Family is very important to Turks, and my Turkish teacher has mentioned different members of her family at various points in conversation. The other day she happened to mention that she'd been talking to her father (aged 92) who told her he was scared of dying. She said that her response to him was along the lines of 'don't worry, you'll go to paradise like your friends who have already died, the rest of your family will join you there later' (that's a paraphrase by the way).
Most of the class smiled and my teacher (who in many ways seems like a fairly religious person) clearly didn't think there was anything to be scared of.
I could have cried (and with the pregnancy hormones currently flooding my body, I mean that literally). Judging by what my teacher has said about her family and upbringing, I'd assume he's a fairly religious man - yet he told his daughter that he fears death.
It's probably fair to assume - though of course I can't be sure - that this gentleman has never met a believer or heard the good news presented in a way he can understand. (If you want to know the basis for my assumption, click here or here and have a look at the statistics on the top of the page). The only person in whom salvation is found is considered to be only a prophet by almost all the people in this country.
And as I was sitting in class, it struck me that this is why we're here. We miss family and friends and England, we feel like foreigners here and we're still getting to grips with the language. But it is all worth it if we can play a small part in supporting and working alongside the groups of believing people here, so that they can shine like stars in the darkness as they hold out the word of life.
I'll never meet this gentleman, but I hope that before he dies, he will come to the one person who can give him rest. The sobering reality is that there are millions more in the same situation in this country and no other name by which we can be saved.
