Sunday in Darhan, Mongolia

It’s Sunday morning in Mongolia, and I’m sitting here in the church that we have been ministering in for the last few days. Our hearts have been so connected with them. I’ll give a few family updates.

First of all, Charlene has been assisting our children’s ministry leader for the trip with Vacation Bible School. Working with children definitely isn’t her passion, but she definitely has had grace. She’s served more in an assistance role and helping with details. She also had the opportunity to teach Friday night at the Encounter here at the church. She taught on The Father’s Love and did an incredible job. She’s also been a huge blessing to me as well just helping me be able to do I’ve needed to do on this trip.

Samara has been her easy going self most of the time unless she’s extremely sleep deprived. It has been really cool to watch her help lead the other kids even though she can’t speak the language. I walked by the other day and saw her grabbing kids by the hand and pulling them toward the direction she wanted them to go. Another touching moment was one evening during worship when one of the little girls came up to her and grabbed her hand. They stood there hand in hand singing. I wish I would have had my camera in hand.

Selah is doing great. Of particular significance is that she is doing a GREAT job with the food here. We were pretty concerned because she has always been so picky. But to our great pleasure, she has embraced the culture and pretty much eating everything! She has helped me by playing the drums for worship as we’ve trained the worship team here at the church. She also had the opportunity to lead the kids in worshiping to How Great Is Our God. She played piano and sang and did a great job.

I am loving this trip. I have been on several mission trips but nothing quite like this one. The unity on this team has been incredible. I’ve also not been on a trip that had so many things going at the same time – children, worship, construction, and medical. There has been a supernatural synergy among all of the teams. I have been particulalrly energized helping to teach and train the Monolian worship team. Our hearts have been connected. It was great to see them last night and today implementing some of the things we taught them this week. They are all hungry hearts wanting to learn more.

Tonight we have our team dinner celebration with the Mongolian leaders. Tomorrow we leave for Ulanbataar and then Korea. We spend Tuesday in South Korea and then fly to Beijing on Wednesday morning. I checked out the weather in Beijing for this week and Thursday is supposed to be 100!! The whole family (including John) is really excited about the final leg of the trip. Continue to keep us in your prayers.