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.

Too Long

First, let us apologize for the long period of silence since our last posting. The past few months of our life have been very busy. When we had a chance to write a post, we either forgot or were too tired. When we thought of writing one, we did not have the time. Again, we are so sorry and will keep up with this a little better from now on.

We will update you on what has happened over the past few months and what is coming up soon. In June, we returned to the States but not before moving to a new apartment in the southern district of Ulaanbaatar. It seemed like our things had multiplied like rabbits; but thanks to some great friends, we were able to get it all moved in one trip! We stayed in our new place for about a week before traveling to Alabama. Thus began our fast-paced summer stay!

Before a week had passed, we travelled to southern Illinois to visit with Jennifer's family. We were with them for two weeks. Joshua enjoyed watching much of the World Cup!

Next, we transited through Nashville, TN where we stayed a weekend with friends and spoke at our former fellowship.

We rolled back into Huntsville, AL where we began going through all of our belongings on this side of the world. What a job! It was also encouraging to see how much we have been blessed. After camping at Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta, Georgia for the Fourth of July, we had a two day yard sale and were able to sale off many of our things. We only hope that those things that were a blessing to us may be a blessing to others now.

Shortly following this time, we travelled to Oklahoma City for the national association meeting of our denomination. It was a great time of fellowship with many old friends and of refreshing.

Following the meeting in Oklahoma we travelled to Missouri to visit with Joshua's grandparents and family. Our visit was good. Shortly after our visit, Joshua's grandfather learned that he has 100% bone cancer. That may have been the last time that we can visit with him in person in this life. Please lift this up. It is hard for us to leave knowing this.

After Missouri, we have been in Alabama mostly. We had a quick weekend trip to IL for a visit with two fellowships and good friends.

The last few days we have been up to our elbows in the arduous task of packing. No little thing when it seems you have more things than bag space. We fly back to Ulaanbaatar early Saturday morning. We will hopefully arrive in UB late Sunday night local time.

We are getting back about a week and a half before our team training begins and will use the time to readjust to the time and culture. We will also be preparing for the new school year.

Please lift us up. We will be meeting many new challenges this coming year. We will be better with the communication, promise!

Spring in UB

After months of frigged temperatures, spring has finally arrived in Mongolia!! Over the past few weeks the daytime temp has gone from the high 40s to the low 70s! It seems like everything that was frozen for so long is beginning to thaw. There are signs of new life around the city, small though they may be. It has also been evident by the number of people out and about. Here are just a few picts of the area around our apartment.

This is the main artery of the city, Peace Avenue. Across the street is the bus stop that we use at least twice a week. We can get a bus from here to take us across town to the school we teach at. In the past couple weeks, this bus stop has become a haven for vendors, gobs of waiting passengers, and pickpockets!
The majority of the city and surrounding area is mostly dirt. Now that the ground is not frozen or covered with snow and ice, the dirt has been loosened and stirred by the constant wind. The trouble now is dust storms. On our way home from class the other night, we drove through dust as thick as fog. The wind, which was blowing at blizzard speed, was bringing the dust into the city from the surrounding country.

This is a school that stands between our apartment and our teammates' place. Other than when this picture was taken, there are usually thousands of little kids everywhere most of them eating ice-cream!
We are not really sure what this means, but we think it is a little funny.
Most of the trees and bushes are still leafless, but grass is slowing coming up in patches. Many places have begun planting new trees and watering existing ones. We asked one of our students when the dust stops blowing in and things get green again. She said June! Well, at least we will see green things in the States!

There has certainly been a change in the air. As with spring in the States, it seems like people's attitudes have been changing, and life has been taking a different aspect. For one thing, the sun is up by 6 am and does not set til well after 8 pm. Fourteen hours of sunlight is a bit different from the 6 or 7 hours we got all winter! Another change is the increase of tourists. All winter, we were looked at by the locals as belonging here. Now, we are getting more and more suspicious looks. We don't mind much. Not many tourists can speak Mongolian!

Knowing that we are leaving soon has made us to look at UB from a familiar aspect. Over the past eight, almost nine, months this place has become our home. It has its ups and downs, but this is our town. It will be good to be in the States for awhile, but we will miss this place and will look forward to getting back. We thank our father for this, because the feeling has not come on its own.

Digging Deep

We are starting to feel like a baseball team late in a heated game. Our bullpen has been drained and reserves are growing few in number. It has been a hard fought course, but our stamina is beginning to give way. The time following our trip has gone by in a whirlwind. We hit the ground running and have had little time to look back. Many things have been very difficult, but we have learned a lot. We can also tell that we are being worked on and prepared for things ahead.Shortly after we returned, we began teaching two groups of Mongolian English teachers. The goal of the classes has been to prepare as many of our students to be able to enter the higher level training program this coming fall. Unfortunately, our classes have taken a real hit. Many of the students that we started with have dropped the course. We are now down to 16 students between the two classes. Our goal is to challenge them, make them talk, and help improve their individual skills. The small sizes have allowed for more one-on-one interaction. We have some great students and want to help them as much as we can.

All of our students are women, so it is a little easier for Jennifer to interact with them. However, through talking with them in class and through their homework assignments, we have all been able to learn many things about them and tell them more about us.
We team teach between the two classes and share the teaching load among three of us. Jennifer prefers to teach the lower level students, and Joshua enjoys the challenge of teaching the higher level students.
Sometimes Joshua likes to "help" Jennifer while she is teaching, but she doesn't care for that at all. Actually, we were just modeling something for our students. Many times we have to act out what we are teaching to help them understand better. We always knew those years of charades would come in handy some day!We want the students to talk as much as possible and communicate in English. As we have well learned, it is one thing to know a language but another thing to communicate in it. We want our students to be comfortable communicating in English so that they can better teach their students. It is a lot of fun to listen and observe the activities. Sometimes there is no telling what we will hear. Our two-week practicum class last semester gave us a whole toolbox of speaking structures to use in the classroom. It gives us a variety of options and can be very entertaining for our students. Who said that class had to be boring? Of course, we usually jump in as well. We don't want our students to have ALL the fun!Sometimes it can be challenging to help the students understand the lesson point or the activities. We are constantly evaluating how to present the material in the way best suited to our student's level.

These classes have been a real learning experience for everybody. We have seen improvement in many of our students, and we have been challenged to teach better. Somedays we just have to stop and remind ourselves that this is still our rookie season. Many things have been difficult. It has provided many occasions for doubt and discouragement. However, I was recently reminded that we don't have to be perfect; we just have to be faithful in what we are doing and do it with all we got for the glory of our Father. With this under our caps, we are preparing for the final push of the semester. We want to finish well.

With all of this in mind, we have felt it necessary to make some organizational changes in our classes for the rest of the school year. The details are complicated, we are still trying to figure them all out, but if all works out we will be able to better encourage and challenge each of our students appropriate to their individual levels.

Beijing The Final Act

To my amazement, I am still talking about our trip. Unfortunately, things have been busy since we got back to UB, so I haven't been able to finish this up as quickly as I would have liked. However, this will be the last post about our amazing trip.We were able to be in Beijing during the Chinese New Year. What an incredible experience! We had never seen or heard so many fireworks in all of our lives. The pictures do not do justice to the display. At midnight of the Chinese New Year, the entire sky was lit up, and it sounded like the city was exploding. We love fireworks, but there were so many that we were actually scared.While we were there, we couldn't pass up an opportunity to see the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. I doubt that there are any other Olympic sporting event locations as iconic as these. The Beijing games were exciting, and it was great to be able to see the places were Olympic history was made. Josh also decided that he could have been the mascot. Check out that pose! The day after Chinese New Year, we visited the Temple of Heaven. It was customary for the emperor to offer a sacrifice to Heaven the first day of every new year. This practice ended over a hundred years ago, but we got to see actors present what that event was like.

After nearly getting crushed at the Temple of Heaven, there were a lot of people there, we went to Tienanmen Square.

Tienanmen Square and the monuments and buildings in and around it were very impressive. It was also a great place to get a sense for China's cultural situation and future.

Our final stop in Beijing was the train station. After a week in China, we boarded an early morning train and headed north-west into Mongolia.

The scenery along the way was fantastic. Just outside of Beijing we began cutting our way through mountains. On the other side of the mountains, the land flattened out and soon became quite desert like. We even got to experience our first dust storm!

Another interesting element of our journey was the changing of the train wheels. The track gauge in China is different than the track gauge in Mongolia. Because of this, the train wheels have to be changed every time a train crosses the boarder. Therefore, the last stop in China was about four hours long. The local crews lifted each car, disconnected the current wheels, and connected the proper size wheels. All of this may have been a bit more interesting if it hadn't been midnight at the time.

When we awake the next morning, we knew that we were back in Mongolia. The landscape had changed from a red dirt to white, everywhere. We saw numerous herds of animals including this herd of camels. If you look closely, you can see their humps. So far, these are the only live camels that we have seen in Mongolia. I say live camels because we have begun eating camel meat on a regular basis. Just another one of those crazy foods to add to the ever growing list. Actually, camel meat is very good.

We had a wonderful time on our trip, but we were happy to get back to Mongolia and the work that we are doing here. The semester has been flying by, but we have had a renewed purpose and sense for why we are here. Our time away was refreshing and renewing. Now we are pushing towards the end of our first year and looking forward to the future.