A Memorable Weekend

We had several things happen this past weekend. I'll blog about our daytime on Saturday later this week. For now, I'll share about Saturday night and Sunday: Saturday at 10 pm, we watched our daughter, Danielle's college graduation ceremony on live stream (it was Saturday at 9 am for her). We didn't actually get to see her cross the stage since our live feed would freeze up since the buffering couldn't keep up with the stream (or something like that). Here's a picture to "prove" that we were "at" the graduation...ha ha! Kevin is watching one of the speakers at the graduation on the computer.


Then, Sunday we had the privilege of four women coming for our English speaking practice time. We've held this time for many weeks, and every week we have different combinations of people come! We always get opportunities to speak highly of Him who loved us and gave Himself for us! One of these young women is the sister-in-law of one of our students from the March practice teaching we taught. She has come to our apartment once before, and on this day, she brought two of her friends. All three of them are in their third year of college, training to be teachers. The other woman who came lives above us on the 3rd floor apartment.

Two weeks ago, we started to experience water damage on the wall (behind me in this photo--and now the wall paper has been torn off the wall to allow it to dry since it was a wet cement wall), from the apartment upstairs. The bathroom was having leaking problems which caused our problems. It wasn't a terrible mess, but it certainly has been an inconvenience and has caused a musty smell. As a result of the water problem, I've had two times I've needed to go up to their apartment to let them know it's leaking through our wall again. The second time was just last week, and I met Ongutsun who lives there and speaks English.

After we talked about the water problem, I asked her if she'd like to come to our house Sunday for English speaking practice. She lit up and smiled hugely. And, she arrived on Sunday and was a wonderful addition to our conversation. Some of the things we did while they were here for almost four hours (they stayed long enough that we brought out a second snack of popcorn and fruit after our first snack of juice and cookies!): we introduced ourselves, sharing whatever information we wanted about our families; we role-played (Kevin took two of the women at the table and I took two at the couch and had pretend conversations in English to practice asking and answering questions as well as forming sentences and expanding vocabulary. I was a dr. and my two women were patients. Kevin was a visa officer and his two women were apply for a visa to go to Tennessee!); we talked more; we popped popcorn and they watched it pop through the glass lid. None of them had seen this before, even though they had eaten popcorn at a theatre. Kevin shared from his journal since one of the women saw it sitting out and she asked about it. That was a great opportunity. I had printed off lyrics to a song by David Crowder and we listened to the song. They shared their favorite songs and we looked them up on the internet and listened to them. We even showed each other some dance moves (oh, yeah!). I showed them one I remembered from high school. Sorry, no pictures of that! We sat and talked some more, and exchanged email addresses. I suggested we go to the market since I needed to get some vegetables. Three of them (not the neighbor upstairs) were interested in going; they live an hour away and hadn't visited the market I usually go to. This was four hours after they had arrived! And they still wanted to hang out! I needed to get the market run done, so I figured asking them along was the best way to accomplish this! So, one actually had to go do something else, and the other two went with me. We had a wonderful talk on our walk about friendship and how Mongolians walk arm in arm very often (I should get a picture of that...so neat!), and one of them said that I should come to her wedding when she gets married. I want to continue a friendship with all of these women. They were touched by Kevin as a loving husband during our time together. They said so! This is unusual to see in Mongolia...it stands out.

So, when you think of us, think of these four women: Adzaa, Amgaa, Nergwii, and Ongutsun. They are invited back next week...may they really come!