The Grants' Bulgaria Blog.

Hi all, Stu here.

There’s a memorable episode of Long Way Around that Elly and I watched recently which shows Charlie and Ewan’s first 24 hours in Kazakhstan. After crossing the border a guy named Igor escorted them to his house to stay the night. Igor’s wife prepared them all some food (and vodka) while Igor repeatedly made phone calls. Soon, other guests arrived, and Igor’s wife brought out more food (and vodka)… until the house was full of Kazakhs (who were full of vodka) and a raucous party ensued. Almost no one else spoke English. The evening culminated in a classic moment when Igor descended his staircase holding a guitar in one hand and a Kalashnikov (rifle) in the other. He proceeded to sing them a song with great gusto before the whole party went out on the balcony to shoot their guns in the air.

The next morning Ewan started a video diary entry with the phrase “I cannot begin to explain the last 24 hours…”. Well, after our visit to Slavyantsi, I’m tempted to say the same thing!

—

We went with David, Kathryn and Aydin to visit Hasan and Emine, Millet believers who live in Slavyantsi (pr: slah-vee-aunts-ee). David has helped Hasan in running some basic computer classes in a Turkish village called Climate (pr. clee-maht-eh) and there is apparently demand for more classes.

In a nutshell, we stayed with Hasan and Emine for 3 nights, were extended amazing hospitality, and accompanied them to two church meetings (totalling 4 hours, all in Turkish!) and a day trip to Aytos (pr. eye-toss). It was a pretty intense weekend, so I’ll run you through the highlights.

—

On Doing Church, Millet-Style:

Hasan is the pastor of meetings in Slavyantsi and neighbouring Sungurlare (pr. suhn-goor-lahr-eh). At both meetings I got a strange sense of walking into a Southern Gospel service – if only there had been a swaying choir dressed in blue the image would have been complete. The meetings were crammed into tiny, run-down chapels and the preachers (David and Hasan!) were energetic and might as well have been saying “Do you HEAR me, brother and sisters?”. I did hear “kardeş” (brother) used a lot!

The services seemed pretty similar to what I’m used to, though the songs were A capella or with just a drum (but with funky Turkish style melodies). I was surprised and a little disappointed that the format of the meetings was so familiar; everyone sat on chairs, in rows, and listened reverently… I was hoping that a church which appeared spontaneously in Millet culture 20-30 years ago might have developed unique ways of meeting together. That’s not just my bias for non-traditional forms of church coming through either; it is a very European style and certainly not familiar or natural to Turkish or Millet people. The result of adopting such a Western style is that the churches find it hard to convince others that Jesus has anything to offer other than what they see as Western forms of thinking/acting/living.

Having said that, God is still big enough to be using these meetings to do great things amongst the Millet. The services were also good fun! Singing along wasn’t really an option (lyrics in Turkish, melodies like nothing you’ve ever heard!) but the music was great! Elly and I also got to go up the front and greet everyone – just like visiting “missionaries” do everywhere in the world, I suppose!

On Listening to Lots of Turkish:
Over the 3-and-a-bit days we’ve probably heard 15-20 hours of spoken Turkish. That’s a lot, I ought to point out for anyone who forgot to read the numbers. Later, I’ll add a post about our experiences of learning the language, but here I want to relate the strange experience of not knowing the language at all!

It’s intense! Even in Haskovo, I sometimes have those panicky moments where I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be speaking Turkish or Bulgarian, or I can’t remember the word for “thank you” or “1.25 Leva please”… That must be what being a 2 or 3 year-old must be like – everyone’s talking but I don’t get it and I really want X, Y or Z but I can’t communicate it except by pointing and grunting. Unfortunately pointing and grunting are the two languages I do know here.

In Slavyantsi, David and Kathryn were essentially catching up with old friends AND discussing new ministry possibilities, so Elly and I weren’t really able to participate much. D+K graciously translated bits and pieces every day (this including a sermon and a memorable debate which I’ll describe shortly!) but for the most part we were listening to 100% Turkish. Of course it was fun for a while, and we’re always able to pick up words here and there. But after about 30 minutes of Turkish, my brain is fried and I have to turn it of (ie. stop trying to understand anything). I subsequently learned that there’s a third stage in this process where I don’t even realise that I’ve been listening until a random Turkish phrase pops into my head hours later… I usually have to look it up to find out what it means. It’s funny how the sounds get stuck in my head.

This morning I was dreaming in Turkish; again, not words I could understand, just more Turkish background noise. It’s weird! I’d like to think that hearing so much Turkish does some good in terms of learning the language! At the very least it causes a little healthy frustration (at not being able to understand) which inspires us to study Turkish harder!

On Multi-Lingual Theological Debates:
“Not recommended” would be a good way to sum up this topic! I no longer remember how, but after Hasan and I had finished an interesting discussion (with David translating) on what church is like in Australia, it came out that I had been baptised as a child – and not by full immersion (gasp!). Essentially, Hasan was horrified, and immediately offered to baptise me “properly”, saying that some youth from one of the meetings was going to be baptised soon. This isn’t something I’d given a lot of thought to because I suppose it seems to be yet another debate I’d rather avoid in preference to important issues. The problem was, every time I went to explain another aspect of my answer (which in a nutshell is: I made a public decision to follow Jesus, and I’ve been baptised… why should it matter that they didn’t occur at the same time?) I suspect Hasan now thinks of the Anglican Church as a strange sect, thanks to me. To someone like Hasan, from a completely un-churched culture, things like infant baptism, baptism by sprinkling instead of full-immersion, Anglican confirmation, etc. etc. are just inventions – and not found anywhere in the Bible! I can see why he’d be so fervent about it (the phrase “I’m just not sure if you’ll be saved from the fires of hell, brother” was uttered…) but it didn’t change my mind, I’m afraid. *Sigh*

That’s all from me. Tell ya mum she’s a legend.

Onya,

Stu.

Tags: culture shock, food, language - Turkish, Millet church, prayer points

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 1:56 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.