Here’s something I wrote in my journal the day we left Mongolia:
“Today was an impressionist painting—not vibrant, but beautiful; poignant, but not joyful. It was a powerful, romantic, and utterly painful time. Sometimes, I realized I’d almost forgotten to breathe. At times my heart was being cut out of my chest with a dull, invisible knife. There were splashes of real joy however. When Gana sat with me on the way to the airport and I tickled his palm. He smiled a real smile. But around the edges of his eyes there was a longing. Even the weather understood us today. While yesterday was bright and warm, today was cloudy, overcast and slightly gray.”
My parents and I left Mongolia. And that good-bye was so difficult. As much as we wanted to, we did not kiss one another good-bye. We were still determined to save our first lip-kiss for our wedding day. With all the saying good-bye we did prior to our wedding it’s a miracle we didn’t kiss!
Again Gana and I didn’t know when we would see one another again. He had received permission from his church to shorten his contract, but how was he to obtain a U.S. visa. My parents’ stipulation to our engagement was that we be married in America.
On the plane MIAT served us some sort of greenish looking cow tongue and a hard roll.
This time we did not have to stay the night in China. I slept as much as possible on that flight home. Whenever I was awake the tears would flow and could not be stilled. So, I opted to sleep.
When I got home I got a “real” job hoping to save enough money eventually to afford an immigration attorney. An excellent one was recommended to me. I called his office and found out it would cost about $3000 to obtain the type of visa Gana needed—a K1, one of the trickiest visas to obtain.
To a poor Mongolian pastor who made about $30 a month and a poor American girl who worked part time this seemed an insurmountable amount of money. So, we prayed. We wrote letters. And we kept our hearts warm for one another while we waited for God to do something.
Notice God's unutterable waste of saints, according to the judgment of the world. God plants His saints in the most useless places. We say - God intends me to be here because I am so useful. Jesus never estimated His life along the line of the greatest use. God puts His saints where they will glorify Him, and we are no judges at all of where that is. ~Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 10
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