emotional baking

I bake when I'm happy and calm. I bake when I need to relax. When I am stressed. When I'm worried. When I'm excited.

I am an emotional baker.

Today I baked "My Computer Crashed" Peach Cobbler and "Holy Heck, Some People Really Suck" Honey Apple Bars.

to just not do it

When I left Dallas I was running about six days a week, about 3-4 miles a day. Sometimes a bit longer, sometimes a bit less, but usually not with a whole lot of variation in my mileage.

I had terrible shin splints every time I ran. By the time I got to training in New York I felt like they would never go away- that they were just a fact of running that I would always have to deal with.

Transitioning to Mongolia was hard for a multitude of reasons, among them the fact that it was already winter when we got here and I could only run a few times before it was too cold and snowy for me to go out anymore. Giving up running almost every day was a struggle- it left me restless and frustrated and really wishing that I could run.

It also meant my shin splints disappeared. I did yoga and cardio DVDs and jumped rope and found other ways to keep myself active during the long, cold as heck winter. I told myself that I would start running again in April- no matter how cold it still was.

And I did. I bundled up and I ran on the icy sidewalks and I managed not to fall and it felt so good to run again.

The best part? The shin splints were gone. And to make sure they stayed gone, I committed to running only three times a week.

I found a training plan and I decided to train for a half-marathon. I had never run longer than 9 miles before (once and it was horrific because I hadn't intended to run that far and it was truly the worst run I've ever been on) but four months seemed like a nice long time to prepare. And I love structure, so a set plan for how many miles to run and when made me happy.

The miles increased and I loved tackling new, longer distances. It was intimidating and challenging and exactly the kind of structure I needed as the rather chaotic busyness of the spring and summer unfolded around me.

And then it just wasn't that fun anymore. After about three months, the long runs started getting painful. My hip flexors (which have always been incredibly tight/difficult) started really bothering me when I ran. I got tired of planning my weeks around fitting the long runs in. I got tired of waking up at 5:30 on my days off so I could get 10 miles in before it got hot and congested in the city. I got tired of being tired all the time.

I ran the half-marathon at the end of July and it wasn't the most pleasant experience of my life. Now granted, I'm in Mongolia, so it wasn't an actual race- it was just me, running 13.1 miles by myself one morning in order to bring all of my training to an end. But my hip hurt and the running had stopped being fun/relaxing/joyful about three weeks prior.

I was not the least bit sad to be only doing yoga for the week following. And I was even less sad to then decide that what I needed was to take a few weeks and only run when I felt like it. And when I did feel like it, I only ran short distances (2-3 miles)- focusing on my form and on breathing and on just enjoying it again.

In April I had grand plans to do two cycles of half-marathon training- running one half at the end of July and trying to fit another one in before the weather became unbearable.

Then I took a break and my plans changed. I have enjoyed not running long distances. I have enjoyed running when I want to and not planning my schedule around needing to get runs in. I have enjoyed doing more yoga and strength training and not feeling pressured to get a certain amount of mileage in.

I have enjoyed not doing it. Not having a training schedule. Not having a mileage goal. Not having hip pain. Not waking up at the crack of dawn to run the same loop four times.

Whew, that's been freeing. To be ok with choosing not to commit to another long distance training program right now. To let myself just love running again- without a set goal or an immense amount of structure.

And today I set out to run and at the end of one loop, I wanted to do another. So I did.

Almost 6 miles feels so much better when you want to do it.

Here's to sometimes choosing not to do it.

Here's to Mongolia teaching me how to let go of plans and embrace the joy of what is before me- whether it be people, camping trips, worship, teaching or not running.

we're playing bas-ket-ball

(read this first and you'll have an even more comedic understanding of my week)

it was the week of basketball tournaments.

two basketball tournaments for that matter.

it started on Thursday, with the young adult group.

we had perfect weather- sunny and hot.

about 40 some people showed up at one of our branch churches for the day of games.

starting at 12 with worship, we played and played and played- all the way until 8 p.m.

it was wonderful.

not to mention it gave me an excuse to play basketball again for a few hours.

yesterday we had the second tournament, this time for the teenagers.

it was a cold, gray fall day that reminded me of Western PA in September.

perfect for basketball and sweatshirts and making food for everyone.

we yelled and cheered and listened to the boys' hilarious commentary.

all 50 some of us ate pasta salad and fruit salad and celebrated the winners.

and it was just the right way to end the summer.

moments

Cramming 18 people and their stuff into one micro. Laps sat on, legs smushed, weight shifted, elbows jostled, balances precariously maintained. Counting while we try not to be breathe, our laughter interrupting the stream of numbers as we gasp for air.

The stars- oh the stars! A thin veil blanketing the night sky as I carefully walk in the pitch dark from the outhouse to the ger. Wanting to just stand there and stare at the beauty above me.


Walking into the pastures and across the railroad tracks and into the woods. Jam sandwiches and cookies. The precarious trek up the rocky side of the mountain. A quiet walk back, watching the rain clouds roll in.

Card games that leave us laughing. Games of Mafia that leave us guessing. Eating goulash at 10:30 pm, drinking milk tea as the night grows dark around us.


Holding fat-cheeked babies, chopping vegetables, taking afternoon naps on the floor. Relay races and coats and dropping temperatures. Eating the best yogurt I've ever had at 1 am while we take a break from playing poker with English flashcards as our betting chips.


Sitting in a bible study, listening to the voices lifted high in song and hearing in them the raw truth that churches are built on faith. Naraa speaking- this is not my church. This is God's church. This is our church. Words of hope and words of leadership. Words of beginning.

unlikely parades

it was a cloudy, overcast morning. chilly, gray clouds seeping into the mountains, into the grass, under our sweaters and jackets and scarves. a mist that somehow seemed fitting in this village of dirt paths and wooden fences and roaming goats. it fit the story of huddled gers and smoky stove fires and jumbled Mongolian sentences falling out from the homes and into the air.

we blew up balloons. dashka and underaama put on clown costumes. bayara grabbed his guitar.

we trailed along after each other, the strumming of the guitar keeping time as we wandered about the pathways, looking for children to invite, to gather up, to (quite simply) herd into our growing crowd.

we sang. we laughed. we were silly.

the balloons found hands to hold them. the guitar found little pairs of legs to follow after its rhythm. the clowns found willing recipients of their jostling, chasing fun.

and we found the beginning of a beautiful week in a parade of people in the early gray of a Tuesday morning on dirt paths with balloons and a guitar, singing "If You're Happy and You Know It" in Mongolian.

My heart says of you, "Seek his face!" Your face, Lord, I will seek.
-Psalm 27:8

ykylimw #23

you know you live in mongolia when...

...every game you play must have some kind of punishment for the losers.

This might mean having to dance in the middle of a circle of folks. It might mean leaning forward so everyone can pound on your back for a prescribed amount of time. It might entail getting flicked on the forehead (and yes, that hurts). Or it might mean having to do any number of embarrassing things in front of a large group of people.

The first question after I explain any new game is "What happens to the loser(s)?" And nothing is not an acceptable answer here.

I usually shrug and then they make up their own punishment as they see fit. Because to be honest, I'm pretty anti-punishment when it comes to games.

I encountered this "there must be a punishment" thing when I lived in Bolivia too. Usually I played along with good humor, subjecting myself to said punishment when necessary and working really hard to avoid it when possible (although let's be real, the whole I'm not a native speaker of your language thing is a legit disadvantage).

However, one evening we were at an acquaintance's birthday party and I'll admit I was in a bit of a foul mood. It had been a complicated day- I thought one of our friends was mad at me and I had really only come because I was hoping to talk to her and sort things out rather than continue to stress out about it.

We played some word game, which are the absolute hardest when you are only at a basic- functioning language level, and I, inevitably, lost.

I was supposed to get up and dance in front of everyone to some random music they would select. Everyone looked at me in expectation, waiting for me to get up from the table.

And I refused to move.

I sat there stubbornly and glared at them as they tried to cajole/force me up and out of my chair. My foul mood made me inordinately stubborn in that moment and I would.not.move.

They all kind of stood there stunned for awhile and then eventually moved on to harassing one of the other guys who had lost. And I sat there and realized that I had never in my life made such a scene about refusing to do something silly like dancing.

goats and keepers

chasing goats around the yard, laughing as they dash out of reach again and again and again.

listening to their tiny goat noises throughout the day, reminding us through the fabric of the ger that they are there, eating their way through the yard as we go about our day.

their keeper is a boy, a boy who brings them with him each day, like a sweater or a watch or a book bag. He is here and they are here and together we are here.

we run in circles and we fall on the ground. we pick ourselves up and we keep running. we sing and we dance and we sprinkle glitter on glue-y designs. we play and we laugh and we watch the goats roam.

i watch the crowd of little ones tumble into the ger that we built. i watch them taking it all in, all of the newness; the songs and words and motions they have yet to know. i watch their wiggling, their crawling, their twirling selves and i think of joy.

the church is built upon these sneakers and sandals and footsteps. in a church that has been meeting for less than three weeks, they are the congregation. they are the voices that will grow here, that will find grace and mercy and struggle and the mess that is the church.

they, and their goats, are the ones who fill the church yard. who spend their days here because it is safe, because it is full of love, because it is near.

the goats are at home wherever their keeper happens to be. as long as they're near to him, they're content.

the children who gathered in the grass for VBS last week are the beginnings of a church in a village of 3,000 people in the midst of pastures and mountains and fields.

i can't imagine a more beautiful beginning.

may we too learn to be content wherever our Lord and Keeper takes us. may we too find the simplicity of nearness to be all that we need to fill our souls.

travelin'

I'm heading out to Khonghor this morning and will be there for most of the week. We'll be leading three days of VBS for the kids there and having fun escaping the city for a few days. It's only about 45 minutes outside of UB, but it's still a nice break.

I'm planning on packing lots of layers so I don't freeze again. And beyond that, I'm just looking forward to lots of quality time with people I adore. Not to mention some milk tea, sleeping in a ger, playing soccer in pastures and watching the stars.

There's also a good chance I'll be joining Holli and a visiting mission team from Detroit the week after this for another trip(s) to the countryside.

The weather is already turning cool and I want to soak in as much of these waning summer days as I can. Meaning you can expect lots of Internet silence and eventually, endless pictures documenting my love of the Mongolian countryside.

Daraa uulzay (see you later), friends!

hey, hey

Two weeks ago: A week of kindergarten VBS
Last week: A week of a youth seminar led by a visiting mission team
This week: Elementary VBS
Next week: VBS at Khonghor UMC

Yeah, it's the last month of summer. VBS and youth programming coming out of our ears and it has been a ton of fun. Exhausting, but a ton of fun at the same time.

There's been lots of jumping, singing, glitter, glue, tickling and pleasedon'tpunchhimintheface going on, as well as a large heaping of laughter, yelling, herds of stampeding footsteps and a general lack of sufficient sleep.

We also do a lot of dancing at VBS here. Well, in general. They love worship dances and a large majority of our worship songs have dances that accompany them- meaning I spent the first...oh 8 months (possibly even still) internally debating whether focusing on figuring out the singing or the dancing was more important.

This coming from the girl who once had her ballet teacher yell at her "CAN YOU NOT HEAR THE RHYTHM?"

Why no, no I cannot.

I've got the hang of some of our worship dances and I can manage to not look like a complete crazy while doing them (debatable I'm sure) and even relax and let them be fun.

However, it's clearly true that an uncoordinated adult is just simply that- a rhythm lacking person who has not managed to properly learn the dances. And who even when she knows them gladly looks a little bit a fool while doing them.

Vacation Bible School proves these rules do not apply to kindergarten and first graders.

(there is supposed to be a video here, proving how little ones make worship dances awesomely adorable, but my computer/technology/the Internet is refusing to cooperate. So imagine and hopefully come back when such a thing does work)

So they jump and throw their hands in weird motions and do some shuffling and some clapping and some turning in circles. It's enough to make your heart melt into a puddle.

Sometimes I dance too.

Other times I stand and I watch- watching as five year olds and eight year olds and my darling fifth-grade class and all those in between dance.

Watching the girls who count the beats and practice the moves during lunch time and twirl around like the dancers they actually are. Watching the boys who pretend they are too cool for such things but then secretly join in the crowd, their willingness to dance and to sing making me want to hug them and ask them to promise to never, ever grow up.

They remind me that rhythm doesn't matter. They teach me that rhythm is not what fills a room and transforms it from a crowded space to a shared one. They show me that getting the steps right is not nearly as important as trying, as throwing yourself into the motion, abandoning all sense of self so that you might fall into the pool of surrender.

They make it abundantly clear that delight is the Queen of the Dance.

The throne is hers if only we'll let it be. If only we'll dance.

To delight in all that there is to find in the movement, the celebration, the shared act of worship.

And to not give a darn about my inability to keep the rhythm or sleep enough so that the bags under my eyes disappear.

Thank you VBS, for reminding me of delight and her goodness.

ykylimw #22

you know you live in mongolia when...

...you offer your cat a tiny piece of the aruul (dried milk that is pretty sour) that your roommate received as a gift and is now sharing with you and the cat eats it gladly.

And then she's walking all over you- purring and sticking her face in your hands trying to get you to give her more of it.

Before you know it, your cat is walking between the two of you, eating chunks of dried sour milk from both of you as you talk about your days, acting like it's the best thing she's ever tasted.

Mongolians swear by how good aruul is. If Dobby is any indication, Mongolian cats affirm this sentiment as well:-)

contrasts

The heart breaking makes a sound I never knew could be
So beautiful and loud
Fury filled and we collide
So courageous until now
Fumbling and scared
So afraid You'll find me out, Alone here with my doubt

Here it comes, a beautiful collision
Is happening now.
There seems no end to where
You begin and there I am now
You and I collide

Something circling inside,
Spaciously you fly
Infinite and wide,
Like the moon and sky
Collide
Here it comes, a beautiful collision
Is happening now.
There seems no end to where you begin and there I am now
You and I, collide

-David Crowder Band, lyrics from A Beautiful Collision

Worlds, languages, cultures, heaven and earth, grief and joy, experiences, knowledge, questions and answers.

Daily collisions that leave me different- moved, changed, an inch to the left, a leap to the right.

Meeting God in this place, these moments, these lingering thoughts and passing words.

Life found in the crux of these wholly painful and wholly good joinings of that which is simultaneously different and same.

Collisions that bring us new eyes; that bring us nearer, closer, deeper into the fold of a kingdom coming, of a King loving and a Spirit moving.

It's a mess. But it's our mess. And if we can see the mess then we can see the beauty in its jumbled arms.

It is early, sleepy, cold August mornings. It is sensitivities and fears and failures and hopes and intentions and confusion.

It is cups of tea and plates of cookies for breakfast. It is laughter and blank stares and understanding and not having any clue what in the world is being said.

It is exclamations of Yana! in skits and dancing Jonahs who wear tutus and get thrown out of the whale's mouth while wearing rainbow colored hats. It is worship and dancing and singing and playing.

It is tears and anger and frustration and miscommunication. It is forgiveness and grace and hospitality and the longing to do the best that we can with what we have.

It is practicality and reality. It is dreaming and conspiring and hoping and believing.

It is piles of gold glitter shaken off from craft projects forming a film on the floor. It is quiet, it is loud and it is a humming song.

It is late night picnics on the floor of classrooms; a rice cooker full of rice, a thermos full of meat, vegetables and more oil than one could ever imagine. It is laughing until it hurts and it is watching the clouds shift over the mountains, revealing more and then less and then more again.

It is pictures and guitar chords and silly motions to VBS songs and the notion that this is fleeting, that none of us can know or make promises about what is to come.

It is a collision of it all. A collision of us- with one another, with life, with the Divine.

messages

Giving my cell phone number to people here always leads to interesting communications.

Cell phones here don't have the Mongolian alphabet, so folks here send messages using what Hol and I call "Monglish" -which is this kind-of, sort-of phonetic version of Mongolian using English characters.

As someone trying to learn Mongolian, this is super hard to figure out. If it's really simple sentences I can sometimes read it, but usually it's all just a big mess of letters that I can't make sense of in the least. Especially when they go all text message slang and start writing in Monglish shorthand. That, my friends? Is when I raise the white flag of surrender and pass my phone to a Mongolian in order for my text message to be translated.

It's one thing to try to figure out what "rofl" or something of the sort means in English, but it's a whole other deal to read texting lingo in a language you're learning in an alphabet whose sounds are no longer what you first learned them to be (P is an r sound, c is an s and so on and so forth).

Most of my friends realize this and tend to try to text in English when they send me messages, an extension of text message hospitality I am all too glad to receive.

This is great, because it means I have a much higher chance of getting what is trying to be said. It's also pretty hilarious, because it means I get some really funny text messages from my friends, students and other people who happen to end up with my number.

A sampling of some of my personal favorites:

(I got this one after our youth camping trip from one of the youth who didn't come. And it was so out of left field that I couldn't help but crack up....because if you know Jawa you know he was probably just bored and decided to start asking me questions about made-up things like anger towards Holli):

Are you hate Holli? Last 3 days of camp Why are you hate? Because.......Answer my question) Erin. IT THIS TRUE or false?

(Another one probably sent out of boredom that made me laugh):

Hi how are you? what's up woman what are you doing? what's new? Are you sleeping?

(This one is from a random taxi driver who started a conversation with me on what ended up being the longest taxi ride ever [we got stuck in traffic] and who said he wanted to come to my English classes. He started sending me messages the next day and wanted me to answer all of these questions at rapid fire speed. When I didn't reply immediately he started asking if I was angry or what was wrong):

Where are you born which city. Whats your hobby. My hobby is raising horse and gun.

(From Jawa again, a continuation on his insistence that because I'm 7 years older than him I'm ancient and thus his grandmother):

I am home I am very busy see tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock you are my grandma bye.

(I love the way they use all caps to emphasize their point):

Erin tomorrow you bring cards don't forget will be let's play od miga nara ah erin and java OKEY SEE YOU TOMORROW.


:-) There's nothing like a hilarious, interestingly spelled and grammatically questionable text message to make your day a little bit brighter.

bring on the Monglish....

ykylimw #21

you know you live in mongolia when...

...women routinely shave their heads during the summer.

And all children get their hands shaved when they're 5 or 6 years old, regardless of gender.

And one of the most popular hairstyles among guys is the rattail. From toddlers with braided rattails to teenagers with spiky hair up front and a long curl in the back...they are everywhere.

(confession: I'm totally envious of the women who can pull off the shaved head look.)

babies

squishy cheeks. mini mongolian dels. chunky arms. precious noses. tiny teeth.

my friends here are always joking that the babies at church are my children, as I kind of have a tendency/habit/compulsion to gravitate towards them.

we laugh about it, but seriously who wouldn't want to steal one of these little ones?