Enkhee and Bayambaa's salvation testimony

This actually occured about two years ago now, but I was recently asked for the story. It was such a blessing to remember the details of their salvation testimony that I thought I would share them with you all, the readers of my blog. I trust that you will enjoy reading this true story.

It was Ganpurev and Ulzee who introduced me to Enkhee and Bayambaa. Enkhee is Ulzee’s older brother and Bayambaa is Enkhee’s wife. They have three children: Soyoloo, Mongonoo, and Bombog. One reason that Ganpurev and Ulzee introduced me to Enkhee and Bayambaa is that they had a burden for them to be saved. But I had difficulty visiting Enkhee and Bayambaa because they both worked seven days a week. Finding a good time to visit often proved troublesome. On top of that the whole family seemed dysfunctional to me. Often when I arrived, Bayambaa, the wife, would be scolding her husband about something. Or Enkhee, the husband, would be tacitly approving of the children’s disobedience to their mother. On several occasions when I visited Enkhee was drunk. Still, I tried to visit as often as I could.

At one point I heard that Bayambaa was in the hospital, something about her liver or kidneys bothering her. Now, Mongolians go to the hospital for much more minor things than Americans do. In fact, occasionally a Mongolian will say something like, “I’ve not been feeling well. I think I’ll lie in the hospital for 10 days and have some injections.” So the fact that someone is in the hospital does not mean that they are seriously ill or in any danger of dying.

I took the opportunity to go with Ganpurev and Ulzee to visit her while she was in the hospital. I was not really certain what to say but know that my visit meant a lot to the family. Not long after, Mongonoo and Bombog began to come to Kristie’s Sunday school class. Since our goal is to reach the whole family, not just the children, I redoubled my efforts to visit them.

Often when I would visit, Enkhee would pick up a newspaper or stare at the television as if he were ignoring me. But his sister, Ulzee, assured me that he was not ignoring me, he just is not very sociable. Still, it was difficult to visit their house only to seemingly be ignored. I took the opportunities when I visited their home to speak to them about Biblical truth. We talked about the true Creator God and that all the other gods were false gods.

We talked about what sin is. When I pointed out that everyone had sinned, Bayambaa quickly agreed, “Oh yes, everyone is a sinner.” But instead of meaning that as a problem, she meant it as an excuse. Of course everyone has sinned. So what? This was the real message of her agreement. So we discussed that sin is an offense against a holy God and that we must have forgiveness in order to enjoy fellowship with the God Who created us.

I taught that Jesus was the perfect God-Man, fully God and fully man. I also taught that his death on the cross paid the penalty for our sins and enabled us to obtain God’s forgiveness for the sins that we had committed against Him. It often seemed as if I were talking to people who were simply not interested. Finally a day came when Enkhee had to leave Mongolia and travel to China for business and was gone over a month. My visits and our Bible lessons suddenly stopped.

I remember that it was on Easter evening that Enkhee called me about eight o’clock. “I’m back from China,” he said, “Can you come to my house tonight?” At the time I had guests at my house but told him that I would come over as soon as possible. My guests left about nine; and not long after, I left for Enkhee’s house. I was there until nearly midnight. It was the start to new Bible lessons reviewing the same things I had taught before.

One night about a month later when I visited, Bayambaa said to me suddenly, “I believe in Jesus.”

Next to me was the family “god shelf” with pictures and idols of various deities, pictures of the Dalai Lama, and some incense. I gestured to the god shelf as I asked, “If you really believe in Jesus, what about these gods? I have taught you that there is only one true God and that all these gods are false. If you truly ‘believe Jesus’ then you would get rid of these false gods.”

“What should I do with them?” she asked, absent-mindedly poking at the fire in her cast-iron stove with a stick.

“Throw them in the fire and burn them.” I said. She quickly closed the door to the stove and proceeded to tell me all the reasons that she could not burn her idols. It was revealing to me that although people say that they believe Jesus, the truth can be seen in their actions.

I realized that the greatest hindrance to saving faith in Jesus Christ was the gods that they were already worshiping. Concerned that I was not communicating well enough with them, I took Ganpurev over to their house. On the way over, I explained to Ganpurev that I thought that their most serious problem was that they still clung to their old gods. I kept thinking of the verse in I Thessalonians, “how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” I did not want them to merely say, “I believe in Jesus,” pray a prayer with me, and add a picture of Jesus to their god shelf (I have been asked before for a picture of Jesus so that they can add it to their god shelf). I wanted their lives to reflect the change that the Holy Spirit brings when He truly quickens a life.

During our visit, Ganpurev, who is only a young Christian, was very insightful in his comments to them. He taught them from Deuteronomy 10:17: “For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God.” He pointed out that the God of the Bible was not even of the same rank as these gods that were on their god shelf. He was God over those gods. It was an interesting observation coming from one who had grown up in a polytheistic culture.

Then Bayambaa suggested that they could give the pictures and idols away to others instead of burning them. Though I did not immediately see the significance of this idea, Ganpurev quickly grasped its significance and responded, “Why would you want to avoid burning your false gods? They’re not real. They can’t hurt you. If you really understood what we are teaching about the true God, you would realize that He is more powerful than these gods [pointing to the god shelf] and that He can protect you. You don’t want to burn these gods because you’re scared of them.”

Enkhee and Bayambaa did not have much to say to that and our lessons ended again.

Several weeks later on a Sunday, Enkhee and Bayambaa unexpectedly showed up at Ganpurev’s ger, a circular tent made of felt and canvas pulled over a wooden framework. Gers are a very common living situation for Mongolian families. Ganpurev was not home and looking for Ganpurev, they called me. I did not know where Ganpurev was but told them to wait at Ganpurev’s house because I was coming to meet them.

Ganpurev arrived home not long after I arrived. Ganpurev and I, Enkhee and Bayambaa joined now by Ulzee continued our conversation about God, Jesus Christ, sin, and repentance for several hours. At the end of our conversation, Enkhee and Bayambaa announced, “We’re going to go home and burn our gods!”

Now, you must understand that Mongolians often promise to do things that they do not really intend to do. So when they said this, I did not immediately jump up and down with joy because I wanted to see if they truly went home and threw their gods in the fire. But something about their attitude seemed different.

I went home and told my wife, “I think Enkhee and Bayambaa are genuinely saved.”

Her question was, “Did you pray with them?”

“No,” I replied, “But they said that they were going to go home and burn their gods. If they do go home and burn their gods, we’ll know that they are truly saved!”

On Wednesday, Bayambaa called Ulzee and said, “We went home Sunday night and threw all our gods in the fire! Now three days later, we are still so happy and have no regrets [about throwing our gods in the fire].”

When I heard the news from Ulzee, I was so happy! Here was the Holy Spirit changing lives.

That next week, Enkhee and Bayambaa asked me to bring my whole family and to come over to visit to their house. I had been explaining to Kristie how anti-social Enkhee often was and how dysfunctional the entire family seemed to be. But our visit was so pleasant and Enkhee was so friendly and attentive that as we were driving away, my wife asked me, “Are you sure you were telling me about the same family?”

“Yes, but isn’t it amazing the way that the Holy Spirit is already changing them?!”

As an epilogue, several months later, I was at their house teaching a Bible lesson from Psalm 139 about how well God knows us and protects us. I had asked a question that neither Enkhee nor Bayambaa seemed to be able to answer when Soyoloo, their teenage daughter, spoke up and gave an impressive answer.

“So you’re interested in the Bible too. Are you a Christian then?” I asked Soyoloo.

“Of course, I’m a Christian. When we threw those false gods into the fire, it was a family decision,” was her basic response. It reminded me of the Philippian jailer in Acts 16 of whom it was said, “believing in God with all his house.”

This story really gets interesting when you hear the rest of the story.

You recall that I had been teaching about the Bible, God, Jesus, sin, and repentance for several months and how uninterested the family seemed to be. However, they continued to send their two children to Kristie’s Sunday school class. Several months before Enkhee and Bayambaa burned their gods, Kristie had asked some of our prayer partners at Westgate Baptist Church to join with us in prayer for the children in her Sunday school class. It was decided that families would adopt children and pray for them by name. To encourage them in prayer, Kristie sent pictures of the children to the families that had agreed to pray for them.

In Oregon, the Ojala family agreed to pray each day by name for Mongonoo and Bombog and received a picture of the two children. After several months of prayer, their oldest daughter Mia, a young lady of about twenty, felt personally impressed not only to pray for Mongonoo and Bombog but also for their parents to be saved. We only found out later that the week that Mia began to pray for their parents to be saved was the very same week that Enkhee and his family burned their gods. What wonderful news to give the Ojala family as they asked about the spiritual condition of the parents of the children for whom they had been praying.

It was also a vivid reminder that your prayers really do have an impact on our ministry. Even though the Ojalas are thousands of miles away, the God of heaven Whom we serve took those prayers and drew a Mongolian family to Himself. Never forget that your prayers enable our ministry.