WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2006

Greetings from Mongolia,

It is Wednesday here in Bulgan. We’re keeping busy and the meetings continue to go well.

Several of the Australians who have been working here on the church and the pastor’s home have come back from a few days in Ulaanbaatar so we’re back up to a pretty good sized work crew of 15 or so. Several of the crew leave tomorrow and more leave on Friday, but some will stay around to finish up the loose ends.

Yesterday afternoon there was a meeting with the government officials where the final inspection and occupancy permit would be finalized. The meeting was supposed to be over well before our 6 p.m. starting time for the evangelistic meetings, but unfortunately was not. Since the inspection meeting was set up in the mothers’ room, we were able to stay on schedule and the city fathers/mothers got to enjoy the Jesus DVD, the Health Talk by Deborah and part of my sermon through the glassless windows between the two rooms. At 6:25 p.m. it was apparent we were not going to get our projector table back since it was being used as a dining table, so it was time to improvise. I found a bucket and stacked it on top of my roller case I’ve been using to cart the equipment back and forth. With the video project perched on the bucket, we got underway. The DVD player and the computer had to remain on the front pew, but everything worked fine.

Another special challenge was the fact that our main interpreter was involved in the meeting with the city officials so I did not have my interpreter available. No worries, God worked things out ahead of time. A couple days ago, a young high school student asked for a meeting. It seems she had been an exchange student, living in Arizona for a year and wanted to practice her English. She asked if she could interpret for me. I invited her to join us for the afternoon of visiting homes where she did a good job of interpreting for most of the visits. As she was about to leave, she informed me that she had told her friends that she was going to interpret for part of the meeting that night. So I said, great, you can interpret for the Health Talk. She went over the notes and did a wonderful job – with four or five of her friends in the audience. The Health Talk was nearly done and my interpreter was still very much involved with the other meeting. So I ask our student interpreter if she could stay on until the regular person came and she agreed. So she ended up interpreting for about a fourth of the sermon! God had everything already worked out.

Each evening Deborah and Donalea run a children’s program, complete with Power Point and crafts. The kids are having a grand time and it would seem so are the Deborah and her mom. We’ve had around 30 children each night.

In the adult section, the attendance has been a bit irregular, but seems to be around 30-40, including a good number of visitors.

As I walked back from lunch a few minutes ago, I was treated to snow flakes gently falling to the ground. It has been quite comfortable here so far, but in the last day or so has turned much cooler. We don’t have heat in the hotel rooms (except a few portable heaters) but the rooms have been around 60 degrees in spite of this. I suspect this will change as the weather turns colder.

Blessings and thanks for keeping us in your prayers.

Mike

PS This did not go out on Wednesday as hoped so I’ll try again today (Thursday). During the night, rain turned to snow and we were greeted with several inches of fresh snow!