More than the place or the activities, it’s the relationships that were formed that left a huge mark in my heart. I would never forget how Baska would always take care of us even if it means he had to walk home late just to make sure we’re safe. I’ll always remember Shawn’s positivity and humor, which kept us energized throughout the day. I will always be amazed at Ruth, Murun, and Crystal’s knowledge of the city, and how they...
Ulzii, one of the members of the church (and a very good friend of mine) invited us to his house for dinner. It was a refreshing moment for all of us to be welcomed in someone else’s home. I was even surprised to see our photo framed beside his bed. I would always remember how much fun we had that night, specially when everyone can just be crazy in front of each other. Another house we visited was Brother Baskaa’s....
On the 8th day of our mission trip, we held an event called Victory Weekend. Victory Weekend is a two-day retreat that helps believers to have a deeper relationship with God and focus on establishing the spiritual foundations necessary for a life-long walk with Him. We covered topics like Lordship, repentance, faith, church, and the power of the Holy Spirit. On the first day of the retreat, an interesting thing happened. One of the women in the room was Toya....
We invited everyone that we’ve met for the last 7 days to a party we organized. We were surprised to see more than 70 attendees come and enjoy the program we prepared for them. It was a very fun and memorable evening as students, faculty members, and young professionals came together to have fun in the games and munch on the pizza we served. We taught them a popular Filipino game called Pinoy Henyo (Mongolian style),and it was a blast!...
One of the people who were deeply touched during the prayer & worship night was Jila Amarjil. She invited the whole team to visit her in an old circus and told us that she wanted to give us a gift. As we arrived at her “workstation,” we found out that she’s actually a local celebrity in Mongolia! Aside from singing professionally, she also teaches young kids how to do acrobatics. In fact, she had two of her students perform for...
We went to two campuses in Ulaanbaatar. The first one is Etugen Institute, a medical school that has about 15,000 students. We were welcomed into the faculty rooms where we had an opportunity to talk one-on-one with the professors of the school. We also had the privilege to stay in some of the classes and engage with the students there. Thanks to our local friends (and Google Translate), we were able to communicate with the students and have a great...
We were supposed to go to the countryside to visit a church but around 100 kilometers into the trip, one of the cars broke down and it had to be pulled back to the city. It took us almost 4 hours to do it! And though we were a little bit sad (and tired) because things didn't go out as planned, God encouraged us by doing amazing, amazing, amazing things through the prayer and worship night. God allowed us to...
Our team held a series of trainings to help equip the members of Father’s Love and City Harvest for effective discipleship. In the Making Disciples Class, the participants were taught of ways on how to effectively reach the nation by making disciples who, in turn, would make disciples of Jesus. And for iLEAD, they were taught of how to raise up leaders through identification, instruction, impartation, and internship. We encouraged them to influence the people around them so they could...
For our rest day, we decided to visit the province where the 40-foot all-steel statue of Genghis Khan is located. But on our way there, we had to stop to ask for directions. We took this opportunity to take some awesome road shots with the vast plains and mountains on the background. Not long after, we spotted some herdsmen with fowls and camels and asked if we could take a photo with the animals. It was my first time to...
We split our group to two teams to lead the Sunday services with Dennis leading Father’s Love and JayArr’s team on City Harvest. After lunch, we all met up at a basketball court to bond with the locals. I would dare say that Mongolians are very intense when it comes to basketball. Not only the men -- but women -- play really hard inside the court. The same court where we also witnessed a pastor and a volunteer wrestling (for sports sake)....