I need to see a monk.


Yusuf came into the church asking to talk to a monk. After two people welcomed him and explained that we didn't really have monks I sat down with him to share the gospel. He explained that for three months he has been seeing a dream, and that was the real reason he was in the church. In the dream Yusuf walks into a church where a monk asks if he can "read a prayer over him." In the dream he agrees and the monk prays. Yusuf can't remember the content of the prayer but he knows it is significant. So, naturally, Yusuf came into the church asking for a monk. I spent about a half hour talking with him. Among the passages we read together was the story of the paralytic in Mark 2. In that story the man comes to Jesus looking to get healed, but Jesus sees that he has a deeper need than that, so instead of first healing the man, Jesus says "Son, your sins are forgiven." It seemed clear that Yusuf had a deeper need than the ones he knew about. Just as Yusuf was coming back to the subject of the dream and the monk, our pastor walked into the church. This is the first time that he has been able to come to one of our Tuesday events. I immediately introduced them and asked if we could all go downstairs to pray. Our pastor shared with Yusuf, explaining that God is calling him, seeking to get his attention, but that in the end he would have to make an important decision about whether to continue to pursue what God is trying to say or to ignore him. We prayed together and after the pastor had prayed I stood up and read from Ephesians 3:14-21: "...I pray that out of his glorious riches He may strengthen you through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith..." Yusuf stayed long enough to have a tea with us and he promised to be back on Sunday.


The Tuesday outreach events that we have been organizing have really taken off. On two Tuesdays we served soup to more than 50 guests and two weeks ago we served well over one hundred bowls of Ashure, a traditional Turkish pudding. We have been seeing some people come back week after week just to chat or to ask questions or for prayer. And every week we have had new people coming to the church for the first time. It's very exciting. In fact, it's such a contagious atmosphere that we have had more and more believers coming to help out every week. This past Tuesday we had more than 20 believers, many of them from other churches. They come to serve tea, to pray for people, to chat and to watch God do amazing things like he is doing with Yusuf.


This coming week we are doing another Soup Day. Pray for us. We want to be a blessing in our neighborhood and we want to be able to bring down the barriers that keep people from coming to the church. And we want people to meet Jesus.

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