Called to Gobi

by D. I. Telbat

  I stood over him, feeling pained in my heart, then unclenched my throbbing fist. What had I done? What kind of missionary was I? Slowly, as if stunned myself, I sat down next to the big man.

  "Luyant, I'm sorry." He looked at me, but I couldn't meet his eyes. "I used to be a violent man but I thought that part of me was dead. I shouldn't be telling you how to handle your family. I should've trusted you to do the right thing yourself. I questioned your honor and I'm sorry."

  Discouraged and disgusted with myself, I stood and walked back to my ger.

  "Lord, what have I done?" I pled aloud. "I'm such a failure!"

  Dragging my pack out, I hefted it onto my shoulders. There was no point in sticking around the clan. Barely a day had passed and I was completely destroying the testimony I'd sought to share of a peaceful and loving God. Angrily, I cinched tight my chest strap and turned to fetch my bike. Though I had no food, I didn't deserve any, preferring rather to starve to death on the steppe than pollute Christ's name in front of strangers any longer.

  But when I moved for my bike, Luyant stood in front of me with a stubborn look on his face.

  "I'm not going to fight you, Luyant. Let me get my bicycle and I'll leave. You'll never have to see me again."

  Big Luyant stepped toward me and I could just feel my bones breaking already. I closed my eyes and prayed it passed quickly, but not too quickly, because I deserved every blow. Instead, Luyant loosened my chest strap, lifted the pack off my shoulders, and set it on the ground. He set hands the size of frying pans on my shoulders as he stood in front of me and shook his big head sadly. Gan-gaad emerged from his ger just then and groaned through a stretch. Luyant ruffled my blond head and walked away.

  "Pond!" Gan-gaad called as the whole camp awoke. "Get the packs from your ger and dismantle the camp! We move south today!"

  Crawling into my ger while still reeling from the morning's drama, I pulled out a number of animal packs, which I guessed were for the camels, and three riding blankets. People swarmed me like bees to pollen until all but three dusty saddles had been snatched away. Out of nowhere, two of the men produced wagons and an additional cart to which they harnessed two teams of horses. The other gers were nearly dismantled as I contemplated where to start on my own. The canvas covering the poles seemed like the right place, but they were tied down so the wind couldn't blow them askew. Maybe the poles were—

  "Has a serpent bitten you?" Zima asked slyly as she whipped a cord knot free on my ger.

  I touched my bruised and swollen cheekbone, and smiled sheepishly.

  "The biggest serpent I've ever seen . . ."

  Luyant heard me and I saw him smile before he turned away with an armful of camel gear. Zima dragged the cord over my ger, taking the canvas with it. She threw me a corner and I helped her fold then roll it up into a tight bundle—all in one piece. Gan-gaad yelled for the camp to move out while I was still scratching my head about the rest of my ger's dismantling.

  "Pick up here," Zima instructed as she hurriedly pointed at the first exposed pole to the right of the door. She picked up the left. "Lift up, then push all the way around."

  The poles were light-weight and bound in the middle and top of the ger. I lifted the first one and walked into the next. Like an accordion, the poles collapsed together toward the back, hinged on top, until Zima shoved all six spider legs into my arms. It was a seventy-pound burden I dragged across the trampled ground to a wagon where other ger poles were stacked. The second I had the poles in place, Dusbhan, the armed nephew, whipped at the two teams of horses and the wagon began rolling.

  Zima ran by me, her heavy skirt threatening to trip her, and thrust my backpack into my hands. She climbed onto an aduu, used a short whip on her horse, and galloped to catch up to the others.

  I turned in a slow circle. A couple fires still smoldered. The stream had been trampled by a hundred hooves. And my bike stood on its stick where Luyant had propped it. Otherwise, the small valley was deserted.

  Climbing onto my bike, I watched as the last of the camels disappeared to the southeast over a small rise. Two riders rode the flanks. Everyone else rode their horses in the front or on the wagons. The animals knew their salvation relied on the clanspeople, and they hustled to keep up with the parade. The riderless horses were the most independent, drifting along at their own pace, some of them two hundred yards away.

  Starting forward, I stopped again, then set my bike aside and sat cross-legged on the grass. They wouldn't get so far ahead that I couldn't catch them. From my coat, I pulled my Bible and journal.

  "Lord God," I prayed, "I feel overwhelmed by this disastrous start as a messenger of Your Word. I've struck a man and didn't use caution when drinking last night. Thank You for Your patience, Lord. Please give me wisdom. Give me the perseverance to continue, despite myself, the obstacles, and the trials. You know I'm just a man, Lord, so give me the discipline to keep my thoughts shameless when I'm close to Zima. I know I didn't come all the way around the world to lust after a pagan woman, so please keep me in check. As for Gan-gaad, Lord, if it's Your will, open his heart to my words. Thank You for Luyant's patience and not cracking my skull today. Oddly, Lord, even after our little fight, he and I seem to have a connection. Perhaps that's something I can develop since he's not kicking me out of the clan for striking him. You know I could use a friend or two in this world, even here . . ."

  When I'd finished praying, I read through First Peter, an applicable passage for those enduring the difficulties of the ministry, especially persecutions. And I wrote two pages to Gino, confessing my shortcomings to my brother in the Lord, as James instructs us, so Gino would know more how to pray for my specific needs on this side of the world.

  My stomach was empty, so I filled it with water and hopped onto my bike. It took thirty minutes to catch up to the clan but no one seemed to notice I'd been missing. I set my backpack on the back of one of the wagons and peddled my bike with ease without the extra weight.

  Zima kicked her horse over to me.

  "Set your bike on the wagon, too." She held out her hand. "Ride up here with me. See? I have breakfast."

  "Maybe tomorrow I'll ride my own horse," I stated, obviously disappointing her. She tossed me a twisted, dried stick of tasteless venison and rode ahead.

  I'd never ridden a horse, but I knew the basics after I'd drilled an old cowboy in prison for information. He'd worked on a horse ranch down in Virginia years ago.

  "It's easy, even for a city-slicker," he'd said, scoffing. "Rein to the right to go to the right. Left to go left. Back to stop. Heels to the ribs to get ‘em goin'—but not behind the ribs! That'll get you bucked off in a hurry. Voice commands never hurt, either, and some horses are neck-trained and don't even need a bit at all. Where'd you say you were goin' again?"

  Maybe it seems odd that I received my missionary training in prison, but you would be surprised how much knowledge and how many survival skills can be gained behind those bars.

  I nibbled on my breakfast venison and admired the caravan around me. After Genghis Khan's empire had fallen apart, Outer Mongolia, the Mongolia of today, had become a province of China. The overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 separated them, and they became their own communist country by 1924. They developed as a nation with tsarist Russia encouraging it along and kicking the Chinese out permanently. When the USSR crumbled in the 1990s, Mongolia was essentially left to stand alone. The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) was defeated as another political party arose, but the communist MPRP couldn't remain idle after so many active years. They won elections in 2001 and had been striving for exclusive power ever since.

  When I studied Gan-gaad, I saw a product of all his country's conflicting movements. He claimed to be a communist, but he hated Russia and China, which had pushed Mongolia onto that track. Russia was a democracy now, and China seemed to be making similar steps, regardless of the recent rumors of military domination on several fronts.

  Gan-gaad and his clan were
rare, I decided. Even in the clan leader's lifetime, his country had grown and modernized in the eastern cities and towns, where there were even one hundred television sets for every thousand people. The world was privatized. The free press printed newspapers for citizens in Ulaanbaatar, the country's capital. They were combatted by communist propaganda, but the country was evolving.

  And here . . . Gan-gaad ran his clan like a small dictator runs a country. He owned all the livestock. Some of his customs weren't even found in the history books I'd read as he'd evolved on his own over the years, maintaining some traditions and disregarding others.

  But the Gospel of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection was for him, too. I'd come for the Gan-gaads as much as for the Squirrels of this ancient region.

  "Pond!" Gan-gaad shouted from his horse not far ahead. "How fast is your bike?"

  "Very fast, Gan-gaad."

  "As fast as a horse?"

  "Nothing's as fast as a horse," Dusbhan said from my right.

  "Over a great distance, yes," I said.

  "Then let us save the horses. Ride your bike to the north and see how far back Navi-hasgovi is behind us."

  "Yes, Gan-gaad," I said, turning my bike around.

  "I'll go with him!" Zima said.

  "No! See to the children, Zima!"

  Zima rode up to me as I zipped up my coat to keep my Bible, journal, and binoculars safe so I could travel at high speeds. My canteen was secure on the back of my belt.

  "I must always care for the children." She dropped a pouch of more venison into my hands. "Everyone is talking about how you hurt Luyant this morning."

  "Oh, I didn't know anyone saw." I frowned. "I was a fool."

  "No, it was good. Luyant has said he will give me a portion every night. That was your doing."

  "Luyant speaks to you?"

  "Of course not. He writes. I taught him. And I teach the children now."

  "Do you teach Mongol script or Cyrillic?"

  "Both," she said.

  "Could you teach me to read Mongol better?" I asked. "I only learned to write Cyrillic."

  "If you teach me English."

  "Maybe we should ask Luyant first," I said.

  "As long as we teach everyone, he won't care."

  "I should still speak to him about it," I said, pulling my cap down over my ears.

  She pouted stubbornly, but I wouldn't discuss it further. I stood up to peddle to gain my speed away from the caravan, then settled into a brisk pace on the trail north. Switching to a higher gear, I felt the rush of speed as I cruised along faster than I'd ever taken the bike. Free of my pack, I felt light as a feather, floating over the hills and flying down them.

  *~*

  Chapter 7

  I suspected I'd been sent on this errand so the clan could speak about me more openly. For all I knew, Gan-gaad could've been holding a tribunal for my demise at that very moment. But I welcomed the opportunity to stretch my legs now and feel the wind in my face—and to talk to my God. He was my only refuge in the world. Regardless of my errors, I needed to remain repentant and close to Him as I was His son and servant first.

  When I passed our previous camp, I maintained my speed up through the hills that continued to increase in size as I got closer to the northern and western mountains.

  By noon, traveling at a comfortable, average speed of about fifteen miles per hour, I'd put seventy miles behind me. My thighs were cramping so I stopped to guzzle some water to wash the acids from my muscles. Sighing tiredly, I tried not to think of the long trek back to the clan. Fortunately, they were moving only a couple miles an hour away from me.

  I pushed my bike for a mile up a rocky slope that leveled off on a wide plateau. Finally, I saw dust in the distance. Through my binoculars, I studied what was known as the Navi-hasgovi Clan.

  Gan-gaad was right to say they were a larger clan. I counted fifty men and women and hardly any children. They had twice as many men as Gan-gaad and three times as many wagons to carry their heavy gear and feed for the coming winter.

  But Gan-gaad was wrong when he said they were traveling slower. The Navi-hasgovi Clan had no sheep or goats, and they were moving swiftly across the plateau with only the larger livestock.

  They were still five miles away when I turned back to the south and rode away.

  #######

  I stumbled into Gan-gaad's camp an hour after dark. Two men were on the perimeter watching the animals as they bedded down for the night. Exhausted, I dropped my bike against my northern-most ger, and noticed how everything else in the camp was set up exactly the same as it had been the last time.

  As I passed Dusbhan's ger, I heard a portable radio playing brass jazz from the 1950s, and an infant crying in another ger. Luyant strummed a horsehead-shaped, two-stringed instrument at a fire with Gan-gaad and a dozen others. When Zima saw me, she jumped to her feet and offered me a bowl of pudding, the same meal as the night before. These were the evening activities that I'd slept through the previous night.

  Luyant stopped playing his morin-khuur, as the two-stringed lute was called, and all eyes turned to me for my report. I positioned my toes in front of the fire, which burned smoke-choking coal and horse manure. After I'd eaten three mouthfuls of pudding, Zima offered me a pitcher of airag, but I declined and drank from my canteen instead.

  "They're gaining on us," I briefed between bites. "Maybe at one time, they were a slower clan, but not anymore. True, they have more gear, but they also have more wagons to carry it and more cattle to harness. And they have no goats or sheep."

  "How soon until they catch us?" Gan-gaad asked. One of his three wives at his side refilled his pitcher.

  "We'll reach Bulgan before them," I said. "But they'll arrive the next day, by my calculations. They're two days back right now. After Bulgan, they'll be ahead."

  "Two days back!" Gan-gaad said. "You rode that far?"

  "Yes." I nodded. "I passed two of your campsites before I saw them at a distance."

  "It's not so far. I could've ridden that far on horseback," Dusbhan said, boasting from behind me, having emerged from his ger.

  "Two days there and two days back?" Gan-gaad laughed at his nephew. "You couldn't travel four days in one without eight horses to relay every hour! Great Zanabazar! That's far!"

  "And now I feel pain in every joint." I grinned. "But I enjoyed the challenge."

  Gan-gaad, quite drunk from his over-fermented mare's milk, burst into laughter and clapped his hands. Luyant continued to play his morin-khuur, and Zima moved closer to me. Dusbhan stewed a moment longer, then returned to his radio.

  "I set your pack in your ger," Zima said quietly in my ear.

  One of Gan-gaad's wives began to sing a tatlaga, a melodic, rhythmic song that told a story, usually sung by men, but in this clan, anything could happen. She sang about the earth and the sun and the marriage of the two with a band of clouds. This was yet another strange quality of Gan-gaad's socialism. He allowed songs of the gods of the traditional Tibetan Buddhism, also known as Lamaism. There were numerous religious symbols and designs carved or painted into their gear. Not everything was necessarily Buddhist, though. Zima wore a bracelet with tiny bronze figurines meticulously crafted. She fingered the ornament when she saw me studying it.

  "It's all I have from my mother," she said. "My parents were killed in Dalandzadgad when I was young. The Russians' fault during the perestroika."

  "I'm an orphan as well, but God gives us strength to continue, doesn't He?" Glancing at Gan-gaad, I saw he was drunkenly consumed with the music.

  "Which god gives you strength?" she asked.

  "I believe in only one God. He wasn't so weak that He could create only the sun or the trees or only the water. He created it all. He's the God who gives me strength."

  She touched her lips to signal silence.

  "Gan-gaad was afraid you brought your religion. You mustn't speak of it openly." She waited to continue as Luyant stopped then started playing a new song. "But you'll
tell me, won't you? My father was Russian, you know. And my mother was a Kazakh. They used to argue because my father swore there was only one God."

  "Tell me about this," I asked, pointing to her bracelet.

  Zima touched a dangling bronze sun.

  "This is my favorite—the sun god. He made the gods that move in the day, I think. And this is the god of the moon. He made the night gods, like the owl and bat gods. You really think one God made it all?"

  "I know it," I said. "He spoke with the first man and woman, and through time, to others. He helped them write a book of it all, from the beginning to what He will do in the end."

  "Oh! The Bible!" She checked her voice. "It's the Bible, yes?"

  "That's right. You've heard of it?"

  "Only because I'm Russian. Gan-gaad won't let me go into the towns any longer because I'm too curious." She giggled at the charge. "But I have spoken to foreigners before. I have government books only, but I once saw a library in Dund-Us at market. Gan-gaad curses me and says I'm smart enough to destroy him, but I don't know what he means. Then, he curses Luyant because Luyant allows me to learn and teach the others."

  "I have a Bible," I whispered.

  "You must teach me English so I can read it! Please, Pond!"

  "It's in Cyrillic." I chuckled at her excitement for knowledge. "Every morning, I read about God and what He wants us to do. Then I pray and ask for His strength to live better for Him."

  "And what do the words tell you to do?"

  "To trust Him." I was about to explain more, but her face seemed so illuminated by the simplicity of this godly desire.

  "To trust Him," she repeated, staring into the fire. "Trust that He made all things?"

  "Yes, and that He loves us and gave Himself as a sacrifice so those who believe in Him don't die in anguish for the bad things they do. God is forgiving, but we must approach Him for that forgiveness."

  "By praying," she said with understanding. "Every morning you pray?"

  "I try to."