One more month exists before the completion of our second school year in Mongolia and our return to the United States for the summer. I mean one month literaly. We will board a plane on May 15th and arrive in the States on May 15th. Talk about a long day!
The time has passed quickly, perceptively more so than last year. I wouldn’t entirely contest that it has passed more quickly because of busyness. When we began the year we expected to be very busy throughout. However, we soon learned that teaching one day a week doesn’t take up a lot of time, especially when that three hours is split between three teachers. Granted, the student observations and grading homework has been time consuming, but we have not had a large number of students. Because we found extra time, we filled it with other things. Joshua devoted two days a week both last semester and this to graduate school work. Jennifer has acted on a committee or two and has been tutoring two people (more on that in the newsletter). Life itself takes considerably more time for us to live here than it does in the U.S. In short, we have stayed busy enough to cause the months to pass quickly at least in our perception. We are thankful for the time that we have had and for the experiences as well. This year has been unique. Last year had its set of challenges as we made Mongolia our home for the first time. This year has had a different set of challenges as we continued to live life day in and day out in Mongolia. We have been plunged into the teaching program that we were only told about last year. We realized our lack of experience and ability. We have felt our lack. It is in that lack that we have and continue to seek His sufficiency.
The process of ending out this year and preparing for next has been a long and painful process. As has already been mentioned, going into our time at Thailand, we lacked a desire to return to Mongolia next year. During our time there, we were guided to return for at least one more year. Our organization has been reeling with the outgoing of the former country director and incoming of a new one. Many things that had not been said finally came out and have facilitated the process of change and expansion. However, it is difficult to expand when the number of people is decreasing. Not only will the former director no longer be working with our organization, we are also losing several very valuable teachers. But we are assured that He is in control. This is another of the reasons that we have been spurned to remain faithful to the work here.
Currently, our organization focuses exclusively on the retraining of Mongolian English language teachers. This has been the case for well over a decade. With the change of location from the countryside to the city and the passage of time, it has been identified that what we are doing needs to be modified to fit our current situation. Training of teachers will continue, but what that looks like is still a mystery of sorts. Next year, there will be a team of teachers who will finish up the requirements of our current student class, but at the same time there will be a process of reworking that program to be more effective in the current and future eras of English teaching in Mongolia. However, this is potentially no longer going to be our sole focus. There have been many ideas on the table. Some doors have opened while others have closed or are nearing that point. One option is of placing our teachers in high schools to help train the English teachers of that particular school. Another option has been to work side-by-side with some of the Mongolian teachers to hopefully exemplify good communicative English teaching as well as build relationships. Yet another option is to place some of our teachers in a university to teach English as well as teacher training to some of the future English teachers of this country. It is still uncertain at this point what we as an organization will be doing next year.
Despite the ambiguity there are two things that we know for sure. First, Joshua will once again be a team leader. This is nothing new, but the team of which he is leading will likely be far different than this year. Our preference would be to teach university. This is what we came to do and feel most confident in doing. This is in no way assured at this point though it is the direction that we have been asked and feel most led to go. Much still rests on the direction of our organizational leadership and opportunities.
Second, we will remain in the apartment that we have been living in this year. This is big for both of us. Not more than a month ago, it was announced that practically all remaining teachers would have to move next year because of the reorganization of teams. That would make three moves in three years for us, something that neither of us liked the thought of. Despite that, we were willing to move should that be deemed absolutely necessary. However, after a large amount of reasonable protest, our director has been moved to allow us to continue living where we have already put down roots and begun to build relationships. We are very thankful for this.
We all realize that though change is both good and necessary it is uncomfortable. We are seeking His guidance and wisdom concerning what we will do and where we will be next year. More details will come as we learn them ourselves. But for the time being we would like you to join us in seeking wisdom and guidance and peace of mind concerning our work for next year.
Blessings to you and your family until you hear from us again!
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