The Love of Christ in a Pink Crayon

Let me start off by saying that being Caroline’s mom has totally revolutionized the way I am able to understand God’s love for me.  I think any parent would agree, you don’t know love to its fullest expression until you love your own child.  In my life B.C. (before Caroline, that is), I often didn’t understand the elaborate one year old birthday parties parents threw for their children.  I sort of judged it as a good excuse for parents to throw a party for themselves.  Pretty sure I even said out loud something to the effect of “when my first kid turns one, I’m just going to have some family over and eat pizza since the little one won’t know what’s going on.” 

And then everything changed when I looked into Caroline’s little smushed face on June 27^th, 2012.  That day was a bitter-sweet experience for our family.  Caroline was born full term at a hefty 8 lbs. 3 oz. but during labor contracted what they diagnosed as Group B Strep Pneomonia and wasn’t able to breathe on her own.  We were told that she would be under treatment in the NICU for at least 14 days.  By God’s divine intervention, Caroline was released on Independence Day Eve just 6 days later, completely healed.  That experience taught me many things about God’s character and I got to witness right from the start that my daughter’s health is completely in His hands.  This experience of the One True God healing Caroline gave me the confidence to follow Him leading us to live in the unfamiliar land of Mongolia.

One of the first hard thoughts I had when thinking about our time in Ulan Bator, was that Caroline’s first birthday would be a four day journey away from our family and close friends.  In processing my disappointment with the Lord, I began to realize that those elaborate one year old birthday parties are in fact for the child and not the parents.  Scriptures about God preparing a table for us and celebrating our salvation in Heaven all started to make sense.  He delights in His children, even though they are completely unaware.  He takes great joy in celebrating us, cheering for us, and loving us even if we never fully understand.  He simply loves giving good gifts to his children.   

And so my quest to make a great one year old birthday party in a second-world country began.  On a missionary’s salary, I was required to “DIY” everything (except the cake because we don’t have a working oven).  I used those creative brain cells that had to be kick-started with a steel-toe boot.  And then, I did what I had always previously thought of as a huge waste of time: I got on Pintrist.  With some scrap book paper and a loaned glue gun that I packed in my suitcase (thanks, Tania!), I set out to make our communist Russian era apartment look like a place to party.   

I prayed that God would give me wisdom, creativity, and enjoyment in the work.  I asked that He would redeem the painful memories of June 27^th just one year ago and give us His omnipresent love to make up for the fact that our loved ones are so far away.  God graciously and abundantly granted all of my requests!  He was in every little victory throughout the day.  I felt his Presence and heard his Voice, guiding me in every little decision and thought.  He helped me be grateful in each moment rather than thinking about who and what wasn’t there.  

Among the many miracles that happened that day, one of them stood out to me as a testimony of God’s love for me.  The story of Caroline’s birthday goes like this: 

In true Mongolian fashion, the power and water unexpectedly got shut off the morning of her party.  Since I couldn’t use the glue gun to finish up the decorations, I felt like God told me to go out and get the last minute items and pick up the cake.  I stumbled upon enough disposable pink cups, forks, and napkins for our ever-growing invite list that consisted of friends from church and our Mongolian acquaintances we were reaching out to.  After walking all over town to find balloons and paper plates, I finally found some plain white plates that were within our party budget.  I was told in very broken English that the city supplier of helium was completely out, so I wouldn’t be able to buy inflated balloons at all that day.  I chose not to believe them because I knew how much Caroline loved a balloon she received a couple weeks ago, so I walked to two other stores and sure enough, no helium balloons to be found.  

A little disappointed about the balloon but sincerely grateful for what I did find, I went home to set everything up and check on the power and water situation.  I arrived home about two hours before the party started and found the electricity and water still shut off, but it actually didn’t bother me at all.  I set out the cups, napkins, and cutlery on the table and that’s when this tiny miracle happened.  

I heard Jesus’ still, small voice that told me to go look in the storage closet by the kitchen and there I would find a cup on the back shelf.  Without hesitation I went there and inside the cup, in the back of this random closet I rarely open, was 1 pink crayon.  I remembered from my Pinterest-ing the night before that I could “customize” my blank white plates to match the party.  With a weird excitement I went to work on the plates, relishing in the matchy-matchyness of it all.

Thirty minutes before the party, I prayed over the phone with one of my teammates for the power to turn on so I could make the microwave popcorn.  Not but ten minutes later, we were back in business with full power and water!  Also the Franzen family that lives on the other side of town found not one, but TWO balloons for Caroline to enjoy.  Finding this pink crayon was actually the smallest miracle of the day, but to me the most significant.  God showed me that he cares about the little things.  He wanted Caroline’s party to be special even more than I did.  He loves throwing a great party.

My true motive behind throwing Caroline her birthday party is that I want her to look back at pictures and know that she is cherished and celebrated.  Even though her birthday party may not be as elaborate as her friends back in America, it was put together with all the love, affection, and creativity I have in my being because I long for her to know that she is loved by me.  When I think about how I feel about Caroline in all of this, I cannot fathom how much God longs for us to know about His love for us!  Sharing the Love of Jesus for his people is precisely why God led us here and why I am now loving every minute of it!  

“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God… God showed how much he loves us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.” 1 John 4:7 & 9  

My pink crayon

   Little Buttercup with her birthday balloon

Happy Birthday, Caroline! 

You are loved.

Top 10 things I LOVE about Mongolia!

10.  The kids here are so. stinkin'. cute!!!!

9.  Every store and restaurant is a mom and pop shop. No big, bad, Walmarts here!  We like to pretend that we found the newest, hippest dive restaurant in town.  And there is something that feels good inside about buying directly from the owner of the store.

8.  The billboard advertisements.  I saw a larger than life-sized picture of Jean Claude Van Damme circa 1990's as the business sign for a gym.  Probably the best part about this is that I am one of the very few people that thinks this is odd.

7.  Funny English translations on products in the store. Such as "soap for a happy life." Golly, I sure better get my hands on some of that soap! :)

6.  Everyone loves Caroline and we get VIP treatment wherever we go because of her!  Really, Mongolian people just love kids!  It's neat to see a culture that isn't annoyed by children.

5.  Life is simple.  I get to spend more time thinking about what really matters.  I don't have to decide on what shoes I should wear because I decided that back in Dallas when I packed my bags.  I don't have a hundred choices of granola to pick from, I'll just buy it if and when I can find it.  This is such a freeing thing!!!

4.  My church family!  I admire, love and respect my pastors, Josh and Sagana Crosslin so much for the way they love and serve the Mongolian people.  They have given their lives to this ministry and they are such a great example to us!  I also love my teammates from Texas!  They are hilarious and it's so cool to see how God has brought us together.

3.  The time we get to spend together as a family.  I am a quality time love-language person, and I get to spend time with John and Caroline way more here than I ever have on a day to day basis back in Dallas.  It's such a blessing to be able to work alongside your best friend in ministry every single day.

2.  People here are truly hungry for Jesus!  Many people I have met have specifically expressed that they want to know more about God.  There is a new generation of Mongolians who have never had to live under the oppression of Communism.  This generation is hungry to know the Most High God that created them.

1.  My time spent alone talking with God.  His presence has met me here in ways I haven't experienced before.  "He meets me with victory at every step."  Scripture has come alive and His Word makes perfect sense in places I have never understood it before.

Desperate for heaven.

I am debating whether or not to post this because I don't want to be a downer, but I want to be honest in hopes that you will be motivated to pray for us and long for heaven with me.  I am having a tough time here in the middle of this dry and dusty city of Ulan Bator.  Just when I think I'm getting the hang of things (I don't get winded until floor 6 of the climb to our apartment, I know basically how to get around town, I figured out a way to give Caroline a bath so she doesn't drink the germ-y bath water)...life gets really frustrating. 

Last night was one of those moments where you feel like you're hitting a stride during a run, you're feet are picking up the pace, the air fills your lungs and it feels great... only to trip over a log, get the wind knocked out of you and your knees end up scraped up and bloody.

It all started with cooking dinner last night.  I found a decent, sort of western-style grocery store which is a 15 minute walk from our apartment.  Caroline was in good spirits, full from lunch and ready to pass out in the baby carrier (or as John and I affectionately refer to it as her leash or "the sweat sack").  Sunscreen is applied and I'm ready to head out on this hot and sunny day for a shopping adventure.  After getting over there, I can't find any boneless meat, of any sort, so I pick up two bone-in chicken thighs to go with the left over potatoes in our pantry.  I'm so proud of myself, I'm thinking "Michelle, you are SO Proverbs 31, look at you!  You're going to have dinner finished when John comes home and he is going to swoon!"

I make it home by 4:30, get up to floor 5 wearing a puddle of sweat between me and Caroline, only to realize that I let someone borrow my keys earlier to do laundry at our house and I have no way to get inside our home.  I give my team-mate a call, arrange to meet him back down at the main road to get the keys, and praise God, he is really close by, so that's only a 10 minute, 10 flights of stairs detour.  Ok, it's a quarter till 5, no big deal, I can do this!  I'm a P-31 woman, after all!

Once I get inside, I lay Caroline down in her crib carefully to trying not to wake her up.  I'm not successful, but I let her whine for a while so I can change my sweaty clothes so I can start washing and peeling the potatoes.  Oh wait! I need to figure out this chicken situation too, so I trying getting online to Google "bone-in chicken recipes" but the internet isn't working, again.  So I restart the modem, and try again.  No luck, so I try, try again while I am washing the potatoes.  Potatoes are peeled and in boiling water, and after praying for healing over our internet, I can get online!  Thank you, Jesus!

Ok, so I am no cooking expert, so according to the sources on Google, unless I have a grill or an oven (nope, not here) I need to de-bone the chicken in order to cook it over the stove.  Hmm, how hard can that be, I will just pull it apart and throw it in some spices and olive oil and it will be delish, right?!  Wrong.  After wrestling those chicken thighs with a pair of scissors for a good hour, I get about 1 breast size portion of meat in small, gristly chunks.  

Caroline is now in a full-out wailing cry, so I wash my hands twice and give her a balloon to play with on the floor of the kitchen so I can pull the greasy chicken bits off of the stove.  It's now a little after 7:00 and John walks in the door.  He is wearing his suit (such a sight for sore eyes!) and two new huge blisters from walking miles in his dress shoes.  He spent all day going business to business inviting people to come to our church-sponsored business leadership seminar.  We both look at each other with a look of exhaustion, mixed with frustration and yet gratefulness to be together and at home.

At least I got one thing right, dinner is ready right away!  We sit down and pray over our meal that God would bless it and make it taste good even if I screwed it up.  Well, I'm pretty sure that God decided not to answer "yes" to that prayer because the chicken was horrible.  It tasted like chewing slimy grass (I thought it was supposed to be Rosemary?!) with chunks of fat.  I slaved over a raw chicken and a hot stove for 2 hours and came up with one of the worst meals I have ever eaten.  So, we chose to thank God for the potatoes and ate those instead.

By this point I am just in a plain old bad mood.  Pissed off is probably a more accurate description.  Am I allowed to say that?  I mean no offense, I just have no better way to describe it.  I want to throw a tantrum.  We are hot and sweaty, tired and still hungry. 

We get Caroline washed and in bed and we decide to rent a movie on iTunes to just unwind.  The internet doesn't work on our laptop, but we are able to catch a signal with the ipad.  We find a decent, PG-13 movie from the 90's and rent it on itunes, but it won't load on our ipad.  So we go back to diagnosing our laptop and get it to work, so we try pulling up our purchase on our laptop.  It doesn't recognize the purchase, so we buy it again.  Yes!  It's downloading!  and...only...7 more hours until it finishes.  GHAAAAA!!!!!  I drown my anger in my emergency stash of peanut M&M's I brought from Dallas.  I am determined to make this work.  And then I have a fleeting thought... maybe God wants us to find our rest in Him?  Nope.  Not after all of this, I DO NOT WANT TO PRAY ANYMORE!!  I have been praying all day and look at where it got me?  I'm a flesh-can of anger and on the brink of letting go of all self-control and throw a full-out hissy fit.

I decide to answer some emails while I cool down and hope that the movie miraculously downloads, but then I look at the time... it's 10:00.  With my tail between my legs, I decide to wave my white flag and get ready for bed.  I let the faucet run... no hot water.  heh. Whatever. I'm crawling into bed with a dirty face.  I. Give. Up.

I laid in bed, angry at God, angry at myself for my lack of self-control.  Then I heard Him whisper "Michelle, it's time to thank Me."  With tears streaming down my cheeks, I thank God for keeping us healthy, for protecting us from pick-pockets, for a hard and uncomfortable bed to call my own, and for potatoes and M&M's. 

I'm still not sure what the exact point of yesterday's struggles were, but I am beginning to understand what His Word means when He says in Romans 8:23-24 & 28

"And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved.  Now hope that is seen is not hope.  For who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."

"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."

If life is so great and dandy here on earth, then why would I eagerly anticipate Christ's return?  So many times I have said in my heart when life's circumstances are good "wait Lord, can I just finish this next really fun thing here on earth and then you can come back?"  But when the "es" hits the fan, I am SO READY TO LEAVE THIS JOINT!  And that is a holy and good thing to plead for Jesus to come back, because we weren't made to live in this broken world.  Even better would it be to have pure, sinless, new bodies in perfect fellowship with Jesus and one another.  So, that is the hope I am choosing to live for.  I am terribly poor in spirit here, so bless me because I eagerly await God's Kingdom of heaven.

It's Official!!!

This past weekend was a BLUR.  Open mic outreach Friday night, World Mandate Mongolia on Saturday night and then the launch of our bi-lingual church, Antioch Mongolia, and small groups on Sunday.  Everything that our church family has been working and preparing for came to fruition this weekend and it was a huge success!  

Saturday night’s Gospel presentation had approximately 50 Mongolians decide to follow Jesus!  We had more than 150 Mongolians show up for our first service on Sunday morning and more than half that joined a life group/community group afterwards.  Now our focus is on finding the H.O.T. Mongolians… Hungry, Obedient and Teachable.  Mongolian people are certainly hungry for the Good News but it will take men and women who are humble and obedient to the Word of God if there is going to be a strong foundation of believers when we leave in December.

Please pray that the seeds that were sown this weekend would bear fruit and not be snatched away by the enemy.  Pray also that new Mongolian believers would rise up and lead this new church.

And, in other news, we were told that after being in Mongolia for 3 weeks that we have most certainly eaten horse meat by now.  Tastes like chicken?

Blessings,

John

Top picture: these are the faithful believers who helped start the church here 20yrs ago.

Bottom two pictures: Stephen Gulley leading worship and Robert Herber preaching at our first service.