To and Through: The Beginning of My Mongolian Adventures

(A note from Gladys: Hello, everyone. Scribbles and Everday Miracles welcomes aboard Anthony, who will be sharing in this blog how God is leading him in his most recent missionary assignment. The following is only a first. We hope you are blessed by it and the others that will follow.)

On the morning that I received the confirmation of my travel to Mongolia, I was preparing to make an eleven-hour journey by bus to my parents’ home. It has been months since I first received the call to be a missionary in Mongolia, and for a while there it seemed that it would never happen. But it’s true that God does not think as man does.

It was a Wednesday, and I had planned to stay with my parents until the weekend. However, I was informed that I was booked for a flight out of the country on Saturday night. All plans of a nice and fuzzy weekend with family dissolved, and thus began a series of seemingly unfortunate events that turned out to be a story of grace.

I made the trip home to say goodbye to my parents (I’d be gone two full years!). The journey was supposed to be smooth, if not for the typhoon that raged almost all night and really slowed the bus down. As we reached the next province, a major part of the bus got broken and almost sent us rolling off the cliff. By God’s grace, no one was hurt.

From Better Way Foundation in Nueva Era, Ilocos Norte to my hometown in Echgue, Isabela, and back.

I arrived home Thursday morning. That same night I needed to travel back to the missionary campus. My parents sent me off with tight hugs and many tears. Two years would not go by so fast.

During the trip back came yet another typhoon. The stronger the winds blew and the heavier the rain poured, the more the bus shook, and the more intense the prayers.

Friday morning I was back in campus with only enough time to finish packing my things and say goodbye to my friends and fellow missionaries. If I were to make it to my Saturday evening flight, I had to make another night trip by bus.

The rain poured the entire day and flooded the creek that crossed the path to the campus, completely washing away the footbridge. But I and some friends, wet from the rain and wading in the creek, still managed to attend the vespers meeting and the simple farewell program prepared for me. My missionary friends sang “God Will Take Care of You.” I was moved and motivated.

After the program, my closest friends braved the still-pouring rain with me, crossing the flooded creek to bring me by jeepney to the city two hours away, where I could take the bus for another 12-hour trip to the airport in Manila. I would then have 16 hours in Manila before my flight, a safe enough margin – if the typhoon wasn’t there.

But it was.

As the rain kept pouring heavily, the flood water rose until the roads looked like a huge river. My friend drove carefully and slowly. Still one of the tires fell off the road and we found ourselves stuck in the mud. There was no way to move in any direction.

The scene brought to mind an incident about three days back. I had a truck bring my things down from our mountain campus. One tire slid into a ditch and got us stuck there. After hours of trying, my two friends and I could not get the truck out. One phone call later, our friends arrived from the campus, with two carabaos (water buffalos) to pull the poor truck out of the ditch and get us back on the road. Praise God!

But this time was different. We were in the middle of nowhere, too far for our carabaos to come pull us out; and it was literally the middle of the night, too late for phone calls (phone services and electricity were down anyway, due to the typhoon). We spent hours pushing, pulling, doing everything we could, and finally we got through.

Still, the night’s challenge was far from over.

It turned out that all the bridges that led out of our little town were either broken or covered entirely with water. We went this way and that, tried all the routes we knew, all to no avail. We were left with no choice but to wait for the water to subside. Our clothes still wet, we slept in the jeepney for two or three more hours – each minute eating away the precious time allowance before my flight – before the water was shallow enough for us to safely cross the bridge.

By then, dawn was already breaking.

As we drove, we could see roadblocks and fallen trees everywhere, landslides, once-dry riverbeds filled to overflowing, rice fields turned to seemingly endless expanses of water. We could only be thankful.

Two hours to the city. Twelve hours to the airport. Now I just had enough time to make it to my flight.

At the bus terminal, I bid my friends goodbye. What a night we had! I took the bus, and the trip proved so much better this time. But this calm, it turned out, was only as the passing of the eye of a storm.

From Nueva Era to Laoag City to the airport in Manila, to Tagaytay, and back to Manila.

True enough, I arrived in time at the airport and breezed through checking in. But a tint of anxiety grew on me as I went through Immigration.

As it happened, I didn’t have all the needed documents to travel abroad, and I was held in Immigration for interviews.

One hour before the flight. I sent frantic emails to the office in our mountain campus (where there has been no electricity for days), the LIGHT office, and the hosting organization in Mongolia. No reply. Tick tock, tick tock.

“Lord, is it really Your will for me to go?” I have spent the last three nights on one vehicle or another, the last three days saying goodbye to loved ones; I have been through storm and flood, I have prayed and used up the best of my strength. “Is it really Your will for me to go?”

Tick tock, tick tock.

The plane left without me. I went to a friend’s house for a place to stay. The following day, they were leaving for their new house and invited me to come along. We got lost along the way, and they wondered why – but not me. Not anymore.

A couple of days later, the documents were prepared, another flight booked, and Immigration passed.

Mongolia. Finally.

At the Mongolian airport, I was met by my first Mongolian friend who was shaking when I first saw her. I understood why when she told me later that they met a little accident on their way to the airport. Wow.

Baaska, the girl who came to meet me at the Mongolian airport - but not without meeting a challenge first.

The following morning, we prepared to make the eight-hour trip to Starting Point Life University, where I would be serving God for the next two years. But as we were leaving the city, a car suddenly hit the back of our car. Oh, when will this end?

From Manila to Ulaanbaatar (via Incheon) to the SPLU Campus in Bugat, Bulgan, Mongolia.

Still, gratitude and praises to God filled my heart and my prayers as we reached the SPLU campus in Bulgan Province. It was the Lord’s will for me to be here, after all.

The Philippine flag I presented to Academic Dean Cathie  and Khisgee (John), the School President (right). 

In the campus, as I met fellow foreigners who will also be working with SPLU, I learned that they too had their own versions of the long and bumpy ride that brought us together in one mission field. Amazing challenges and miracles filled their joyful stories.

Their experiences and mine helped me understand more clearly the Lord’s ways of preparing a soul for bigger challenges in life. It may be a typhoon, a flood, a ditch, a bump in the road, or getting lost in the dark – all of these remind me that if it is God who has called me, it will be God who will carry me through; If He brings me TO it, it only means that He will bring me THROUGH it.

Now just thinking of what the next challenges will be completely thrills my heart. Anyway, I know that God will take care of me. Like it says in the song my friends sang,

“Be not afraid whate’er betide,

God will take care you.

Beneath His wings of love abide,

God will take care of you.

God will take care of you
Through every day, all o'er the way.
He will take care of you;
God will take care of you."

Do stay tuned for more Mongolian Adventures with the greatest Guide ever.