A play and pray weekend...

We spent last weekend with our team at a nice hotel in UB. It was nice to visit some decent restaurants and the boys LOVED the shallow swimming pool! It was a "Prayer Retreat," so besides the R&R we spent a lot of time learning and praying together too. I get to preach in Mongolian this Sunday from Acts 1-2. It seems to me that the disciples didn't waste a lot of time setting goals and making budgets. Rather the only plan they had was to come together and pray until the Spirit did something amazing!! Next week I am leaving the family and going to Thailand to rub elbows with other CAMA workers and C&MA leaders. Pray with us that it will be a Spirit-filled time and that God will watch over Krista and our two wrestling maniacs while I'm gone!

Oh, but it's cold outside

Another cold and windy week in Mongolia, but we had one day above freezing last week...it sure doesn't take much to restore hope in Spring! The whole city was outside on that day - walking, playing, chatting in front of the market. For the most part, though, we are all still staying indoors. Zeke and Saiah LOVE to play the boardgames we brought back with us, and they like playing "animals" and reading books too. Anything to keep them from whining for more computer games! Zeke is back in school - Mongolian preschool in the mornings and English kindergarten in the afternoons. Krista and I are back in school too - each spending two mornings a week with a Mongolian tutor. Language is tough!! It's much easier to try and get by with what you already know than to continue deepening your knowledge and interaction...I suppose that would make a good spiritual principle too...

Getting down to Service...

It's been a somewhat frustrating week, but I suppose those frustrations are meant to show us what important things are missing from our lives. This week I feel like an organization trying to implement beneficial projects. "But that is your whole job," you say? Yes, but I can't help but feel like the greatest, most meaningful moments occur as I myself reach out in compassion to embrace someone who is struggling. It's not some big, well-oiled machine that distributes the most good to the most people in the shortest amount of time...rather it is a meeting of hearts. I think there should be some days when I quit "work" (i.e. administering projects from an office) early and just go around and spend time with people in need...

Hands

It's been a rough week for these old hands. Monday it was trying to disassemble and unthaw that ornery American hand-pump, which was cold business because the inside of the house was still as cold as the outside. When that didn't work too well, Wednesday we bolted down a Mongolian hand-pump and hauled water to fill the radiator heating system. Then I grabbed a blow-torch and tried to thaw pipes so that the warm water would circulate. Thursday we drained cold and dirty water from the heating system and replaced a radiator that had cracked from the ice, then we unfroze the hand-pump and poured several more buckets into the heating system. That day we also pried the bent grate out of the woodstove, dug in the snow for pieces of rebar, sawed off several small pieces to make a new grate, and had 'em welded together. Friday we drained the cold and dirty water again in order to replace a cracked pipe that was leaking on the carpet. After that we unfroze the hand-pump and filled the radiators again. Saturday we mostly just wrapped and tightened leaking joints in the radiator system. Sunday, after clapping and turning pages and praying in church, we unfroze the hand-pump again and carried 500 liters of water up the ladder into the big water tank. Then we squeezed into a corner with a flaming blow-torch in order to thaw a valve from the tank going to the kitchen sink, after which we took apart and cleaned the kitchen faucet to get it working again and wired a lightbulb to hang directly over the aforementioned frost-prone tank valve. And did we forget to mention the chopping, stacking, and hauling of firewood and the crushing and bagging of coal? It probably wouldn't have been so rough a week if we hadn't sometimes forgotten our gloves and we weren't too macho for lotion...

We've never felt so dry, cracked, scuffed, bruised, frost-bitten, splintered, singed or dirty. But you know what, we don't mind all that much. We figure that means we're doing our part, getting something done, serving our purpose and not just shaking other hands or holding a silver spoon. Not that waving hello or shoveling desserts are unworthy activities! It's just that we would be disappointed if life didn't sometimes require everything we have to give.