Wow school starts in a weeks time & the summer has flown by. During the summer we as a family went camping for a week twice, once in July & the other time in August. The 1st time we camped close to the city by ourselves. The 2nd time we camped far from the city & with our extended family Aunt Jenna & Uncle Pascal. The river crossing (horses were swimming with us & all our gear on their backs) was the best, coolest part of the adventure.
In Mongolia camping is much different than in Canada. All you have to do is drive anywhere, find a place you like, make sure that it's not a special Buddhist prayer place & set up camp. There are no outhouses, no water or taps unless their is a river, designated sites, or anything. Just you nature & your stuff. Oh, don't forget the toilet paper. Things are always a fun crazy adventure here in Mongolia. The river we crossed to find our camping spot is a great example. You can see this in the slideshow on the right. The 2nd day before we were leaving it rained hard all day & when we woke up the next morning (day before we left) the river was 30cm higher. We all started to get a little concerned, but had fun even though the water was rising. We woke up the morning we were leaving & the water rose another 30cm & the river was now 1meter deep & 400meters wide.
When our taxi arrived in his Delica SUV van I had to yell across the river in Mongolian that the only way we could cross the river was by horse. God is good. A Mongolian language instructor that I knew was in her Ger close by with her husband & son. He told Sara that I was stuck & need to borrow her horses. It was so much fun. After that fun we all said to ourselves that we needed to buy good camping gear that can be carried while on horseback & all of us needed to take horse riding lessons.
Some of the other things we did this summer was have our annual JCS retreat which is a time for all kinds of missionary families from different organizations to come together from all over Mongolia to learn (guest speaker taught sessions each day), to pray, to play (both kids & adults), to eat & just talk together. We also befriended a short term mission family from Canada, the Farquhar's. Their children & ours played almost all day everyday while they were here. Teresa & I had a great time talking, shopping, showing them around & eating together. We were sad to see them leave yesterday morning, but are hoping they will return in the future for a visit. This summer many people stayed at our place when coming from the countryside. It's nice that people know our home is open if they need a place to stay.
A Christian Mongolian family in our stairwell (family of 4 living in a 1 room apt) was broken into & their front door destroyed. So we with some other friends here pooled our money to buy & have put in a brand new steal door for them. Teresa & I over the past couple of months have been doing a lot of individual & marital coaching (counseling) to other missionaries & local people here. We have been asked if we would be willing to coach (counsel) Mongolian families who's marriages are struggling. Please pray for this as many missionaries here have shared that this is an area we seriously need to consider & would be great for us to offer because of our past experiences.
Yesterday all 4 of us went to the private school (uses Canadian curriculum) Kiel will attend starting next week. We went to pay his tuition, get his school uniform & meet some of the teachers. We were able to meet 5 Christian teachers teaching at the school from (US, UK, Canada, New Zealand.) We all had a great time chatting & felt more comfortable knowing that Kiel already knew some of the teachers before his 1st day of classes.