Good Mongolian hymnbooks

Those of you who live in an English speaking country, you may not realize how much of a blessing it is to have good, God-honoring, flesh-mortifying music. Christianity has only been re-introduced into Mongolia in the last fifteen years which means that almost all of the "Christian" songs used in Mongolia are contemporary songs whose styles closely follow contemporary secular music styles.

We have cobbled together the list of songs that we use from a Mongolian Christian song book only using those whose styles are God-honoring, translated some songs and choruses ourselves, and borrowed others translated by another independent Baptist missionary. Still, in all, we only had some fifty songs or so to work with. Imagine a hymn book with only fifty songs in it.

Recently I heard that the local Christian book store which is similar in many ways to the typical "Christian" book store in the Northwest had some new hymnbooks. I was not expecting much but hoping to add a few more songs to our makeshift list. So I was surprised when I went in and found a hymnbook with 271 songs. Some were translated from Japanese and some from Korean but a majority were songs I had song since I was a child that were not available to us previously, songs such as "It Is Well With My Soul" and "My Jesus I Love Thee." I was thrilled! When I asked the storekeeper how much the hymnbook cost, she said that they were not for sale. She gave me a number to call and told me that I would have to deal with the publisher directly.

I gave the number to a Mongolian friend who dealt with the publisher for me. It turns out that they were giving out hymnbooks for free. They were excited that we showed any interest and said that we were the first group to contact them. Because they published a limited amount they were only able to give us three books; however, they also gave us PDF files with permission to make as many copies as we needed. Praise the Lord for His provision!