Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia May 6, 06

Hello to all from Ulaan Baatar Mongolia! Erika and I arrived here safe and sound early on the morning of May 6th. The Lord has been working in many ways in the lives of the people of Mongolia.My first impression is that the people of Mongolia look a lot like Chinese people. But I have been told that it seems they act more like Russians in their culture. As I have been here though, I think both the Chinese and Russians have some of the same types of cultures, because of being communist countries. Supposedly, in Mongolia, communism has fallen, but in some ways it is still here, because it has not been long since it was gone, and there is still a lot of influences of the way things were.Since Mongolia is on the border of China and Russia it does have a lot of Chinese and Russian people as well. Mongolians though tend to look up to the Russians and seem to like them better in a lot of ways, and that is why, I guess, they live more like the Russians. They do have some of there “own? culture too J. They really look up to Chingas Khan, and some even worship him. The time of Chingas Khan is looked upon, as probably the best time for Mongolia, they seem to always look back on that time. I hope that they will learn to look forward.

First we went to MIU (Mongolian International University), and observed the Character and English classes. There will only be one more class with this group next Saturday, but it is nice to see the types of things we are going to be teaching and how it is being taught. Every weekday, whoever is at CTI, gets together at about 12:30 to share praises and prayer requests and then we pray together. It is a nice time to get to know what all the different parts of the team are doing. On May 22nd the Waller family, all 11 of them, are leaving Mongolia. We don't know if they are coming back or not, but they have been such a help to the team. When they leave, CTI is going to have to cut back on the teaching and different ministries that they have, because there just won't be enough people to do everything.