In our last email, we greeted you from Beijing and now we have the awesome privilege of greeting you from UlaanBaatar, Mongolia! God has been incredibly faithful in answering both your and our prayers on this entire outreach. Not only did we have safety while traveling, but more importantly, God provided numerous divine appointments along the 41 hours of traveling from Beijing to UB.
Our first leg of the journey began with a taxi to the bus station, and a 12 hour bus ride from Beijing to Erlian. God crossed our path with an American named Mark with whom we were able to share our purpose in Asia and he helped us greatly in our traveling with his fluent Chinese! We then piled 11 people into a Russian Jeep and drove across the Chinese and Mongolian border. After buying our train tickets on the other side, 12 hours of waiting in Zamin-Ud, playing a few games of pool with the local Mongolians, and prayer walking around the town, we bumped into a guy I saw roaming the alleyways of China our first night in Beijing.
Just five minutes into our conversation, God immediately opened the door for me to share the Gospel with our new friend Sanjis, a wandering traveler from Sri Lanka. We bought our train tickets early morning and Sanjis bought his a half hour before departure, yet his ticket miraculously placed him in our train car in our very compartment amidst the hundreds of Mongolians who bought their ticket in between us. So for the next 16 hours on the old rickety Tran-Siberian Railway to UlaanBaatar, we all had a chance to speak into his life. We also met Baayra, a Mongolian who spoke perfect English, and have been able to meet up with him again for dinner last night in UB and share our purpose here. God has provided divine appointments and most assuredly planted seeds in them through us. Now we continue to lift them up to God asking Him to grow those seeds into a harvest of salvation through prayers of intercession. So please join us in intercession for the many people God has placed in front of us.
So after the 16 hours in a train compartment with no open windows and five smelly traveling feet and a midnight dust storm that filled the train with dust, we were greeted with an hour’s wait in UB…with cold wind and snow flurries! Yet God’s faithfulness continued as we went out to eat at a little Mongolian restaurant the following day. On our way in, we passed two little orphaned children maybe 4 and 6 years old trying to sell candy to buy bread to feed their empty stomachs. We ordered our food inside and asked the waitress as best we could to take the fifth plate to the children. Misunderstanding, she brought the food to us and we pointed to the children. Bewildered that we would do such a thing, she brought the food to them as every eye in the restaurant, including the cooks, watched their two faces illuminate with joy as they received the food. God’s love was definitely evident throughout the room. As we finished our meal, we looked down to find two dirty hands reach up to our table with tiny little hard candies for each one of us. We were humbled as we watched these orphaned Mongolians who knew no English give what little they had as their thank you to us! The next day, as we read through our DTS prayer journal together, we flipped the page to our very first day of prayer for Mongolia as a team. It read “Father God, please provide opportunities to help lost and orphaned children in Mongolia in a very practical way.” So in God’s faithfulness, He answered our first prayer as a team on our first official day in Mongolia…God is so good!
I know this email is getting long, but God is doing so many things here that I can’t help but share. Over the weekend, God provided the absolutely awesome opportunity to camp out in the Mongolian wilderness with 16 other missionary kids and their dads. We drove three Landcruisers out to a remote forest, set up tents, made a campfire, and played games into the late hours of the snowy night. As we sat around the campfire for morning devotions, I spoke on our identity IN Christ, the authority we have because of our position in Christ, and the righteousness we now live in because of Christ. It led into great discussion as we built new friendships and scheduled other times to spend with them. After an incredibly fantabulous sunrise our third day, watching the sun enlighten the vibrant yellow fall trees, and standing in awe as two dozen horses galloped by with a Mongolian rider leading them, we wholeheartedly jumped back into our time in the city.
We have been helping teach English at the Mongolian University and speaking into their lives weekly. We have all had opportunities to share about creation, Biblical foundations, family, and even speak into God’s calling for them. Lucas was able to share on trusting in God with some missionary kids, and Andy is sharing his testimony at a Mongolian men’s group tonight. Doors have also opened to spend a lot of time with younger children in the coming days. God has spoken clearly that He would like us to trust Him as He leads us into the Mongolian countryside traveling from ger (yurt) to ger. Please be praying for an affordable and reliable jeep to take us across the rough terrain for 2+ weeks, a driver, and a translator. As of now, we still have at least another week in UB, so we will keep you updated on more prayer requests as our time in the countryside approaches.
I apologize for the lengthiness of this update, but if you’ve read thus far, we would love to hear from you. Thank you for all of your prayers and support; God is indeed listening and answering on a daily basis here.
Once again from 5 guys fulfilling the Great Commission in Mongolia,
Steve, Zach, Andy, Lucas, and Jesus :-)
Zach Hooley
hooley4christ@mac.com
www.hooley4christ.com
208-315-4707
B-DTS - Backpacker's Discipleship Training School
SABS - School of Applied Biblical Studies
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