Living in Mongolia

Hey! So I believe a Mongolia update is needed, so here’s a condensed version of my last two weeks. 

We arrived in Mongolia on the afternoon of August 19 and drove along bumpy roads for almost 3 hours to Terelj, one of their national parks. We arrived at our campground and met with the missionary family that we’d be working with over the two weeks. For privacy reasons I’m not going to share much about our hosts or service on this blog, but just know that they are amazing people who were so kind and welcoming. 

Our campground was beautiful, though rather chilly. The boys all stayed in their own gers (we know this as a yurt), and the girls stayed in a dorm-like building. We were jealous of the boys’ gers at first, but when we heard all the struggles they had with them because of rain and cold, we weren’t as envious–plus we got to stay in one for a night, so we still got the experience. We ate most of our meals in the giant cafeteria ger. I really enjoyed not having to go out and find food on my own, even if I did start to get tired of eating lamb at almost every meal, and who knows what else because I didn’t know what some of the soups, meats, or porridge actually were. 

Work

We spent our mornings in the classroom with Dr. Norton and our visiting professor, Dr. Schultz. We were usually still bundled up in coats while learning, and I even brought my sleeping bag with me one day and sat inside of that. Some days we would hike up to a gazebo for Travel Writing so we could look over the valley while writing about the landscape. 

We drove into the city each afternoon for service at the church. We spent the first two days with kids doing VBS. On the first day, the younger ones just wanted to pull us around, and they attached themselves to each of us trying to climb onto our backs, play tag, and be swung in circles. We did crafts, acted out a little skit, and just tried to shower these kids with love. The highlight of that first day might have been my friend Jacob getting mobbed by all the kids at once while wearing a dinosaur costume. He said he was scared for his life during that. The next day was with a little bit older kids who were equally fun and energetic, but a little bit less crazy and clingy. 

The following week’s service was more manual labor. We worked to move the church from one building to a new one, which involved a lot of work getting the new property ready. We pulled a yard full of weeds, cleaned carpets and windows, and painted. Our largest project took place the beginning of that second week when we moved the ger of the family that stayed at the church to the new property. It was quite a project to move everything out of the house (yurt) and then tear it down and carry all of the pieces a few houses up the street. We had to even out the land beneath where we planned to put it, lay the floors, put up the walls, hold beams in place for the ceiling, and finally cover it with all the layers of fabric and wool. We were rather proud when we finished it all at sunset. Now we’d like to put a ger on our college campus…

Our other two big projects were a built-in basketball court and laying insulation. On the first day of these projects, I helped to get ready to pour cement by gathering rocks to put under all the cement. Everything is done a bit differently in Mongolia, but I suppose it works–It just might not pass all the U.S. building codes. I found myself in the middle of a Mongolian dirt road, that looks like an alleyway, picking up and gathering rocks to put in a cooking pan and then take up the hill to the church. I never would have pictured myself in that position, but there we were. I helped with insulation later in the afternoon that same day, and then returned the following day for the voluntary work day as one of only two girls–working with a majority of the guys on the team. ‘Twas an interesting time being one of the ‘guys’. I spent almost two hours in the 20 degrees hotter attic laying insulation and stapling plastic with three of the guys. It was definitely a new experience that made my entire body itchy even with proper clothing and masks. 

Highlights

August 24 was a pretty big day–In part because it was our youngest team member, Sheffield’s (our professor’s son) 7th birthday, but also due to the sheep slaughter and dance party. I know you don’t hear sheep slaughter and dance party in the same sentence very often, but we had them both. We watched two sheep get slaughtered for our after-hutch-meal the next day. I’m not going to go into detail because it’s gross, but it was really interesting drawing parallels to Old Testament sacrifices and Jesus being the Lamb of God. I was able to watch it, but I didn’t like it, and I can’t say eating it the next day was all that easy especially since sheep ear and brain are gross. Later that night we had our dance party with some of the high school youth. Mongolian pop music is fantastic, and I love dancing so I had the time of my life. 

One of the other greatest moments of this country was girls’ night. It’s an ATW tradition for the guys to put together a girls night (and vice versa). We had no idea what was coming; we only knew they’d been having weird guy meetings. I was in a mood that evening and wasn’t all that nice to two of my friends, because they wouldn’t let us leave the cafeteria ger. They had a skit put together of The Princess Bride which included five of our guys playing the roles of Buttercup, Wesley, the Grandpa, everyone else, and the set/prop. They threw it together all in the moment, but wow was it funny. About halfway through, it was interrupted and we were told to move the play inside because it was cold. Little did we know that it was all a ploy to get us to the main room where the boys had the actual movie set up on a screen and lots of snacks, juice, and chocolate. I apologized a few times to the boys that I had been irritated with earlier, and I think God taught me a lesson in patience and kindness that night. God has really blessed us with some great men on this trip!

The final crazy moment of Mongolia was riding small horses through the valleys of Terelj. I haven’t ridden a horse in quite a long time, but I figured it out pretty fast. I was initially led by a guide with a fairly long leash, and had to call out to him because I was ready to be set free to ride on my own and I wasn’t enjoying my knee ramming into the other horses around me. I started to really have fun when I was set free with my horse, Buddy (that’s what I named him because I knew no matter what name I gave, this is what I would actually call him). He may have been one of the wilder of the horses–If I held him back for too long, he liked to start galloping to reach the front of our 50 horse caravan. Naturally, I enjoyed holding him back at the end of the group, then I could say hi to my friends in back on the calmer horses and take off for the front. After five hours on the horse, my entire body ached, but what a cool and exciting day! This is the kind of classic ATW experience that we try to get in each trip; it speaks to the adventure side of  the trip and is just in the words of Dr. Norton, “epic.”

So there’s the summary of some of the greater events and service work in Mongolia. A second post for the country should be up soon with a more eloquent story about our afternoon hike that I wrote for Travel Writing and a couple other things. 

Blessings to each one of you and love from Vietnam!