All articles in category Mongolia
Article
November 2017
Articles > Asia > Mongolia
Building for the future in Mongolia
Welcome to Mongolia: a country with as many people as Wales, spread across an area four times the size of Germany and almost seven times the size of the UK! Perhaps you’ve never noticed Mongolia on a map, enveloped by borders with Russia and China, and yet it’s time to start taking note of this often-ignored land. Big changes While notions of Mongolia as a nation defined by its history are common (the Mongol empire being the largest connected land empire in history), change is afoot. Since the fall of communism and the peaceful revolution of 1990, scores of people have migrated to the cities...
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By Gerald Mitchum
Article
August 2006
Mongolia
Missionary Spotlight – Eating scrolls in Mongolia – Dr Gerald Mitchum
I have never actually eaten a scroll, but I have eaten some meals in Mongolia that would make a scroll look like a gourmet feast. However, I know some of our western food in equally repulsive to our Mongolian friends. But God told Ezekiel in Chapter 3:1 of his book, ‘Eat this scroll’. Did he eat it? It says, in 3:2, ‘so I opened my mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat’. People come to the mission field for various reasons – some for travel adventure or to experience a different culture, others to escape the stress of living in the West. Still...
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By Gerald and Frances Mitchum
Article
October 2004
Mongolia
Missionary Spotlight – Mongolia – ten years on
Not a few ‘wordsmiths’ have tried to capture a cloud on paper with a pen. Standing in the desert in Mongolia, I turn full circle and on all sides see the earth surrounded by floating balls of cotton-wool. Try to touch them and they are not there, but from where I stand they fill the air — a mystical mist with form but no substance. And overhead, streaking the deep blue background, there are yet more clouds — wispy things of white horsetail hair, painting the canvas we call sky. In the distance they threaten darkness, with the sound of thunder and bolts of...
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By Hugh Kemp
Article
October 2002
Mongolia
Missionary Spotlight – Change in Mongolia
Mongolia experienced colossal political changes between 1990 and 1993. The 1990 elections initiated two years of democratic reform. The Soviets left, the constitution was rewritten, and there was talk of Mongolia becoming another Asian economic tiger. Democracy and market reform had come to stay. From a missionary perspective, Mongolia was then a clean slate. She had no recent history of missions, no western colonial history, no established church. So this period was characterised by a flurry of evangelistic activity aimed at a new generation of Mongolian youth, who had witnessed the collapse of Communism, and for whom the Tibetan-Buddhism of their parents, and the...
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By Gerald and Frances Mitchum
Article
July 2002
Mongolia
Missionary Spotlight-Building in Mongolia
The words ‘Oh you of little faith’ aptly described us four years ago when we first saw the tiny village of Red Mouth, in Mongolia. We witnessed a meeting there to organise herders into a co-operative, so that they would have better buying and marketing leverage. A left-wing government was in power and, interestingly, a political rally was scheduled at the same place, same time, same date! What developed was a shouting contest that lasted for hours. What a pitiful place – this small community with no jobs, lots of poverty, and poor education. The little school met in two, stale, crowded gers. Twenty children...
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Article
July 2002
Mongolia
Missionary Spotlight-Facts
Area: 604,250 square miles. Neighbouring countries: China and Russia. Environment: Landlocked, with a harsh, continental climate, desert plains (especially the Gobi Desert), grassy steppes and forests. The west is mountainous. There are frequent dust (or snow) storms, grassland fires and drought. Water for irrigation or drinking is scarce. Natural resources: Oil and coal; minerals, especially copper, iron, molybdenum, tungsten, tin and gold. Population: 2.8 million. Life expectancy: 64 years. Infant mortality: 53 deaths/1,000 live births. Ethnic groups: Mongol (mainly Khalkha) 90%, Turkic (mainly Kazakh) 7%, others (including Chinese and Russian) 3%. Languages: Mongolian (official), Turkic, Russian. Literacy: 87%. Capital: Ulaanbaatar (774,000).Urbanisation: 62%. Economy: The economy...
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By Stephen Howard
Article
July 2002
Mongolia
Missionary Spotlight-A cautionary tale
My wife and I came to Mongolia three years ago, to work in rural areas. We knew that much had happened in the country since the end of communism more than ten years ago. A fast-growing church was emerging. Mongolians were reaching out to neighbours at home and to people beyond Mongolia. We heard from some missionaries that we would soon no longer be needed! Having completed two years of language study we moved from the capital, Ulaanbaatar (UB), to a remote provincial town several hundred miles west. Expectations Understandably, we went with certain expectations. We envisaged that we would be strengthening a local church...
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By Hugh Kemp
Article
July 2002
Mongolia
Missionary Spotlight-Mongolia – land of contradictions
The Gobi desert paid me a visit today: icy wind, sand, rain and snow all arrived together, screaming off the steppe, lashing around me, boring sand into eyes, nose, ears and mouth. I am getting warm again in our apartment on the top floor of a building in the eastern sector of Ulaanbaatar. The sky is now deep blue and crystal clear, except for the trail of an international jet. The trees’ buds are a promising green, poised to make the sudden growth we’ve longed for all winter. That startling, vivid, clear blue Mongolian sky! The Mongols of old worshipped the sky as god above...
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By Gerald Mitchum
Article
October 2001
Mongolia
Missionary Spotlight – Moving mountains in Mongolia
On the other side of the mountain lies a place of intense darkness. A place where for hundred of years Satan has owned ‘the real estate’, and the power of darkness penetrates the countryside. Alcohol deadens the minds of the men and makes them easy captives of demonic forces. The most striking building in the village is the decorative Buddhist temple. This supports eleven lamas at the expense of the poor herders who travel miles to pay for prayers to a god who is deaf to their needs. Way blocked It was April, and we found ourselves caught up in winter’s last throes....
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