I remember standing by the window of our kitchen on the sixth floor of our run- down apartment building overlooking a good portion of Ulaanbaatar’s 3rd and 4th micro-district. I could see the building behind us was painted in baby blue with paint peeling; a mighty dust bowl was stirring up between the buildings. I saw the swirling dust and the cold hard packed icy ground littered with broken glass. Fifty five degrees inside the kitchen and 10 below outside. Looking out, I realized my family’s livelihood all depended on me. If I didn’t go out into the cold, face the wind, bite my lip, and hunt down some food we would starve. Already we were getting very thin. My mother who had always wanted me to lose weight saw a photo of me and panicked. “Are you all right, dear?”
There was an egg scare, a bread shortage, long lines in the food shops. I was the closest to poverty I’d ever been, understood the heart of millions of mother’s across this planet who wonder where their family’s next meal would come from.
I was truly alone for the first time in my life. Oh yes, I lived in Mongolia with my husband and children, but it was the first time I was stripped of everything that made me who I was.
My husband was fighting battle of his own, having been a vibrant preacher and teacher, he was reduced to babbling like a one-year-old in the Mongolian language. My children found their strength in us and were probably oblivious to the battles of the heart and mind that were going on inside of the adults in their lives.
For, in missionary service I had left behind family and friends, homes, clubs, organizations, titles, and routines that made me who I was. Little did I know that I would also leave the things that defined who I was as a Christian. I would have to abandon many things that fed by soul: the Sunday School class I taught, set down the hymn book, the ladies bible studies, the Sunday worship service, the Christian radio, Christian music, books and magazines, the preaching of the Word.
I had ventured out to Outer Mongolia with my family and just my Bible. And the one with really small print. Would I make it? Would it be enough? Others have heard this sort of story before and would say, “I couldn’t do that. I’m glad you can. But I couldn’t. I’m glad God called you and not me!”
But you could. And you will. You will most likely face some sort of suffering some sort of poverty of soul, depletion of resources or strength. Some absence of friend, spouse or health. And you will make it.
A few months into our work in Mongolia, I found a verse in Psalm 119 that said,
“Establish my footsteps in your Word…”
I knew that this would be the key to my longevity. I wouldn’t fall into despair (though maybe into an open manhole which are so prevalent over there) if I was in His word.
I had engaged in several years of hard word for God in my previous churches always knowing I should be in God’s Word more and praying more. But I was always failing, always doing it like we go about flossing our teeth. Because someone tells us we have to. But we are not thoroughly convinced we’ll lose our teeth without it.
Convinced that it would be God’s Word that would keep me sane, I started reading the Word every morning. I didn’t have a desk, just a plastic lid I would slip out from underneath my bed. In it I had my miniature Bible and a pen and a notebook. I would read the Word and cling to it. “I will make it here. I think I can, I think I can.”
I would read the Word. Just a couple of verses. I would stop and pray that the Lord would make those verses true in my life. That’s all I had the strength for. And slowly, His Word became alive! He was using the Word to strengthen me like I’d never experienced before. And so began a connection to Him, God the Creator of this universe!
But now I sat quiet enough, long enough for Him to transform me. Right there in that “ghetto apartment.” It was just me and Him and my Bible, and I would never be the same.
Please share this post with someone going through tough times or is adjusting to a new and very different place in the world.
Read more about The Stages of Acculutration
Read about the toughest stage called Culture Shock with Diamonds in the Dump
Read about my hardest day in Mongolia Fahrenheit Meets Celsius
Welcome to you if you are new to World So Bright!
