Coming into Mongolia, I really didn’t know what to expect. We were going to be the first World Race squad in this country, so all our missionary contacts were new. Needless to say, I guess nobody knew what to expect on either side. Team Nautilus was placed with the nomadic cell group belonging to the Church of All Nations planted in the capitol city, Ulan Bator. After a few days of orientation, we were sent off to the countryside, a landscape teeming with rolling hills and rushing rivers. We set up our tents and stayed with the nomadic pastor and his family on the property they were in for the summer season grazing their livestock – sheep, goats, horses, and cattle.
The majority of our ministry this month consisted of loving, encouraging, and serving the small community of Mongolian and Kazakh believers. This included a variety of things – cutting down logs for firewood, praying, churning horse milk, shoveling manure in the sheep pen, sharing our testimonies, cooking, cleaning, chopping wood, and babysitting. We were later told that the summer season is always one of the busiest months in the countryside, so it was a huge blessing for a team of people to chip in.
On one of the first few days, we traveled to a small, isolated nomadic community and prayed for two families. One family had an elderly grandmother who had pain in her legs due to her diabetes, and we had the opportunity to pray and encourage her. The other family was an elderly couple who had recently converted to Christianity, but still had Buddhist idols in their home. I had the chance to share my testimony with them about how the Father’s love sets us free from our performance of good works. It really resonated with them, and they asked for prayer in the alcoholism within their family. Our hope is that in due time, as Christ reveals more of His love, power, and glory to them, the spiritual and physical idols in their home will fall down.
For a period of about five days after that, we didn’t have a translator and our pastor barely spoke any English. Nevertheless, we felt extremely welcomed and slowly became a part of their lives. In this culture, you know you’re being treated like family when people begin asking you to help and entrusting you with the daily chores, so once we started working alongside them, we knew where we stood. There were even two days when the pastor and his wife left for a wedding, and trusted us to watch and cook for his kids! Around this time, our translator also arrived. She was a huge blessing (literally, her name meant “blessing”), and once she rolled in, we were able to share each of our testimonies and communicate any prayers and words of encouragement to the families we were with. Bonds deepened, and we began to hear the stories of what God had done in their lives to compel them to surrender their lives to Him in worship. .
Above: Our amazing translator!
The end of the month eventually arrived. Leaving our host family was more difficult than we had imagined. Nevertheless, we had the utmost peace and reassurance that the faithfulness of the Lord would endure through the Mongolian valley through the seasons. Through the continual prayer of the saints, we join in this spiritual work even as we are physically away.
Above: Church of All Nations Contacts and Host Family
Every morning in Mongolia, we began with this prayer of different verses compiled by our squad. I end with this prayer here.
Father, we thank you that thought the grass withers and the flowers fall, your word endures forever. Therefore, we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away; inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal. So may we pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. May we fight the good fight of the race and take hold of the eternal life to which you have called us to as the body of Christ. For we are joined and held together by every supporting ligament that grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. And we cry out to you that you may soften the hearts of those around us so that they may know the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. May we bring you glory on earth by finishing the work that you have given us to do as we consider our loves worth nothing to us. Our only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given us – the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace (Isaiah 40:8, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 1 Timothy 6:11-12, Ephesians 4:16, John 17:3-4, Acts 20:24).
