Lisa Barry: Once again, Elisabeth Elliot takes us along on her journeys overseas. We've learned about some abominable conditions that people live in around the world. We've heard about their commitment to Christ and their perseverance in the face of suffering. Today Elisabeth takes us to Mongolia, where we'll get a little taste of what life is like right here on Gateway To Joy. Here's Elisabeth.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That's what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, talking again today about some of our journeys with God. I must say that we have certainly found that underneath are the everlasting arms.

You may not know how much of a worrywart you are listening to, but it is my nature to be very concerned about things, although I have a wonderful husband who certainly knows how to travel. I've never seen anybody like him when it comes to talking with people. It doesn't matter what language they speak even. He has a way of communicating in a friendly, relaxed, non-threatening way. He certainly does know how to thread his way through customs officers and airport taxes and taxis whose drivers speak another language. I would certainly hate to have to travel as we have been traveling without my wonderful escort. God has given me a great privilege.

Well, I had told you about a trip to an unnamed country yesterday, where dirt was being carted in wheelbarrows and tunnels were being dug by hand and walls were being laid and there was no heavy equipment around. I keep thinking of those words from a hymn, "I Cannot Tell." That's the title of the hymn.

It says, "I cannot tell how He will claim His earthly heritage, how satisfy the needs and aspirations of east and west, of sinner and of sage."

We went through remote little villages, mud brick houses, mud ovens. No color but mud, it seemed, on every side. Is there any beauty, any diversion, any love, or marital conflicts among these people? Those are the sorts of thoughts that went through my head.

We saw rice paddies, nuclear plants, coal heaps. Then we found ourselves on an immaculately clean train, starting on the Trans Siberian Railroad. This was a thrill for me, I have to say. We had a little state room. It had two beds in it. It had a little table and two comfortable places to sit. We had a little half-bathroom, which we shared with the man on the far side. There we were, hour after hour after hour, crossing the great Gobi Desert.

Now that was a thrill for me, because when I was just a little girl my father told me about two amazing women named Mildred Cable and Francesca French. They were, I believe, the first white women ever to cross the Gobi Desert. When we looked on the map, we discovered that there are actually three different Gobis. I think I'm correct in saying that they all belong in Mongolia, but it is a vast emptiness, a vast loneliness.

Once in a while we came to ordered fields, where we would see a solitary person kneeling or squatting and working away with hand tools. Then there were hills. Then a green valley with horses drinking from a stream. Green pastures. Two shepherds. Two flocks of sheep. Still waters. And of course, you know what I thought about as I looked at those.

At 9:00 in the evening, we pulled into a station out on the vast desolate beginnings, I suppose, of the Mongolian steppes. Officials came into the train. They handed us papers to fill out and examined our passports. The wheels of the train were being replaced because of a narrower gauge from that point on and we were told that this railroad goes all the way to Moscow.

So we filled out the papers four times, and twice after going to bed we were aroused, searched and questioned. But on the last attempt for these officials to figure out who in the world we were, they finally just gave up on us because nobody spoke English.

At 2:15 a.m. we left the station and were now in Mongolia. We had had a good rest. Our state room was immaculate. We had clean sheets, pillowcases, new wool blankets, good pillows, a tiny shower and a wash basin.

8:45 a.m. We had seen horses, cows, goats, dogs, and most thrilling to me, camels and one small deer or antelope. I wasn't quite sure what it was. We stopped in one time and there were some charming little boys begging for hand-outs from the train windows. We gave them some cookies and they pounced on them and tore away.

The scenery was so beautiful that I thought of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, "O world, I cannot hold thee close enough. Thy winds, thy wide gray skies, thy mists that roll and rise; that gaunt crag to crush, to lift the lean of that black bluff. Lord, I do fear Thou hast made the world too beautiful this year."

Then we saw a herd of dromedaries, a smaller kind of camel, close up. And finally, at about 1:00 that afternoon, we were met at the station of Ulaan Baatar. I must confess that until I received my invitation to speak in Ulaan Baatar, I had never heard of it. It is, as most of you know, I suppose, the capital city of Mongolia.

We were met there by a beautiful woman, 6'2", an American named Martha Taylor from Mississippi. She took us to supper at a Mongolian family's home and we had meat turnovers and a salad of cabbage and carrots.

June 6. I spoke by interpretation to a Bible school. The students were such an earnest group of young people. Before I spoke, they had a prayer time when everyone prayed simultaneously and with great fervor and then prepared to settle down and listen very attentively.

In the afternoon, our hostess Martha took us on a beautiful drive to the countryside, as they call it. Out of the city into great rolling hills, green grass, weird rock formations reminiscent of Colorado Springs. One immense rock was called Turtle Rock. You would have no trouble understanding why it was called Turtle Rock. It looked exactly like an immense turtle.

Then we had, most interesting of all, a visit to a ger. "Yurt" in Russian. Some of you have heard the name "yurt." I had never heard of a ger. It's the same thing. It's a round house. It starts with the framework and then it's covered with skins and felt and heavy cotton, perhaps canvas.

We were invited into the home of some friends of Martha's, although they didn't know we were coming. They immediately began to cook for us. In the center of the house was an iron stove with a pipe. Around the circumference were brightly painted beds, five of them, on which we were invited to sit down.

Our hostess immediately served us milk tea, as they call it. It was very weak tea with hot milk and-are you ready for this? Salt. Very unusual. Then we had bread with a yellow sort of butter, made by heating milk on the stove, whipping it 1,000 times, skimming the thick yellow whatever-it-was that looked like cream. This apparently hardens into slabs. We had never seen anything quite like it. It didn't taste exactly like butter, but our hostess Martha told us that it was very unusual for people to have bread there. We learned that Mongolians normally eat nothing but meat and milk. Can you imagine a diet of meat and milk? Of course, they make every imaginable milk product that can be made, including what I have just described-this yellow hard slab that was sort of butter.

Then we had yogurt with sugar. As we were about to leave, the lady of the house, our Mongolian hostess, began to boil lamb bits on the stove. She had been spending a great deal of time chopping lamb into tiny, tiny little pieces. She was putting them on the stove for us. Our hostess Martha very politely declined and said that we were invited to dinner somewhere else, which was of course perfectly true. She did so in a way as not to offend our hostess.

We went then to the apartment of a girl named Mary Beth, where we had tea with a lovely group of new Christian girls, also Mongolian girls. We were taken to a performance put on by Mongolian dancers representing ancient civilizations. Amazing, very strange kind of singing-strange to our ears. We would hardly call it melodious or tuneful. They seem to be able to do things with their throats that we could never do.

To my utter astonishment, when that performance was over, we met several foreigners who had read my books. A couple was not with the group that had invited me, but they introduced themselves to me as "fans." Well, that does give one a start when you're in an as out-of-the-way place as Mongolia. Can you imagine my utter surprise in such a faraway country?

It always causes me to think of the sovereignty of God. If Jim Elliot had not died way back in 1956 at the hands of ignorant people who thought that he had come to eat them, I would not have been in Mongolia because I would not have been writing books. I suppose I would still be in Ecuador in the jungle.

Journeys with God-so marvelous, so unimagined. How we thanked Him for His faithfulness throughout those many weeks.

Lisa Barry: And what a story to tell. As we say good-bye for today, I want to remind you that we have a tape available of this one-week series and it's called JOURNEYS WITH GOD. I have to admit, the pictures in my mind of these places are so vivid. It's almost as if I've seen pictures. You'll get that same feeling when you listen to the series again on cassette.

The cost is $7, and you can send that, along with your request, to Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Or call toll-free: 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. Our Internet ministry address is gatewaytojoy.org. The devotional that we're featuring this week on our Web page is from the book ALL THAT WAS EVER OURS. You'll also find program schedules, listening guides and upcoming program topics. Check it out on-line. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Tomorrow Elisabeth's travels take us to Taiwan, so don't miss the next leg of our journey next time on Gateway To Joy.