A Day in Izmir

I left Selcuk at around 10am and took a minibus an hour north to Izmir, one of four cities in Turkey that have an LDS Church. Armed with the address, attained from www.mormon.org, I first asked the staff at my hotel if they knew where it was. They told me that with that address alone it would be very difficult to find. Apparently all I had was a street number and name and the address lacked the crucial part of the enormous city in which the street was located. Essentially I was looking for a street in New York City without knowing if I should go to Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Harlem, Brooklyn, etc. Still, I thought I'd give it a shot.

I arrived at the Izmir bus station and asked a travel agent at one of the many booking booths. Upon showing him the address, he replied "Problem. Big Problem." And then he reiterated the same message I got at the hotel. I asked another travel agent. "Big problem." They basically said it was impossible to find it.

I kept walking around and finally ran into a police officer who spoke virtually no English. I showed him the address and gave my best "Do you know how to get here?" look. He seemed to understand and pulled out a cell phone. He spoke for a few minutes with someone very helpful on the other end of the line and then flashed me a triumphant smile. After hanging up the phone he wrote the section of the city the church was in inside the book I had written the address in and then he led me to the local bus pick-up point and told me to catch a bus from there.

I asked around for which bus to take to my desired section of the city and finally got on the right one. Of course, I had NO IDEA where to get off this bus. I conveyed to the driver that I didn't know where to get off (again, using my best body language), and he made some sounds that I interpreted to mean he would tell me when to get off. I sat close to the front and sure enough, after meandering through some sketchy looking neighborhoods, we emerged in a nicer looking part of the city and he told me to get off and pointed ahead. And so I walked ahead.

It was at around this point that I became familiar enough with my surroundings that I thought I might be able to decipher the street system enough to get to the apartment building named in the church's address. Wrong. As I would later learn, there is no rhyme or reason behind the ordering of the numerized streets in Izmir. It's a crap shoot. And so I wandered for another hour and a half or so, occasionally asking people in uniforms how to get there and getting rough directions as I walked. Finally someone told me to ask a cab driver. I'd been avoiding this cause I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a taxi if I could avoid it. As the time drew late, however, I decided I was going to have to bite the bullet. I approached a cabby. He asked another cabby, they conversed for a while over the address I'd handed them, and he returned a gave me rough directions in Turkish heavily accentuated with body language. Just then, a woman walked up who did speak English and she translated for me and sent me off in the right direction. The fact that the cabby didn't just tell me to get in and drive me a very short distance and then overcharge me for the journey is characteristic of the genuine friendliness of the Turkish people.

After wandering a while in the right direction, I saw a Domino's. Now, if anyone would know how to navigate the chaotic streets of Izmir, it was the delivery guy standing near his motorcycle not 5 feet from me. I greeted him and...he spoke English...and...knew exactly where the building was. He even drew me a little map inside my book. And so, with about 4 minutes to go until church started, I headed down the right street.

I arrived at the apartment building and rang the buzzer. A muffled buzz greeted me through the intercom and the door clicked open. I went in and, thanks to my hotel friend's help in deciphering what of the address I did have, I knew to go to the fifth floor. There, to my surprise, I was greeted in English by a senior missionary, Elder Richardson.

I walked in the door, looked around, confirmed my suspicions that church was in fact held in a home, took of my backpack and shoes, pulled a tie out of my pack and put it on.

Sacrament meeting (and Sunday School and Relief Society) was held in the living room of the senior couple's apartment. Priesthood (for all three of us) was held in the kitchen. Church was attended that day by myself, the Richardsons and three Turks: the branch president (a fluent English speaker who spent 19 years in Coppenhagen and translated the entire service), a middle-aged convert woman, and a younger investigator woman.

Church was abbreviated to two hours with all three meetings being condensed and a 10-minute break. (A 10-minute break when you only have 6 people to start with is an interesting concept.)

Different as it was, it was remarkably the same and felt like home. It had been weeks since I'd been to church, owing to the absence of the church in most of the places I was traveling.

After church, I stuck around and had dinner with the Richardson's before catching a bus back to the bus depot and there buying what may well have been the last bus ticket to Istanbul available that night. I ate a late snack of yoghurt before jumping on the bus and trying to sleep as the bus careened toward Istanbul for the next 7 or 8 hours.