But what about those decisions with no wrong choice? Those are the big ones. Those are the tough ones. When I step back from this choice before me I find it simultaneously of both the absolute and least importance. What is the bigger decision, that I decide love my neighbor when I walk out of my house or in which fashion to exercise the skills God has given me to bless people and honor him? And yet choosing between two goods is so difficult. It’s like a trick question: neither is wrong, but is one better? Does it matter if both are good?

Sometimes I wish my decisions were between following my heart by using my God-given skills and killing some poor homeless man. No contest, easy choice: homeless man lives. But no, I’m deciding between two great lifestyles.

First, here are some details of what this tour looks like. Or if you are unfamiliar with what I’m doing let me start there. I am in the Philippines for a few weeks working as a technician for a Christian performance tour group, part of Youth With A Mission (YWAM). During the week I am a part of the Island Breeze team. We’re doing two school assemblies Tuesday through Friday. School assemblies are simplified performances at local schools for anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand kids. During these shows I manage our basic setup and run sound.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday our the full shows. On Thursday we setup all the tech, but unlike other tours I’ve worked with, we are primarily overseeing not lifting. This first week I helped with the Friday show, and then for Saturday and Sunday went to the satellite location to be the audio engineer and tech producer of the shows there. These are the same as the big hub shows with smaller tech.

This coming week, if we can get the gear, I will be producing the live video feed with a few camera operators for the hub shows while someone else takes over the satellites.

So things are very busy. Monday is our day off which is why I am able to get Internet.

As for the Philippines, I love being back in the islands! Yes it’s hot and muggy and you just have to deal with it, but the people, culture, food, sights, sounds, and smells are incredible and I had missed them!

We are staying at a Catholic convent. Yep, with nuns. They are an amazing group of people! There are about 10 nuns and they serve their hearts out for us. They are hilarious and not what you would expect: full of surprises! For example, they have a karaoke machine!

Also, because of some political and rebel issues, and the fact that we are foreigners and half of us are white, we have been given a large police and military escort by the government. Each of the three performance teams always travels with a detachment of about 7 or 8 police officers… the kind of police you find that have to deal with rebels: camouflage and M-16 machine guns. At the big shows there are also some military from the area that run security for the venue. While it is a primarily unnecessary precaution (don’t worry, Mom ), it makes me feel both safer and unsafer. Having a convoy of a police escort can draw attention.

It feels like we’ve been here more than just a week and a half! I think I’ve already done

On that same trip, we went and visited some friends who live in a ger, or yurt. The grandmother fed us homemade yogurt and a lot of candy, along with their traditional tea, which is milky and salty. It grows on you.

The Mongolian countryside in this area is a vast expanse of hills, low mountains, and scattered forests. It is primarily sparse grass in a dry and dusty soil. The openness and size of the sky makes you feel tiny.

After our walk, the boys of the neighboring gers wanted to show us the wolf cubs they had recently found. Apparently the mother had died and these cubs were only a couple of weeks old. They were very cute, but already ferocious. The boys fed them a few strips of raw meat, then the wolf pups would charge you and try to nibble your toes! I want one.

On the way home we had run in with a wrench that required a brief stop.The colors of the roofs here are striking. In the “ger district” which is the area outside of the main downtown, where people put up gers or rickety houses with no running water, the roofs are all reds, blues, greens. When you are up on a rise and can see across the land, it makes a very contrasting scene against the browns of the fences and dirt roads.

One day we went out to eat at a small little cafe downtown. My brother and wife know the owners through teaching their daughter English. They were very excited to meet other family members and kept the place open later for us so we could eat there after everyone had left! The gave us a feast. It was a treat as we had piles of amazing food. I laughed as the man energetically mimed to us and talked through Jonathan’s translation while The Eagle’s Hotel California and other classic songs played from their boombox. (Funny tangent: I was on a walk one day in the ger district when I heard the Singing In the Rain remix from the VW Golf commercial from years back being blasted inside a ger I walked past.)

And with that friends, I am about to find a taxi to take me to UB where I will explore for the evening, trying to avoid gangs that like to attack Americans for no reason (history people, did we ever screw Mongolia over?), and board an airplane to the Philippines in the morning.

With my brother and his wife living here on a permanent basis, they thought it would be good to build their own house, rather than to continue renting with rising costs. As foreigners they aren’t allowed to own land, but the government does have a program which gives people large pieces of countryside to people to steward and protect.

Because of the economy and lifestyle here many people will go to the forested regions and (illegally) cut down trees for firewood. That in itself isn’t such a bad thing, the use for the wood is a great necessity; however, without proper care and replanting, the forests are rapidly depleting. I’ve heard that just 15 years ago the forest up the hillsides on the outside of town used to stretch back down into the valley a mile or two more from where they are now.So in light of this my brother and his wife were contracted a piece of land on the condition that they would protect and nurture it. The land is a few miles outside of the city. It’s a beautiful piece of mostly forested countryside. Unfortunately, it is also far from running water and electricity, as well as being cut off from any other homesteads by a couple of ridges. In order to reduce the cost of bringing in electricity lines and water, and to not be so isolated, the house is being built on their neighbor’s land. Within his land he has a nice fenced area of, I’d estimate, seven acres where his house sits. This is also where we are building my brother’s house. With water, electricity, and a neighbor all right there.

Now that you understand the larger picture everything else should make a little more sense when I talk about building things and where I am.

Currently, the foundation has been dug out and we are preparing materials for pouring the cement. This will be done by hand, wheelbarrow full by wheelbarrow full! Friday, my dad, brother, and I spent the afternoon building forms to pour the cement into and staking out the area in the site where they will go. Now on Monday we are waiting to have the final parts of dug so we can put the gravel and cement in. This process will probably take the rest of the week at least I would think.

It is often a waiting game, so we need to have a lot of patience. It isn’t something that will be completed quickly, but there are other people coming to help once my parents and I leave. Being able to be here and help kick off the actual building process is pretty cool. I’ve never done any construction work on this scale!

The other side of the coin though is that the end of a trip comes up so quickly. I can see my two month trip already breezing past. I’ve been gone a week already!

So time travels slow where I am not and fast where I am. It’s been ages for the rest of the world and just the blink of an eye here. Though in actuality that is less the speed of time as the amount of time. More time passes where I am not and less where I am. But that gets into weird physics of the standard speed of time change which I am neither smart enough or willing enough to go into. 

I’m trying to work out the mathematical formula for these phenomenon and I think it must be something along these lines: 
((D * L) / A) + A  = T
Where D = Perceiver’s Distance from location, L = Length of time to get there, A = Actual time passed, and T = Perceived amount of Time passed. Note, all time is in days.

This works great for a weekend trip from Eugene to Portland: ((100 * 0.083) / 3) + 3 = 5.76 days. This of course happens because you miss your friends having an awesome time on the weekend without you, so it feels like it’s been nearly a week. (note, 2hr drive time divided by 24hrs in a day equals 0.083)

However, I’m having trouble when it comes to a trip part way across the country for a week. Say you’re around 1200 miles away, like Eugene to Denver are, and takes about 5 hours to fly between. ((1200 * 0.21) / 7) + 7 = 42 days which is a bit much. However, if we add a modifier to our division to bring things into perspective, it may help: ((D * L) / (A * 10)) + A = T. This gives us 10.6 days for the above trip. Very reasonably.

But, as I’m doing this as I write I notice a potential problem which may not be a problem but the truth. For a trip like I’m on you end up with (and this is very rough): ((6000 * 1.5) / (7 * 10)) + 7 = 135.57 days. But once I’ve been gone for a month it is only preceived as 60 days. You eventually close to an unreachable point where perceived time meets actual time. 90 days feels like 100 days. This could actually be true. However, I feel like 135 days for 7 is a bit extreme.

Obviously this theory needs some refining.

So I’ve arrived safely in Mongolia after a stopover in Vancouver, BC to visit some friends. It rained in Eugene, it rained in Seattle, and it rained in Vancouver. Okay Cascadia, I’m peacing out for a bit until you sort out your summer plans, be back in a couple months! However, day three in Mongolia and there is snow on the hills up where my brother is building his house. In case you forgot your geography, Mongolia is in the northern hemisphere: it’s summer.

But I get ahead of myself, my brother lives in Erdenet, the second largest city in Mongolia, situated in the north a couple hours from Russia. My parents and I flew in to the capital city of Ulaanbaatar (yes, with five a’s). My brother picked us up and we continued our journey with a five hour drive through the wide open landscape of Mongolia. I wish I could show you pictures, but they are still on my camera and like I said, Internet is slow here. The road we took is the best road through Mongolia they say, and it winds north through a landscape of hill ranges that are for the most part barren of trees. There were a few roadside villages and the surrounding countryside was dotted with gers (yurts) and livestock. The only fences were around individual plots of land a couple acres large: the animals have all the room to roam they need.

While the weather has been wet and cold, we’re here to help my brother build his house. It’s a waiting game right now with small preparations while we wait for the sun to come out and dry the land so we can work.