I remember a number of years ago when I was working at a hospital, I worked in the kitchen doing dishes and running trays up stairs. It always amused me when I would head to the grocery store after work in my scrubs and get confused for a doctor. I even used to tell girls I thought were cute that I was a brain surgeon. They never believed me but that was part of the joke! It was so absurd that people thought some nineteen year old punk could be a doctor.
So here I am in western Mongolia looking at a woman and her daughter on crutches and I point to myself and say slow and clear, “I am a doctor.”
I should preface this, shouldn’t I? Well, that morning I was at the local coffee shop filling in my spreadsheets and had some time with God, when a message came in. It seemed as if our lady’s team needed some help over at their place. So I packed and bundled up for the thirty minute walk across town. I decided walking was the best way to travel – that way I could pray over the city and it’s people.
I just made it across the river when I saw her. She was struggling. If it was not for her mother I am sure she would have fallen over, even with her crutches. She was walking across their lot, not far off the river, heading for their little one story house.
As I walked by I prayed for her, her mother, and their family. I prayed for healing, and as I turned the corner I could hear God’s voice.
“Did I call you to pray from a distance?”
I slowed in my walk.
“Did I not make you bold and brave, my son?”
I could feel Holy Spirit convicting my heart. I turned around. I felt the excitement build in my stomach. I could feel Holy Spirit in me jumping for joy – adventure was legitimately around the corner.
I turned into their little lot, looking around eagerly. I came around the house and saw them, struggling to get here through the door. As they looked at me, a memory flashed before my mind.
Our host was talking about healings he has seen, “If you tell people you want to pray for them, they will say no. I think it stems from all the persecution that happens here. So I just tell them I am a doctor, act as if I am examining them, and pray in English! I mean, what is a doctor? Someone who helps and heals people, right? I do the same thing.”
So there I was. “I am a doctor.”
It just kind came out of my mouth without my authority. I recovered quickly and asked, “Can I look at your leg?” Simultaneously pointing at my eye and her leg. They both smiled, nodding their heads.
I helped her into the house and got her to sit. It seems whatever short trip they had been on had worn her out. I looked her up and down, as she looked at me through her big brown eyes that sit innocently on her round face. I knelt down and took her foot in my hand, looking over her leg. I prayed over her leg, telling Father and Jesus how I wanted to see her healed. I finished my prayer.
I moved her leg. There seemed to be no difference. I was stumped, so I grabbed my phone and translated “I will come back.” Before I left, the mother offered me a candy. I accepted it with a smile, said good bye, and headed out the door.
As I walked down the street the round faced girl danced in and out of my thoughts. The way she walked on her crutches and her mannerisms… It might have not been her leg but something mental. Something wrong with her brain, or some kind of spine damage.
Plagued by the potential horrors that might be the cause of this, I almost did not notice two squad mates walking in the opposite direction. I hailed them down and asked them where they where headed. They where headed into town. They had all kinds of plans it seemed. A thought crossed my mind and I acted on it before I thought too much.
“I have a proposition for you two if you are interested.” I explained about the round faced girl and that I wanted to go back and pray for her, and asked them both if they would drop what they where doing and head with me. As I asked I realized this required a certain degree of trust. That is why when they both gave a hardy “yes” I felt a wave of relief wash over me.
One was now three! I led the way with two women of God in tow, excitement rising once more. We headed back the way I had come, rounding the corner and to the small lot, chatting the whole way. As we approached the house I could see my two friends growing apprehensive, reminding me once again how different our culture was from that of Mongolia.
Then another thought penetrated my mind. It was my squad coach talking with all the men about being men of God and how to treat our ladies. I just remembered one line, “Lead and they will follow.”
I could feel my bold side respond to this with a “sounds good to me!” I again leapt to action as I thought, “As I understand it, it’s common in this culture to walk into someone else’s house.” I heard one of my squad mates say something, but I did not hear it. I was already committed. Besides, it was probably something about knocking.
I yanked the door open and poked my head in and exclaimed “Previate?” (That is the word for hello in Russian.) I heard a reply in a language I did not understand, but I did understand the tone – it was welcoming. I entered and ditched my shoes. Heading for the hallway, I found the mother with one of her other children. She smiled up at me. It was then that I realized how short she was.
She indicated the first door on the right. She knew why I had come. I turned around to find out where my backup had gone. They slowly came in behind me when they saw they were welcome. I could see that any apprehension had dissipated and was replaced with relief and with it came big smiles.
We walked through the hall and into the door the mother had indicated. There was a table and some stools and propped against the back wall was our round faced girl sitting on a bunch of cushions and what looked like bedding. It occurred to me that she might sleep there.
My ladies moved to action. I got them in the house, it was their turn to act. They both said hello and knelt down to the round faced girl as they exclaimed that she was beautiful.
We got our translators out and started attempts at communications. It was slow but we exchanged names and ages. It seems our young girls name was ________ and she was twenty. From there we did our best to build some kind of relationship with her and her mother.
Not long after all of this, the father arrived. He also understood why we were there, and disappeared only to reappear shortly with a folder in his hands. His hand plunged into the folder extracting what look like x-ray results. He took one and held it up to the light to reveal that they were scans of a brain.
I was right. It was something to do with her brain! I asked the ladies if they could figure out through the translator the exact problem as I flipped through the brain scans looking for the culprit that I suspected.
As I examined what might as well have been hieroglyphics to me, my squad mates confirmed my suspicions. It was a tumor.
I groaned and swore under my breath. The father pulled something else out of his folder of bad news.
It looked like a sign you would hold up when you asked for money for some kind of cause. He pointed to something I understood and found quite unpleasant, 50,000 USD. I glared at the number as if it was my worst enemy and we were squaring up to duel. I looked away from the number and to the round faced girl as she struggled to communicate even in her own language.
At that moment the mother said “Chai?” Not wanting to be rude we accepted and sat at the table to drink tea and talk with the rest of the family. We shared music, photos, and some different videos from this crazy journey.
As we finished our tea we translated that we would be coming back, and headed out the door.
The next day I found our host and told him about the adventure. He was particularly amused that I used his controversial doctor trick. After hearing the full story, he agreed to go with me to visit the family.
A quick side note before I continue, I lied to a family about my occupation. That was a mistake. I later found out that my memory of my host was faulty, he commonly acted as a doctor in examining people on the streets, he never told anyone a straight lie about a doctorate. I on the other hand did, I own up to that.
A few days later me, my host, and his oldest daughter, walked onto the lot of the family. We walked right up to the door, I hesitated. In America you would get shot for opening someone’s door and walking in, but not here. It was the cultural norm.
My host encouraged me, and I opened the door, walked to the hall and took off my shoes, as my host knocked on the open door that lead into the hall.
The mother poked her head out of the first door on the left. She smiled at my familiar face, beckoning us inside. My host greeted her in Kazakh, and we walked into the room I was in before, and there at the table sat our round faced girl with innocent brown eyes.
As we found seats the mother bustled around getting chai and fresh borsoke (strips of dough fried in a mixture of oil and yak fat). My host started in on getting to know the family, it was only our round faced girl, her mother, and what I assumed was one of her brothers. My host tried his best to translate for me, but I told him not to worry about it, I was focused on praying for an opening to pray for our round faced girl.
As he asked basic questions about the family, even though my focus was split, I was able to catch a few things through pantomime, inferences, and similar words in Kazakh that are really close to their counterparts in English.
The father was a taxi driver, the brother was going to school to be a policemen, and mother was a stay at home mom, also a cultural norm.
Then my host got to the point, he asked questions about our round face girl. It was a car accident, she was walking across the street when a car hit her. It was brain damage, our tumor was lost in translation. I grimaced at such bad news.
My host decides to take a risk, he asked the family if we can pray for the round faced girl’s brain damage. The mother says yes! I was over joyed! My host starts to explain that we will be praying in the name of Esa (Jesus). It was hard to tell what the mother thought of this, their facial expressions on this side of the globe are stoic and minuet. I felt my hope slowly start to dissipate, but before it could go, the mother agreed, maybe it was my imagination but she was hardly willIng, regardless we had her approval.
My hope was back and in full force! I thanked God in the moment to be his son and to be doing his work. As we closed in around our round faced girl, the father walked in. He looked at the three white people circling his daughter with a puzzled look, but before anything else my host was up and greeting him with the utmost respect. We went through the explanation process for the father and when we asked for the approval to pray, he said yes almost immediately. I would have been over joyed, but I was distracted by the look on his face, clear and easy to read, he was desperate for a cure. He looked lovingly onto his daughter with the same brown eyes that were perched on her face, looking innocently off into space at that moment.
It was at this instance I understood why our host had brought along his daughter, “Honey can you lay hands on her so we don’t break any cultural norms?” It was clear that this was not his first rodeo. We started in, my host prayed in Kazakh and English, I in English of course. Five minutes past…ten minutes…fifteen.
After fifteen minutes we stopped. The peace that invaded the room was palpable. The round faced girl had tears shining in the corners of her brown eyes, she was clearly touched by God’s hand. The mother no longer had apprehension on her face, but a cool peaceful demeanor.
My host started to talk with the father, it turns out that my host once bought a table from this man, and his brother was a carpenter that my host knew. They talked over different things that I did not understand, I could tell he was trying to build a relationship, that is how you build the kingdom after all.
The father started to asked complicated questions about Esa and the Quran. My host deflected all of these questions and instead got all the family’s phones numbers, promising to come back. He looked into our round faced girl, he asked her if she can read. She said yes with the nod of her head. I understood that, a bible was on it’s way.
We said our good byes, thanking them for the chai. Once outside my host grabbed my hand and shook, “Good job Luke! That was bold!” My host went on to tell me that this kind of contact normally only happens with a local believer and not an outsider.
All the way back into town my host and I talked about different things, everything from what God had planed for this city of Ulgii and Mongolia, to what God was doing in us. After exchanging words from the Lord we said a warm good bye, filled with hopes to talk again before my departure.
