I hope that everyone has a Merry Christmas & a happy New Year. For us most of our friends went to other warmer countries or to their home country to celebrate this year. Not many people were around, but in some ways it was nice. we watched movies, played Barbie's & built Lego's together as a family. We also went to a couple of friends homes for a meal & enjoy their company. Now things are back to normal & our friends are returning from warmer places.
It is hard to believe that in 7 weeks our Mongolian language classes will end after 2 years of study. Many friends are asking me if I am ready to enter into full-time work speaking Mongolian most of the day. I have been responding with a very sure, yes. There comes a point where you have the basic/intermediate grammar, a vocabulary of more than 1500 words & have created/used all of the conversations you can think of in the classroom before it's time to finish. I think I have reached this point & am ready to start working.
Please pray that I will be able to get a work visa. I will be applying in the next two weeks with immigration to see if i can get a work visa with Flourishing Futures, a Ger district community centre. The centre is right next to the community corner store, & water pump house. The centre has many projects already in service. They have a Kindergarten, after school homework/tutoring classes, food/clothing distribution, football (soccer) camps, work with a govt orphanage, run summer camps for the ger district kids, & visit local people. I hopefully I will be teaching Mongolian/English computer classes to kids/adults, helping out with the other things the centre is already doing & have some ideas with things I would like to do to serve the people living in the ger district.
To prepare for my work visa I have been continuing my Mongolian language study full-time & whenever I have a few spare minutes have been taking online PC classes. I am hoping that this will help with the application process, but you never really know. Please pray for my visa. We are planning to leave the country to go to Thailand in March to finish (hopefully) the visa application process (usually takes 14 days to process out of country) & for a short vacation before returning to start working at the ger district centre.