babies and turks and baptism

We had a full weekend! But it was great to be with friends and family.
Friday night we ate dinner with Izehi and a Turkish family with whom we have become friends. Izehi and I wanted to learn to cook Turkish food, so we asked for lessons. Şafak and her husband, Ibrahim, and their son, Derin invited us into their home. We had a great time learning to make mercimek çorbasi (lentil soup). I found a similar recipe online for anyone interested in trying to make it yourself! It's always fun to be in mixed language company. Izehi and I know very few Turkish words..so we had a lot of fun with the ones we know and we even learned more. However, Daniel speaks rather fluently, so he and Ibrahim got to chat a lot - who knows what they were saying! :-)

Saturday my old roommate, Ashley, and I drove to Shreveport for a shower for my sister. She's 7 months pregnant and looks FABULOUS. This Thanksgiving our family will have a LOT to be thankful for - Jenny and Brian are expected to bring little girl Cohn into the world the Thursday before Thanksgiving! We're anxiously and prayerfully awaiting her arrival!

Sunday was super baptism Sunday at our church. A couple of weeks ago our pastor spoke on baptism - what the Bible teaches about it, who should be baptize, why one should be baptized. There were 75 people baptized over 2 services on Sunday morning. WOW! Praise God! Some of them were first-time baptisms, either recently saved or saved a while ago but never followed the Lord in baptism; some were people who had previously been baptized, but felt like at that time, they didn't really understand the significance of baptism or maybe they had walked for a period of time in disobedience to the Lord and wanted to announce to the church that now Jesus is LORD of their lives. It was great! After the service, our Turkey team went to Jim and DeeAnn's for lunch. We hang out with them 2x each week to plan for the move to Turkey!!