Interview with Turkish Missionaries
We recently sat down with our missionary partners in Turkey—whose names here are changed for their security—Gwen and David.
They gave us an update on their ministry and their lives in Turkey. We hope you’ll join us in learning a bit more about what it’s like for them as they share the Gospel in a foreign nation under a hostile government.
Please pray for their success in ministry and for their safety.
How have the earthquake relief efforts affected your ministry in Turkey?
The bulk of what we’ve done is caring for people in their time of need. However, what we are seeing is that there are Turkish people who have never met a believer in their life, and they are coming in contact with those who are following Jesus and seeing the love of God in a way they’ve never seen before.
Through that, the country is doing news reports about the church and what the church is doing. We’re hearing people talk about what the Christians are doing in the country. Normally, when they talk about Christians in Turkey, it’s not favorable. But now we’re getting so many favorable reports because of the love that’s being shown.
It’s been almost a year since the earthquake. Lots of people have moved on, but the church hasn’t, and the Christians who live in Turkey are still caring. That’s made a huge difference in people who have never met a believer in their life, never been in a church in their life, but now they are interested and wanting to talk more about Jesus.
Have you seen an influx of new believers come out of this tragedy?
We are at a point in Turkey where every time we meet someone who has never met a Christian or never heard the Gospel before, our desire is that they have a Godly experience with someone who is following Christ. All of the people we are encountering now live in a part of Turkey that does not have or has very few representatives for Jesus, but they are more open to hearing the Gospel than ever before. We will see new believers come out of this, and we’re super excited about it!
In the village that we are sending most of our relief to, the village leader was hit really hard. He has lost two of his daughters in the earthquake. His other daughter has no legs and lived in a wheelchair, but her wheelchair was crushed in the earthquake. His wife and one other child survived.
When we met them, they were living in a tent and had nothing. He’s the village leader—the most important person in the village. He invited our preacher over for dinner and said, “You know there’s something good that’s come out of this disaster?” Our preacher thought, “what in the world could have come out of this that is good?” The leader said, “I no longer think Christians are infidels.”
He used a Turkish word that I wouldn’t use on my worst enemy as the way he used to think about Christians. But then he said, “I no longer think that because you guys are the ones who came, and you guys are the ones who stayed.” And so, we believe that man will come to faith because he said, “Why? Why are you guys doing this?” Our preacher was able to share the Gospel with him.
We believe that village leader will come to faith, and when he does, the village will follow. We genuinely believe—not that God causes disasters—that God is working in the disaster to bring about His glory and more followers to Jesus in an area that has not had very many followers at all.
Are there any updates on the political situation? How does this affect you?
There was just an election where the party that had been in power has remained in power by a slight majority. This has affected minority groups in general but especially believers. The government in power wants the country to go in a much more Islamic and religiously conservative direction. They have implemented many laws to that end.
Some of these laws have affected the economy, and now the economy is struggling a lot. So, there’s a lot of Turks who are having difficulty in being able to support their family and stuff like that. Turkish believers do not think that the government will relax in any way now that they’ve won this election. Most likely, because this election went in the direction of the party that was already in power, they will only continue to pursue more policies that are not favorable to Christians and other minorities.
But at the same time, everything that we are hearing from the Christian community is that they have a strong faith and that God is in control, regardless of who is in power. The kingdom that we belong to is above that of any earthly kingdom. So, it has really increased a lot of the faith of believers who we worship with and those that we’ve seen in other places.
Also, a lot of people for a long time had a lot of faith in their government and the military and things like that. Seeing how the government has responded in the midst of the earthquake has really caused a lot of people to question the government. They have begun to seek out the truth from other sources, and this has really made them open to the Gospel.
What are some of the challenges, cultural or otherwise that you guys are facing as a family doing missionary work?
Our children are in a Turkish public school, which has about 1,000 kids. They are the only followers of Jesus that we know of in the school. So that presents some great challenges, but it’s a great opportunity for them to be a light to their classmates. It has opened tons of doors for us to share the Gospel with kids and for our kids to share the Gospel with their classmates.
But it is a challenge, and it is difficult at times for them to be in such a minority. So that’s one of the things that we face.
We absolutely love living in Turkey. I don’t know how long we will live here. We will never fully understand the culture, but we do love the culture here. The most difficult part is the distrust. Research says that the Turkish people groups are the least trusting people in the world. We are very trusting people, so learning how to work and build trust in people enough that your words have some influence takes time.
I think this was something that was also part of ministry for Jesus, and he got that and understood that. He was willing to take that time to spend with people in order to share his life with them. So, most of what we do is “life evangelism,” where we share our lives with people and they see the difference in us. They want to know why there’s a difference.
However, in the last five years, Turkey has kicked a lot of missionaries out of the country. People who are very close to us and that we love dearly no longer get to live in Turkey. That has been a real challenge—not only for us but for our kids to lose their friends. For us to know that our days could be numbered there and that this instability exists is difficult.
What are your goals for Turkey?
All of our current goals fit under what we’ve always wanted: that Turkey would no longer be the largest unreached people group in the world. So we are working within the churches in a couple of different arenas. First, we are continuing to do outreach on the college campus so that the next generation has much more of an opportunity to hear about the Gospel than the previous generations did. Second, we are doing some real intentional work among women who’ve been sexually abused—as well as discipling them to mentor and disciple their children to lead the next generation of Turks to follow Jesus.
With the relief effort, a lot of our energy is focused on training of lay people to do counseling—to do “trauma compassionate present listening.” My neighbor lost 50 family members in the earthquake, and those people need somebody who will listen to them. So we are training a lot of our Turkish ladies and men to develop these skills so that they can be more available to listen. They are going into these devastated areas and to some of the tent cities to be a real compassionate presence. Then they are able to share the Gospel with them.
What can we do for you to help support your work?
The biggest thing is pray. One thing we’ve latched onto is that prayer is laying the foundation and preparing the way for what we are about to do. Pray for Gwen, so that when she enters a place with the ladies that she is ministering to, that the Spirit will be there and the people will be receptive to what is about to be shared. Or, if we are about to enter into an earthquake region, that the Spirit will be there to prepare the hearts of the people to receive not just the physical blessing but the spiritual blessings.
For David (who is a teacher), pray that as he enters a classroom, that he will be able to be the presence of Christ and not just teach them whatever he is teaching that day. Those are things that anybody can do to support us.
There are still logistical things such as containers that are needed for housing. People are still without homes who are living in tents that don’t do well during the winter. We need container dwellings for them that are much more safe and able to withstand the elements.
Beyond the physical, many people will need counseling as this goes on for months and years. There were some ladies who have been sexually abused—we’ve known that counseling was a great need in this country already. Their culture will tell them that they should just buck up and get over it. Often people expect you to grieve for a certain period of time, and once that time has passed, you don’t need to be sad anymore. But the truth is that many of us and many of them will be grieving for a long time to come. They will need help and guidance on how to process through their grief.
We are praying for workers and praying for a harvest. We believe Turkey is the gateway to the Muslim world, and we want to disciple and equip Turks so that they can move into parts of the Middle East where we cannot live. We want them to be able to reach other middle easterners, as they already understand the culture and even some of the language is very similar. We ask that you make yourself aware of how many people in the world will be born, living and dying without ever being able to hear the Gospel.
Pray for marriages, too. One of the areas we want to turn more attention to within our church are marriages. Turkish marriages are really struggling. We want to talk more and research how to build strong healthy marriages in the coming years. And as those marriages are a light to the Turkish people of what love really looks like and the love of the Father, pray that God will strengthen the marriages of the believers.