There is a saying here that in the springtime men and women dressed for fashion are most at danger of dying. While forty below is cold, fifteen below with a fifteen mile per hour wind hurts everything it touches. Overall it’s been a very warm winter as far as Mongolian winters go but the grass will not turn green again till late May.
For the month of March I am teaching a modular course at Union Bible Theological College on “Ministry to Teenagers.” The students are ten rural ministry leaders from the furthest reaches of Mongolia including Dornod in the far east and Hovt, a predominantly Muslim Kazak region in the far west. They range in age from twenty to seventy-five.
We are having a great time together responding to these questions for our ministry to youth:
1) What is our intended destination?
2) From their starting point, what are the milestones of their journey?
3) What vehicle will we use to get our teenagers successfully to the place God
wants them to be?
We are using the wilderness travels of Israel’s journey from slavery in Egypt, through the transforming experience of wilderness wanderings, and culminating with the point of decision at the Jordan as they lead teenagers to walk in the promises of God. We are working extensively from the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy 8-9, Luke, John and Hebrews 3-4.
Praise God, GSM now has an office! As I was looking for space a couple weeks ago with an agent, I pointed out a spot at the central bus station on the major thoroughfare through Ulaanbaatar and said “If GSM could have a place anywhere, that would be it.” This was because it serves as an access location for many of the major universities and students in town as well as home of one of the largest English language learning schools in UB called Jet.
A few frustrating days later Amy and I decided to visit one of GSM’s young professionals named Chimgee who is the director of Jet. We described our almost impossible search for a low fee rental office close to the downtown area where most of our ministry happens with students and young professionals. As we left and were walking down the block from Jet, Chimgee phoned us to say she had worked out a deal with the building leasing manager for us. She got us an office right below Jet and in front of that major university student terminal bus stop for a rental fee we could not have hoped for! Praise God!
Kim, Eva and I had lunch with a couple of international university students on a recent Sunday after church. Both are from a country where they would be killed if their new-found faith was discovered. The young lady told us she had suffered since childhood from daily seizures which doctors were not able to treat. When she came to Christ in Mongolia the seizures went from a daily occurrence to a weekly occurrence. Since her baptism a few month ago she has not had one seizure. She is a beautiful young lady but I cannot show you a picture of her or the young man.
Please pray for both of these students. The young man will be traveling home after graduation to be an agent of Christ there. The young lady who did not attend school till almost a teenager desperately wants to travel home and share the gospel with her mom but is very afraid of her older brothers. She also mentioned recent questions from extended family that indicate the family may already know she has become a Christian. Both confirmed stories I have read recently that a surprising number of people from this region are accepting Christ and both said they had been influenced by Christian missionaries operating covertly there.
Praise God, not even the threat of death is stopping the gospel Christ!
Meet some other folks in our lives:
First is Nomin’s family who invited our family over to celebrate the Mongolian lunar New Year they call Tsagan Sar. Many of you may have met Nomin when she joined us in Texas last March and April to help with our first GSM fundraiser. Nomin's father is a Mongolian olympic wrestling coach.
The third picture is of Bat. I performed the marriage ceremony for Bat and his wife Bujmaa in 2012, and this is their beautiful daughter dressed for Tsagan Sar holiday visits with family.
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