October 25, 2009

We were recently on a 3 week plus adventure! We went to our office as usual on a Friday. At 9:15AM we were called to the office of David Stapley, the Director of Temporal Affairs for Eastern Europe. He said, “How is your visa situation?” (The reason for that question is that we are only allowed 2 entries to Russia in 90 days.) We replied that we were OK and he asked us to leave immediately to go to Turkey to help with flood relief there. By 10AM, we had our tickets to go and had shut down and packed my computer for travel. We walked 10 minutes to our apartment and were picked up by a cab for the airport at 10:40AM. It impressed on my mind that we need (we now have) a grab and run bag for travel. We forgot a few key items like my thyroid medicine, but we survived.

We arrived in Istanbul, Turkey about 5PM and went to our hotel, the Konak. We have stayed there before. On Saturday, we left bright and early Turkish time, 11:30AM to see the flood damage in one municipality. It had been 3 days since the flood and this municipality was doing well to help their people. We were driven to the flood area where we saw water levels that had been 9 feet high and mud levels that were 18-24” high. The municipality had provided 400 workers that went in with shovels and attacked each area to get the mud and water out. Each home has a hole about 10” in diameter in the wall just above the mud level to allow the water to drain out of each room. The mud had been shoveled out and by the time we got there the people were washing down everything. Furniture was in the streets (or what they could salvage) and they were washing down walls and floors. They wanted us to come in to see what they had accomplished. It was amazing. We saw a woman, wearing yellow boots, with water and rags in a plastic container like a small child’s wading pool. She was walking up and down in the water trying to get the rags clean so they could be used again. She kept changing the water until the rags were clean and then other women took the clean rags and started washing walls and floors. The women wanted to show us the progress they had made. We were impressed. You could see the water and mud lines on the walls, but they were clean and the floor was clean. They said that the entire family huddled together in that room at night to sleep. They had no furniture and no blankets, just each other to keep warm.

This woman was cleaning rags by walking up and down in clean water then changing the water over and over until the rags could be used again.

The first municipality sent in workers each day to shovel mud and help the people.

How they punched holes to let water drain (2nd floor)

Some people came up to a city worker and asked who we were. He said we were Americans. The people had puzzled looks on their faces and said, “But we thought Americans were bad and they are here to help us?” Maybe we did a little good.

We left that area and went to another and met with the mayor (same municipality) who was out in the field coordinating help. He didn’t know us or what we can do and he said that if we could provide immediate help he wanted it, but if it would take us a week they didn’t need our help. We asked what their immediate needs were and he said blankets. He was providing hot food 2 times a day to all of his citizens that were being affected. He and his city workers were actually doing a great job. They needed more immediate help.

We left and went to work. It is not easy to get money into Turkey and everything has to be done in cash. The missionary couple stationed there, the Paskett’s from Bountiful, Utah, were wonderful at leading the effort there. We were just support and backup. We both started drawing money in Turkish Lira out of our bank accounts. We needed to get the equivalent on $30,000 in US money to buy the blankets. Our debit cards had limits of how much could be withdrawn each day. Les Paskett is a retired banker. We called our 24 hour bank help from all over the world and got our limits changed to as high as possible. The branch of the church here had 16,000 Lira that we could use temporarily. The church was working at getting money to us, but it would take a few days that we didn’t have. Les Paskett had a Turkish account, but the banks there don’t have cash on hand so he had to order cash on Monday morning to be delivered to the bank on Tuesday morning. He ordered the blankets from a factory to be delivered on Tuesday as soon as they had cash in hand. Somehow we got everything aligned and were able to deliver the blankets on Tuesday afternoon. The mayor was so impressed that we could do things that fast that he allowed us to do other things to help. They asked for and we provided hygiene and cleaning kits, school kits and shoes.

Off duty marines helping.

Distributing blankets.

Happy faces.

When we distributed the blankets (4000 of them) we drove to different neighborhoods and the “headman” of the village called out the people and we gave them blankets. Two employees from the American Embassy, 5 off duty Marines, some church members and people from the municipality participated. This was on a Tuesday. We found out that there was a four day holiday for the end of Ramadan that started on the next weekend and went until Wednesday. Everything was closed, banks, municipalities, etc. There was nothing we could do so Jack and I left on our original trip to Belarus, Georgia and Armenia and came back on Friday to continue helping. When we got back we helped arrange for the other kits and went to 2 other areas affected by the flood.

The first new area was just shanties that were put up too close to the stream bank (all the flooding was flash flooding because of rain). They were from a different political party than the mayor, plus there had been an attempt on his life so the people got no help from the government. We provided the same things, but they were in worse shape.

"My own blanket."

Second area of help.

This area had much poorer housing. It was built out of anything they could find.

This little girl was helping with the scrubbing.

The suffering in this area broke my heart and there was so little that we could do. In areas of the world where we have more church members, we can bring in crews like the first municipality and go to work cleaning up areas. Our church is not recognized as a legal entity in Turkey so the membership is very small.

We left Turkey after spending 2 weeks there with good feelings about helping, but sadness that there is so much suffering in the world and so much poverty.

I will send out information on the other countries that we visited on this trip in another email.

We love you and miss you. Thanks for your prayers.

Frances and Jack