Deans' weekly update

Kristie and I had a wonderful trip to the United States. The conference was enjoyable, our visits with churches refreshing, and our time away from Mongolia relaxing. Now back in Mongolia, we are eager to get back to work.

We have a renewed vision and direction for our work in Mongolia. Kristie will concentrate on preparing her Mongolian assistants to completely take over the children's ministries. As before, my focus will be on training men. Specifically, I wish to engage in teaching some Bible institute classes. Ganpurev and I will continue to work on a church constitution. This will prepare the church to be more independent of me and will solidify Ganpurev's Biblical training.

My parents are here with us and should be with us through Christmas. They watched our children while we were away. My father has been working on cabinets for the church's kitchen. They look beautiful. My mother has been helping Kristie with the homeschooling. Their assistance has been invaluable both at home and at church meetings.

Baysaa and Ganchimeg have been going through a difficult time recently. First, Ganchimeg had a difficult labor & delivery. Afterward, damage to her hips and pelvis made walking difficult for some time. After recovering from that, their two-year-old daughter Hulan (Hoe•lung) had a respiratory infection that kept everyone up at night with her coughing and crying. Now Baysaa has a punctured ear drum. He is running a high fever even though he is taking some antibiotics. It has been a rough winter for them and the cold weather is not even here yet. Please pray that they would learn the lessons that God has for them while they are experiencing the pressures of life.

Quote of the week

"I cannot tell how I am buffeted sometimes by temptation. I never knew how bad a heart I have. Yet I do know that I love God and love His work, and desire to serve Him only and in all things. And I value above all else that precious Savior in whom alone I can be accepted." – J. Hudson Taylor

Quote of the week

Christ has no hands but our hands to do his work today.
Christ has no feet but our feet to lead men in his way.
No tongue but our tongues to tell men how he died.
Has no help but our help to bring men to his side.

Deans' weekly update

We are taking a quick trip away from Mongolia to be at Baptist World Missions annual conference. This year the conference is at Marquette Manor Baptist Church in the Chicago area. Our good friends, Pastor and Mrs. Schlagel now serve there. So it has been a blessed time of fellowship. Monday night Dr. Ed Nelson preached. It is amazing to consider that he has been preaching for longer than my father has been alive, and his doctrine is the same today as it was when he started because the word of God never changes.

There are so many wise and experienced preachers of the Gospel at this conference. It has been spiritually invigorating to listen to the preaching and mentally stimulating to talk with them at meals and between sessions.

This past Sunday and this coming Sunday we have meetings with supporting churches before we return to Mongolia next Monday. While we are gone, the Mongolians are in charge at the church in Ulan Bator. We heard good things about the Sunday services from our parents who are in Mongolia with our children. The number of people were down both in the morning and in the evening. But the men that were leading the services did a good job. It is encouraging to watch the Mongolian men grow in their ability to lead.

Quote of the week

"We have it among professing Christians—this strange ingenuity to seek our own interest under the guise of seeking the interests of God. I am not afraid to say what I fear—that there are thousands of people who are using the deeper life and Bible prophecy, foreign missions and physical healing for no other purpose than to promote their own private interests secretly. They continue to let their apparent interest in these things serve as a screen so that they don't have to take a look at how ugly they are on the inside.
So we talk a lot about the deeper life and spiritual victory and becoming dead to ourselves—but we stay very busy rescuing ourselves from the cross." —A. W. Tozer

Deans' weekly update

Several weeks ago, I mentioned three people for prayer. Dashka is building a place for his family to live. In the midst of that project a six foot section of his ger caught on fire and was burned though not completely. He now is trying to finish the building before the cold weather comes. If he cannot, he will need to repair his ger.

When I talked to him today he told me that he is hoping to complete the roof this week. But he is out of money.

I also asked you to pray for the Elliott family. They left Mongolia suddenly to travel to Korea for Lydia's treatment. Lydia has been discharged from the Korean hospital but still needs our prayers. The last I had heard she was still not responding to treatment the way that doctors were hoping she would. They are hoping to return to Mongolia at the end of the month. They need our prayers, too.

Last, I mentioned Ganpurev's sister Buynaa (pronounced Boy•nuh). She was diagnosed with a benign tumor at the top of her spine. She is taking medicine and will be re-examined in a  few months. Ganpurev and I had a thorough opportunity to explain the Gospel again to her and her husband Bold. Continue to pray for their salvation.

Using opportunities to speak for our Savior

I'm not an Apple fanboy though I use Apple products. The recent passing of Steve Jobs, however, made it all the way to Mongolia. In a conversation with Daniel at Millies Restaurant today, he pointed out that despite all his money and talent and vegetarian eating, Steve Jobs died at the rather young age of 56. "And now his millions do him no good," Daniel remarked

I pointed out to him that the early death of a rich man is a warning to us that we need Jesus Christ. Money will not satisfy or buy long life. Skill and talent won't matter when we are gone. What will matter is whether we know that Jesus Christ is our Savior.

Daniel says that he is a Christian, and he may be. I cannot know his heart. But it was another chance to emphasize faith in Christ to a friend. When talking about current events use opportunities to turn the conversation to Jesus Christ.

Quote of the week

"The book of Job is about suffering in the same way that the book of Ecclesiastes is about affluence. They are only the anvils of experience upon which the truth of the centrality of God is hammered out in a person's life." —Jim Berg

Deans' weekly update

We had one of our most interesting Sunday mornings in a long time. I had prepared a lesson about the consistent Christian life to cause the Mongolians to think about what it means to follow Christ. In exploring this topic I wanted to give them an opportunity to ask questions or make appropriate comments. I had an object lesson and a few pictures to show and prepared an illustration on a white board. So we moved out of the auditorium where I usually preach and moved into a smaller classroom where the white board and a few tables were. So rather than preach as I usually do, we had an environment and preparations that were more of a teaching lesson.

I was excited when a visitor came about halfway through my lesson. But he did not stay. He took Baysaa whose responsibilities include watching the property. Evidently, it was a neighbor who needed something. So he peered in the door, signaled for Baysaa, and left with him. I thought that was the end of it.

However, Baysaa and the visitor returned after a few minutes and both of them took seats in the classroom. After about ten minutes of listening, our visitor raised his hand to ask a question. Although I did not know it at the time, he had many questions. He asked about the return of Jesus Christ. He wanted to know if predictions that the end of the world was coming have any foundation in the Bible. He asked who the Eternal Sky is. Mongolians already have a religion, he said, and Christianity is not needed here. He asked me if I thought Genghis Khan was going to come back. (There is an Arthur-like legend here that one day Genghis will come back and rule all Mongols).

Of course, all of these questions were being asked in rapid Mongolian. Almost as soon as I could answer one question, he had variations of his question or another one ready. I could tell that he was trying to stir up controversy. Some people love a good argument. But I let him ask his questions for about ten minutes because it was good for the Christians to see that there are answers in the Bible.

Finally, he posed a question about Genghis Khan sending blessings to the Mongols that I had never heard before. I did not want to go down that trail because it was not related to the Bible. Also, he had posed several questions that I believed would be a good starting point for the Gospel but that I needed to prepare an answer for. So I asked him if he would come back next week to hear my answer to his question.

"What time?" he asked.

"Eleven o'clock" (We start late by American standards, at a fairly normal time for Mongolians.)

"I'll come" he said, "But I have work about this time."

This leads me to my prayer request for this week: pray for me as I prepare to share the Gospel based on an interesting reading of Mongolian history. For me it starts at Acts 14:17, "Nevertheless He left not Himself without witness." Also, pray for Otgoo our neighbor to come back to hear the lesson. Baysaa knows how to find him; if he does not come next week, I plan to go and find him.

Money corrupts

I mentioned in an earlier post the corrupting influence of money as illustrated by the government's attempt to encourage families. But there is another danger in money: missionaries who wish to employ nationals as preachers of the Gospel. Usually it occurs something like this. The missionary believes that nationals can do a better job than he can at preaching the Gospel. (While this is a axiom in missions, it does not follow that foreigners must pay the Mongolians to preach the Gospel.) Armed with this belief, he arrives in Mongolia with money.

The first obstacle is language: he can only choose from those Mongolians who speak his language. Without knowledge of the language, he lacks hard-won knowledge of the people’s culture. He meets someone who speaks English and is impressed with their teachability. But his lack of language knowledge and cultural understanding prevents him from knowing whether the people whom he wishes to employ are truly teachable or just have a mercenary attitude.

Suppose that the missionary is speaking English. He finds a man who can speak English to some degree and launches into a theological conversation. The national listening to him has a perverse incentive to act as if he understands and appear to agree even if he does not understand or despite disagreeing. The truth is that if he disagrees the missionary will find someone else who appears to agree. If he constantly is telling the missionary, “I don’t understand what you just said. Could you explain that again?” the missionary is likely to find someone who acts as if he understands. After all, the missionary cannot understand what is preached on Sunday.

In my country, missionaries have sat in a translated service and listened as a fellow missionary preaches in English and his words are poorly translated into Mongolian. How does the foreign preacher know that he is being mistranslated? And what incentive does the translator have to stop the foreign preacher with the money in the middle of his sermon to explain that he does not understand some theological concept? Would not the translator rather translate as he understands the sermon even if he is understands incorrectly?

Because the translator has a perverse incentive to appear as if he understands and can accurately translate everything the foreigner says, the man with the money is often unaware of deep misunderstandings or disagreements.

A fellow missionary once became aware that a certain national preacher was engaged in activities that he personally could not condone. When he approached the national to ask if his foreign employer would approve of such activities, he was surprised to be told basically that what the foreigner did not know would not hurt him.

Another time, two of us asked a national pastor if he was a Baptist. After all, his foreign employer was raising money in the United States by claiming that he was planting “Baptist” churches in Mongolia. He responded that he was a Baptist. We asked him the reason that he was a Baptist. He stated that he was a Baptist because he used more sedate music than the Charismatics use.

By the way, I am not claiming that the only true churches in Mongolia are Baptist churches. I have found that there are some called "Baptist" with whom I cannot associate; and conversely there are some who do not call themselves Baptist who are far more Biblical than some who do call themselves Baptist. But to misrepresent that one is planting “Baptist” churches in an effort to raise money is deceptive. Simply telling people that you are planting non-denominational churches, if such a statement is accurate, is more Biblical than telling people one is planting Baptist churches when the pastors of those churches cannot articulate the reason they are Baptist other than the fact that they are receiving money to plant “Baptist” churches.

I intend to post more on this subject in the coming weeks.