The Yetenek Sizsiniz Adventure...

It all started back in October when 4 of us were riding unicycles along a busy street in Istanbul. We had just crossed an intersection when a guy stopped his car in traffic and ran across the street to video Dustin doing tricks.  He had been out scouting for Turkey's largest TV talent show Yetenek Sizsiniz.

We thought nothing would come of it until we got a call 2 weeks later asking Dustin to perform for round one of the show in 2 days.  We happened to still be in Turkey, heading to Switzerland in a few days.  So, October 5th Dustin performed for round one, did excellent and passed to the next level with three Yeses!  It aired October 13th as one of the highest rated TV shows in Turkey and the highest rated Turkish TV show in Europe.  Click here to watch.

The show organizers told us they would fly us back to Turkey from wherever we were for the next round.  We hadn't heard a word from them until early December which led to over a month of possible filming dates and life on hold.  Finally, just 2 days after Katie was involved in an accident in Seattle which totaled our only vehicle and transportation back to MN, we got the filming date of January 17th.  We already had airfare booked from Minneapolis to Kenya that same date for an outreach with our church.  God worked in gracious ways and the TV show paid for our flights from Seattle to Minneapolis to Istanbul to Nairobi and back to Minneapolis plus covered our flight change fee.  God provides!

Our faithful friend from our partner team in Istanbul met us at the airport and made life so much easier with his competent assistance and Turkish language skills.  We bused with other competitors 2 hours northwest to a university in Edirne where the filming took place.

It was a crazy day of preparing and performing for the TV show.  The morning started with a bit of stage rehearsal time for each act.  Late afternoon they started filming the first of two episodes that day.  We were the first act to go on.  We felt very good about the performance and received good feedback from the judges.  Turns out it was a disadvantage to be first since it was up to the audience to give us a percentage score and they had nothing else to base our performance on.  We didn't realize this until after our act when the judges gave their comments then directed us to the screens to see what the audience thought.  Click here to watch our second round.

In the end we were 1 percentage point away from making it to the next round.  At the last minute they had us put costumes back on and thought we'd be going back on stage for a tie breaker vote.  But the last act, a little girl doing stand up comedy, got an unexpected high score.

We are happy with how we performed and are OK that we are not moving on.  We feel we got enough air time to be a little better know in and around Turkey which will hopefully open up more doors in the future.  It was a fun and crazy experience that we won't soon forget.

With Alp, the offstage comedy/commentator.

Alp came out for Dustin to jump him and the audience  went wild.

The most colorful costumes we may ever wear!

San Juan (game) in Istanbul on our way to Nairobi with our faithful assistant.