Final Weeks as a Family of Two

My new favorite U.B. café, Macaroon 153.

Happy summer, everyone! Hot weather arrived late but abruptly this year. We had two weeks of stifling heat before returning to the very temperate days we are enjoying now. The elevation and dry air means that summer feels awesome in the shade but the direct sunlight is intense and can burn much faster than I'm used to. Baby Sigler is coming along well, and we've enjoyed feeling (and now seeing) her pushes and kicks. Both school and work have entered into a summer break, so I'm finally compiling the report I've been wanting to give for a long while now.

The most exciting development around here has undoubtedly been the efforts of our evangelism team -- which I am not even part of, as my teaching and training duties keep me here in U.B. For the majority of May, our group partnered with a couple of local churches to make the 3-day cross-country drive (camping along the way) to the westmost province of Bayan-Ölgii. This region is the most "foreign feeling" in Mongolia, being the only province with an ethnic majority other than Mongolian as about 93% of the 108,000 residents are Muslims of Kazakh descent. [info on Bayan-Ölgii]
The team had some adventurous roads in the final stretch once the paved highways gave way to rocky streamside paths. In Bayan-Ölgii they partnered with some local Christian groups and churches (familiar among them to Western readers will be YWAM staff), and started systematically knocking on doors in the 14 small towns throughout the province.

Camping along the way

Based on our team members' reports it seems to have been a mission of great contrast － warm hospitality from the local people who were receptive to the gospel (though at times suspicious about whether this activity was approved by their Muslim clergymen) and would invite our people in to their home for tea and snacks － and opposition and harassment from the local police who seemed  concerned with preserving the Islamic status quo. 

Our team had prepared Kazakh tracts and Bibles since many of the people there aren't fluent in Mongolian. They tell us that when they gave out full-sized Bibles the recipient would hold it in front of them with both hands and raise it above the level of their head. This signifies that they are receiving a valuable gift and feel honored. Middle- and lower-class people tend not to have much reading material in Mongolia, and I assume that's even more the case among the Kazakh-Mongolians out in the far west. While there was some variation in the level of opposition they faced from village to village, almost everyone who answered the door invited them in and listened intently to their gospel presentation. There were even a few who asked our people to repeat it for a friend of family member who arrived after they had already told it once. Once in a while someone might ask, in a mildly accusing manner, "Who told you to do this?" or "Who translated this stuff into Kazakh?"  One of our guys said that he just answered "our clergyman" (using the same word they use for local Muslim leaders) and then they'd be ok with it.

One of our younger guys knocked on a door and was greeted by several men wielding knives who asked "what do you want?" I have been told that the Mongolian stereotype of Kazakhs is that they are always stabbing people. Our guy answered "I'm here in Jesus' love to share between we Mongols and the Kazakh people." One of the men brandished his knife while stepping toward him, demanding "What did you say?" So he repeated himself at a higher octave while backing away. This exchange repeated a couple times until our guy just left some tracts and backed his way right on out of there. Such rebuttals were few, however. Another man was stopped by a guy on a motorcycle and asked "who gives you the right to go around doing this?" he answered with some quick thinking: "Well I'm a Mongolian citizen, and Article 2, Section 4 of our national law says that I'm free to do this." The motorcyclist seemed satisfied with this answer, saying "Oh" before driving off. In essence, our guy's claim was true in that Mongolia does officially espouse freedom of religion, but the law he cited to the man was completely made-up. 

Sharing at a home

Distributing concise Bibles to students

Toward the end of their trip, and particularly in the largest town of the province, the police started causing more overt trouble, claiming that there had been complaints that they were disturbing the peace of the town and threatening to post pictures of our vehicles and faces on Facebook so the Muslims would know whom to attack. Fortunately, this final confrontation came at the time when they had pretty much finished going to all of the homes in the town, so our guys decided to just say "Alright, we'll leave." Besides the fact that they had finished all the homes in the main town and 11/13 of the villages in the province, they were concerned about the local churches and ministries who were partnering with them in the work. Our team will leave and head back to safety, but the local church and ministries might have to deal with consequences from the agitated local authorities or religious leaders.  So they decided to pack up in the night to get out of the province by morning, so that those local Christians could say the evangelists had already left/been sent away. Our people all said as soon as they drove into the next province (still days away from the capital here) they all felt "back home," even though they hadn't actually left the country. It was a hard but rewarding expedition for the team, and they came back full of excitement for what they had done and how the people had responded. There were some locals who remembered our team going there previously, about 10-11 years ago. One such man said "You're still saying the same thing you did way back then. I think this must be the truth, because people don't keep their story the same for so long when it isn't the truth."
The people throughout Mongolia tend to be impressed when they find out that we aren't trying to recruit them for any particular group (though of course we encourage anyone who believes to get connected to a local church) and are clearly just interested in giving them this crucial information about judgment and salvation.  They also reported several cases of people asking to pray for salvation, which is always exciting though of course we have to pray for the Holy Spirit to protect this step through what will likely be a dry and challenging spiritual climate.

Paved highways mostly just link provincial capitals

Various challenges on the rough country roads

Fell through the ice

When setting up camp between villages, a strange cloud formation appeared as a two-pillared arch above them, touching down before and behind them. This was encouraging to our team and recalled God's direction of the Israelites in Exodus.

Sharing about the evangelistic trip
during Sunday morning church.

A couple of weeks after the team's return they set out on a shorter mission to partner with a sizeable local church in Mongolia's third-largest city (about 85,000 people), Darkhan. This trip was a mixed bag in a different way from that of Bayan-Ölgii. They joined with some other churches here in UB and drove the 3-4 hours to Darkhan, where they would stay at the church and go house to house alongside those church members throughout the entire city. Altogether they had a team of about 100 people going door to door to share the gospel and invite people to an event at the church at the end of the week. So on the positive side, it was a big team working together and having communal worship each morning, who got to visit about 4,500 homes, talk with over 18,000 people, and pray with about 900 to accept Christ. The Saturday event attracted more than 600 people to the church which exceeded its actual capacity.  

On the negative side, several of our people felt that they were having to do a lot of the work and the local people would show up at meal times expecting to be fed or even given extra meals to take home to somebody! Our people felt like the Darkhan church members were shirking work and expecting just to be "ministered to" rather than partnered with. So despite these amazing numbers (which in itself can never guarantee the breadth of sustained transformation) several of our guys came back feeling exhausted and mistreated. Nevertheless, when you look at the big picture we feel that it was an anointed trip in which God transformed possibly hundreds of lives. 

One of our guys shared that the Darkhan church assigned his team to specifically  visit homes which were known to have Christian relatives. One man he visited was drunk and angry and said that instead of listening to Jesus talk he was going to beat him up. Our guy responded, "If you're going to beat me, at least listen quietly to what I have to say first. Listen without interrupting me, and if you still want to beat me up after I finish I'll let you." So he started sharing the gospel and had to remind the guy several times "Hey, you said you'd listen without interrupting!" when he started mumbling and saying things. But when he got to the part about heaven and hell the man calmed down and gave rapt attention. Then when our guy finished he said "Ok, so that's what I wanted you to hear. Do you still want to hit me?" The drunk man said he didn't. Instead he wanted to know if he can go to heaven too, and if so, how! 

Another house had a guy with a bad leg who also responded angrily when our people came and told them to get out of his house once he heard what they were there for. But our guys just said "Hey you need some water. How long have you been sitting here?" So they got water for him and made sure he was okay and then just told him the gospel. He thanked them, apologized for being angry, and showed up for church the following Sunday morning!  It's hard to see the forest for the trees when you feel personally misused, but we trust that it will be more than worth it as God tends the many seeds which were planted that week. And hopefully clearer communication with the local church next time could alleviate the pragmatic troubles.

Besides that, our church team has experienced some changes. I think i recently wrote that we had been enjoying a season of growth without loss, but it looks that we may be entering a phase of change here. While a new family of four has just joined us and another family of three are expected to come after the break, one of our largest families may be on the way out as they have become embroiled in legal matters, are being currently held in government housing for protection, and their future involvement with us remains unclear. They are a family of eight, with two in my English class and two more slated to join our youth group this autumn, so as far as the children are concerned this development weighs heavily. The parents have long been known to be of dubious character but we always wanted to do our best for the six children and pray that the whole family could be transformed. We still pray for that, but the future arrangement is tenuous.  Furthermore, the other English teacher has moved away to be with family after working here for 11 years. Originally she planned for me to succeed her but in this past year of delay in her departure I took another job and can no longer accept her mantle in full. We originally thought to hire another teacher alongside me, but it's come to light that our NGO will not be able to sponsor a visa until another year or so, which leaves us having to fill the role from within. Normally Yaejin would be the perfect fit, but with a newborn that will have to be off the table! 

My class (minus one boy) on my birthday

On a lighter note, July has brought about an exceptionally calm and quiet phase for us, as almost all of the Mongolians retreat to the countryside for summer break and five of Yaejin's siblings have gone to visit relatives abroad. This leaves only her parents and the three youngest (11, 12, 15) alone here with us as the summer vacation entertainment! Most of the time we are enjoying it. We had them spend the night, I took them to my office to help me with an unfinished project, we play frisbee, soccer, etc. and have Mario-Kart or movie nights at our house. They usually have a very demanding schedule for school (learning 5 languages with extra time for mathematics and Bible) so it's good to see them enjoying some free days of fun.

I hope to post another update sooner than this one. The content is already largely evident in that we'll have our baby daughter with us! Praying all goes smoothly and quickly -- before the 18th if I'm going to be allowed in with her, due to some odd hospital issues --  and that the doctors are right about her being a daughter, otherwise we will have to come up with a different name!

One of our clients asked me to be a judge for their "Got Talent" styled
English recitation contest.  It was a great event for all involved.