Deans' weekly udpate

Imagine the following little scenario with me. Christmas is the next Wednesday. A week before Christmas the school district suddenly realizes that they forgot to schedule a Christmas break into the school year. There is no chance of holding classes on Christmas or the days following; but classes cannot be canceled either. Instead, the teachers tell the students that they will have classes on Saturday to make up for Christmas being a day off from school.

Crazy? Yes, it sounds crazy to me. But that’s what the Mongolians do. We found out last week that Saturday was going to be a school day (and an official business day) so that everyone can take days off this week for the Mongolian Lunar New Year.

I started off with that story to explain the reason that I cannot update you on last week’s children’s outreach: it never occurred. I wrote to you on Wednesday; on Wednesday the parents heard that their children would be going to school on Saturday (three days thence). On Thursday the Mongolians decided through a series of phone conversations that Saturday would not work as the day for the outreach and re-scheduled the outreach for a Saturday two weeks later. (Assuming that the schools do not decide to hold school on that Saturday too.)

It probably worked out for the best because many of the church children were ill on Saturday and would not have been able to attend even if it had been held that day. So the gifts are still sitting in the storage room at the church building.

We also had a low turnout on Sunday morning between illness and the upcoming holiday and wondered how many people would come Sunday evening. To reach the church’s building people must travel through one of the busier shopping areas of the city. Because of all the shoppers traffic was heavy. Still, we had a good turnout on Sunday evening.

We are looking forward to Kristie’s parents and our pastor and his wife arriving this week. Many of you already know that Kristie’s father is our pastor and that makes her mother our pastor’s wife. It will be their first visit to Mongolia in four years. So much has happened since then. We are excited to show them all the differences.

We are also looking forward to the Mongolian New Year this week. We will be visiting many of our Mongolian friends, some of whom are not yet Christians. The visits will give us another opportunity to speak with them about Jesus Christ. Please pray for us as we preach Christ to our friends and neighbors.