Mongolia.. where do I start. Mongolia was a very unknown place to me so I wasn’t sure what to expect but my month taught me a lot about myself in a different environment.
This month my team and I were teaching English, one class in the morning for children and one class for adults in the evening. To see people of all ages so eager to learn English was shocking. Even though people may live all around the world, everyone desires to be loved and needed. What that looks like in different cultures takes time to see and understand. There is so much more to people then what meets the eye. One of the last lessons that we worked on with our students was the topic of the enviroment that we live in. We got to teach them about practical ways to keep the earth clean: reduce, recycle, reuse. This lesson led up to one of the most rewarding days in Erdenet.
One of my favorite days was community clean up day. Joining the students from our english classes, my team and I went over to one of the mountains and picked up trash. We had the children helping us out and ended up getting a lot of trash cleaned up. Most of my team went up the mountain to clean, but I found myself around the base of the mountain. During my time picking up trash, I felt a sence of stillness around me. I was able to sit in the Lord’s precence and soak up His goodness.
While picking up trash, I did find a lot of glass in the grass that had been there for a while. Most of the big pieces were on the surface level and easy to pick up, but some of the tinniest pieces were embedded deep in the grass and took more intententinality to pick up. I believe God was using the glass as a visual of our brokeness.
As I was picking up the glass pieces, my attention was brought to the gloves that were protecting my hands from the possibility of getting hurt. When it comes to the broken pieces in my own life, I realized that God is like the gloves. He protects me from getting hurt along with removing all the broken pieces. No matter how deep the cut is, we don’t have to live with “broken glass.” I have learned that I need God to be the ultimatle healer in my life. He is the only person that can pick up the little pieces that have caused the most hurt.
As I sat in the train and looking out at the hills and grassy mountains that make up Mongoila’s countryside reflecting on all I have experienced and learned, I want to pray over the country of Mongolia. The country’s landscape and people are beautiful. I did notice a lot of sadness in the people; I pray for healing, peace, and Joy. I pray that God just takes over their hearts and can experience freedom in him.
