Local Parish

This morning Adam, Andre, Peter, and myself met Engin (the pastor of the Turkish church here in Istanbul that we are have been connected with through St. Margaret's Anglican Church in Winnipeg) outside of the Swedish Consulate where his parish used to gather inside the chapel. We walked along Istiklal Caddesi where he pointed out different Christian churches and told us a bit of the history about the buildings and the congregations. As we walked along we where getting closer and closer to the street our flat is on. We arrived at the Armenian church that is no more then 50 feet from our front door. It takes as much time to descend our spiral staircase to the front door as it does to go from our front door to the church's steps. Jess had stayed at home because we thought we where going to be doing a lot of walking and her ankle was still hurting, but I quickly ran over to get her when I realized how close it was. It was really great that she was able to be there since she had been missing out on a lot of things these last two days.

The entire service was in Turkish, of which we know very little. Some of the songs where recognizable, and I recognize the some parts of the liturgy, like the Apostles Creed and some parts of the Eucharistic prayers. But for the most part everything that was said I could hardly understand. One thing Jess understood, was "Bir ve uc"which translates to "One in Three". We may not know how to say much but we have a robust Turkish vocabulary of the trinity.