To start please pray for the new requests I have posted on our prayer list (right side of the blog.)
April 9th 2009 we landed in Mongolia & April 9th 2010 has come & gone. In some ways it is hard to believe that we have been living here for a year & in other ways it seems we have been here for 10 years.
These past couple of weeks have been very busy. The Easter weekend was a great time for us. It started with us having language classes as normal on good Friday. I talked to one of my language instructors as well as some other Mongolians & they had no idea what good Friday was. I had the privilege of leading communion during JCS's good Friday service in the evening. The service was amazing & God spoke to me in a great way.
Saturday we went over to the Mill's apartment to paint Ukrainian Easter eggs. We all had fun painting eggs together, talking about Ukrainian traditions before Christianity came to the Ukraine & how they kept some of those traditions after Christianity was established (some Christians are encouraging Mongolians to leave all their traditions saying they are not of God which is discouraging.) We also talked about the Ukrainian traditions we grew up with & how much fun they were. It was quite funny because the kids only lasted one egg & during the end our our time it was only the Mill's teenage children & the adults left still painting their eggs.
Sunday morning the kids woke up to some new Spring clothes, a Kinder egg hunt (the only chocolate eggs you can find here) & a small gift. After church (4-6pm here) we invited 3 single missionaries up for supper. We all enjoyed a great home cooked meal, put the kids into bed & finished visiting together. Monday started with Esme coming to my Mongolian language class for the first hour & a half. While on break I took Esme over to a new friends place to play, Then I returned to finish my language class as normal. Teresa cooked a home made roast chicken dinner. She was able to find a small 2 kg frozen chicken to cook. She made homemade stuffing (thank-you family for sending the spices we needed), sweet potato casserole, mashed potato's, boiled carrots & gravy. We invited our very special Aunt Jenna as well as our friends Ian & Elizabeth. It was a great meal, the kids had fun & so did we.
The rest of the week was great for the kids. They had a good couple of weeks of home schooling & a good gym class. However, Kiel has been very board. He needs to be challenged more, is very social & only has one friend that lives close to us. In a couple of months Kiel's friend with his family will be going to the US & then returning/moving to the countryside (12 hours away.) Teresa & I have been praying & God has said for us to do what we think Kiel needs & He would take care of the extra support we need. Please pray for this. We will be looking at the information & making plans for him to attend a private school here in Ulaanbaatar that uses Canadian curriculum.
Mongolian language classes for both Teresa & I have been going well. Please continue to pray for us. We have learned that when it comes to language study you are your own worst enemy. Many times when you have an encouraging Mongolian conversation you talk to someone else 5 minutes later, don't understand a word & can't think of the words needed for the conversation. Satan uses discouragement to try to stop you from learning & talking to locals (building relationships.)
Teresa has been helping (giving ideas) to some missionaries that are starting a student cafe & others are moving to a new office. I have been working on PC's. I just finished building another desktop PC for a Mongolian family (non-Christian family we have a good relationship with) that could not afford one, working on a couple of missionaries PC's that have been giving them problems as well as repairing some wireless networks that were tampered with. I find doing a PC fun, but will have to stop taking anymore because this week was very tiring.
God has been giving me (Matt) His heart for the poor & dieing in Ulaanbaatar. These are the people I would like to serve after my language classes are finished. Please pray for this.
Thank-you all for your support (prayers/giving) & patience as we learn Mongolian for these first 2 years here.