Day 7: Visions of Uz

While on our way to a village outside of Osh today, we saw a long line of concrete posts, about 6 feet high and spaced about 20 feet apart. Our friends pointed to it and said “there’s Uzbekistan” – we actually saw Uzbekistan today! Unmanned lookout towers dotted the country side and the wires which presumably were once strung between the posts were long gone. I suppose that in an act of defiance, we could have stopped the car, ran 20 feet, and taken a step into the country into which we were refused entrance. But it was not the geo-political entity of Uzbekistan where we so longed to go. It was the people with whom we had built relationships with over nearly two years that we wanted to see. It was the city that we lived in and the friends with whom we would have sat and talked over tea and plov. So we did not cross into Uzbekistan today, because simply in Uzbekistan is not where we wanted to be.

That's Uzbekistan on the other side of those posts

Our hosts took us out to an Uzbek speaking village today where they work with an English club. About 20 people attended, ranging from preteen to middle aged. I was the guest teacher, and used the time to talk about ourselves, talk about America, let them ask questions, play a few games, and go through a small lesson. English teaching is nowhere on my radar in terms of something that I would like to do someday, but it was good to once again be among Uzbeks and engage them in their culture (I had plenty of chance to use my Uzbek language, as the English of most of those in attendance was very poor). They invited us out for a picnic in the country this Sunday, so I will write about that experience later.

Here’s our new dilemma: our plane tickets have us flying out of a country that we are not allowed to enter. So today, we went out to look for new tickets out of Central Asia. This is just another expensive result of our entrance to Uzbekistan being refused, with our non-refundable tickets out of Tashkent combined with the proposition of buying new tickets out of Dushanbe. This is all minor in comparison with the disappointment of not getting in last week, but this is the more urgent problem we are currently facing.

Please continue to pray for us on this trip, as we begin to really deal with what happened to us in Uzbekistan, and as we visit these other locations and seek God’s will for our lives. It appears that we will be presented with a very difficult decision, and we currently have no idea how it will turn out. But we are trusting God to lead us in his timing. Please pray with us to that end.