I’ve only been in Mongolia one week, but I swear it feels like a whole month.
This is what I expected my entire World Race would look like.
We’re getting dirty. We’re trying extremely weird things, and we’re loving it!
For the month of May, we are working with a Nomadic church outside the capitol of Ulaanbaatar. There are an array of different things we are working on, but for the first week that we were here, we were driven out to the countryside to live and work beside a pastor.
Man, I’m telling you in the first day I tried more crazy things than I had in months!
Day 1: We butchered this little buddy so that the 14 of us could eat for the week. My teammate, Julia, and I skinned and gutted the cutie pie! WHHHHAT??!?!
***Picture not included: That night the family presented us with a platter of the goat’s cooked head, liver, kidney, blood sausage, tongue, etc. on a beautiful platter. The host presented me with the eye socket, which apparently is a huge and most important part! This meal is the biggest honor a family can give you… so I was over the moon excited!
Then it was time to cut wood. I used an ax y’all! Our home was kept warm and all meals cooked by a furnace inside, so we had to chop all of our own wood. We happily grabbed a saw and ax and got at it!
Day 2: FOR 10 HOURS, I SHOVELED POOP! The farm that we stayed at was completely self-sufficient. The incredible family we stayed with is always helping others and busy with so many things that they let the task we completed be pushed to the back burner. There was 3 YEARS and 3 FEET of goat poop stacked up, and we broke it all up so the family would be able to sell it for other things (fuel).
***I may or may not have had a poop fight with the contact’s little boy and accidently threw a mouthful of baas (Mongolian word for poop) into his mouth. Don’t worry he got me back real quick! Sorry little buddy.
Day 3: Shower day! There are no showers at our house, so we had to travel 45 minutes out and man was that the most glorious shower I’ve ever had in my entire life!!!!
While on the subject of hygiene and things, everyone house and businesses in Mongolia use outhouses. THIS is the view from MY outhouse…. Lord, you are a beautiful creator!
Day 4: FARM WOOOOORK. The family we are staying with seriously works from 6 AM to 10 PM. It’s insane, so we were able to jump in and make it easier for them for that week, which was awesome!! Raking the pens out, shoveling more poop, cutting wood, and OF COURSE, playing wif ze little goats!
Day 4: Church! Ya’ll, my church was in the cutest log cabin you have ever seen!!! This is the traditional Mongolian furniture and set up. It’s beautiful to see how the church doesn’t need all of the hype, lights, and distractions to worship, but the Holy Spirit still showed up in a wonderful way!
As soon as I walked into service, I knew that this little muffin was going to be my new best friend. In minutes, she was in my lap playing patty cake and having a tickle fight. Totes adorbs
After church, we were able to explore the area around it, and we came across an abandoned ranch. The house attached was tattered, so we were able to see how the houses here are made. They literally construct the homes out of logs, twigs, mug, and stucko. They also add animal fur in between the logs to keep the house insulated. Just to show how they are made. The Mongolians are smart people!
Day 5: Cow Milking!!!! I did it like a BO$$!! They tied the big guys up, and we went at it. I only filled about a sippy cup worth of milk, but I still did it!!
Day 6: Cooking day! Our wonderful contact’s wife, Gyna, literally cooks all day long. She wakes up feeds and milks the cow and then gets to work in the kitchen. ALL DAY LONG cooks, and then milks the cow at night, then gets back to cooking dinner. We were able to bless her and do her work for the day, while she could run out and do errands. The other family taught us to make homemade fried cookies, Buuts (dumplings), and gurltai shol (flour soup and dumplings).
Day 7: Leaving Day! This was extremely hard for me. Our main contact, Gamba, was such a father figure to us. When you first meet him, he seems like a very tough, hard working man, but as you get to know him he is the sweetest, kind-hearted man. At the dinner table one night, he gets someone to translate to me, “I am very proud of Jordan. She works so hard and tries everything”. That literally meant the world coming from a man who works so hard to provide for his family and serve the church so well.
I will always remember them for that.
It’s their culture. It’s their way of life, which I desperately want to continue after the race!
