Greetings Fans and Followers!!!
I bring news to you from the future. We are doing great here, we made it past the half way mark and have not severely injured anyone. Today we traveled up into the ger district to a small place that the church owns where they feed the orphans that live there. The girls helped make lunch and the boys chopped wood, we played with the kids, and they took Kara's camera and took many many pictures. It was a lot of fun. We will be returning there everyday this week. This weekend was the YTP(youth training program) retreat for the cafe. There were about 40 high school students that attended, they had worship and devotional time, all of it in Mongolian of course, and then we planned a couple of games for them to play. We all had a great time, and we were well fed with three heavy meals inbetween the time of 10am-6pm, it was awesome. Tonight Jordan Eric and I will be leading a game and devotion for the YTP weekly meeting, and the other three will be on their own. We are doing great and appreciate all the thoughts and prayers, we will write again soon. Until then, Bye!
-Genaya

mongolia, its like something one would read about in a national geographic. the way of life is very different, it seems that their society tends to put people first, and profit and industry second. punctuality is not something that is too important here. indeed, this is a refreshing outlook on utilitarianism. why isnt our culture more people-oriented, i suppose wealth is too important to us.

Keeping It Real

Hello devoted fans and followers!
Today is our third day in the glorious land of Erdenet, where you can see the sky, this is the very place where dreams are made. On our first day here in Erdenet, we got the chance to go to Eagle school where we helped out in an English lesson. Each of us got a group of 2 or 3 students, and they had to interview us in English and then stand up and intoduce us to the class. It was top notch! It was a really great experience working with the children, we even got to hear them sing their national anthem! Delightful. Erik is a superstar over here. I can't even count the amount of times that people will point and "ooh" and "ahh" at the massive height that is Erik. Every time that we go to the market, the locals will whip out their cell phones and line up to have their pictures taken with him. It keeps the rest of us wildly entertained. Yesterday, we went to youth church, where we performed a skit, and then tried to teach the chorus of "Hosanna" in English. We also sang "Blessed be your name" because they all knew it in Mongolian at well. It was such an awesome thing to be singing the same song together, but in different languages. Well, this is the extent of our adventures thus far, but this week we have a pretty busy schedule, so I'm sure that there shall be many more stories to come! We're hoping to go out to the countryside and the ger districts at some point, which we are all eagerly looking forward to.
Thank you all for all your prayers and support. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for you, and this experience has already been such a blessing.
Until next time....

Christmas Day in UB

Well, not actually but it felt like it for us since we received our bags today! Praise the Lord. Well, we heard they had come yesterday but because the airport crew was done for the day we couldn't get them, I think it was about 4 o'clock or so. They are crazy here, the Mongolians kind of do whatever they please. It's awesome. So yesterday, we figured out our cancellation problem. We will come home two days early and won't have to stay long in Beijing, which is great...we hope at least, it is a 3 hour layover so pray everything goes well. We met some nice people that work at the JCS office here, they have opened their homes to us and today one couple brought us to a really tiny restaurant for real Mongolian food, our first and very greasy.

So we are heading to Erdenet tonight on the train, we leave at 8:30 and will get there sometime in the morning, we are all very excited to get there and start doing things. It will be an interesting time on the train for sure. We have been learning a lot about the Mongolian culture also which is really special. So for now, we are doing wonderful and so thankful things are falling into place. Take care and we will talk to you soon!

Fresh Laundry...

Praise the Lord! After 6 days of the same socks, underpants and everything else we finally have our luggage and all the clean clothes that come with it! It was like Christmas morning opening up our suitcases and picking out something clean to wear.

Big, big thank you's to Roger Osness, Rob Lewis, Joint Christian Services, and a huge thank you to our Mongolian Travel agent who worked the phones hard to arrange our new travel plans and find our luggage. We thank you all so much for pulling all the strings you could for us, it was so reassuring to see all the support for this team!

We will finally be heading to Erdenet tonight on the 25km/hr night train for 12 hours. UB has been a blast but it's time to chew the meat of this here mission.

Now for all of you who may be asking, "What exactly is Mongolia like?" Well it feels like Canada but looks and tastes a lot different. The air is rather thick with coal smog, and it does create a nice cough and smelly clothes. Ulaan Bataar is very icy, and really quite dirty. It's a very busy city, about 1,000,000 people. It really isn't a pedestrians world over here. The the drivers use the horn as an extension of their body, basically letting every one know, "I'm coming, get out of the way!" It's a real life game of frogger, bobbing and weaving vehicles to cross the street.

It's a crazy place, but would'nt rather been anywhere else in the world right now, it's been a blast!

-Eric Ryan Nordstrom

Happy New Year!

Hello there people of the past. A hearty hello from us people 15 hours into the future.

Good News on our luggage. It sounds like it will arrive in Ulaan Bataar to, and then we can catch the night train to Erdenet. It's been a spiderweb of phone calls, paper work and travel agencies, so it's hard to know if everyone truly is on the same page, but were hoping it all comes together today, our clothes are getting pretty stale.

We got a phone call from the local travel agent who told us our return flight from UB to Beijing has been cancelled on account of Chinese New Year. Air China has canceeled all thier flights until Januray 30th apparently. But they say they will get us on a flight with another airline, but we will then spend two full days in Beijing. Hopefully we will be able to leave the airport and see the city a bit, we hope to have that all figured out today.

All in all, we are still very happy to be in this new land, we have wandered the streets here a bit and had a lot of fun doing it. We went for pizza at a cafe, and went for Chinese food last night. This morning we ate chocolate coffee bean cereal, caramel crocodiles, sticky buns with mystery centers, and cows cream. And all that only cost us 18,000 Tugruks!

We just want to thank you all for praying for us, and supporting our way to Mongolia, it has been so unique this far, and we are anxiously waiting to start teaching and serving in Erdenet.

God's Love and Peace.

Eric Ryan Nordstrom,

Team Mongolia.

Mongolia Itinerary!

Only one week left before Christmas holidays, crazy how the semester has flown by. Here is a quick itinerary for our trip:

Friday Jan. 2-Departure from Edmonton 6:50am Arrival in San Francisco 9:10am
Depart San Fransisco 11:00am Arrival in Beijing Saturday Jan. 3, 3:35pm
17 hour layover in Beijing airport...wahoo!
Sunday Jan. 4 Departure 8:20am Arrival in Ulan Bator 10:45am
Then we will be taking a 10 hour train trip from UB to Erdenet

Enjoy 23 days in Mongolia!

We'll get back to you with the return trip soon...or perhaps all you need to know if everything works out fine we'll be back on January 31!