Archive for July, 2007
For everything there is a season…a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4). Sometimes (now for us) these things happen simultaneously and that can be unsettling at best.
Saturday morning began for Jonathan as a time to laugh. As a matter of fact, that’s what woke us up. He had six friends here for his birthday sleepover (without the sleep, a misnomer for sure). Then I stayed home to feed the herd while Bernie represented our family at a wedding. We’re still not sure whether to laugh or cry about that one. If that leaves you confused, email us.
It was after the wedding that the tide turned. We had a farewell lunch with teammates, Jacob and Juhny Kim. They are returning to the States on medical leave and if/when they return is indefinite. We made an effort to keep it light.
In the late afternoon we caravanned to the airport where we were joined by several of the young leaders of our UB church. The time to cry could not be postponed any longer.
I once attended an Alliance Women’s Rally and heard one missionary testify “Good-byes suck.� That offended some people. If it offends you, please grant me a little grace. Because as I stood there and watched what went on around me, I frankly couldn’t come up with anything else to describe what was taking place.
- I watched Jacob and Juhny say goodbye to their spiritual children.
- I watched our team say goodbye to valued and needed co-laborers.
- Bernie and I said goodbye to precious friends who have been here for us as we struggled to adjust to a new way of life.
- I watched Jonathan say goodbye to the third friend since we arrived a year ago. He and Enoch were inseparable over the summer.
- I watched the Mongolian young men and women say goodbye to the man who for many was the closest thing to a father they had known.
- I watched Sauggy say goodbye to his mentor and friend and saw the weight of responsibility heavy on his young shoulders. I watched the uncertainty in their eyes as to what will happen next for their church.
So, this missionary family has learned the goodbyes of exactly one year ago were only a beginning, and have been told by many that one of the hardest things about missionary life is always having to say goodbye.
After two hours we were back at the airport. This time we were welcoming new workers, Brent and Lisa Liberda and their four children. Then again, this morning we were there to welcome our new MK school teacher, Kirsten. So for this we rejoice, we dance. Tonight Jonathan will go to yet another “sleepover”.
There is a sense of déjàvu’ as I write this. My first blog a little over a year ago ended with Revelation 21, and it seems right to encourage myself with words from this chapter again. This time, verse 4: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.�
What this means is that while on this side of eternity, our time may be divided between sorrow and joy. But when it’s all said and done, we’ll leave behind the weeping and we’ll leave behind the mourning. Then we’ll laugh and then we’ll dance. Until then….
July 30th, 2007
We are very happy to have Kathy Neu from our Home Church visiting with us this week! She’s made good friends with our dog Sadie, and has kept Cori company during all of Jonathan’s Birthday celebrations. She’s also voluntarily help us with the dishes! We’d like to keep her! Kathy will be with us through our field forum in August, where she will be helping with MK VBS. It’s great to have a friend from home visiting with us!
July 28th, 2007
This will be one of the few places in the world where you may view the August 1, 2008 Solar eclipse.
July 20th, 2007
(This is my final entry. Day five of my little excursion into Mongolia’s wild countryside. If you are just picking up this up now, I suggest that you go back to Day 1. That way you can read all of the fun and excitement that led up to the final day…)
Day 5
To quote Samwise Gamgee, “Well, I’m back”. My journey wasn’t near the epic proportions of Sam and Frodo’s - but it is nice to be back after another long travel day. The reality is that this trip has truly helped me to better understand the country and the people I am called serve - and for that am grateful - and thus was worth every rut in the road.
Today started with eggs and toast at the Fairfield again. I really do like that place and definitely recommend it if you’re ever in Tsetserleg. Maybe next time I will be there early enough in the evening to grab a cheeseburger for supper.
Once again during breakfast I found a ride. A European couple was staying there as well (He’s Italian and she is German) and they had hired a nine-passenger micro-bus to take them back to UB, so obviously there was plenty of room for one more. So for about â‚®15,000 I had passage back home. I was pleased with this.
I did need to hurry and eat, pack my belongings and get to the van. When I got there the van already contained 8 or so other people. Of course, there’s no way this guy is going to UB with an empty van. However, because it was a nine passenger van it was okay. With luggage things were a tad tight - but definitely doable. I had a seat in the back by a window, for which I was grateful. We went through the now familiar ritual of getting gas and oil and water (they wait until they’re full before they do this. I guess there’s no point in buying gas if you’re not going anywhere?) However, soon enough, we were on our way.
Shortly, outside of Tsetserleg the van stopped. Someone along the side of the road had waved the micro-bus down. We’re adding another passenger. This happened three more times within the first two hours of the trip. When all was said and done, we had 16 passengers and luggage crammed into that micro-bus. The irony of it is - 16 isn’t bad. In the city, when there’s no luggage involved, they can crush near thirty people into one of those things. I guess we should be grateful he stopped when he did. I managed to keep my window seat, but it was a really tight squeeze, as a family of three plus another teenage-looking boy all shared my seat that was meant for three people. I just sort of leaned out the window and hung on for most of the 12 hours we were in there.
As we were bouncing down the same rutted old paths that brought me, I was listening to a Biographical Sermon about Adoniram Judson, by John Piper. The Title is “How few there are who die so hard: The Cost of Bringing Christ to Burma”. It quite frankly put my uncomfortable bus ride back to UB in to perspective. I have not suffered. Not yet, anyway. Judson had to sleep on his shoulders with his feet stuck up in the air on a pole every night for seventeen months in a Burmese prison. I am thinking that probably qualifies for suffering. In it all, I also know that suffering is God’s design for reaching those without the Gospel - and for discipling this little church in Mongolia - so young in the faith and immature.
As I sat and listened and pondered the fruit of Judson’s sufferings while bouncing down those little rutted paths, I was challenged by John 12 and the corn of wheat once again. I want, more than anything, fruit from my life and the lives of those I am called to serve. But fruit only comes through death - and as I listened to the story of Judson and his life and his death and his fruit, I was made to realize once again that death needs to keep working in me while I still breath the air of this earth. It’s not enough to leave die by by leaving everything that is loved and familiar and to come to Mongolia (and not everything loved, I have my family here with me - or at least will again in a couple of days). But we don’t die once. We must die - take up the cross - every single day.
I also listened to John Piper (in this same message - it was delivered at a pastor’s conference) encourage pastors to consider leaving the pastorate in order to go to the unreached and the under-reached peoples of the world. That sounded like a loved and familiar song. The more I thought about it, however, the more it makes sense to me. Pioneer/front line missionary work is not a work for the inexperienced or the new Christian worker fresh out of bible school or seminary. The work that needs to be done here in Mongolia requires men who have “Seen a few winters” (sorry, more Tolkien quotes); men who know what it takes to ‘make disciples” - and have already done the stuff through the hard work of pastoring. Because it’s even harder work doing these kinds of things cross-culturally and in a war zone of Buddhism and Shamanism and Communism and humanism and probably a hundred other ism’s that I have not even heard of before!. In other words, the need is for laborers - but not laborers with soft hands and inexperienced minds. We need laborers who are already weathered. Pastors who have proven themselves faithful are prime missionary candidates, in my opinion. And anyone who is in the pastorate, should consider what God might be saying about future ministry.
You can’t listen to this thing on Judson without it stirring the heart to that end. I can’t anyway.
So - as these thoughts are swirling through my head, I look up and realize that it has been raining. Now the dusty roads have turned to sludge - and it was about that time that our driver made a bad decision. He went left, when he should have gone right - and we had to stop for about a half hour, while all of the men on the bus had push it out of the mud. One more incident to make it a true Mongolian experience. The sun was going down, as we pulled into UB right around 9:00 PM.
and … well, I’m back.
July 19th, 2007
(So here is day four’s installment. If you haven’t read the previous entries, start here. Otherwise, read the journal entry and view the pictures from…)
Day 4
I am almost too tired to write this, but I do need to take a minute to make a note of my insane day in ‘Yellow Dog Hell’.
First let me explain what that means …
I woke up this morning at 6:00 AM to the tune of yaks munching grass right outside my tent. I hate it when that happens.
(Yak Water Polo?)
I went on a small photo safari, read my Bible and began to break down my camp site. My Mongolian campsite companions told me yesterday that they were thinking about leaving at around 8:00 AM. Well, you don’t don’t have to be in Mongolia very long to know that really means we’ll probably leave sometime after 10:00. It was 10:15 actually, when we finally pulled out of there. I was also told that we wouldn’t start driving right away, because some of the party didn’t get a chance to view the volcano on the first day. However, before that we all visited a little spot near the lake called (in Mongolian) “Yellow Dog Hell”. Here’s why it has such a noble name.
Many, many years ago two rivers (a mommy river and a daddy river?) had a daughter (that would be White Lake - Tsagaan Nuur). And for some reason that I am not entirely sure about, the daughter had a yellow dog (Why a lake would have a dog is not too clear in my mind, but it’s a story so quit asking questions). At one point their daughter got very sick and was about to die. So the parents went to … I am guessing the shaman, but I don’t know that detail for certain. He told told them that if the daughter was to live, then the dog would have to die. So the father took her dog and left it here.
After five days the dog died. And Tsagaan Nuur lives to this day. This place is now called “Yellow Dog Hell”. It’s quite an interesting spot, actually, with more unusual volcanic rock formations.
So after this, one van went to the volcano. The rest of us went into the little village of Tariat, and waited for them at little guanz. It was a nice guanz (as far as food was concerned), and had some of the best hoosier I’ve had in Mongolia. So I drank milk tea and ate meat pies. The others in my group were also drinking some kind of soup made with sheep intestines. I try to avoid food made with any kind intestinal material whenever possible, and managed to squeak through that one unscathed. We watched Mongolian Wrestling that was taking place for Naadam in UB on a little television. It was really quite the Mongolian moment.
(The food was definitely better than the place looked on the outside!)
After some time there, we moved to a bridge that was on the edge of town and waited for the volcano visiting people there. They showed up at some point. But in the meantime, the folks in my van decided they wanted to take another swim in the river. I say another swim, mind you, because they had all already been swimming in the lake that morning. I have decided that Mongolians really like to go bathing in water whenever it is possible for them to do so. It also seems that there is absolutely no shame in swimming in your underwear. So they do, and so they did. Not really to the point of feeling all that comfortable swimming in my underwear (and not really wanting to sit in a van for 8 hours with wet underwear), I elected to take pictures of sheep and take a nap in the van.
When I woke up, the swimmers were coming back - and it seems that the other van had showed up at some point - dropped off some who wanted to swim - and went on to the next guanz because they hadn’t eaten yet. So we packed up and rode on to meet them. After about 20 minutes we found them, and stopped. Forthwith, everyone else decided they wanted to eat there as well. By the time we left that guanz, it was 4:00 in the afternoon - and we were 20 minutes away from the lake. I was beginning to sense that this was going to be a long trip.
We stopped several more times before we finally pulled off the dirt path and into a small group of gers that were a bit off the trail. It was probably 8:30 at this point. They wanted to buy fresh airag. So we pulled into this place and the family had us go into their ger, and we drank more milk tea and ate hard bits of cheese, and they gave us big bowls of airag. We were there for about an hour before one of my party came to me and said that they all wanted to spend the night here.
I did a quick calculation in my head and figured that at this rate, I wouldn’t get home until sometime in August - so I said thanks for the ride this far, but I really needed to get to Tsetserleg tonight, as I had left some money there to purchase a bus ticket back to UB tomorrow. So the sun had set, it was after 10:00 and they helped my wave down a car that was going toward Tsetserleg. It was two ladies and 2-year old in a Toyota Rav4. I was kind of glad that I got to ride in one of those, because I think that’s the type of car I would for us to purchase next year. The class reunion folks were very gracious, and wouldn’t allow me to pay them any money for gas. We said our good byes and I got in the car.
I don’t know how this lady found her way to Tsetserleg. These roads are tough in the day - darn near impossible at night. Somehow (sometime after 11:30) she found the way, and here I write form the Fairfield, not-by-Marriott guest house once again. Same room even. The ladies were driving on to Khar Khoren - which is two more hours down the road, at least. They also wouldn’t accept any money. Very nice people. It is now after midnight and tomorrow may be another challenge, as there is no bus running to UB because of Nadaam. I may be stuck here until Saturday, which is not necessarily a terrible thing. They do have a hot shower and the food’s not bad. But it would be nice to get back home. It will be nicer now to go to sleep.
July 17th, 2007
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