Don't believe Everything You Hear

I have this distinct memory of a night from my childhood.  What I heard that night made a HUGE impact on me.  And... I can't understand how I believed what was said.  We were up visiting with family at my Grandmother's house in Oak Creek, CO (near Steamboat).   I'm not sure if it was a family reunion or what, but there were a lot of us there.  Now, my grandmother's house was very small, which was why I was sleeping on a pallet on the floor in the little dining area, right next to the little living room.

Anyway, the adults were watching some kind of news program on T.V.  I, of course, was listening to the show as I lay there instead of sleeping.    Adult T.V. was much more interesting than anything I got to watch.  The announcement was made that after the quick commercial break, they would be back with a story of great importance that everyone should hear.  So of course, my little ears perked up.  It seemed like the commercials took forever.... someone squeezed the Charmin (which was apparently a big no-no), Mikey ate the cereal, and some group of people sang about buying the world a Coke.  Whatever.  I just wanted them to get to the story before I fell asleep.

Finally, the show came back on and the big story was about these new KILLER BEES that were going to take over the world (or at least my part of North America).  They talked about how people had already died in South America and that the bees would soon be marching their way up throughout the entire U.S.  O.K.  Now I was entirely freaked out and couldn't sleep if I wanted too.  I'm sure that I drove my family crazy with endless questions and statements about Killer Bees, like  "What do they look like?", "Is that a Killer Bee?",   "I'm sure that's a Killer Bee.",  "I just got stung by a Killer Bee,  I'm sure of it.", "The Killer Bees are going to be here any day now, they said so on T.V."  etc....

Hmmm... Bear with me as I'm going to jump to another story before I tie all this together (at least this story has pictures, yeah!)

This summer I had an opportunity to travel to Turkey with my husband and my 15 year old son.  Fantastic!  I was so excited!  I researched and planned.   The week before we were scheduled to visit Turkey, protests started in Istanbul and then in Izmir, the two places we were visiting.  I began to watch CNN, BBC (my news programs of choice.  Dear Hubby tends more towards FOX.  Somehow we make it work).  They were showing all kinds of things like people being sprayed with fire hoses.  Tear Gas being fired.  Businesses being looted.  It looked like a total riot had broken out across Turkey.  I'm concerned.  Almost cancelled our tours.

We decided we would go.  If at any time we felt uncomfortable, we would just head back to the ship.  No problem.  Our first stop in Turkey was Istanbul, where the protests had started and were the strongest.  Not knowing what to expect, we cautiously went off on our tour.  Guess what we saw, found, heard?

This:

A perfectly beautiful, peaceful, amazing place to visit.  You see, what the news media failed to mention was that Istanbul is a city of 15 million people spread out over 100 miles.  The protests were conducted by about 10,000 people in one square of the city.  Now, I'm not going to get into all the politics of the protests other than to say that I found that the Turkish people I spoke to split on how they felt about what was happening. 

We enjoyed our day.  Touring the Blue Mosque:

The Aya Sofya, which started out as a Byzantine church, then became a Mosque, and is now a museum:

We spent time at the Topkapi Palace

We ferried down the Bosphorus and had an amazing Turkish lunch!

And we ended it at the Grand Bazaar where we drank Turkish Apple Tea (which my son fell in love with), bought some spices, bought some Turkish tile, bought a chess set,bargained with the locals, and generally enjoyed our day!

Ok, so what about the Killer Bees?  Well, they have made it to some of the lower  southern states.  And, they do cause some problems, sometimes.  However, it seems these "Killer Bees" don't do well with the cold.  Hmmmm... seems to me that little factoid was left out of the news program.  It also seems that their progress is moving much slower than anticipated.  Imagine that.

The whole point of this long post is that you shouldn't just believe something just because you hear it on T.V., the internet, the newspaper, the neighbor, etc... I don't care what program you watch, what you read, who you listen to, there is some bias in there.  We spread a lot of fear around because we don't look into the details of something before we repeat it.  

These Bible verses communicate what I'm trying to say much more eloquently:

"Dear friend, guard clear thinking and common sense with your life;  don't for a minute lose sight of them.  They'll keep your soul alive and well,  they'll keep you fit and attractive.  You'll travel safely, you'll neither tire nor trip.  You'll take afternoon naps without a worry,  you'll enjoy a good nights sleep.  No need to panic over alarms or surprises, or predictions that doomsday's just around the corner, Because God will be right there with you; he'll keep you safe and sound."  Proverbs 3:21-26  the Message