We were told we have yellow skin. No one has white skin, that’s ridiculous. Mongolians, mostly, have brown skin. Mongolians with very dark skin are considered black (as are most people of African descent) and Mongolians with lighter skin are yellow. We stick out in a crowd, especially in late fall and winter when there… Read More On Being Yellow
“Mongolia has a lot of holidays!” my mom said when I told her we had last Monday (the 26th) off of school and work. “Not really,” I said, then thought about it. We have had a lot of holidays this month, but it’s because we combined two cultures. We got to celebrate Chinggis Khan’s Birthday, Thanksgiving,… Read More November is For Holidays!
Every four years the International Conference of the Wesleyan Church gathers to talk business and policy, to network, to share stories, and to encourage each other regarding how God is moving around the world. Without getting too nerdy, the ICWC meeting in May will involve hundreds of global leaders for the Wesleyan Church. It’s… Read More $6,100 gets Naraa a Seat at the Table
Remember that post where we shared how excited we were that we figured out how to pay our bills? The next month, the process changed…but just a little. And this month it changed again. Living in a place where everything is different–subtly or overtly–can be disconcerting. It’s empowering when you figure something out. It’s a… Read More It changed. Then it changed again.
In the last year we travelled around Michigan, drove to Georgia, flew to California (twice), flew to Oregon, and drove to Nova Scotia via Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick before moving to Mongolia. As we were finishing up partnership development we stayed in people’s spare rooms, basement, guest houses, and hotel rooms. We’ve gotten… Read More Our Top 5 Gift Recommendations for Travelers
I have long believed that you should not set up the Christmas Tree until the day after Thanksgiving. “Let Thanksgiving have its day!” I have always said. And then I moved to a foreign country that does not really celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas. It’s now mid-November and feels like the middle of winter (our first… Read More O Christmas Tree
Ariunaa exudes gentleness and peace. I think you can feel it in the pictures. But life was not always this way. When she was thirteen life was hard. A relative told her about a free place where you could go and pray and ask for help that worked. She was desperate, so she went. “Jesus,… Read More Ariunaa: Mongolian Enterprise Fund
I grew up hearing that the heat in California wasn’t as bad as the heat in Michigan because it was a “dry heat.” I was skeptical of this until I experienced California heat myself. At over 100f/38c, California’s dry heat is still uncomfortable and oppressive, but I’d take California’s dry heat over Michigan’s humid heat,… Read More Machine Monday: Humidifiers
Filter #1 This is the first air filter machine we bought. It is small and was relatively inexpensive (around $60). It was early in the season and they were the only air filters we had seen, so we bought two of them and put one in each of our bedrooms. In retrospect, they were not… Read More Machine Monday: Air Purifiers
He just wanted the bullying to stop. He just wanted to scare them a little. He didn’t know the gun was loaded. He didn’t mean to shoot anyone. Batjargal was born with a cleft palette. His parents rejected him, even as he struggled to survive. At a few years old he was adopted by a… Read More Batjargal
“It looks like hebel,” LeYanna said as she stepped out of our apartment building on the way to school. Hebel, is Hebrew. It’s from Ecclesiastes and means “smoke” or “vapor.” We don’t teach her Hebrew but she’s picked some up from watching the Bible Project videos.* It was around 8 a.m. toward the end of October. The… Read More Machine Monday: Preamble to Air Purifiers
*The earlier, published post of “the Bidet” has inexplicably disappeared post-publish and I recreated this post from an old, old draft. I’m really not sure what happened. So, I apologize if this post is less polished than normal* Machines are taking over our apartment. I put a poll on Facebook asking which machines you were… Read More Machine Monday: the Bidet
