Videos

Check out our Youtube channel, TheDetherageTrio, to watch some videos of our life. You can just click on the link to the left, and it will direct you to our channel. We will post new ones as we make them! I just put a few new ones on there from our recent hiking and camping trips. Enjoy!

Back to Life

This post was written on September 2nd, but we were unable to post it until now. Our plan is still to post during the first and middle parts of each month. Therefore, we will post agian during the first week of October.

As of this writing, Jennifer and I have been back in Mongolia for a week and a half. We had a safe but long trip, and all of our luggage arrived intact with us. We thank Him for keeping us safe and for getting all of our luggage here! We also thank Him for a nice home to return to. The final leg of our flight landed in Ulaanbaatar at about 11:30 pm on the 22^nd (local time). After going through customs and claiming our luggage, it was well after midnight, and we had been up for a very long time. Our good friend Odko met us at the airport and drove us home. Praise Him for friends like Odko!!

Our first few days back were consumed with unpacking and reorganizing our apartment. We also needed to get the necessities of life, such as bread and potatoes. Life here resumed rather quickly even though it was difficult to leave our families again. We are so thankful for His mercies and care. Without them, life would be so much harder.

As most of you know, we are now living in the southern district of UB, Han Uul. Life here has been different than it was in the city’s center but in a pleasant way. There are few, if any, foreigners that live in Han Uul; and generally, tourists do not come here. Therefore, the population is not as familiar with having foreign tourists around much. We have already been accepted by many people as just a part of the community. Most people around here know where we live, and many are very happy to see us and get to talk with us. It is refreshing to be in a part of town where we are not viewed as tourists. We have also felt very safe in going out of our house. We have not felt threatened or got the feeling that people were trying to take advantage of us or steal from us. We felt both of these often while living in the city.

Even though we are not in town anymore, we are close enough that we can walk in if we need to. We have stretched our legs often since returning, partly because we did not do a lot of walking while in the States. It only takes about an hour or a little less to walk into our office. If we do not feel like walking the whole way, there are several buses that get us very close. For logistical reasons, we will probably not do our shopping at the same places we did last year. However, there are many small shops around our apartment building that carry most of what we use or need. We have noticed that many things are more expensive than they were for us last year, but we are confident that He will provide what we need with the resources that we have.

In our next blog, we will tell you about our team, training, and upcoming schedule!

Communication Plans

Our use of the blog and Facebook accounts last year to communicate with you all was sporadic at best. Therefore, we are going to try to plan our communications a little better this year. We will continue to write a once-a-month newsletter that will be sent out by physical mail and e-mail around the end of every month. We will endeavor to write a blog post at the beginning and middle of every month. These will update you on things that we do not include in the newsletter and will share more of our thoughts and feelings. In addition to these methods of communication, we will post a comment of the week every Tuesday on Facebook. From time to time we may send out special messages via e-mail. Our desire is to keep you well informed about what is going on in our lives and what He is doing in Mongolia. There is no way that we could be here without your constant support. Thank you for your concern and uplifting. We appreciate you all!

Please feel free to respond to any of our messages, posts, or comments. We love to hear from you and are very encouraged to know that people are actually reading what we are writing. From time to time, we may be slow in responding, but your remarks will be well appreciated and cherished! As always, please remember to follow the communication guidelines in all correspondence.

Thank you again for all that you do!!!

P.S. We would have started all of this a month ago, but we have had issues with getting our internet hooked up. Sorry for the delay in communications.