Listen as Chris Puckett shares how he answered a calling from God to move from Arkansas to Ankara, Turkey. He will share many challenges that he and his family faced and tell how God used hard circumstances to show His goodness. Chris learned that when he followed God’s plan, everything fell into place.
Show Notes:
1:54 – “What we were doing was a lot of good things, but we were building our own kingdom and not his. His kingdom is what we should be focused on.”
2:58 – He let me know that he wanted to use those skills but use them in a different way.
3:13 – Tell us how you found out about the Oasis Network.
3:35 – Teaching is something that I have always loved.
5:54 – Easter weekend after a great deal of prayer, my wife looked at me and said, “We’ve got to go, don’t we?”
6:15 – The struggle to decide to go to Turkey helped prepare them for this new adventure.
6:48 – What is Ankara Turkey like?
8:26 – God let me know that he had it under control and we just needed to trust him, and he’s proven that over and over. He’s taken care of every need we’ve ever had.
9:17 – Finances should never be a stop to anyone who feels led to go overseas.
9:45 – Challenges he faced when moving:
- Learning a new language
- Leaving family
11:00 – Biggest Fears with moving
- Finances – made plans, God fulfilled all of these.
- How would they communicate with family being so far away
14:29 – I felt like I had been saying no to God over and over, but he was going to do whatever was required to get us there.
14:51 – There are so many stories of kids that myself and wife have been able to minister to and relationships that I still have, even from the first couple of years.
15:49 – The Struggle in January of 2020, Chris’s son Isaac, a super athletic 20-year-old would be diagnosed with a syndrome that causes complete paralysis.
16:41 – This hit us hard. It hit us like a ton of bricks. He went from playing basketball to two days later, not being able to move, swallow or hardly breathe.
17:00 – The medical care in Ankara is pretty good.
18:16 – A few times through the years that we have been in Turkey, we have been in situations where there is nothing we can do, and we just ask for prayer. This was no different. We bent down on our knees in the ICU waiting room where he was and started praying and started asking for other people to pray.
19:08 – I knew the long-term prognosis for this was that he would be okay, but it was going to take 6 months to a year.
19:16 – What I didn’t know, is that God had a different plan.
20:00 – This is my 20-year-old son, who can do absolutely nothing. With the only breath he has, he looks at me says, “Daddy, God is telling me to rely on his strength and not my own.”
21:06 – We started praying more and more diligently. “God, we don’t know what you’re doing, but show us what to do here.” “God you’ve got the why, you just show us what.”
21:42 – The next morning, he could breathe a little easier and swallow a little bit. He could move his knees and ankles a little bit.
22:27 – The doctors had never seen anyone recover from this as quickly as he did.
22:44 – In 8 days, he was walking around the ICU area.
23:02 – We had the opportunity in the waiting room to pray with people about what they were going through.
23:18 – God gave us a peace about what was going on with Isaac, and it was through that peace that we were able to minister to others in that same area.
24:34 “Reality is, a man’s job is to rely on God & let God work through him to take care of the ones around him.”
25:19 – When you are left with no recourse, and the only thing you can do is pray, what you realize is, that should’ve been the first thing that you do every time, anyway.
26:06 – What we should be praying is, “God you show me what to do in the situation where you have placed me.”
28:07 – Understand that God has everything planned for your good, but your good is often not the way you want to define it.
28:17 – “God uses so many hard circumstances to show you and prove to you how good HE is.”
Helpful Resources:
Chris Puckett
Secondary Principal at Oasis International School
Chris Puckett is the Secondary Principal at Oasis International School, Ankara, Turkey. Thirteen years ago, he and his wife brought their four children to Ankara. They had never even been outside of the States let alone thought about living overseas. God told them to go so they did. The blessings in that last sentence will take him a lifetime to explain. They will never be the same and are looking forward to HIS next steps every day.
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