Family

As a military family living overseas we are often away from our family for a year at a time, traveling back only when funds (and leave days) allow. We miss birthdays, holidays, weddings, and all sorts of special events. It's not easy to pick up the phone and call home when you want to, since you have to keep the 8 hour time difference in mind. When you do get to visit family, it often feels rushed since you have to squeeze everyone and everything in in a few weeks.

Luckily, God has provided us with a surrogate family here in Turkey. They know how it feels to miss family because they are in the same situation. They understand the work pressures, deployment stress, sentences spoken in acronyms, and what it feels like to make new friends every few years. Our Turkey family is even more perfect when you consider almost all the military members are around the same rank, most of us have no children, we are all about the same age, and we all attend the same church service. We love to have game nights, to travel, to have dinner, and to just hang out. There is not a week that goes by that we aren't together.

I have a feeling our Turkey family will be close for a long time...