After hiking for several days, we had picked up our car and driven to the base of a giant mountain for the last leg of a 10-day trek. We had spent our day visiting some sites from the Apostle Paul’s journeys, and now the daylight was quickly fading. We parked the car around 5:30 p.m., threw on our backpacks loaded for a four-day climb, and began our upward quest at full gallop. Our team consisted of our student missionaries, Joseph and Shadrach, a Turkish Adventist named Burak, and me.

We hiked with determined spirit for three hours and then started thinking about finding a campsite. We had spent some days already camping on various beaches, so the rocky wilderness terrain looked like quite an uninviting mattress.

In the fading light, our hearts were buoyed as we saw a farm, a man working in a garden, and some abandoned buildings. With ominous clouds gathering overhead and a gusty wind beginning to blow, the buildings seemed to beckon, though scrawled on the fence in dripping red paint were the Turkish words, “Stay Out!” Burak and Joseph dared to approach the farmer anyway. Two angry dogs and one kind young farmer later, we received the green light to come and set up camp.
From our team’s rations, we threw an onion, a red pepper, two handfuls of rice, green lentils and a vegetable seasoning cube into a tin pot. Wanting to save ourselves the effort of building a fire, we asked the farmer if he might have a stove. He did, and while the stew bubbled, we became acquainted with our surroundings.

The cabin was set on the edge of tall pine forest. To the side was a lovely meadow filled with flowers, goats and a rustic stone barn. By the barn were millstones that were centuries old and a small patch of grass near an apricot tree. That grassy patch, after we relocated a small turtle and six dozen rocks, seemed a soft and suitable place for our beds. The home itself was made of concrete with a plywood porch. The term “redneck” may help you visualize the assortment of tools and junk that lay around. (Later, when we went to use the outhouse, we saw that the owner kept his chainsaw there.) Ice-cold water trickled from a nearby spring, and there was no electricity. When night finally fell, it was a blanket of darkness without edge.
Because my tin pot was cooking on the farmer’s woodstove, it seemed appropriate to invite him to join us for dinner. He was glad for the invitation to his own house. His wizened great aunt soon came in from the fields with her goats and spread out a tablecloth on the floor of the living room over the Turkish carpets. We sat cross-legged with corners of the tablecloth on our laps and watched as she put a big, greasy pan of fried goat meat in front of us. Our hosts ladled out and lapped up our lentils. We all laughed with the old auntie who thought it was hilarious that they had eaten all our soup and left the goat meat for us before finding out that we were vegetarians.

Soon another man, Nevrut, joined us. We quickly learned that this was his home, and the young farmer we had met was his nephew. Nevrut was a strong man in his mid-50s with a big black mustache that danced in the lamplight as he talked in his happy, boastful way. He was single, and I could sense he was all too conscious of his loneliness. He immediately launched into his story of lost love. He had fallen in love at age 16 and built a house for the girl he hoped to marry. He had even engineered a mountain road to the house. He loved the girl deeply and set all his heart’s hopes on her. However, he was called to the military, and upon his return, he found the girl was married to someone else. He never fell in love again.
Nevrut bragged of his involvement in fighting the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group. He had killed many PKK members in the nearby mountains. He belonged to a civil fighting corps trained to eradicate the PKK. As we listened, I thought of my own mission and how this man might feel about it! He then brought out his prized possession, a long-range sniper rifle. It had cost him nearly $20,000. Glowing with pride, he passed the heavy weapon over for me to inspect.

After Nevrut brought out a special rapid-fire shotgun and some other weapons, and after a few more of his manhunting stories, each ending with the Muslim phrase, “God is Great,” Burak, my Turkish friend, nervously whispered to me in English, “Don’t say anything about religion—please!” Under the circumstances, it seemed a reasonable request.

Despite Nevrut’s stories, I sensed kindness in him and felt compassion for him. He offered to let us stay in his house for the night, and we gladly accepted. He put large cushions on the floor, and we prepared to retire like royalty.

I’ve read that the Assyrians used to decorate their guest chambers with terrible instruments of torture to keep their foreign visitors in check. Truthfully, that is a bit how I felt after seeing Nevrut’s arsenal.

As we crawled into our sleeping bags, our host said he would return in a half hour after his last Muslim prayers of the day. While Nevrut prayed, I prayed, too. I thought of giving him my Leatherman knife for a gift, as he prized American things. But then I thought, “What good would another knife do this man?” Then I thought of the Turkish New Testament in my vest pocket. “Lord, if there is any way, please help me leave a Bible in this home.” I thought of leaving it under some blankets or on top of Nevrut’s gun cases where it would be discovered after we left. But God’s ways were above mine, as I learned the next morning.

Not being weary from a day of hiking, the farm’s roosters arose far too early. Again, we gathered in a circle on the living room floor for a meal. The old auntie had prepared a breakfast of olives, tomatoes and noodle soup for us.

Nevrut motioned to the strips of meat his family was eating, encouraging me to try them. I told him that I had chosen to be a vegetarian when I was eight. “No meat, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no drugs. I keep my body like a mosque—clean for God.”

Nevrut came over, hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks. “We are brothers,” he said.

“God’s way is the only way to live,” I replied, as Burak looked at me as if he was facing a firing squad.

Nevrut sat back thoughtfully and began to tell a new kind of story. He’d had a toothache, and a doctor had told him to put some whiskey on it. Instead, Nevrut had drunk the whiskey together with eight painkillers. The overdose ended up paralyzing half of his face. I listened closely, not knowing where the story would lead.

Nevrut continued, “One day, my commanding officer called up 130 men from my area to fight the PKK. He told me to stay behind as a rear guard. As I was keeping watch over a key trail into the forest, I saw a group of seventeen men walking. Oddly, two of them were swinging a little girl between them. Assuming they were PKK and had kidnapped the girl, I met them on the trail with my rifle aimed at the leader. With raised arms, they declared their loyalties to the Turkish Republic and convinced me they were not PKK. Persuaded that they were not a threat, I invited them to my house for a meal. At the meal, one of the men, a German, gave me a small book about the prophet Jesus.”

What this book was, I don’t know, as Nevrut described several stories that had no Biblical basis. Nonetheless, Nevrut saw in this book the power of the healer Jesus. For eight years, he has suffered with his facial paralysis, and he was desperate for healing, so he began carrying the book in his vest pocket. “For one week five times a day after making namaz [Muslim prayer time], I would rub that little book gently on my cheek and jaw, praying that Jesus would heal me.” Nevrut’s eyes shone and his mustache danced as he finished the story just the way I hoped he would. “And after a week, I was totally healed. God is great!”

“And praise to Messiah, Jesus!” I added. “He is a healer and has power to hear and answer our prayers because He is alive!”

“Yes,” Nevrut, agreed, eyes gleaming. He was a healed man, and he knew it.

Surely this was my opportunity to get a Bible into this home.
Suddenly, I heard a new voice behind me. “Allah is one, and Mohammad is his prophet, and the way of the Quran is the straight path.” I turned around in surprise, troubled at how our praises to Christ had been redirected. Another man had entered the room during Nevrut’s story.

Caution flared up in me. “Who is this man, and will his loyalty to Islam prevent me from leaving a Bible after all?” I wondered silently. Would Nevrut receive a Bible in this man’s presence? What were the risks now?”

To be continued.

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