When you are walking around the city of Ulaan Baatar, you dodge cars and carefully step around open man holes, drunk people sprawled out, chopped off animal heads, and many other things. It takes longer to do anything here. You can't just go to your nearest Wal-mart. A lot of times when we make plans to meet with someone, they may just not come because something came up, or they are 30min to an hour late. And they don't always let you know about these things either. It is frustrating sometimes. For a city, crime is not bad at all; the only real reason that you try and go out by pairs, at least, is because of the attentiveness that you need while getting around. One of the biggest crimes is theft, but you don't have to worry about your safety, many people are just poor and think that stealing is the solution. Sakhiya, a Mongolian friend that used to work for the Character Training Institute (CTI), came over for dinner one night. We had a really good time talking and getting to know more about the Mongolian culture. She is 22 years 
old. We started talking about height. I am surprised at how tall some of the Mongolian people are and Sakhiya said that she was surprised at how young some Americans were when we stopped growing taller. Sakhiya said that it is the same way with the people that live in Ulaan Baatar city, they stop growing at a young age, but for the Mongolians who live in the countryside, they grow until they are about 25 years old, men and women. I had noticed that I seem to be on the short side here. :-) Erin and I helped with translation work on our Attentiveness overlays. They needed to be updated. I helped with back translating with Ideree, one of our Mongolian staff. Erin helped with re-wording some of the overlays in English and suggesting helpful changes in the English. When all the English changes were done they were passed on to me and I helped with making sure Ideree understood the meaning and got the closest and best translation into Mongolian. We are now finished with Attentiveness and are starting on the Obedience overlays. On our last day at Mongolian International University (MIU) we gave the Final Exam for our classes. How the Seniors have done in our class is a big deciding factor on their final graduation grade. We went early that morning to set up the chairs far apart from each other to prevent some cheating. We still had 8 people that we caught cheating and had to fail on the test as well as on the semester. I am sure there was a lot more cheating just from looking at their tests and grading them later. We think that maybe our test got out when we had it printed at the school. But one good thing is that we had 2 slightly different tests, so it was easy to tell the ones that had only seen one of the tests because they started answering the test with the answers to the other. There are some amazing things that these students tried to get away with. One guy had written notes on a piece of paper with invisible ink, and then the pen that he was using had one of those black light flash lights on the end so that when he thought we where not looking he flashed it on to see his "invisible" notes. Some people had notes that were printed so small that I could hardly read them, they put them on the smallest pieces of paper and tucked them wherever they thought we could not see or held them in their palm. One girl wrote some notes on her little pencil bag. We hoped that the training on Truthfulness would have impacted them, but I guess not all got the point. Some though, really understood the character qualities that we were teaching, and applied them to their life, and that was an encouragement. One night when I was brushing my teeth I had an experience that I don't think I have ever had before. You know that not very pleasant sensation that you feel when you bite down on a really cold Popsicle? It feels like freezer burn or something. Well I got that when I was brushing my teeth! The water was so cold, and I started brushing my teeth, it hurt! :-/ I can hardly believe how cold water can get before it freezes. Holy Way Church had a retreat in Guchert, a place in the country side, for a few days. Erin and I stayed over night one of the nights. W ally and Jeannie Stephenson , a missionary couple from Canada spoke at the retreat on Helping Hurting People, and how to have a Godly family. Wally is a pastor who's wife and daughter died in 1993, through that, he started writing a book called "Helping Hurting People". Jeannie, a single lady that was a missionary to Bangladesh, was given the Wally's book to Edit. In 1996 they were married. Now they go all over the world giving seminars in different countries. It was wonderful getting to know them and learn from there experiences. There was a girl from Singapore at the retreat and she pointed out to me that the traditional way for a Mongolian person to point to something is not with their fingers or using their arms, but to use their lips! They sort of stick them out more and move their head pointing their lips at what they want to point at. A man did that right in front of us! On Sunday morning I took the opportunity after the church service and during testimony time to give a testimony, and encourage, the young people especially, on obeying and honoring their parents. It went with what Jeannie had talked about on Saturday. The Lord laid it on my heart to share about the blessings of obedience. This was a chance for me to communicate with all the young ladies that I had been getting to know through a translator. One girl would take me by the arm and drag me places, but she could not really speak to me. She told me in what little words she knew, something like, we will be friends forever and then started singing the Titanic song to me! J (I have never seen the Titanic, but I have heard the theme song), I guess she memorize the words in English. The real reason that Holy Way has a retreat once a year, is for the new believers to have the chance to get baptized. Sunday morning was very cloudy. The wind came and it got even colder, and then it rained. Thankfully the rain eventually stopped and it was not raining for the baptism but I think it was in the 40's for the baptism in the river and still windy. Not quite what you would want. But about 50 people were baptized that day. Some of the very young and the very old though just stood by the river and got a sprinkling baptism. One evening we invited Janelle over to join us for dinner. She is a young Christian Mongolian lady. She seems to be really growing in her faith. The end of last year her 29-year-old brother was murdered. They did not know where he was for a while, but then later they found him floating in the river with what looked like stab marks all over him from a knife. Janelle said that her small hometown is rich in gold, it is a gold mining town. And there are a lot of crimes there because of it, and her brother is just one of the victims. She told us some of the things that the Lord has been teaching her from this. How it made her think of the pain that Jesus suffered for us and other things. She said that two of her sisters and her mother tried to commit suicide because of this; they were so sad that they just did not want to live anymore. This was their 'favorite' child and brother, so much so that the parents 'hid' him until he was graduated from High School. They 'hid' him by having him look like a girl. Long hair, and girl clothes. Now that we are done with the school year trainings, we have started character trainings with the Biblical references for an Orphanage called the Children's Place. There is probably about 15 to 20 Christian Mongolian staff that came to our first training. They really seemed to get a lot out of the character lesson, and the American ladies that are in charge of the orphanage were very grateful for the discipleship. They gave us a tour afterward, and we were able to see some of the orphans. There are only infants to toddlers in the orphanage, about 30 children, they try and get them adopted in about a year. They are adorable kids. It was such a blessing to get to hold and play with some of them. Another training that we have just started this summer is training the World Vision staff. We are able to tie in the scripture with our lessons to them as well. It was neat to hear Tim talk about some of the history of CTI with Mongolia. About 6 years ago the Mongolian government invited CTI to come to Mongolia and teach character in their schools and other government offices. Since then we have also received many other opportunities from organizations and church groups to come and disciple and train them as well. This was a wonderful opportunity for CTI. One of the first things that Tim said to the government officials that invited us was "you do know that we are a Christian organization, don't you?" There was silence in the room, and then one of the men spoke up and said, "Yes, we know you are Christian, but we want you to teach our government and schools character without the Bible". Knowing that we needed to comply with the government on the restrictions they gave us, we also realized that we had a great opportunity to be able to be in places that other Christian organizations would not normally be able to get too, or even groups that they would not likely be involved in. And to build relationships with them. Many have come to Christ this way, through seeing Christ in us. Praise the Lord that he can use even our weaknesses and show Himself strong through us. "...My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities , in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong." 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 God really does redeem the time. These are just a few of the things that have been going on and that you can pray for. May the Lord bless you as you seek to serve Him in whatever He has called you to.
old. We started talking about height. I am surprised at how tall some of the Mongolian people are and Sakhiya said that she was surprised at how young some Americans were when we stopped growing taller. Sakhiya said that it is the same way with the people that live in Ulaan Baatar city, they stop growing at a young age, but for the Mongolians who live in the countryside, they grow until they are about 25 years old, men and women. I had noticed that I seem to be on the short side here. :-) Erin and I helped with translation work on our Attentiveness overlays. They needed to be updated. I helped with back translating with Ideree, one of our Mongolian staff. Erin helped with re-wording some of the overlays in English and suggesting helpful changes in the English. When all the English changes were done they were passed on to me and I helped with making sure Ideree understood the meaning and got the closest and best translation into Mongolian. We are now finished with Attentiveness and are starting on the Obedience overlays. On our last day at Mongolian International University (MIU) we gave the Final Exam for our classes. How the Seniors have done in our class is a big deciding factor on their final graduation grade. We went early that morning to set up the chairs far apart from each other to prevent some cheating. We still had 8 people that we caught cheating and had to fail on the test as well as on the semester. I am sure there was a lot more cheating just from looking at their tests and grading them later. We think that maybe our test got out when we had it printed at the school. But one good thing is that we had 2 slightly different tests, so it was easy to tell the ones that had only seen one of the tests because they started answering the test with the answers to the other. There are some amazing things that these students tried to get away with. One guy had written notes on a piece of paper with invisible ink, and then the pen that he was using had one of those black light flash lights on the end so that when he thought we where not looking he flashed it on to see his "invisible" notes. Some people had notes that were printed so small that I could hardly read them, they put them on the smallest pieces of paper and tucked them wherever they thought we could not see or held them in their palm. One girl wrote some notes on her little pencil bag. We hoped that the training on Truthfulness would have impacted them, but I guess not all got the point. Some though, really understood the character qualities that we were teaching, and applied them to their life, and that was an encouragement. One night when I was brushing my teeth I had an experience that I don't think I have ever had before. You know that not very pleasant sensation that you feel when you bite down on a really cold Popsicle? It feels like freezer burn or something. Well I got that when I was brushing my teeth! The water was so cold, and I started brushing my teeth, it hurt! :-/ I can hardly believe how cold water can get before it freezes. Holy Way Church had a retreat in Guchert, a place in the country side, for a few days. Erin and I stayed over night one of the nights. W ally and Jeannie Stephenson , a missionary couple from Canada spoke at the retreat on Helping Hurting People, and how to have a Godly family. Wally is a pastor who's wife and daughter died in 1993, through that, he started writing a book called "Helping Hurting People". Jeannie, a single lady that was a missionary to Bangladesh, was given the Wally's book to Edit. In 1996 they were married. Now they go all over the world giving seminars in different countries. It was wonderful getting to know them and learn from there experiences. There was a girl from Singapore at the retreat and she pointed out to me that the traditional way for a Mongolian person to point to something is not with their fingers or using their arms, but to use their lips! They sort of stick them out more and move their head pointing their lips at what they want to point at. A man did that right in front of us! On Sunday morning I took the opportunity after the church service and during testimony time to give a testimony, and encourage, the young people especially, on obeying and honoring their parents. It went with what Jeannie had talked about on Saturday. The Lord laid it on my heart to share about the blessings of obedience. This was a chance for me to communicate with all the young ladies that I had been getting to know through a translator. One girl would take me by the arm and drag me places, but she could not really speak to me. She told me in what little words she knew, something like, we will be friends forever and then started singing the Titanic song to me! J (I have never seen the Titanic, but I have heard the theme song), I guess she memorize the words in English. The real reason that Holy Way has a retreat once a year, is for the new believers to have the chance to get baptized. Sunday morning was very cloudy. The wind came and it got even colder, and then it rained. Thankfully the rain eventually stopped and it was not raining for the baptism but I think it was in the 40's for the baptism in the river and still windy. Not quite what you would want. But about 50 people were baptized that day. Some of the very young and the very old though just stood by the river and got a sprinkling baptism. One evening we invited Janelle over to join us for dinner. She is a young Christian Mongolian lady. She seems to be really growing in her faith. The end of last year her 29-year-old brother was murdered. They did not know where he was for a while, but then later they found him floating in the river with what looked like stab marks all over him from a knife. Janelle said that her small hometown is rich in gold, it is a gold mining town. And there are a lot of crimes there because of it, and her brother is just one of the victims. She told us some of the things that the Lord has been teaching her from this. How it made her think of the pain that Jesus suffered for us and other things. She said that two of her sisters and her mother tried to commit suicide because of this; they were so sad that they just did not want to live anymore. This was their 'favorite' child and brother, so much so that the parents 'hid' him until he was graduated from High School. They 'hid' him by having him look like a girl. Long hair, and girl clothes. Now that we are done with the school year trainings, we have started character trainings with the Biblical references for an Orphanage called the Children's Place. There is probably about 15 to 20 Christian Mongolian staff that came to our first training. They really seemed to get a lot out of the character lesson, and the American ladies that are in charge of the orphanage were very grateful for the discipleship. They gave us a tour afterward, and we were able to see some of the orphans. There are only infants to toddlers in the orphanage, about 30 children, they try and get them adopted in about a year. They are adorable kids. It was such a blessing to get to hold and play with some of them. Another training that we have just started this summer is training the World Vision staff. We are able to tie in the scripture with our lessons to them as well. It was neat to hear Tim talk about some of the history of CTI with Mongolia. About 6 years ago the Mongolian government invited CTI to come to Mongolia and teach character in their schools and other government offices. Since then we have also received many other opportunities from organizations and church groups to come and disciple and train them as well. This was a wonderful opportunity for CTI. One of the first things that Tim said to the government officials that invited us was "you do know that we are a Christian organization, don't you?" There was silence in the room, and then one of the men spoke up and said, "Yes, we know you are Christian, but we want you to teach our government and schools character without the Bible". Knowing that we needed to comply with the government on the restrictions they gave us, we also realized that we had a great opportunity to be able to be in places that other Christian organizations would not normally be able to get too, or even groups that they would not likely be involved in. And to build relationships with them. Many have come to Christ this way, through seeing Christ in us. Praise the Lord that he can use even our weaknesses and show Himself strong through us. "...My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities , in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong." 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 God really does redeem the time. These are just a few of the things that have been going on and that you can pray for. May the Lord bless you as you seek to serve Him in whatever He has called you to.
