“Celebrating the New Year in Mongolia”

New Years and Christmas in Mongolia are one huge holiday that lasts for weeks. With parties almost every day, the markets are swollen with decorated cakes and you quickly become wedged in the mass of people buying food to celebrate the incoming year. Fireworks are for sale everywhere, as well as Christmas decorations, and temporary venders hold up bottle rockets on the steps trying to make last minute sales. No one is asleep the final moments before the 12th hour strikes because families are feasting on cakes, bowds (a steamed mutton dumpling), and toasting the New Year with Champaign. Outside, Christmas trees light the windows adding festivity to the celebration. Fireworks imported from China, are rocketing into the sky from every home and balcony. It sounds like a war zone as thousands of explosions fill the sky in a display more spectacular than any 4th of July in America. But then January first comes and an eerie quiet settles on the streets and in the homes. I take this respite to ponder the sacrifices of the past year and the unknown opportunities of the future.

I believe the bringing in of a new year is a conscious pause in the passage of time that God gives us to reflect and re-evaluate our lives. For many in America, this is a time for making resolutions about weight loss or breaking some bad habit. Some are kept and others forgotten after the newness of the year wears off and life becomes hectic once again. But the harshness of life in Mongolia necessitates weightier considerations for me.

As I think about the year that has passed, I wonder if I was as faithful a servant as I could have been. Thus, I look forward and resolve to invest more fully in the eternal things. Things of this world are temporary and even the heavens and earth will someday pass away but God, His Word, and people will not. These are the things that will remain throughout eternity. So this year I want to spend more time seeking to know God in a deeper way, investing in His Word, and helping others to know and grow in Him. But with this resolve comes the recognition that further sacrifices may be asked of me.

Two years ago we left home, family and friends behind to live and work in a foreign land. Last year we moved from the big city of Ulaanbaatar, with its one million people, to the quiet countryside of Sukhbaatar. We spent a miserable winter with no hot water and 40 to 50 degree temperatures in our apartment. At that time we were deciding on which church to become involved in and getting to know people in our community. I felt discouraged and wondered if God could ever use the gifts he had placed in my life to serve Him in Mongolia. My language skills were so poor I couldn’t even understand when someone asked a question, let alone begin to answer it. I felt I had sacrificed so much and was greatly discouraged. The sacrifices I had made were painful and homesickness often overwhelmed me.

But now that the year has passed I can look back and see the result of those sacrifices. We have become an important part of our church and a huge encouragement to the pastors there. We have made many relationships in the community and have introduced many to the Messiah. Our language has improved and I can now communicate with my new friends. I am feeling I have a ministry here as I am now discipling 4 different Mongolian ladies. God provided a warm apartment with hot water and has shown me He is trustworthy. Most importantly, I see that the sacrifices were not in vain.

“Our hardest sacrifices are never so hard as we thought they were going to be, if we go on with them to the uttermost that God asks…When the sacrifice is made the whole way…God always comes with an unexpected blessing that so overwhelms us with love and joy that the hardship of the sacrifice sinks out of sight.”

Springs in the Valley, October 9th

As I surrendered those things so precious, God used the pain to change my heart and now I can rejoice in the depth of love that it has produced.

None of us knows what this year will hold for us. We have made plans to attend an annual conference in Thailand, and in June, after being in Mongolia for 2 ½ years, we hope to return home to Oregon. We will see our daughter and her husband. Once again Mike, my husband, will have the honor of performing a wedding ceremony, this time for our son. We will see Mike’s 87 year old mother as well as other family and friends and speak of all that God has done. Then we say good-by again and return to Mongolia in the fall.

My loving Father will continue to ask sacrifices of me as we return to live in Mongolia. If I truly wish to follow through with my “resolutions” I must be willing to embrace those hardships and difficulties. But I now have a confidence that it will be a better year because I know in a deeper way, that His love is boundless, His faithfulness is sure, and His plans for me are good.

“And you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one word of all the good words which the Lord your God spoke concerning you has failed, all have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed.”                                           Joshua 23:14

Written by Lisa Figueth