One of them was a middle aged military career man who was a distant cousin of our Mongolia Basketball Academy Director Mandax’s wife This lockdown has 1 week to go, but families are cooped up in apartments, and infection rates are 250 per million people, which led Asian countries according this this chart sourced from Johns Hopkins.
This is the article from a Mongolian news site on the two deaths, which link is below. Both men were in their 40s.
"Mongolia started its vaccination rollout against coronavirus on 23 February. Around 600,000 people...
"Great Herron Viewing Area" in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park north of Akron
I take some of the statistics in this story with a grain of salt. But it gives hope of a soon return. It may take us longer for us to wait for a visa, but if we wanted to enter as a tourist for 30 days, this is good news. 
Mongolian Prime Minister L.Oyun-Erdene is reported to be considering plans to open the country’s borders to vaccinated foreign tourists by May. PM L.Oyun-Erdene has held a meeting with representatives from the country’s tourism and hotels sector. He noted that Mongolia could generate revenue of USD 450 million from receiving three million tourists a year by 2029.
D.Gantumur, President of Mongolian Tourism Association said that the country of three million has the capacity of receiving 7.5 million tourists a year. He asked the PM to open Mongolia’s borders to tourists from 1 May. According to him, Mongolia can still receive 400 thousand tourists the summer by opening its borders in May.
S.Munkhbat of the Mongolian Hotel Association explained that the number of hotels actively decreased to 430 in 2020 after 30 hotels closed and the number of employees in the sector was cut by 46 percent. Simultaneously, the number of visitors to hotels sharply decreased by 95 percent; only a few hotels were allowed to work as quarantine centres through the pandemic. Most hotels have been closed since January, 2020. The sector has received a body blow, from which it must urgently recover; hotels pay a whopping MNT 600 billion of taxes a year! https://news.mn/en/795381/
From today (1 March), pupils in all 21 provinces of Mongolia are set to return to the classroom, after authorities approved the return to on-site teaching in a balancing act between coronavirus concerns and children’s education. However, students in the Mongolian capital city of Ulaanbaatar will begin classes from 10 March.
According to the education minister, parents can choose whether to send their children back to school or to continue with online classes. Regarding higher education: colleges, universities and institutions will not open in the provinces at present.
Each child in Mongolia must attend school for 165-180 days. However, due to the pandemic, pupils have received only classes for 80 days; this has resulted in 70-80 percent of students falling seriously behind. Furthermore, 174 thousand students failed to learn in online classes due to there being no internet, smartphones or televisions. https://news.mn/en/795388/
When things don't go your way, where do you go? How do we cope? In Jesus we hope.
See the Big Picture: from Grace Church in Middleburg Heights
Do you have a problem with that statement? I just read it in our colleague from Cleveland's devotional on Racial Reconciliation. He happens to be an Alliance minister of African ancestry. But how do his thoughts affect the way we value other cultures than our own? Even Mongolians are not immune to ethnocentrism, and have a long way to go to protecting the unborn as well. Ron's challenge urges us who belong to Christ to value life according to the Creator and the cross, rather than color or culture.
RACIAL RECONCILIATION RON MORRISON
God makes it clear in His word that His image bearers’ lives matter equally and supremely—and He sent His Son to prove it. There is no hierarchy of importance in human life. Do you believe that statement, or do you assign levels of importance on some over others? What makes one person’s life superior and another inferior?
If you don’t believe in a hierarchy of importance in human life, then you should have no problem unpacking the statement “All Lives Matter” to assign every people group equal value. Black lives included. While our nation’s history is scarred by injustices like slavery, and current events include the all-too-frequent mistreatment of Blacks, Christ followers must lead the way in fully acknowledging the equal dignity and value of Blacks as fellow image bearers.
This is why we need to allow the Bible to inform our worldview to “demolish arguments and . . . take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”—and to think like Him (2 Cor. 10:5). We need to agree with God about ALL image-bearing HUMAN LIFE—born and unborn—being of equal value and equally precious in His sight. This includes all Black life.
Have you allowed God’s Word to challenge your assumptions and change your thinking about absolutely everything? If only the Church for which Jesus shed His blood could unify around and embrace the great equalizer, the Cross, we could show this world what a holy nation looks like when God is our King.
