TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2006
Greetings from Mongolia,
It is Tuesday afternoon here in sunny Mongolia. The weather has been warm and comfortable, the meetings are going well and the apartment construction is also to the place where the Global Mission pioneer and his family will move in today! Time is going all too quickly here and before we know it we’ll be on our way back home!
Today we expect to receive by taxi from Ulaanbaatar, three heating elements that we can plug into 220 volts and hang in the baptistery to hopefully warm up the water for a baptism on Sabbath. Along with the heaters, we will receive a pump to empty the baptistery once we’re done using it. Most major items have to be brought in from the capital city, although we can find some things here.
Each evening a bunch of first-timers show up. In spite of what seems like awkward timing, the folk keep coming. Last evening, a contingent of youth showed up for the first time. They were invited by a young man who is gearing up to do a Youth Alive program in the local schools here. When I asked who was here for the first time last evening, quite a few people raised their hands. The topic was baptism! We did a bit of review of the earlier sessions and moved ahead as planned (God’s planning). We had prepared decision cards in the Mongolian language which were passed out at the end of the meeting. In looking through the cards this morning, it seems more than 20 have checked the boxes for becoming a part of God’s people through baptism or profession of faith. Naturally many of these will be people the local folk will follow up with, but we plan to start a baptismal class this evening just the same.
Regarding those who were in the accident on Friday, I’m happy to report that the Peter and Nerida Koolik were able to take their flight home to Australia as planned. The man most seriously injured (another Peter) had surgery yesterday to have a plate or two put in to secure the broken bones. He is doing well. The other Ukrainian couple are staying by to help with hospital care. We thank God that things were not worse. Today the police officers will hopefully complete their investigation which is required for insurance purposes. We hope and pray that this will go well.
Last evening after the meetings, we laid carpet until nearly midnight and then finished up the clothes bar in the main bedroom closet. It is always interesting trying to make do with what is on hand. For the bar, we used a spare piece of steel re-bar and slide a couple of metal mop handles over the re-bar to make a reasonable clothes rod. It will work just fine and doesn’t look all that bad either. The Global Mission couple are now quite accomplished in carpet laying as they did quite a lot of the cutting too.
Your prayers are certainly appreciated.
All the best,
Mike
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