Day 5: Reflections while shoving 16 people and their luggage out of the mud
Bernie Anderson(This is my final entry. Day five of my little excursion into Mongolia's wild countryside. If you are just picking up this up now, I suggest that you go back to Day 1. That way you can read all of the fun and excitement that led up to the final day...)
Day 5
To quote Samwise Gamgee, "Well, I'm back". My journey wasn't near the epic proportions of Sam and Frodo's - but it is nice to be back after another long travel day. The reality is that this trip has truly helped me to better understand the country and the people I am called serve - and for that am grateful - and thus was worth every rut in the road.
Today started with eggs and toast at the Fairfield again. I really do like that place and definitely recommend it if you're ever in Tsetserleg. Maybe next time I will be there early enough in the evening to grab a cheeseburger for supper.
Once again during breakfast I found a ride. A European couple was staying there as well (He's Italian and she is German) and they had hired a nine-passenger micro-bus to take them back to UB, so obviously there was plenty of room for one more. So for about â‚®15,000 I had passage back home. I was pleased with this.
I did need to hurry and eat, pack my belongings and get to the van. When I got there the van already contained 8 or so other people. Of course, there's no way this guy is going to UB with an empty van. However, because it was a nine passenger van it was okay. With luggage things were a tad tight - but definitely doable. I had a seat in the back by a window, for which I was grateful. We went through the now familiar ritual of getting gas and oil and water (they wait until they're full before they do this. I guess there's no point in buying gas if you're not going anywhere?) However, soon enough, we were on our way.
Shortly, outside of Tsetserleg the van stopped. Someone along the side of the road had waved the micro-bus down. We're adding another passenger. This happened three more times within the first two hours of the trip. When all was said and done, we had 16 passengers and luggage crammed into that micro-bus. The irony of it is - 16 isn't bad. In the city, when there's no luggage involved, they can crush near thirty people into one of those things. I guess we should be grateful he stopped when he did. I managed to keep my window seat, but it was a really tight squeeze, as a family of three plus another teenage-looking boy all shared my seat that was meant for three people. I just sort of leaned out the window and hung on for most of the 12 hours we were in there.
As we were bouncing down the same rutted old paths that brought me, I was listening to a Biographical Sermon about Adoniram Judson, by John Piper. The Title is "How few there are who die so hard: The Cost of Bringing Christ to Burma". It quite frankly put my uncomfortable bus ride back to UB in to perspective. I have not suffered. Not yet, anyway. Judson had to sleep on his shoulders with his feet stuck up in the air on a pole every night for seventeen months in a Burmese prison. I am thinking that probably qualifies for suffering. In it all, I also know that suffering is God's design for reaching those without the Gospel - and for discipling this little church in Mongolia - so young in the faith and immature.
As I sat and listened and pondered the fruit of Judson's sufferings while bouncing down those little rutted paths, I was challenged by John 12 and the corn of wheat once again. I want, more than anything, fruit from my life and the lives of those I am called to serve. But fruit only comes through death - and as I listened to the story of Judson and his life and his death and his fruit, I was made to realize once again that death needs to keep working in me while I still breath the air of this earth. It's not enough to leave die by by leaving everything that is loved and familiar and to come to Mongolia (and not everything loved, I have my family here with me - or at least will again in a couple of days). But we don't die once. We must die - take up the cross - every single day.
I also listened to John Piper (in this same message - it was delivered at a pastor's conference) encourage pastors to consider leaving the pastorate in order to go to the unreached and the under-reached peoples of the world. That sounded like a loved and familiar song. The more I thought about it, however, the more it makes sense to me. Pioneer/front line missionary work is not a work for the inexperienced or the new Christian worker fresh out of bible school or seminary. The work that needs to be done here in Mongolia requires men who have "Seen a few winters" (sorry, more Tolkien quotes); men who know what it takes to 'make disciples" - and have already done the stuff through the hard work of pastoring. Because it's even harder work doing these kinds of things cross-culturally and in a war zone of Buddhism and Shamanism and Communism and humanism and probably a hundred other ism's that I have not even heard of before!. In other words, the need is for laborers - but not laborers with soft hands and inexperienced minds. We need laborers who are already weathered. Pastors who have proven themselves faithful are prime missionary candidates, in my opinion. And anyone who is in the pastorate, should consider what God might be saying about future ministry.
You can't listen to this thing on Judson without it stirring the heart to that end. I can't anyway.
So - as these thoughts are swirling through my head, I look up and realize that it has been raining. Now the dusty roads have turned to sludge - and it was about that time that our driver made a bad decision. He went left, when he should have gone right - and we had to stop for about a half hour, while all of the men on the bus had push it out of the mud. One more incident to make it a true Mongolian experience. The sun was going down, as we pulled into UB right around 9:00 PM.
and ... well, I'm back.
Reader Comments (1)
Well, if we didn't know it before, we know it now...Bernie is going to make a fabulous contributor to the Wild / ik-splor/ whatever magazine! I was mezmorized - and challenged - with every entry. You have a gift and God is glorified in it!