Kid's camp in Mongolia

 

 I (Leif) had the wonderful opportunity to return to Mongolia again this summer.  I wrote and shared a bit about trips to Mongolia last year, and I am excited to be a part of connecting brothers and sisters in Christ from Mongolia and Russia, and seeing how God will use the churches in the two countries to see God's glory go out to all peoples.  The focus of our project was to put on a children's camp for local Mongolian children.  On one of the planning days, before the planning meeting between the Russian team I traveled with and the Mongolian brothers and sisters we partnered with, I hiked up a hill near were the church meets at the edge of Ulaanbaatar (capital city of Mongolia) and saw this rainbow.  It was just a reminder of God's love and mercy and how He gives us amazing promises. 

 

 Here is a picture from the other side of the hill showing the area of town where the church meets and puts on a children's program each week.  If you look closely in the background you will see a stark contrast of new, gated, guarded and expensive apartment buildings and small old individual houses and a number of yurts all intermixed together.  The church gathers in a yurt in a section of poorer houses and yurts.  Most of the children in this church come from that little neighborhood, and it was fun to see how excited they were to see us and how much they love their teachers and the teens and young adults that help at children's church.

 

I forgot to get a picture of the church yurt from the outside, but this is one just a half block away that looks just like it.

 

 Here we are inside doing some planning.  One of the reasons I came was to add English as a possible translation language, but we had a Mongolian contact that spoke Russian very well and did most of the translating and interpreting.  This made it easier for me, and nice to not have to work through double translations. 

 

I did have fun talking with some of the Mongolians who did know English, and was happy with how the whole group really did a good job of getting along well and enjoying each other despite our language barrier.  We all had plenty of great opportunities to laugh.

 

 Here is a picture of four out of the five Russians I traveled with as well as one of the young Mongolians that helped.  Like I said, I was very pleased with how our whole team worked together, and this group did a good job in traveling, working, and hanging out together and I loved times to pray together with them all.

 My job at the camp was to lead the sports/games.  The kids seemed to  love everything.  Thankfully we had a very nice day our first day and were able to be outside. 

 It seems that the more physical the game was, the more the kids liked it.  Typically for the game pictured above the workers just have to tag a kid and they stop, but in translation it changed to having to catch the kids.  They had a great time, and all of us who were chasing them had fun and got a really good workout!

 

In addition to games, we all participated in various skits to share about how God gives us life, love and meaning.  By the way this skit shows the fifth Russian that I traveled with.

 

 The kids did a great job of being energetic and running around for the games, but calming down to pay attention and listen during the skits and teaching times.  I was very impressed with them, and am praying that God will used this to help each of them and their families to know and love God.

 

 We had this camp outside the city at a Christian camp, and I loved waking up in the morning and looking up on the hill to see 60+ Mongolian children gathered around a cross.  This symbol of our Lord Jesus is a reminder of the amazing love and sacrifice Jesus made so that we could all gather to Him and live in His loving presence forever.  Please pray with us that this message of love and sacrifice would reach all nations and touch the hearts of all people.