Our little Ankara Branch

Our small Ankara Branch has about ten active members plus a 5-year old child and a baby. About half speak or understand Turkish, and most but not all speak English, some as a second or third language. Our meetings are conducted in both languages, with the role of interpreter rotating among a few members. Our hymns are sung in both languages at the same time, and the language of the prayers depends on who is praying. One of the sacrament prayers is given in English and the other in Turkish. Our Branch President speaks Turkish and German, so Ron and I have had to dredge up long-forgotten German from our college days, as it often takes two languages to express a complete thought.
We meet in an office, titled on the outside “LDS Charities”, on the fourth floor of a bank building in downtown Ankara, about 2 blocks from our apartment. We hold a 2-hour block of meetings, with Sunday School alternating with Relief Society and Priesthood meetings. On Fast Sundays we hold a “Linger Longer” pot-luck supper—and after the last one, two of us became ill.

Here are pictures of our last Relief Society gathering and of the priesthood quorum.

Last Tuesday evening Ron went to the branch office to catch up on financial record-keeping with David Larsen, the Branch Clerk. They worked for an hour or so and went down to the lobby at 8:55 p.m. to find the front door locked! They had been told earlier that the building is open till 9:00 p.m., but apparently someone was a bit eager. The door had a big padlock on the inside, so they thought someone must be in the building, but no one responded to loud knocking on all the doors they could access. They called the phone number on the rental bill, but got no answer. There were no phone numbers posted in the lobby; the management was not apparently expecting that kind of problem. Ron and David checked for a fire escape from the fourth floor windows of the Church meeting rooms, but there weren’t any. (Not a comforting discovery when one contemplates the possibility of a fire.)

Finally, David, who is an American Foreign Service Officer, called the embassy and had their roving security patrol come to the building. Ron and David saw them through the glass doors as they arrived, and waved to get their attention. Being behind glass made Ron feel like some kind of exhibit. Fortunately, the security patrol talked to a cabby outside, who showed them where the caretaker stays in the basement. (Cabbies know everything; they spend their time either driving around or watching the neighborhood from an enclosed taxi stand.) They shouted down through a grate in the sidewalk, and the caretaker soon emerged and let Ron and David out, after only about 45 minutes of captivity. It could have been much worse; they had visions of sleeping the night on the meeting-room floor. Just another adventure in Turkey!