So THIS is What Everybody Keeps Talking About!

Ahhhh, the country... Welcome to Ёл Хад (Yol Khad) Mongolia!  If there's anything the Mongolian people are proud of it's the countryside.  The air is wonderfully fresh, the animals are munching on the lush summer grass, and the mare's milk flows into airag (a fermented drink), aaruul (a hard curd), and yogurt.

For a country boy at heart, this felt like home.

 Four Mongolians smiling in the same picture?  Wow!  The one in the white is my co-teacher Chimeg and together we planned and presented the first ever National Intelligence Academy - Summer Session - 2011.

 Here's a few of the students hanging out at one of our gers.  How cool, we stayed in gers!  :)

 We had our own private building for our classes and activities.  Chimeg taught all the grammar, I taught the vocab & idioms and pronunciation & tongue twisters, as well as doing a personal interview in front of the class with each student.  I called it the "hot seat".  I asked them about Pollution in UB, Traffic in UB, Advice to a Friend Getting Married, Qualitites to Look For in a Spouse, and Who Has Been a Good Influence On You.

 Here we are in "Double Lines" practicing a "Progressive Dialog".  You start with a dialog and practice several times, rotating partners after each repetition.  Then you write down only the most important word from each sentence on the board as a cue and practice again.  Then after a few rotations you erase everything and you get something like communication, though few people are brave enough to venture out into improvisation.

 Every day we had around 4 hours of free time so there were lots of basketball and volleyball games going on.

 Some of you have heard us talk about Mongolia's summer Naadam festival with wrestling, archery, and horse racing.  Each province has their own Naadam at a different time than the championship in UB and this one just happened to be going on while we were there.  What an opportunity to take in the culture!

This truly is a beautiful place.  UB is so dusty, even in the summer, so to be near such lush green mountains and meadows...

 Not to mention the fields of wildflowers!  This one is called төмсний улаан, or "Potato's Red".  It has a delightful onion like bulb that you can eat.  Very refreshing and sweet although you have to work a bit to get at it as they are 3-4" deep in the soil.  Persistence pays off!

The pile of rocks is called an овоо, or "oh-whoa".  If you've spent anytime in the Old Testament (mainly Kings and Chronicles) you will have read about the "high places" and "asherim"... well, this is the Mongolian version of that.  There's a visual for you.  They're on virtually every peak and ridge.  All the food on the table is traditional Mongolian festival food.  The man in the grey dell and cowboy hat is flinging up the fermented mare's milk to worship the sky.

 Some entrepreneuring folks were there to make and sell хуушуур (khosher).  It's ground mutton deep-fried in a flour pocket...mmmmmm.  About 1 or 2 will adequately bomb your gut.  Yummmmm...

 Here's most of the gang with the mountain called Yol Khad in the background.  A yol is a falcon-like bird and khad is a very large rock.

 Here we go!  The cool part about regional Naadam festivals is that anyone can wrestle.  They asked if I wanted to participate but old shoulder and neck injuries were persuading me not to.  I totally should have, the couple hundred people there would have remembered that forever.  About 4 of our guys participated and some of them put up a good fight!  We also got to see the children's horse race and pat the winning horse.  What a great opportunity indeed!

 But alas, schedule calls.  This is Tamir.  He became my mountain climbing buddy.  We went up two mountains and one large rock together.  We've gotten together once in UB and hiked up the Russian war monument (about 610 steps!).

 Here's the whole motley crew.  Can you tell most of the guys are into rap music?  :)  I sent one of them the link to Lecrae's "Don't Waste Your Life" video...here's hopin'!

 Six set out, but only two made it to the top!

There's the top, and the other one of the two.

Tamir didn't think these were ohwhoas, but maybe burial monuments.  Hard to say, they were at the very top of the mountain, quite interesting though. 

Oh look, yellow flowers!  YAY!

 This was one of my views every morning when I woke up!  That, and Zorigoo my roommate.  I'll point him out later.

One of the coolest things we got to do was watch the Mongolians round up all the baby horses and tie them up to a hitching line (that we got to help make).  Of course they all bucked and whinnied for a while but then they settled down.  They bring the respective mares over to their babies to feed them and also to keep the mares calm while they milk them.  Look, Amaraa caught one!  :)  So cute, and plenty strong, both of them!

They stay pretty calm if you grab the tail and pull it through.  The little bit of cowboy blood I have in me was sure having a good time.  Brought back tons of memories from my early summer camp days riding horses.

 Back at the camp we had some outdoor games and competitions one Saturday.  Talk about athletic, these guys were amazing!  The guy waiting in the background did a Superman dive roll over the top of that line...not kidding.

The second week a few of us set out to hike up to the top of Yol Khad.

 This valley wraps about 270o around Yol Khad with a tiny little creek flowing through it.  I thought this would be a nice front yard, and hey, at around $2,000-$3,000 per square meter, we could maybe afford enough land to put our tent on!  :)

 Wouldn't a little house tuck up in there just right?  Wow!  This place was great!  You could get all the milk and meat you needed down in the valley and there's a nice town only 8 terribly perilous kilometers away!

 The hike up was steep and a little slippery from various debris on the rocks but the vistas along the way were well worth it.  This is vastly different from most of Mongolia's landscape in the central and southern regions of Steppe and Desert but it felt right at home to me!

 Had to stop and strike a pose.  That's Moogii, Tamir, and Aagii up top.  Aagii's family is quite rich with about 200 horses.  It was great to see him working his cowboy wonders throughout the week.

 Well, here we are, about half way up.  The top is that peak over my left shoulder.  We decided to go down another valley and back up to get there vs. going up to the ridge where we were and trying to boulder our way over.

 "We made it, I can't believe we made it, we all made it!" to roughly quote the opening line from PK's first Spirit Bound play.  We spent about ten minutes just taking it all in...what a view!!!  The guy in the middle was my roommate during the two weeks.  The ranges just kept on going as far as you could see.  This is looking east.

 Looking south...

 Looking DOWN!

We took the grassy valley down instead of the rocky slope we climbed up.

 

 And saw some beautiful things along the way!

 One of the days we went back down to the family in the valley and watched them milk the mares.  Very interesting.

 Amaraa stopped and pet the wee cow a bit.  So cuuute.

 Ever thought to milk a mare?  See the little one up against its mommy?  It really seemed to keep the mare calm.

 Hey Cow!

 Here's a Potato's Red with Yol Khad in the background.

 The second week we were at a different camp and had class inside the cafeteria of the hotel.  We were in motel like rooms in one of the outlying buildings.

 Here I am doing one of the Personal Interviews.  What's that on my face?  :)

 One of the last mornings a thick fog came in and filled the valley.  The Lord kindly woke me up extra early to see it, so wonderful.

 

The last few days Amaraa and Aagii were in conversation with one of the shepherds to get a sheep for a Mongolian khor khog meal (like the one a few posts ago).  Three of the guys and I went out to look for just the right size smooth stones to heat up and place inside the sheep to cook it.  They did a great job!  My sweet love and sweet baby, along with Mom and Jill and a couple of our teammates came and picked me up that night so they got to partake as well.

It was a great two weeks and I made a lot of new friends.  There were several opportunities in and out of the class to speak a good word about our Lord and his word.  Just the sheer beauty of the surroundings naturally lent itself to discussions about creation and the Psalms.  People were curious and just asked me things.  This really was a great group of people!

The Buddhist star worship ceremony the night before Naadam was certainly interesting and most of my "speaking" was done through politely declining to bow down.  Later in the ceremony the owners of the camp saw I was there and offered to have me toss the mare's milk to the sky.  In a sense it was difficult to refuse because they had been so hospitable to us while we were there but I knew I couldn't. When I declined, the owner said, "Aaaa, Khrist" in the hearing of everybody so nothing more needed to be said by me.  I wish I could share with you every detail of that event and every emotion I felt, but I think you can use your imagination.  Lamps in the shape of the Big Dipper, drummers drumming, cantors canting, people prostrating...and one saved sinner supplicating like he's never done before.

Theres so much to more to say about all these things, but when we see you face-to-face again it will be our joy to share with you in much greater depth about these and all of our "adventures" here in Mongolia.  Pray...