The Team

Yesterday we woke up early and wandered around the city. It's a quiet place in the mornings, with a cool breeze blowing the cottonwood through the streets. After a light breakfast we returned to the apartment and found the Young Life team waiting for us. Once we were packed the fourteen of us headed out to the countryside to plan camp.

The camp is tucked up in the hills in the middle of a birch tree forest. It used to be a Russian youth camp. The buildings are comprised of awkward angles and bright colors, thick glass windows and uneven steps. But the place is beautiful. Green and blue fill every view, spotted by yellow, orange and purple flowers, and the white bark of the birch.

We spent time that afternoon sharing our stories, about how each of us came to know Christ and how we came to be involved with Young Life. Instantly I had new friends. Magnei, Bilgah, and Angie are all young staff members working with Taivan. The rest of the team were members of Young Life's Developing Global Leaders program (DGL).

The DGL kids, for the most part, came to know Christ in the last few years at camp, and are all eighteen or nineteen. It's strange to think that these are the ones God has chosen to run Young Life for the whole country of Mongolia, and that we had the honor of spending the last two days with them.

The thing is, I'm older than all of them except Bilgah, who is my age, and Magnei and Taivan who are a few years older. And this is the country's leadership. This is their Colorado team, their National team. And they seem to think that we are something special, that we know so much more because we run Young Life in little Fowler and Sanger. But between us, Johnny and Jane, and Cliff, we are all the Young Life they know. It is incredibly humbling.

We spent time together planning camp, working on program, planning games, and reviewing the big question of "Why?" One of our goals is to leave this young team with the understanding of why we do things so that when we are gone they can continue to be intentional in their time with kids, rather than just doing what has always been done.

After all the planning was done, we gathered at the basketball court and played several games. This is such a fun team to work with, and they love each other so well. It's a case of people being people wherever you go. Laughter is the universal language.

This morning we woke up late and prepared to head back to Ulan Bator. We are now sitting outside of Millie's Espresso, a cafe in the capitol that is owned and run by a friend of Ruth Goble's. Millie wasn't in today, but it was nice to have the Fowler connection all the way across the Pacific.

It's a stormy day in UB, clouds everywhere, thunder in the distance, cottonwood dancing in the street. The rain falls off and on.