Winter Is Upon Us!!

Winter is definitely here :) You may have seen the weather reports for Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia recently. As I type, it is -25F here (-32C). A bit chilly :) I still continue to walk to work and back home most days. I am usually toasty warm except for my face, which sometimes feels the cold. When there is a small breeze of even 5 miles an hour, I can really feel it on the face. But all in all the walks are good in so many ways, and the winter season here in general.

How we enjoy or hate winter all depends on how we dress for it. When I was a little boy living near Chicago, the winters got pretty cold, too. For some reason my brother Jim and I never quite had adequate winter coats and gloves and boots. I remember the agonizing winter days when we had our newspaper routes we had to remain responsible for. do you remember them, Jim?! One thing my dad taught us was to keep going, no matter what. Great advice, really.

Here are a collection of photos from the past few weeks: beautiful scenes, good times with friends, good work at MIU and involvement in the Lord's work.

The Ukrainian Orthodox church buildings I pass every day...

Oops!!! This photo doesn't seem to fit here! Life goes on in UB :)

Kathy continues her guitar playing :)

Munguu our super friend!!

One of the government buildings in the city.

 

Anu and Kathy :)

Didi and Anu :)

Great to have some really nice coffee shops...

... and pizza which is great... here with my friend Tom.

Tom in an uncharacteristic photo in a mall ready for Christmas... Tom plans to rough it in a small village far to the northwest of city life.

Kathy had the opportunity to speak in the MIU Seeds church meeting.

Kathy and "daughter" Amy after the Seeds service.

American Thanksgiving meal after the Seeds service.

Ghana, a nuclear physicist, one of our friends at the Seeds service.

 A banker who helped me out, with a pile of Chinese yuan (not for me!) waiting to be counted :)

Kathy when we went out for a quick walk :)