Please continue to pray that Teresa & the kids new passports arrive this week (preferably before Wednesday our time.)
Last week had some good highlights & here they are:
Teresa each week meets with English speaking Mongolian Christian women for a Bible study. It is a really great time for Teresa to share her life & for the Mongolian women to share their lives together studying God's Word. It's a place where they can learn, cry, pray & encourage each other weekly.
Thursday mornings another YWAMer, a great Mongolian pastor & I visit the new Teen Challenge in Mongolia. We visit to teach a Bible Study to the 9 Mongolian men that live on their little yard. The awesome thing is that it's run by Russian Christians. Aндре (Andre) who is there now living & leading the Mongolian men going through Teen Challenge's alcohol recovery program is an amazing guy. Aндре is such a typical Russian man. When we first arrived there was no smile, a short Здравствуйте (hi in Russian) & then he left.
Thursday's Aндре & the men fast only drinking water, fruit juice & tea for the day. After our Bible study we joined all the men & Aндре for a cup of fruit juice. It was fun to get to know more about the guys around the table in a more relaxed setting. The funny thing is that before I left I wanted to make Aндре smile. So I spoke a little bit in the русский (Russian) that I do know. Then I told him that my mum's family is українка (Ukrainian.) The smile on his face was the biggest I think i have ever seen on a Russians face before. He then gave me a hug & said "see you next time."
As we were leaving Aндре shared with us that there is another Russian man trying to come this summer & Russian family that wants to come in a years time. They want to be able to help both Mongolian men & women alcoholics. Please pray for Aндре & the other Russians that want to come build this ministry to alcoholic Mongolians.
Last Saturday as we were driving up the hill to the community centre our awesome Mongolian kids were running up the street to try & beat us in a taxi. Now that the weather is warm again our numbers are back to the way they were in the Fall (15-20 kids.) Kiel & Esme say that craft class at the centre is always a highlight of their weeks. While Kiel, Esme & the 2 craft teachers we teaching craft class I started a basic computer class. My 2 students are 2 young men that are living in a small 1 room home in the emergency fence our community centre has. Both these guys had to leave a Mongolian government orphanage because they were university age.
For my birthday Teresa, Aunt Jenna & the kids took me to an Asian Hotpot restaurant. It was awesome & we all enjoyed using our chop sticks. Kiel took me out to a Korean cafe for lunch on Monday. He used his allowance money that he had saved for over a month. Today, Esme took me out to a Mongolian restaurant for lunch also using her allowance that she had saved for over a month. This really blessed me deeply. Our kids gladly spend their small allowance money on others regularly. They always bring some of their allowance each week to give to church. They enjoy blessing others instead of themselves. Teresa & I tell them is ok every once in a while to save for & buy themselves something nice.
At
the beginning of the year I installed Linux on all the computers because
they all came with illegal copies of Windows. I knew that we could not
afford to buy all new copies of Windows & prayed that God would
provide some way, some how legal copies of Windows. I did not ask
anyone, just prayed feeling that was all I was to do. Eight months (longer then most of us want to wait) later
a large foreign organization was changing one section of their office
computers & called asking us to take what they had for free. They gave
us 4 old computers, 10 legal copies of Windows XP & 20 legal copies of Office 2003. God answered my prayer & over the past couple of weeks I have been busy reprogramming all the computers at the centre with all legal Windows software.