I'm sorry if I let my readers down by not posting anything lately. It's not that nothing interesting is happening. Quite the contrary, I feel overwhelmed with all the wackiness that's been taking place over the past 3 weeks.

It all started with Hetee losing his wallet. Again. Poor guy was all upset and sulked around for days but that's another story.

Anyway, I emailed our bank to cancel his card and was put in touch with my worse nightmare, Eboneshia. She assured me that all would be taken care of and a new card would be sent to my aunt in the US. I emailed my aunt and gave her the heads up and we just figured we'd use my card until we got Hetee's new one, no big deal.

Well, after several futile attempts to withdraw money with my card I email Eboneshia and ask her if there was any chance she made a mistake and canceled my card instead of Hetee's. Sure nuff, she's canceled the wrong card. Meanwhile, Hetee's lost card is out there somewhere and very much vulnerable if it fell into the wrong hands. I write her back and ask her to very quickly reactivate mine but more importantly CANCEL Hetee's card. As soon as I hit "send", the phone rings. The brother of a guy who goes to the church of a guy we know, was walking outside one day and found the wallet, cards intact!!!!!!!!!!!! But it was too late. Now the cards were canceled for real. Argh... Even reactivating my old one didn't work so we were without cash until yesterday, when my old card finally decided to work.

In the meantime, we had to make a couple trips to Ulaan Baatar (we pretty much had to borrow money from everyone we knew). The first trip was to visit Hetee's grandmother for the lunar new year and the next one was to renew Nate's passport and to go on a 3-day retreat with the UB church leaders. I learned some new vocabulary on that second trip. I already knew that the phrase "I'm going to look at the horses" means "I have to pee". But apparently the vernacular for number 2 is, "I'm going to kill a bear".

Now, the place we stayed at had no indoor plumbing. Not that it was ever really a problem for me to look at the horses in an outhouse before. But, killing a bear, now that's another story. As one person put it, my gun got jammed.

It's hard enough killing a bear in an outhouse but that coupled with freezing cold wind. They don't make enough insulation in the world. After 3 days of chasing a bear it was nice to come home and slaughter one in my own bathroom.

I thought I'd had my share of fun for a while but today, on my way to the office for a meeting I got a little scare. I got into a taxi and asked the driver to bring me to the Darkhan Hotel, where our office is. There was a man in the front seat and he mockingly asked the driver what I said. The driver turned back, winked at me and gave me a cocky smile and said, "She said she wants to drive around Darkhan a bit." I gave him a dirty look and whipped out my cell phone and dialed Hetee. In a loud voice I told him EXACTLY where I was and that I was in a taxi on my way. He was like "what?" since he wasn't even at the office but it didn't matter. I just wanted the driver to hear that I had people waiting for me. With no further shenanigans, they drove me to the office and I got out. A bit shaky but thankful to God for His protection.

And last but not least, I found out today that an orphan girl we've been helping is now pregnant. Please keep her (and us!) in your prayers. Her name is Oyuka.

Thanks and until next time...