Catching Up in 2023

I hope everyone has had a great holiday season! Our work-related activities kept us busy right up until December 23rd, and we flew to Germany early on the 24th to take a little holiday abroad and see somewhere new. Much of our time went in to school Christmas activities -- especially Yaejin's, who ended up overseeing the student Christmas performance on the 23rd. This comprised of performances from each of our three age groups in the four languages they learn (Chinese only had a single song with all the kids, since we are inbetween treachers right now), as well as a nativity play with all the kids, a Mongolian traditional dance from two of the girls, a little performance from the women's small group and from each of our two remaining Russian families here. After the performances the Korlianov family had planned out an elaborate activity for the kids to "find" their presents which had been stolen by three pirates (of which I was one) who will give a map fragment when satisfied with a challenge of some kind, leading to an "adults vs children" competition back at the school for them to win their presents. It went very well and the kids had a great time. I also had fun being a pirate.

As I missed such a large chunk of time between updates in the latter half of 2022, I'll try to catch up on some of the highlights here:
The next big activity after Yuna's birth was the first marriage of any of Yaejin's siblings, Jakin. As I'm sure most of our readers know (and can learn about in my earliest posts here if so inclined), our wedding was replanned to take place in the U.S. due to Mongolia's extremely stringent border policies during the pandemic, and for the same reason her closest brother Jakin was the only member of Yaejin's family who was able to make it, and who gave her away during the ceremony. Well, he had reconnected with a lifelong family friend in Korea and were able to have their ceremony here. This was very exciting for all of the family since it would be the first family wedding they would attend in person. And the Mongolian church members were excited because it meant they could dress in their finest and sing traditional songs and so on. It was also exciting because of the international guests we had around from Jakin's past. Everyone was excited to see eachother, about the wedding, and also to meet our month-old baby!

Dad doing the proper tourist thing, as did I!

Just about a week after the wedding guests had all gone home the Sigler parents came to visit us here at the ends of the earth (I just heard in a youtube video that Mongolia is the most sparsely populated country on earth per sq km -- even more than Canada and Australia!) to see our lives and baby. It was a short visit which made things a little busy, but we had a great time with them and they got to see a good amount of our church and the surrounding city. It was great to spend time with them since we hadn't been together in-person for over a year.

After that a noteworthy highlight was our "school" field day -- I employ the quotation marks because this was a school event in name only, as the events featured all of our church members and school members divided into three teams and competing in various games and activities together before having a big cook-out lunch together. It was really interesting to see the adults playing these different games and the whole dynamic was a nice time to see different sides of people. 

In September, Franklin Graham hosted one of his BGEA Festival events here in U.B. Due to the baby we had not been involved in the preparation at all (though many of our church people were -- in fact you can see the head of our evangelism team and his wife making an appearance in the pictures BGEA posted about the outreach here. And several of my siblings-in-law were involved from earlier on.) We both ended up volunteering just on the second day of the event. 

With our volunteer badges

This is my third time participating in a BGEA event, though admittedly my involvement in the 2012 Miyagi festival was minimal. The impact of this event was a subject of speculation as one can rarely quantify the spiritual. Being from a church founded upon and dedicated to evangelism, Yaejin was especially keen to be involved. As we drove to the venue, the crowds and police support made a statement that resonated with her that this was something special. We stood in line for a bit but ultimately weren't able to get inside the 4000+ seat venue. There was a sizeable overflow area with live feed outside, but unfortunately this placed viewers directly staring into the sun until it set about an hour later. While this did lead to a somewhat negative experience, it was encouraging to think the attendance was strong enough to cause this. Yaejin in particular felt that this was a significant moment of her family's prayers bearing some fruit.  As her father later explained, "If all the local churches decided to team up and host an event, there would be government/bureaucratic opposition, marketing issues... it just wouldn't be able to happen. It's only because of this Franklin Graham being an internationally known person, and because of the good will Mongolians have toward Samaritan's Purse, that this kind of mass Christian gathering is allowed to happen." That said, what are the results of such an event? Most westerners know about the large Billy Graham Crusades throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, but are they the real deal in other cultures, languages, and eras? Would nonbelievers come to a large gathering when they might not know the name Franklin Graham? 

While we still don't entirely know the answer, I can tell you from my past work with BGEA that they do not take it for granted that people are going to just show up and believe of their own accord. They invest a lot of work in the local churches and congregants beforehand, emphasizing the event as merely an opportunity for the members to invite and focus on the lost around them. That said, at this particular event we initially had some concerns about the seemingly large percentage of Christians in attendance, illustrated by the fact that much of the room seemed to be singing along with the worship songs before the message. At that point there was a bit of a feeling like "is this actually reaching many people, or is this a 'preaching to the choir' scenario?" From that perspective, it is an awful lot of work, money, and preparation for something that won't accomplish its assumed purpose. However, we believe there is another critical function of the event in a place like here. Most Mongolian Christians are accurately aware of their abnormal status and will never be in a room with over 1000 other believers at once. Whatever its effectiveness in evangelism (and to be clear, that was not zero), the Festival had to have been a significant encouragement for the local believers -- not only due to the number of people praising God and affirming His word, but also from the legitimacy afforded by this accepted gathering and imperative to reach out to those we can, while we can. In the U.S. you have these large gatherings for Christians to be empowered, so this bore that function as well as the efforts to share the gospel with those who don't know it. So ultimately we did feel that it's a positive and significant event for the Churches of Ulaan Baatar and doubtlessly reached people with the gospel.

Hiring a car for the 2hr drive between towns 
meant we were packed next to a stranger.

In December I had my first multi-day business trip with the company here. A coworker accompanied me to the western cities of Ölgii and Khovd to work with our clients in those two cities. I've written about Ölgii before, when our evangelism team went out that way last summer -- Kazakh/moderately Muslim area. Khovd is less unique in that sense, but our client there has many more students and they were much less accustomed to seeing foreign people there and my presence at the school generated some interest.

It just so happened that we gained a second client in Ölgii in January, so I actually have just recently returned from yet another visit out that way -- and this quite soon after returning from our holiday travels, so it felt very good to be settled back at home afterward. 

This brings me to our winter holiday trip! Due to certain US immigration policies we did not think it feasible to enter the states for Christmas as we had planned. Upon discussing this with the family, they floated the idea of meeting up in a different location, possibly close to America since there are only three of us and eight of them. However, most of the nearby countries seem to be in peak tourist season around the Christmas and New Year holidays, and it didn't seem very reasonable to see that plan through. Meanwhile we purchased direct flights to Frankfurt, thinking we'd get the second leg of our trip once everyone decided where to meet up. In the end, it was too costly and troublesome for all of them to leave the US during that period, and we decided to just have a little holiday ourselves in Germany. 

We got settled into our rented apartment around twilight of Christmas Eve, and soon heard the most welcoming sound of multiple church bells ringing from all around the city, calling people for Christmas Eve services/mass.

It felt like a true Christmas welcome and Yaejin encouraged me to go out for a look around while she settled in with the baby. I ended up following my ears to a large candlelight mass and joined in for 2-3 hymns before heading back to spend the holiday together with my own small family. The following morning we joined a small Lutheran Congregation in the center of Frankfurt's old town square for Christmas worship. Though we didn't understand the message, the elder announced that he would be doing the scripture reading (Luke 2)  first in English "for the benefit of our guests from Mongolia and the US" and then again in German. This was a very hospitable gesture, and our participation in the Eucharist was also meaningful. After the service we socialized a little with the aforementioned elder and the pastor before going off to Christmas lunch next door. 

All in all, we managed to have a unique and comfortable Christmas together, and enjoyed the recovery time once back home. Yuna was a great little traveler, only getting troublesome when we kept her out in public after dark, to which she loudly objected. She had a difficult time readjusting to the time zone when we got back to Mongolia though (it always is harder to adjust to travelling eastward than westward, I find). Due to my second work trip and a teacher-training seminar, I've been forced to somewhat neglect my own students, but this week I should be with them fully.

Our Evangelism team has continued to go out here and there. They have multiple churches joining with them each time -- both from here in U.B. and locally at their destinations. This past trip was mostly people from various other churches, as our team sent about 15 people but they had around 75 going house to house. It's edifying and exciting to have this kind of cooperation from other churches, because for many years this group was more or less self-contained. Finally we have a sense of acceptance from and teamwork with the local churches, who respect our group's longstanding dedication to preaching the gospel with no strings attached. In church last Sunday they were mentioning that it can be hard working with other groups who maybe don't work as efficiently, diligently, or with focus; but it's less important to just "get the word out" than to remember that this process is teaching other churches and believers how they can be preaching the gospel to those around them. That will have greater and longer lasting effect than just our own small church on its own. Mongolia is a very non-Christian land, but we hope and believe that the church is ripe for growth and greater cultural impact.

In other news, there have been numerous mass protests against the government this past year. Generally everyone is fed up with the bureaucrats lining their own pockets by selling off the natural mineral resources to foreign parties while the average citizen remains in poverty. One perspective I've heard is "If you ask young people in Mongolia about their dreams or future plans, pretty much all of them will answer that their goal is to live abroad. That's because no one feels that there is a meaningful future for them here. Yet the land is rich in natural resources, and only the politicians are obscenely wealthy." So... while we are not involved in political matters ourselves, it does seem to be a healthy movement that is trying to take root, and I pray for any societal shaking to serve as tilling the earth for the seeds of the gospel to take root and flourish.

We continue to be involved in the church school and enjoying our daughter as she continually learns new things! Thank you all for your interest and care.