Restored hope

Yakup has lived in Turkiye for five years with his wife and children. He leads a small fellowship for believers who are deaf while working on a Turkish Sign Language Bible translation. He is also completing his Master of Biblical Counseling and is interested to see how he can help believers and churches participate in more vibrant and healthy communities. His wife is leading the children’s ministry at the church and has been developing the first preschooler children’s curriculum in Turkish, as well as writing board books for young children.  

In 2023, two major earthquakes hit our region of eastern Türkiye, bringing down thousands of buildings and damaging hundreds of thousands more. More than 14 million people were instantly homeless, including every member of our 10-person fellowship of believers who are deaf. Some of them stayed in schools where there wasn’t even room to sit, some in tents full of coal smoke and others escaped to their village homes (most people have one home in the city centre with natural gas for the winter and one home in the village with their land and animals).

Immediately following the earthquakes, a winter storm hit our region, and many who had gone to their village high up in the mountains could no longer access food or water. One family told us that after days of living on stale bread and pickles, they were finally able to leave the village and head across the country to stay with family members. However, their relatives, also traumatised by the earthquake and needing more personal space, soon kicked them out. The family was left homeless, unable to return to their city or their home, and ended up living with a friend. Their story is similar to many others we have heard.

The same day as the earthquake, churches in nearby cities, including the church I attend, rallied to help those in need. They set up a mobile soup kitchen and were in our city by the first night. It was the only food anyone was handing out, and even a thousand cups of soup didn’t seem like it made a drop in the bucket. The soup kitchen, parked near the hospital, also provided food for doctors and nurses who were working round the clock as people were dug from the rubble. Eventually, with tent cities being set up, the soup kitchen got permission from the government to set up a full kitchen next to the hospital. Slowly, as more resources became available, the soup kitchen started serving three meals a day. 

Scattered across the country, many people from the deaf community were losing hope. They had left the city with nothing and felt stranded. With no friends or anyone to interpret for them, getting help was difficult, and life was sometimes isolating. Eventually, a few returned to our city. They found it in ruins, their homes standing but with cracks in every wall. Unable to trust their own homes anymore, and with the uncertainty of whether the houses would be condemned or not, they stayed with relatives. 

One spring morning, a couple and their grown son from the fellowship walked from their relative's house to the soup kitchen. They saw the two containers and tent that had been set up with huge pots of cooking eggplant, tomatoes, onions and chunks of beef. They saw the Turkish tea station, set up to serve hundreds of cups of tea at a time, and the smiling faces of the international volunteers who had come from all over the world to help those impacted by the earthquakes. They saw the line start forming as the delicious wafts of food spread out across the hospital parking lot and through the tent city. They saw the police and firemen standing in line alongside hospital staff and those who lost their homes and loved ones. Seeing everything around them, the family stepped around the line to join the volunteers and started pouring piping hot tea. 

In serving and loving those who had come to the table, one family found their hope restored.

“And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God.” — Luke 13:29 (ESV)