God called me to Mongolia

On September 22, 2013, I found myself in a plane descending into a remote area of Asia. It was barely afternoon in the American city I’d just left. Looking out the oval window to my left, I saw night blanketing the city. Just minutes later, I tiredly shook hands with my host family and climbed into their Land Cruiser. We drove out of the darkened city, through a riverbed, and up a large hill to what would be my home for the following few months. As my head hit the pillow that night, images replayed on the back of my eyelids of the drive from the airport—of staggering drunk men and dirty streets.

I woke full of fear the next morning. The months ahead seemed unbearably unknown. God comforted me, saying, “For we are not, as many, peddling the Word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:17). “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5). And, of course, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). Admittedly, I had not traveled to Mongolia to spread the Gospel to the masses. I was there to tutor one girl, a daughter of English teachers. In these verses, God was reminding me Whose I was, where I stood, and the purpose all Christians have in all they do.

It was not the first time God had comforted me since I had signed up for the adventure. As I waited to board my first plane on that trip, God had comforted my fears with a poem by Alice Cary. An excerpt reads:

“I will not tremble!

I will trust!

My days are Thine, O Savior, dear!

Thou seest all this coming year,

Thou lovest me and Thou art just;

Thy poor child will not fear.”

Time touched; the mossy gates swung wide:

I paused—a Voice not all unknown

Spoke to my heart in sweetest tone:

“Child, I will be thy guide;

Fear not to travel on.”

I had boarded my 13-hour flight with the message echoing in my mind—”I will be thy guide; fear not to travel on.” Fear not.

Even before that, I saw God working in mighty ways. I was a fairly new Samaritan Ministries member and employee, a recent college graduate, and I was praying for direction in life. In July, I was preparing to help at an English camp in Germany when I received an email from a co-worker. She asked if I would consider going to Asia to help Brad and Ruth, also Samaritan members, who needed a tutor for their daughter, Christine. Every reason I had to say no vanished in a single email. God brought me to the cliff of all things comfortable and familiar. I took a leap. God was there at the edge of the cliff to catch me on His mighty breath.

God blessed my time with Christine and her family. I was able to tutor and see progress. I was able to take part in another person’s life. While tutoring Christine, I was also able to participate in her family’s daily life. I ate meals with them, traveled with them, went to Bible studies and church and school with them. I entered into the relationships they had built there with believers. I watched them as they offered rides to locals walking down the mountain on the way into the city. I saw them open their home and share their resources with those in need. (The resources are God’s, after all. Their house was God’s. Even now, they are reminded—He gives and He takes away.) This region can be beautiful with its wide open skies and mountainous terrain, but it is indeed a hard country. They showed me that God was doing a work there.

More than that, I was shaken by an obvious truth. It was not only I who traveled to a strange country on the other side of the world. I was there only a few months. Eight years ago, this family left their home and their lives in the United States to serve in Asia, to teach English, and to be Christians in a place with few Christians. They had given up many comforts, believing that God was leading them to something more important. They had left community and family and comfort to serve in an uncomfortable place. While God has blessed them with friends and community there, giving up all they’d known and loved in America had been difficult. Life goes on in a foreign country just as it goes on here, but they have added the difficulty of a whole different culture, of service in a place where everyone is needing more than can possibly be given, of living in one of the most stressful cities in the world. It is hard to remember that the Lord knows all, and that the weight of the world rests on His shoulders and not ours.

During the time I stayed with them, my host family lived in an American-style house on the side of a mountain on the outskirts of the city. They’d built the house with with the help of local friends. Two bags each, I was told, was what they began with. Over the years they filled the house with pictures and books and various things that make houses more like homes. On New Year’s Day, however, God asked Brad and Ruth and their family to start over again. As they traveled to Thailand for a conference, they received news that their house had burned down. Their dog and their possessions were destroyed. When I spoke with Ruth shortly after that, she said, “We had two bags apiece then. Now we have one. We can start again.”

They now live in a tiny apartment in the city and are beginning the long and tedious process of dealing with foreign insurance policies. Still, God is in it. A short time before I left, I had the privilege of helping Ruth prepare a lesson on Anne Bradstreet’s “On the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666.” Bradstreet’s poem declares:

Then streight I gin my heart to chide,

And didst thy wealth on earth abide?

Didst fix thy hope on mouldring dust,

The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?

Raise up thy thoughts above the skye

That dunghill mists away may flie. . . .

A Prise so vast as is unknown,

Yet, by His Gift, is made thine own.

Ther’s wealth enough, I need no more;

Farewell my Pelf, farewell my Store.

The world no longer let me Love,

My hope and Treasure lyes Above.

When I talked with Ruth later, she was still speaking of the good that God has done, even in this. Even in a place like this, even in circumstances so painful, even when it seems like the next moments are just too difficult, He knows what He is about. And He is worthy of all trust.

If you would like to help Brad and Ruth to rebuild after the devastating fire that destroyed their home, you can send donations to Samaritan Ministries, P.O. Box 3618, Peoria, IL 61612. Designate your checks “Mongolia Disaster Relief Fund.”