My Easter this year was a memorable one! Saturday, my team and I rode a 10 hour bus from Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, down to Omnogovi province, in the Gobi desert. We were picked up by our host mom in her white sedan, with one in the front seat and 4 of us piled in the back seat. We drove through the middle of nowhere for over an hour, bumping through the sand, sometimes not even able to see a road.
At sunset, we arrived at the yurt, called a ger, our home for the next 5 days. Dad, Mom, and three daughters, two of them twins, were our family—10 of us in one ger. Mom knew a handful of English words: “thank you”, “baby” (when she pointed at her daughters or when she pointed at the lambs and kids), “husband”, and “my name is”. The rest was left to hand motions, or drawing pictures. No cellphone connection, so no Google Translate.
Easter morning, we woke up to the “baaaaahhh”s of sheep and goats. Dad motioned to us that we were going to milk the goats. We headed out and tried to milk them, most attempts ending in laughter and no milk in the bucket! Some of us finally had success.
Then we went inside for breakfast—rice and milk porridge with mutton. Mom always kept a bowl of bread and goat cheese out for us. So delicious!
After breakfast, we helped herd the animals into the pen, then herded all the adults out, keeping the babies inside the pen during the day.
Back inside the ger, I played guitar and my team sang worship songs. When we finished, dad pulled out his radio and sang traditional Mongolian songs for us!
Next, we headed to the well—some on a motorcycle, some in the car. We watered all the goats and sheep, and filled buckets of water to bring back for us humans.
Then, dad brought a sheep over and started slaughtering it. Oh my. But it was kind of cool thinking of the fact that it was Easter, and that Jesus was the lamb of God sacrificed for our sins. The next few hours, mom worked on cleaning all the parts of the sheep and cooking it for our second meal. We ate the meat from that sheep the rest of the week.
My team read John 18-21, Jesus’ death and resurrection together.
The rest of the day was spent playing Spike Ball with the girls and going on walks in the wilderness.
That was the most eventful day of our 5 days in the ger. We spent a lot of time alone with God in the desert and also a lot of time with our teammates. One evening, we wanted to watch the sunset, but all of the family was gone. So we left a picture note explaining what we were doing!
Translation: “We are going on a walk and will be back to the ger by sunset.”
We had mutton for almost every meal, except for one time we had camel. We hadn’t seen their camels all week, but on the last day, they took us to see their camels and take photos with them!
When we left, we gave them a Mongolian Bible as a gift.
During our time in the Gobi, my teammates brought up verses in the Bible about the wilderness. Such as Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness, and how we can use this time to draw closer to God and pray more. And Hosea 2:14 “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.”
It was a very refreshing time for me. Our lives were very simple and our host family had such pure love for each other.
Check out a video I made of our time at the ger!
