::Sunlight::

Despite having not written for a while, I have had a lot on my mind.  The next few posts may be particularly emotionally poignant for me.  I hope that they make your days better in the coming weeks.

(Narangerel, her family, and friends: July 2009)

Meet Narangerel: the woman in the middle of this picture with the large cheeks, light hair, and fashionable reading glasses. She is over 60 years old, has 5 children, and lives in a little town called Baganuur in Outer Mongolia. For over 30 years, she lived in the Gobi Desert in the Altai province in a petite, round, felt-covered tent.  She has never enjoyed modern luxuries like running water or a computer.  Currently, she has no phone and no job, and takes care of two grandchildren at home and a third that comes by often.  Her condition is common, but she does it all with extreme limits on the use of her legs. She suffers from a severe osteoarthritic condition that was exacerbated by years of bow legged walking, carrying heavy water canisters, and poor diet. Her latest injuries left her bed ridden and in constant pain for months. Despite all the physical suffering she was enduring, her only complaint was, “I can't go see my students anymore. I miss them.”

Narangerel taught young men and women from the New Testament that year. She received no compensation for her work- not a tugrik. Every weekday at 3:00, Narangerel would stumble and limp, leaning on her 9 year old granddaughter, along the 3 km stretch of dusty road to her church building, which sits atop a bakery near the hospital. Each time she passed the hospital, she was reminded that doctors had no cure for her condition, and that, even if they did, she would not be able to afford the treatment.

So she learned to cope. She taught herself to walk in ways that did not force her to shake when she stepped, and eventually was forced to use a crutch to walk- the single most expensive piece of equipment she owns.

The first time I met Narangerel, she was trying to adjust her gargantuan glasses on her abnormally large cheekbones, which made her eyes look like painted baseballs. Her hair was newly dyed a deep burgundy, which created an interesting match with her perpetually red cheeks that had been “burned” by the cold desert winds in the winter. The sight of her smile and oddly rotund eyes made me laugh. As soon as I smiled, she introduced herself and welcomed me with a kiss on the cheek. Over the coming years, I learned more about her.

Through all of her struggles, Narangerel maintains two things: a spirit of gratitude, and a smile. The reality of her conditions does not detract from her positivity. In fact, it magnifies it. She spends her time alone during the day as her two grand kids run out to play. She dives into the teachings of Jesus Christ- a rarity in Tibetan Buddhist Mongolia. Her current project: memorize a psalm every day until she can quote them all. “Reading psalms,” she says, “helps me release all my inner frustrations in a way that leaves me with a resolve to do all God wants me to do. I find every day fuller when, in empty moments, I can call upon a word or phrase that reminds me all that life has to offer me right now, and what is sure to come later. Sometimes I feel like crying because of my problems, but I do not let myself. What would crying do for me? What do I have to complain about? Sure, my leg hurts- sometimes so much that I want to pass out- but will focusing on it make it any less painful? No. Jesus knows that I'm going through because he felt every pain from every step I've ever taken.” She refuses to let her circumstances define her happiness. Instead, she spreads the joy of living to those around her.

As she and I spoke after an absence of almost a year, her eyes welled up in tears, and she looked at me and said, “I've missed you, son. I've missed all my children in America.” You see, Narangerel knows dozens of young men and women from the United States, because they were the first to teach her about Jesus Christ as missionaries. They have been there for her and her family, teaching them, guiding them, serving them, and helping them through long days of boredom and loneliness. The love she has for her children, both her own and those she has emotionally adopted, goes beyond the ability for this young heart to describe. For that love, I am profoundly grateful.

Narangerel put on her gloggles (her glasses that are somehow goggles) and sifted through her notebook to show me a list of the goals she had set for the rest of the year. Among them, she wanted to learn how to be a better teacher, and wanted to try her hand at learning english. Remember, this is a woman in her 60's we're referring to, whose knowledge of her own language was crafted by the Russian Cyrillic takeover of Mongolia and was average at best. To improve her mind and herself, she hopes to learn english so that one day, she can travel to the US to see her children away from home. Her goals go on and on.  She takes a personal inventory of her situation spiritually, emotionally, and physically, and writes them all down. The things she does well go on one side of the page. The specific things she plans to work on go on the other side. One goal she wrote down was to show more love to those that seemed to be judging her, even in her pain.  She refuses to be complacent because she knows that she has a final destiny far beyond what anyone would imagine for her now. She knows that she is a child of God whose future and destiny will be that of royalty.

The day to day grind of dealing with an active family is nothing new to Narangerel. She takes care of her two grandchildren at home, this after having raised five of her own to adulthood. Her middle daughter, Ariuntuya, still lives home while her husband works in the countryside. In a lighthearted moment, Narangerel told me, “I'm just now starting to understand how to relate to my husband. I mean, we've been married upwards of 30 years, and I thought I understood him. I learn new things all the time. Did you know that when men get upset, some good meat and a little hug can help fix the evening? I didn't! It's amazing!” she joked. “Here I'd spent all this time trying to figure out how his mind works, and now I'm just starting!” She is proof that even those with age, whom you would think would have deep relationship wisdom, still work on it just as anyone else, with the end goal of a happy marriage and peaceful home. No matter how much a person has lived, life still teaches important lessons.  None of us has it figured out completely.  As she laughed about it, the spaces in her teeth were obvious, and the fact that she was using a match as a cue tip did not escape my glance. But that all just added to the hilarity of it all, and made me love the woman that much more.

One thing that has always kept her on my mind has been "little pictures." Narangerel, though she's no professional, loves to draw. Her drawings are always simple, situational, and quaint, but they remind me constantly of times where I could have sworn that even angels could not have been happier than I was right then, with that family, in that little town, in the middle of Outer Mongolia. A small book she gave to me in June of 2008 shows a pencil drawing of a small ger (circular tent house) with a bright green door crossed by red lines in an almost exact view of her own home. Beside it reads “This is our home... always remember.” The back page says, “The pictures in this little book are the love that God has given to us. I will pray for God to bless you with the chance to come back to us...” signed Narangerel, Ariuntuya, and Sarantuya. Her simple words penetrated my heart. Seeing her again after a year of absence and seeing her imperfect but angelic smile, red cheeks, and gray hair was one of the greatest times of my life.

She is a small yet powerful beacon of light in this big universe. If you think about it, even the sun is a small speck in the universe, but it gives life to all of us and all those around it. Narangerel is the same....

… which is fitting: Narangerel means Sunlight.