Be Flexible...

I have been hearing this phrase for months now, either from Jon, or at church, or from friends who have done trips like this before. Well, today I am realizing why. We woke up this morning to our phone ringing. It was a TACO team member, telling us that our drummer and his wife are in the hospital. She is pregnant and her water broke this morning (she is 5 weeks early). This threw a bit of a wrench into the plans for this tour. Our first concert is tomorrow, and another one on Saturday. We leave on Sunday to drive to Izmir for a week of touring (I think there is a concert planned for everyday). Do we scramble and look for another drummer, or switch the musicians around that we do have and have Jon play bass, and our current bass player switch to drums...or have Jon try to drum and sing at the same time...or maybe just scale down to a more acoustic group and not really worry about drums? What ever they decide to do, it is going to require more practice, either to learn new parts or whatever. The nice thing is that nobody seems too stressed about this situation. It is nice to know that God is in control, and we will move forward to do what we came here to do. He will be glorified! Right now, I am thankful that she went into labor today, and not a few days from now when we were actually 9 hours away! I am excited for them also as they begin this new season of life and become parents!

Ty and Devon have done really well on this trip so far. They have had to sit through some pretty long orientation type meetings. Yesterday, we did some advertising for the concert on Friday night. We went into Istanbul on the Europe side and set up on the street to do a mini street concert (very stripped down) across the street from where the concert was actually going to be. We couldn't actually hand out anything on the street, but we left the guitar case open with little poster type things in it that people could take. After about 2 songs, the police came and shut us down. We packed up and started walking back to the train. After a few blocks the decision was made to set up again and start playing. This time they played for maybe 45 minutes. There were times that quite a crowd would stop and listen. Anyway, back to Ty and Devon...after we got back to the Asia side of Istanbul, we went to a town square type place to actually hand things out. The boys really wanted to help out with this! A little background on turks and kids. They seem to love children! We can't go anywhere without someone rubbing Devon's head, or touching his face. I guess it is because he is blonde. Dev has been really good about this, and it doesn't bother him at all! I would have freaked out at his age if it were me! Anyway, we used that to our advantage when it came time to hand things out. And anyone who knows Devon, knows he is not really shy. He was having so much fun handing these papers out! At one point I was watching him, he was standing behind Jon (who was also trying to hand them out), people who would tell Jon no, would then take one if Devon handed it to them! It was hilarious! After a while we just all gave Devon and Ty our piles and they handed them out for us! I have pictures that I will get posted soon. After that we went to get some dinner. It was probably about 8:30 pm when we got to an outdoor cafe. I was told this was what Turks would consider fast food. Now, I don't know what my sandwich was called, but I will describe it for you the best I can. So far the food here has been excellent! Now, let me warn you, this might not sound so good, but it was so yummy! It was basically a grilled sandwich which was stuffed with some kind of meat (closest I can think of would be salami), white cheese, tomatoes, pickles, lettuce, (this is where is gets a bit weird), kinda like a potato salad, and french fries. It was so yummy! Ty and Jon each had a sandwich with shaved chicken, lettuce, tomato, pickles and french fries and wrapped in like a flat bread. Devon has some like meat ball thing, except they were kinda flat and oval shaped. It all tasted really good! On our way back to the train to go home for the night we stopped and got Magnum bars (really yummy ice cream bars...kinda like Dove bars, but better!).

I am sure there is so much more I could tell you...there is a lot I am trying to process in my brain right now before I right it out! It has really blown my mind, the experience of being in a foreign country for the first time. Anyway, I am sure I will write more about that side of things in the next day or so!

Thanks for reading, I promise to get more pictures up soon!