The first thing that I noticed about Mongolia was the air. It was incredibly fresh and clean, probably the best air my lungs have ever tasted.
Here are a few pictures of UB (Ulaanbaatar).
Look at that blue blue sky!
Here is a picture that represents how immature I still am.
Our main ministry was located in a rural area called Batshireet, which is approximately a 10 hour drive from our apartment house. The 13 of us in this van took 13 hours. Not an easy feat but nobody got sick or hurt.
These are some pictures from our rest stops.
Beautiful.
I was so impressed by God's creation that I couldn't stop singing "Your Love, Oh Lord" to myself.
REAL Mongolian beef.
Since there was just so much land with no people, we often just went out a short distance, turned around, and did our bathroom business.
Dorcho was the missionary we were staying with in Batshireet. He is actually from Ulaanbaatar, but he wanted to reach out to the people in the countryside who have access to pretty much nothing except themselves. This is the church he is still working on and where our team guys slept.
Here is the bathroom that we used for the next seven days.
Pretty soon, you really got used to squatting.
Batshireet was absolutely beautiful. It was full of farmlife and many many Windows XP desktop hills.
But the most beautiful part of this area was the people. The Batshireet kids were the most innocent children I had ever seen in my life.
So eager to try on their new shirts.
They were so comfortable with us even from Day 1 Hour 1.
Koreans really do look like some Mongolian people.
Even though our Mongolian was limited to about 5 phrases, we were already like family.
We soon got very used to seeing cows and horses coming out of nowhere. Very normal.
Here is Ugi, our main contact's husband. This guy is seriously the man. He loves sports, has eaten all kinds of crazy animals, and can ride a horse like Indiana Jones (no joke). Definitely a Genghis Khan descendant.
One of our main activities was balloon art. I honestly didn't think it would fly, but the kids ate it up like crazy. I was so happy to finally figure out how to make a monkey.
Those who weren't working with balloons were doing face painting. I had no faith in this activity either, but God showed me otherwise.
During lunch time, a good number of kids would bust out a bowl and a spoon that they had brought from home. After they finished eating, they took their bowl and utensil to the nearby river to wash them clean.
It was like Mongolian chicken noodle soup. Fantastic.
Since the sun felt like it was only 5 feet away from your face, practically all the kids knew that it was time for swimming. The water felt wonderful.
This is one of Dorcho's kids that we liked to call the 진도개 because she always had a scowl on her face. Even with our Korean Air stickers that quickly became a fad with the kids, still no smile.
Here is Marla, the happiest child that was ever made. She connected really well with Linda who is super gifted with kids.
Hehe.
This is Tseggy's daughter, Namuuna. She was my favorite favorite girl that I met in Mongolia. She can speak Mongolian, English, AND even some Korean. 종성 sent her a small mp3 player filled with Korean music, and she LOVED it. This is her with Min aka Nana listening to SNSD.
Here is our only non-Korean team member, Joe, covered in crushed cucumber because he got severely burned and ended up blending in with the Mongolians.
Since the mosquitoes were out on a rampage, we constantly had to use medicine to relieve ourselves. Here are some of the kids seeking some of that relief.
Mad good with kids.
If you have Koreans on your team, they're gonna find some way to bring Korean food no matter where they are. We were so thankful for the 집사님s who always woke up early to prepare meals for us everyday.
Breakfast mainly consisted of two things: Buryat bread, which tasted like the most awesome sourdough bread, and Mongolian yogurt, made straight from the cows that were milked the day before. Freakin' good.
Second day of ministry.
I don't even know how many kids we were able to pack into those vans.
Throughout Batshireet, you'd see random houses just out in the middle of nowhere. You can pretty much see them as "unreached" people as well.
This is a picture of the kids lining up to play Steal the Bacon. It was probably the funniest game of Steal the Bacon we had ever seen.
Mongolians are really into volleyball. Here's a group of kids playing Killer.
We even taught some of the kids how to play kickball.
This was my favorite Batshireet kid. I didn't even have to ask her to make that heart when we said goodbye.
Nor her.
The hardest thing about this trip was probably the mosquitoes. I had heard that last year's team had had it rough, but Mike told us that this year was much worse due to the rain. Joe and I donated the most blood on our team. This picture really doesn't do justice, but just to give you an idea, my left leg literally had 30 bites by the second day.
The only thing I had heard about Mongolia's weather was that it was hot hot hot. Nobody had warned us about crazy storms.
You know you're in for a big one when the cows are all going crazy.
But man, even the storm was beautiful.
So we were all stuck indoors with some of the missionary kids. This one in particular was having the time of his life by blowing up balloons as big as possible and letting them go right before they looked like they were going to pop.
While it was raining, Dorcho gave me a tour of his vegetable garden that he learned how to grow from reading books. He is really amazing.
That night, the Mongolians invited us over for dinner. They cooked a gang of Mongolian mandoos called Botz.
I was enjoying them so much that some of the team members turned it into an eating contest to see how many Joe and I could eat. In the end, I won with a final count of 20.
This pleased Dorcho's father so much that he would randomly look at me and exclaim, "Kher Botz!" on a number of times, which means "20 Mandoos!"
Here are some of our 집사님s singing a hymn that the grandfather had overheard and was blessed by.
Three generations of Mongolian Christians. AWESOME family.
Chilly day for Batshireet.
We got our water from a well that had an electric pump. Some people in the village sometimes share a community well.
Some of us started to get real comfortable with the balloons and made all kinds of creative stuff.
Played out.
Day 3 was focused on the youth by playing sports
and having awesome Korean food
and bbq.
Since Mongolian food is saturated with meat and milk, most of the kids only had rice, 잡채, and meat on their plates.
Later that night, we found out that one of the 집사님s knew her acupuncture stuff. So some of us formed a line to get a checkup and treatment if necessary.
On our free day, people took turns riding a horse.
Some of us even got to do laundry.
One group wanted to check out the hills
alive with the sound of music.
This was our Mongolian tour guide, Itkher (super hard to say). He was actually the son of the oldest sister in Tseggy's family, Tsema, who is the only person who has yet to become a believer. However, we learned that she recently started to go out to church a few weeks ago.
Ella jumping with joy.
When we got back, the other group had brought back the lamb
that we slaughtered for dinner.
Some people can be so cruel,
but it was indeed delicious.
Here is our goodbyes with the kids.
Marla, always always smiling.
On the way back, we stopped by this huge statue of Chinggis Khaan that they had just finished building this year.
Those tents in the back our called gers, which are the traditional homes that some Mongolians still live in. You see them everywhere throughout the country.
We came back to the city and went to our first Mongolian church service. It was awesome hearing all these Mongolians singing Hillsongs in their own language.
After service, Tseggy wanted us to interact with her small group members. Although we did not have as much time with them, I heard a testimony of how one of the Mongolians had watched the Jesus Film when he was a student. I asked him why and how he had ended up watching the film, and he told me that someone had told him about a free showing. Haha. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
A few of us went to go reserve a gym to play basketball with some of the young adults at night.
At the center, Ugi showed us a church service that was going on. The lady on the stage looked like she was giving some kind of drama performance, but it turned out that the service was for deaf people. It was amazing.
The most amazing part of the trip for me was visiting Ugi's side of the family that is not Christian. Ugi wanted Mike to share the Gospel with them but after lunch, Mike randomly asked me and Joe to come with him too. Tseggy gave us the history and background of Ugi's non-Christian family and all the prayers and efforts they were making to bring them to faith.
Tseggy worked as our translator as Mike gave a brief testimony about his life. We thought we were finished there, but Tseggy asked me and Joe if we had anything to share too. I was caught off guard and asked if Joe wanted to say anything. Apparently, Joe had an unplanned urge to share about his own grandmother that brought some of us to tears. After Joe, by God's grace, I was able to share a succinct impromptu testimony about how God had made Himself real in my own life as well. Afterward, we all prayed holding hands and our masculine Ugi was in tears.
When we got back into the car, Tseggy was ecstatic as she told us that our testimonies were exactly what the family had to hear. All of us had shared very different things but the same message. The mother hugged and kissed all of us before we left. I really got a glimpse of how God used a useless person like me to do a great work in others' lives.
Our final day in Mongolia.
We went up to this very high area that had a great view of the whole city.
Here is my hero, Tseggy, who is an incredible challenge to me to stop being a dormant Christian. She came to know Christ through English teachers who shared the Gospel with her in high school. At the same time, her older sister, Tsimgae, came to faith, and the two of them slowly converted their family members one by one who were adamantly against Christianity. Tseggy's family is full of Sauls who turned into Pauls because of her. Another amazing thing about her family is that two of them are fluent in English and another two are very good in Korean! We always had different translations going on.
To the left is Tsukbolt. He is a Buryat person who grew up and continues to live in Batshireet. This young believer came to know Christ through a missionary called Mike the Cowboy who just went around on a horse and shared the Gospel with anyone he encountered in the countryside.
Here is our amazingly diverse group, the Dream Team (minus Sang and Linda). I thought the Korean side of our team would be really hard to work with, but God humbled me in showing their great strengths and gifts as His servants. One funny thing that our oldest Korean member said was, "Hey, everyone. Smile! It's Sunday. Nobody is dead. So smile, ok?"
Here are some of the amazing Mongolian Christians our church works with every year.
Note: Joe is now officially Mongolian.
The last thing we did was pray for the country.
And slowly made our way back down to the real world.
I usually do not get too attached to the missionaries or Christians that I meet on a trip. I usually do not feel the need to revisit the same country any time in the future. I usually do not exchange emails with people that I've only met for a couple of days. It was only supposed to be a trip where I could experience and learn a little bit more about another part of the world. It was only supposed to be a short time where I can encourage some Christians that do not look or talk like me. It was only supposed to be a vision trip. It wasn't supposed to be like this. God is doing something strange in my heart with this one.
Mongolia was one of the best things I ever did in my life.
Thought of the Day: PMS
Song of the Day: Marcela Gandara-Dame Tus Ojos
The first one sucked really really bad. But 전지현's English was better than I had expected.
