I lay awake on the morning of November 4, 2016, watching the gray daylight slowly invade the room.
I felt more isolated than ever. This room had a light switch and the toilet worked, but I really didn’t care. I literally felt sick. Finally I got up and shuffled across the room to the mirror. I stood in front and stared at the unshaven, ragged man looking back at me. He looked so sad and so wild that I had to turn away.
Soon a guard was banging on the door. When it opened and I looked into the hallway I saw a group of fifty or sixty people crowded together waiting to go to breakfast. I passed. I did not have the heart to leave my room. But when lunchtime came around I made myself join them, and found a seat at an empty table, ignoring the confused looks a few people were giving me.
Between the light switch, the mirror, and the communal dining I figured out that I had been moved to a floor for people of a lower risk category, but I could not understand why. At least, I couldn’t until later on that day when I was taken from my cell to a visitor room where I saw Robert, the consular official.
“I’m sorry it has taken me so long to see you, Andrew. They’ve only just given permission for me to visit.”
I was so relieved to see him. During my first week at Harmandali an officer had pressured me to write a statement saying I did not want to meet with any US officials. I refused. After a couple of phone calls to higher-ups, he tried to persuade me again. I was indignant: “Your government has burned me once—I won’t trust you again. Why would I sign such a thing? This shows what your true intentions are.”
Burak and Melih had lied to me at Isikkent, leading me to believe that just meeting with a lawyer would keep us there for months. The paper they had me sign saying I did not want a lawyer to appeal my deportation was now being used to keep me from all legal help to appeal my detention. After this I wasn’t signing any papers.
I thanked Robert, but told him that I was confused by what was going on. “I don’t know why I’m here or what they’re doing,” I said, struggling to keep my voice from being overcome with emotion.
He was just about to answer when the door opened. A policeman entered, followed by a careful, reserved-looking man. He introduced himself as Hasan and explained that he was the head administrator.
Robert gave me a look that suggested I let him do the talking for a while. I listened as he asked them to return my glasses and also if he could give me some books, pen, and paper that Norine had sent.
The policeman tensed. “We should ask Ankara.”
I could feel the opportunity slipping away, but Hasan shrugged. “It’s okay. It shouldn’t be a problem.” He held out his hand for the two books that Robert had brought, flicked through them, and nodded. “Let him have the books. Whatever, it’s not important.”
I could barely take my eyes off my Bible, but like a starving man at a banquet, I wanted to take everything I could possibly get my hands on. “Please,” I sputtered. “I really want to be moved to the front side of the building again. It’s good for me to be able to see the sun. It’s warmer and I can tell the time that way. It helps me . . . psychologically too.”
“I’ll look into that,” he said offhandedly as he left.
Back in my room I stood in front of the window and let the cold breeze swallow me. I knew that I needed to pull out my prayer book and spend some time reciting Scripture and praying as I walked the room, and I was glad to finally have the treasures that Robert had brought me, especially my Bible, but I was still stuck in the same inner room.
I had been staring aimlessly out the window, not noticing that ahead of me, on the other side of the courtyard, was an office. A light was on and I could see Hasan, the man with whom I’d just been meeting.
I knew what I should do. I knew that I should keep quiet, not bother him or do anything that might upset him. But I could not hold back.
“Excuse me!” I shouted. “Sir!” He turned to the window and looked over at me. “Please don’t forget about me!”
He nodded vaguely and turned his back on me.
An hour later my door opened.
Two guards were standing there. “Come,” they said. “Bring your things.”
I didn’t ask why. If they were moving me somewhere better, that would be good. But if my shouting had been a mistake and I was about to be punished, then so be it. I was powerless to change anything.
THE NEW ROOM was on the same floor. It was for lower security inmates like the previous one, so I could control my own lights and stare at myself in the mirror. It was also at the front of the building, and it was higher than my original room, so I could see not only the road but also the parking lot and the guard booth at the gate.
Even before the door was locked shut behind me, I started to write in my new notebook.
“The kind God, the gentle God, the God who cares about my heart.” This is what I am thinking, tears welling in my eyes, at the end of a difficult two or three days that really tested my heart—days when I expected that you would remove those things that I care about, strip me, to make me tough and bulletproof. But my heart screams, “I don’t want to be tough! I want to be your little boy . . .” Thank you. I have pen and paper, books and a Bible. Glasses returned. This is the best room I’ve had—now I will be able to see Norine more easily. May I leave here knowing that as I walk through the valley of the wolves, you are with me, and that even in the presence of my enemies you are doing good things for me.
NOT ONLY WERE THINGS BETTER in my new room, but soon Norine was allowed to visit me most days. And not just for twenty minutes either—often for as long as a whole hour. It was a dramatic shift.
Whenever Norine was allowed to visit she would always bring news that she hoped would encourage me. “Andrew, the prayer has really taken off. I’m getting reports off to others, and they in turn are spreading it to their networks.” Sometimes she brought letters from friends—words that they hoped would inspire me to keep going and emerge from this trial victorious: “Sing like Paul and Silas! Preach to everyone around you! Have a great time, just you and God!” I understood why they would write such things, but the truth was that spiritually and emotionally, I was struggling just to survive. Whenever I opened my mouth to sing, I would choke up.
So I was grateful to receive the letter that contained the most helpful advice: “Just breathe. Keep your eyes on God. That’s all—no other expectations. Just breathe and you will come through.”
It was just what I needed.
IT WAS GOOD TO HEAR that numerous members of Congress back home had contacted the US Embassy in Ankara, urging them to act. But I was worried that time was running out. The work that Norine and I had been doing in Turkey was so small by US standards, and we had no profile back home to speak of. Surely it wouldn’t be long before people’s interest drifted on to another worthy crisis, or they just stopped feeling sorry for a locked-up pastor and returned to their normal lives.
That wasn’t the only clock that was ticking. Norine’s visa was due to expire on November 10, and that reality had hung over me from the time we were separated. She was the only person who was allowed to visit me. The thought of her being forced to leave the country had plagued me constantly. I’d prayed for hours on end, begging God to intervene, feeling like he was a judge about to rule. As the deadline approached there were many twists and turns but still nothing solid. My mother even came over from the States a few days before the visa ran out, to be on hand in case Norine had to leave immediately. After a couple of visits she was not allowed to see me anymore and would wait in the parking lot until my arm came out from between the bars to wave at her.
At the last minute Norine found out that she had been allowed to remain in the country.
I was elated when she told me, but within a day I was down again—struggling with questions about faith, fears about people forgetting me, suspicions that I was going to be taken deeper and deeper into the Turkish judicial system so that God could toughen me up some more.
Even eating with the refugees was discouraging. Word got around that there was an American among them. They would ask in surprise, “What are you doing here?” What could I say? It was painful to even try to explain, and I often came back to the room downcast. Most of them had never met a pastor, and they were curious. Although very few of them spoke English or Turkish, I prayed for them, helped in any way I could, and answered questions about my faith. I would talk about God being kind and loving, about him being a father who loved his children. But there were small fissures of doubt in my heart. I was not as confident as I sounded, not as confident as I wanted to be.
ONE AFTERNOON I had just written in my diary, “Where are you, my Shepherd?” At that very moment I heard the tinkling of the bells announcing that the herd of sheep that often grazed outside was passing by. I walked over to the window. The sheep were walking up the hill, but only the dogs were with them. There was no shepherd to be seen.
How ironic! It twisted into my heart. Where was my Shepherd?
THE MORE TIME PASSED the harder it was to resist the temptation to put God to the test.
In my first few weeks at Harmandali I had asked God for three things: to see Norine more often, that she not be deported, and that he take me home by Christmas, when my daughter was thinking of getting married. He’d come through for me on the first two, but what about the third?
One day I sat down and wrote:
If I miss this I will be bitterly disappointed, I will be a broken man—and you will have done it. I fear what will happen to my trust in you. In the end of course you are not on trial. I know in the light of eternity this is trivial. But it will fill me with pain, and deep loss. How does my heart survive that?
I meant every word that I wrote.
Hours later, though, I was feeling different. I prayed and repented of what I’d written. Who was I to put God to the test?
I should remove from my heart any conditions on which God will pass or fail.
I WAS WATCHING from the window the day Norine walked across the parking lot for her visit. She waited just like she usually did to get permission from the guard at the gate, but for some reason this time she was not allowed in. I could not hear what she was saying, but from her body language it was obvious that she was feeling frustrated. The gate remained closed.
I watched her take a few steps away to the side and get on her knees. I knew she was doing it as a sign that she was praying for me, but watching her kneeling there on the concrete in front of a bolted gate, I felt the anger rise in me all the same.
I felt angry for days. Angry with the director. Angry with the guard. Angry with Turkey for holding me like this and causing my wife so much pain.
ONE DAY, WITHOUT WARNING, just as I was pacing my room, the words spat out from my mouth.
I started to weep.
I had failed.
How could I have gotten this low? How could doubts like this come to my mind? I knew that God had been involved in my life, but these doubts were so fierce.
“Papa! Save me,” I prayed. “I’m afraid of my own mind and thoughts.”
In the aftermath I decided that I needed to discipline myself to state some very basic truths.
Each day I made my declarations:
“God, you exist. You love me, and you are in this.
“I am a prisoner for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“I am suffering for Jesus. This gives meaning to my pain. It is precious to God, and he will give me eternal reward.”
I would also add, “At some point you will rescue me. You said, ‘It’s time to come home.’” I reminded God of this phrase so many times. By now I was clinging to it as a promise, and desperately hoped that it would be fulfilled soon.
ONE OF THE BOOKS I had been allowed to keep told the story of Count Zinzendorf, an eighteenth-century missionary. He was on a ship that was caught up in a terrible storm—a storm so vicious that the captain told the passengers that within two hours the ship would be on the bottom of the ocean.
“No,” said Count Zinzendorf. “Within two hours the storm will have passed and everyone will be safe.”
The captain was wrong. The Count was right. When the captain asked him how he knew, Count Zinzendorf explained that ever since he was a child he had heard the voice of God accurately in his heart.
The story took root in my mind.
How was it that Count Zinzendorf could be in the middle of such a stressful experience and still hear God so clearly? And why hadn’t God spoken to me in that way?
Into my mind, quite unexpectedly, came the thought, Seventeen days.
“Wait, what?” I prayed. “Are you saying this, God? Is it possible you’re speaking to me?”
Immediately a second thought came to my mind. I will confirm it.
That night I could not sleep. Seventeen days ahead was December 12. The thought kept pounding in my head. The next day I read through every note that Norine had brought me to see if the number appeared. I searched the Bible, but it seemed there were few verse seventeens that people quote. I was desperate, grasping. If I was wrong it would be a terrible letdown. But if I was right and God really had just spoken to me, I’d be home for Christmas.
A few days later when she visited, Norine looked hesitant.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Someone from church said that they think you’re going to be released soon.”
I tried to keep my voice calm. “Oh. Did they say when?”
“December 12.”
My anticipation was growing.
It took another leap forward a couple of days later when Norine returned and told me about an email she’d received from a friend in Belgium. He’d written to tell Norine that he’d had a dream in which I was released in twelve days’ time.
“Norine,” I said, looking at the email, “he sent it yesterday, November 30. This means December 12.”
She smiled and held me tighter. “Let’s try to hold it lightly, my love.”