Sister delivers Emily Box to Mongolia

3:45 PM, Aug 17, 2012   |    comments
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Blair Barger will delivered an Emily Box to Mongolia.

An East Tennessee teen is back from a trip to the other side of the world where she made a special delivery.

During a week in Mongolia, Blair Barger pushed a van out of the mud, slept in a small home called a ger, and dealt with the realities of limited fresh water.

She also learned a few phrases.

"I learned that bayarlalaa means thank you and sain baina uu means hello," she said.

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The 17 year old was one of 20 young adults chosen for a distribution mission trip with Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child.

The group passed out shoe boxes packed with gifts for needy children.

"It was amazing. It was a life changing experience," she said.

Blair had another personal mission for the trip. She wanted to deliver an Emily Box.

"An Emily Box is a box that's just like the Operation Christmas Child boxes except on the outside it says the Emily Box and it has a picture of my sister Emily who passed away when she was seven from cancer," she said.

The contents reflect Emily's favorites: butterflies and anything pink.

Blair's goal was to find a girl in mongolia to give an Emily Box.

"A girl walked in and she was wearing bright pink sparkly sunglasses, a bright pink shirt, a leopard frilly skirt, and then these leggings and I thought to myself that's something exactly like what Emily would wear," Blair said. "I asked the interpreter to go ask her how old she was because she knew no English and the interpreter said she was seven, which is how old Emily was. And then I asked the interpreter to ask her what her favorite color was and she said her favorite color was pink."

Then she knew. "I just felt like God was telling me that's the girl."

Her name is Strong Flower. Blair gave her the Emily Box.

"They asked them to hold up their favorite item in the box and she said the baby doll was her favorite," she explained.

Then she read a letter about Emily Barger, a sweet little girl who lost her life too soon.

Blair said, "The interpreter was crying and everybody around us was crying and it was just a sweet moment."

The moment ended with a hug and a kiss.

"It made me feel really happy and I was so excited and glad that I could use my sister's story to touch another person's life all the way in Mongolia," she said.

She touched the life of a person in Mongolia who reminds her of her sister.