Simply Church: A House Church Perspective

Mongolia

Wow!  This is an amazing country.  Where to start?

The people here are fun, friendly, very intelligent.  We have been welcomed so warmly by them. 
Other impressions:  Population less than 3 million in a nation the size of California, so very uncrowded.  Wild and beautiful landscape.  Yaks and camels.  Cold!!

The country was under Russian rule for seventy years.  When they left in 1990, there were only five Christians in the country.  There are now around 50,000!  This means that virtually everyone is a first generation Christian.  The nation opened to outsiders in 1991 and we have met several who found the Lord in the next couple of years.  Sadly, Christians have not just brought the Gospel to this nation--they have brought denominations too. 

There are some incredible stories.  For example, we were talking with one man yesterday who, in the early 90s was given a New Testament by a Canadian family,  He read it but didn't understand it.  They spoke no Mongolian, so introduced him to a Mongolian Christian family who led him to the Lord,  Over the next few weeks, he read his New Testament (this time understanding it) from 7am to 1pm every day, more than thirty times in all.  At the time he was working as a jeweler, but gave this up.  His family didn't like the turn his life was taking so gave him the choice of giving up his new found faith or being thrown out of the family.  He chose Jesus.

From his reading of the Gospels he understood that he was to go.  He didn't know where to go so he found a ride, telling the person he couldn't pay for the ride but would entertain him with stories on the way.  So he spent the journey telling him the stories he had read in the New Testament.  He found out where the person was going, so when he was asked which town he wanted to go to, told him the same place.  When asked who he would stay with, he confessed that he didn't know anyone else in there, so the driver invited him to stay with his family.  When he got to the family he told them stories too and they invited in many of their friends and neighbors to hear the stories.  He offered to pray for anyone who needed prayer, and many became Christians.  He then went to other places and did the same.

All this, just from reading the New Testament! No discipleship or any other training.

We have been sharing six to eight hours per day for the last four or five days with a group of church leaders from across the nation.  What a privilege to have the opportunity to shape an emerging church.

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Yesterday evening, we went to the home of a Mongolian musician who played about ten of his traditional Mongolian instruments for us.  Wonderful!

An Answer to Prayer

I love the way God sometimes answers prayers just to delight us.

We had lost our camera (or maybe had it stolen) in France. Everywhere we have been since, we were sure we would find somewhere to pick up another one, but time did just now allow for it. Now we are in Beijing and were sure we would be able to buy one somewhere here near the airport. But everyone assured us that the nearest place to buy a camera was an hour's journey away into town, and we are only here for a brief stop on our way to Mongolia. It seemed a tragedy not to have a camera to take pictures in Mongolia. We had just about resigned ourselves to continuing to use our phones for pictures.

We were wondering the streets around our hotel--little grocery stores, window makers and so on--in order to get a little exercise, and I was saying to the Lord that I would love it if He could find a way for us to buy a camera.

We went into a couple of telephone stores, but none of them sold cameras. Finally we found a third telephone store, and, like the others, it did not sell cameras. But in our mime to ask about cameras, someone went into the back of the shop and produced her own camera to make sure that was what we were looking for. Then she offered to sell it to us. Tony speaks a smattering of Mandarin, and he was able to work out what they were offering.

So now we are the proud owners of a second hand camera--and all because God delights to answer our prayers.

Central India

We are in Central India with some good friends and have spent much of the day listening to amazing stories of how God is working here. It is different from what He is doing in the US because most of the incredible growth is from new believers.  Brand new disciples are telling their friends and family about the changes Jesus is making in their lives.  Many are getting baptized and new churches are springing up everywhere.

We had the privilege of sitting down with two ladies, one of whom was responsible for more than 6,000 baptisms in the churches she had started, and the other, 4,000.  We heard about a few of the miracles they are seeing.

One of the interesting things is that they are moving from an emphasis on miracles of healing and deliverance to a focus on transformation of society.  They believe that God is restoring the land, not just in terms of gardens producing more crops, but also when roads are built and electricity and water are supplied to areas that have not had it before in answer to the prayers of the saints.