Our first day on the job!

Thursday, August 5

We are up early, have a good breakfast, and load ourselves into the vans for the trip to the Change The World compound. It's located near a small town called Hongor, several miles from Darkhan. When we arrive there, I'm impressed beyond words by what I see. The property is beautiful. It's located alongside a river, on gently rolling hills, and much work has been done to establish a comfortable and secure place for the children. There are living quarters, a cooking facility, storage rooms, and perhaps most impressive of all, five roomy greenhouses.

Inside these greenhouses, Jerry and company are growing a wide variety of vegetables, including of all things - corn! I've never seen corn grown in a greenhouse before, but they're doing it. Tall, beautiful stalks that have reached the roof, and are tasseled out and producing large, healthy ears of corn. Outside of the greenhouses, in the sandy soil, there are cabbages with a leaf-spread of about three feet, and squash vines are rambling everywhere, bearing more squash than the compound can use. Jerry tells us that the excess of what they grow is shared with the poorer people in the town. What's that scripture about planting seeds and trusting God for the harvest?

GREENHOUSE CORN

After viewing the beautiful gardens, we move on down the hill to the baby rooms. There we meet about a dozen infants, who are being cared for by three or four women. The babies seem happy and well-fed, and are so very cute. We don't want to leave them, but it's time to move on.

ELOISE AND SMALL FRIEND

After a short drive in the vans, we arrive at a point much deeper into the property, not far from the river. This area contains the dormitories for the "Mustangs." These are the teenage boys, most of whom were living in the sewers of Darkhan until Jerry found them and brought them to CTW. The dorms are semi-finished buildings at this point, which provide shelter for the boys, but still need work (and bathrooms). That's what our construction team will be doing while we're here. A sewer line will be placed and run to a septic tank, water lines will be put in, and a bathroom will be built on the end of each dormitory building.

The men on our construction team pick up tools and start to work. By lunchtime, Richard (our plumber) is almost unrecognizable. He is filthy!! He's been down in a narrow ditch all morning, and has connected an astonishing amount of pipe. He may be dirty from head to foot, but he's smiling through the dirt, and appears to be enjoying himself greatly. He cleans up as much as he can, and we all decide that it's good, honest, Godly dirt, and make room for him at the tables.

We eat in the semi-outdoors, in what would pass for a livestock stall at home - open, slatted sides with a roof overhead. It's large enough to accommodate four picnic-style tables and benches, We go down the hill to the kitchen, pick up our plates and return to gather around the tables. The food is good, and everyone eats well. There is one thing for certain, however. If you don't like cucumbers, you can't make it in Mongolia. We have them at every meal. They're sliced in very creative ways, but a cucumber is a cucumber, and it's pretty hard to pass them off as anything else. We are told that the ones we're eating today were grown here in the compound. Fortunately, I like cucumbers, so I'm in good shape.

LADIES PREPARING OUR LUNCH

After lunch, the benches were removed, and we gathered around the tables to make up food bags for distribution to needy families. Boxes and barrels of donated food, mostly from the US, are carried to our area by some of the Mustangs, and we set to work. Three bags of dry soup mix, two cans of a dried meat product (we probably don't want to know), two bags of dried strawberries, one bag of shelled almonds, and a large bag of dried peaches, are all combined into one large yellow plastic bag. We tasted the dried fruit. Chewy, but good.

FOOD BAGS FILLED AND READY TO DISTRIBUTE

After the food was bagged up and carried to the vans and loaded into them, we returned to our "corral" to set up a clinic for the CTW staff. It was well-attended. My job is to take pulses and blood pressures, and with the help of an interpreter to also get a brief history of the individual's complaints. It immediately becomes apparent that most Mongolians have high blood pressure. Some relate that they have medicine for it, but most do not. Those who do have it tell us that they take it only when they need it. This is frustrating to the medical personnel, and we try to explain to the people that blood pressure medication must be taken every day, but they only smile and nod at us, and we know very well that they're not going to do that. We're dealing with a mindset here, and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to change it.

We finally see the last person, pack up our gear, pile into the vans, and return to Darkhan. After a good dinner, Eloise and I go to our room, get a shower of sorts, and fall into bed. Tomorrow we go to the first of the remote sites, to begin holding a clinic for the herdsmen and their families. That's going to be very interesting!