Knock Knock. Who's there? A camel. A camel who? What I rode a camel in Mogolia?

Hello folks, it's me Steve, writing to you from the apartment of Charles and Anita Jackson in UB. Yes we flew out of the small city of Bayanhongor this afternoon and we are now in the big city of UB. Our past five days have been unforgettable. If you've ever gone to a bible camp for a week and become attached to some people by the end of the short time, then you probably know how we feel right now. We made many friends with the YWAM students who were doing their DTS while we were there. In fact, they had their graduation yesterday morning, which our team decorated for. I hope they liked the bedsheets that were carefully draped from the ceiling and all the snowflakes that Melanie and Emily cut out.
A few of my highlights from the week were the Mercy Ministry, teaching English, playing soccer in -20 weather, and... camel riding. Mercy Ministry was something we did on Tuesday afternoon where we went to a couple homes of families who had a sick or injured family member. Melanie and I went to the home of a woman who had been bed ridden for the past five years after having a stroke. The family and her were not believers, so I asked if I could read from my bible in Matt. 8 where Jesus heals the man of leprosy and the Roman soldiers servant. When they heard this, one of the men asked one of our translators something. It must have been about Jesus because she took a few minutes to share the gospel with the entire family. We then prayed for healing over the woman. It was an extremely powerful experience. Melanie told me that a couple days later at a church cell group that her and Emily attended, the man who asked about Jesus was there also for the very first time. Praise Jesus.

Now for the camel adventure. Yesterday our team was fortunate enough to travel a few kilometers out of town so that we could ride a couple camels. It was sweet. We all took turns riding around with the man who owned the camels, but Luke and I wanted to take 'em for a rip on our own. The owner proverbially and literally handed us the reins and we were off... sort of. We got about fifty meters away and I guess they both blew a tire because they wouldn't move any further. The owner called them lazy camels. It was pretty funny nonetheless. Maybe our calling is not Mongolian herders any time soon. If your ever in Mongolia I strongly recommend the camel ride.

Well there are only a few more days here and I can't wait to tell you all about them soon enough. God Bless.
Stephen

Steve and Luke... English Tutors?

Welcome back to Luke's portion of this blog! We have been out of Canada for 11 days total, and have had some interesting, yet challenging experiences. The day after we arrived here in the city of Bayankhongor, (mongolian spelling) - we were able to travel out to the countryside in a very old russion van. We stayed in a Ger, along with a mongolian family and some of the Ywam students. For those of you who do not know what a Ger is, we would see it as a large, round-shaped tent. (google for pictures) It has a fireplace in the center, and usually 2-3 beds/couches. It is very warm when the fire is going, yet not engineered efficiently, in terms of keeping the heat in. The chimney is not sealed tight with the roof, so heat can escape very easily through the open space. While there, we, as well as the students, hiked up the nearby mountainside for a beautiful view of vast mountain scenery. The next day we traveled back in the van, with a whopping 17 people crammed in tightly. (this is amazing considering it is only made for 11 max. She was a bit squishy!

Back to present day, we have now begun our "official work" at the Ywam base. Until friday, we will be doing various activities throughout the day, as well as teaching scheduled classes in the evening. The afternoons will consist of visitation to families experiencing losses or hardships, and prayer walks throughout the city. At 5 every evening we teach an english class for beginners, (which Steve and I usually spearhead). Then at 7 we do a more advanced class, which usually consists of visiting in small groups, practicing more of the conversation and grammer side of the language.
Emily and Melanie have given a Drama/Small skit seminar, which the students found very helpful, and I will be teaching guitar lessons throughout the week to three intermediate level students.
We all contribute in the planning stages, and then teach as our interests and gifts qualify us to do so.

The first beginner class Steve and I made great headway with the students. Most students come from outside the center, yet a handful from Ywam also attend the class. We started by teaching the Alphabet, and furthermore, the vowels and consanents. Many of them know most of the Alphabet, yet they do not know the correct pronounciation. We do not use a translator for the class which strongly encourages them to participate in the excersises. We are looking forward to seeing them learn over the week.

Thank you for your interest and Prayers, God Bless

Luke H

Transition Days

The last couple days we haven't done too much we couldn't get bus tickets for Tuesday so on Tuesday we did some shopping in the morning which included going to Mary and Martha's which is a store which is all things hand crafted by people who JCS is helping out in their various projects. Like out of broken alcohol bottles they make angels to sell and it helps with a group of people who are alcholics or the ladies who are in streams in the desert make jewelry to sell there. It is a really cool store. Then we went to Mongolia grill for lunch and the chefs entertained us with there ability to juggle the cooking sticks. It was awesome. After lunch we got to tour an orphanage and play with the kids for a while. They were so joyful and we had a lot of fun playing with the babies, chasing after the little girl and praying for the child who was waiting for surgery. I wish we could have stayed longer but maybe we will get back there at the end of our trip. We finished the day with a spaghetti super at the Jacksons and a bible study in a small group on keeping the Sabbath day holy the third commandment. On Wednesday we got up early and took the bus here to Bayonhungor. It was eleven hours long, very bumpy and well my stomach didn't hold up for all of it. With about three hours to go I pucked which was the most eventful part of the day. It was sweet though Emily took really good care of me and Steve gave me a couple tic tacs after I was done. We did get here though at a decent time and except for that we have all been very very healthy. Today we have gotten settled here, got a tour, planned out the week and just had a Nice day to relax and get some extra sleep. We are ready to go to the country side tomorrow to stay in a Ger over night and meet the twelve Ywam students we will be working with next week. It will be a lot of fun.


Thank you once again for all your support and prayers


Melanie and team Mongolia

Darn... Missed a day!

Hey, hey, hey this is Luke and Steve coming at you live from the flat.... all the way from UB! Sorry for our slacking off yesterday, we had a long day and we were pretty tired. But not to worry, we are about to make up for that!
Yesterday was Sunday and so naturally, we went to church. We were placed at a church with Charles and Anita Jackson, and we were also put in charge of leading Sunday School. It was definitely interesting, to say the least. We had a translator, yet it was really cute listening to all the Mongol kids try to pronounce our English camp songs. Steve and I were kind of worried as we were literally told to just wing it!
Following the service some Lady gave me(Luke) some homemade Mongolian slippers which was really cool, She usually sells them for 19000 Togrogs or around $19 American... I guess she accidentally made them too big for any Mongolian feet and decided to give them to me for free!
The church had no bathroom but a little outhouse was waiting outside! Now when I say outhouse you probably are thinking wood shack with a seat and a hole... you are wrong. This was one ghetto outhouse! It consisted of a wooden shack with no seat and one crack in the floor for you to squat over! To top it off, there was frozen... stuff, all over the floor from where the last people had missed... It was an experience!

Once Church was over, we had the opportunity to visit the Ger of a local family, and they fed us bohds! These are a Mongolian favorite, they contain mutton wrapped in a paroge-like pastry. They are steamed and all the fat is caught in the pastry. When you bite into it, an explosion of melted fat shoots into your mouth! All in all they were pretty good! To see the Ger check out our new videos. (posted soon).

Today we were at JCS International getting an overview of the projects they are working on and an idea of what JCS does. We had lunch with a few of the missionaries who work with JCS and were able to discuss some things about what being a missionary in Mongolia is actually like. Then in the afternoon we had the opportunity to actually see one of the JCS projects called Streams in the Desert. This is a project that works with getting women who are involved in the sex trade off of the streets and training them in skills such as sewing and jewelry making. It was very interesting hearing some of the stories from the people who started and run the project. It's amazing how God can call people to something that they sometimes feel completely unqualified for and He can also call people into something that works so naturally with who they are. After that we visited the Mongolian International University and met with the president of the school who told us all about the university. He was kinda like a Korean version of P.H., haha, it was interesting. We finished off the day at a JCS family's house with dinner and visiting. All in all a really good day.
It would be good to have some prayer for safe travels on the bus from U.B. to Bayanhongor on Wednesday. Thank you for all of your support. God Bless.
Love Stephen and Luke

Sorry for the inconvenience... Malfunction junction

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=782hawkeye&aq=f

Just an update, our blog page only shows some of our many videos filmed. Which, of course, for you is unfortunate. Now fortunately we have provided a series of steps for you to access this highly unclassified cheap entertainment, for your enjoyment.

Step 1: Click on the link above to be teleported to these documents. (if this fails just copy and paste the    link into your webular device.)

Step 2: Have your face exploded by happiness. 

Step 3: Now Make like a tree and Get out of Here!

You are most welcome

Love: Luke and Steve

(mostly Luke)

In the Flat...

Well hello there! This is Luke and Steve "Live on Location" from our 3 bedroom flat in Mongolia! Yeah Yeah (insert New York accent)! We landed in UB at about four in the afternoon yesterday. We were met by one of the JCS staff named Tim. We drove through the city to our places where we'd be staying. The drivers here are pretty crazy sometimes. Apparently they were only introduced to traffic lights about a year ago, so we're told (I'd believe it). The girls are staying at Charles and Anita Jackson's not too far from where we are at. The city of UB is located in a valley so it is surrounded by a bit of a mountain range, which is pretty cool. The view out the one side of our flat is far superior to the other side because that side of the city has been less industrially developed.

 We met a few of the people who work with JCS last night at a cafe where we were treated to some hot drinks and food. I am looking forward to getting to know some of the people who live here and hearing about the work that God has done here in Mongolia recently. Well, Luke and I are going to be picked up in about ten minutes to go see more of the city, so I should get at 'er. God's Peace.
From Luke and Steve... mostly Steve.

Luke here, just wanted to let you guys know that Steve and I have been doing documentary's on You tube, they are posted at the top of the blog! Check them Out!
Peace!

Start of a new adventure!

Okay, so we just lost our first attempt at blogging, yeah mom it's Emily.  Well, here we go again, round two.  We started out the day with a very successful trip driving to Edmonton to catch our first flight where we reluctantly said farewell to Jonny, we'll miss you man!!  After boarding the plane we sat...and sat... just cuz they found a small dint in the plane, yeah it was fine.  And a few people were late, silly people ;)  It didn't bother us too much because of our large lay-over waiting for us in Vancouver.  It was a smooth ride and freakin awesome man!!!!  I love planes!!!  My first time!!  Woot woot!!!  So at 12:15 at night, we have been here for about nine hours and we've been delayed again, oh woe is us! jk ;)  Our flight now leaves at 8 in the morning and we may get to even sleep on these nice comfy chairs :) They're padded!  Throughout this time in the airport we got lots of great team bonding time playing cards and slaps, I mean playing the card game slaps.  We also got lots of window shopping and some buying... ya know, that food stuff gets important.  But it has been a lot of fun, so to sum up what's going on; we had an awesome day, good flight to Vancouver, lots of fun on the moving sidewalk things.  (They're like flat escalators Hannah).  And we are sooo ready for bed.


Please pray for a good nights sleep, that our flight leaves on time, and we make our connecting flight to Ulanbataar.

With lots of love and blessings,
Emily and Melanie

P.S.  We get home on the 26th really late, in Edmonton at 10:30 at night.  Flight 248, Air Canada.  There ya go mom :)