Painting and a Surprise.

I’ll have to explain this first. Green, gray and light blue are the “in” colors when it comes to wall paint. If you prefer anything else, you better mix it yourself. The light green and white walls of ABTC were in desperate need of a few layers of paint. Another color!! To help some of the college students attending Nikdovnixon Church at ABTC, we got five young men to paint most of the building inside. And here is the story I have to tell. We started on the Friday two weeks ago, and for that day all I could do was to try to remember the names of the guys. That Sunday, one of the guys, Baatraa was preaching. When we left, I told Pieter I thought he did it quite well. He looked confident, not that I understood much of it. A friend of ours told us later he did quite well with the content of the sermon. The following Monday, I felt I need to find out more about their backgrounds and what they are studying. Baatraa is eighteen, graduated from high school three months ago, and is starting his studies at the local college in September. His dream is to be a pastor one day. Can you imagine an eighteen year old student, with not much training at all, having to give the sermon on Sunday in the church you attend?

So, in future, whenever we would doubt our coming here, I will think of Baatraa. The church has many young people who need training and hopefully we’ll be able to help them a little.

In the second photo is Pieter. He worked during the summer with the same group of young people to clear ABTC's yard from tons of rubbish and stuff that collected there over the years. ABTC begins to look more and more like a training center and a nice place to be, learn and fellowship together. Our next project is to transform the back yard into a nice place where the MK School's children can play and students and staff can relax and have fellowships (during summer time of course!). (Note - the Missionary Kid's school for Darxan is located in the ABTC building.)

Suu avaaree!!!

“Suu (milk) av (to buy) aaree (please)”!!! Mongolians have pretty impressive voices, you can hear them announcing the arrival of milk even with the windows closed. Mongolians buy milk every morning, just enough to make some suutae tsae (boiled milk with some tea leaves and salt). The salt in the tea is probably the equivalent of a strong cup of coffee. They were quite surprised in the beginning when I bought up to 8 liters of milk at a time (one or two times a week), enough to also make yoghurt and cottage cheese. We strain the milk through several layers of cloth, and then boil it for 10 – 20 minutes. Quite an operation to boil 8 liters of milk. We’re just glad to again have “real” milk and not like in the Philippines where we had to make do with powdered milk. The prices range from $0,25 per liter during summer, up to $0.80 during winter.

High School Students

We were a little confused in the beginning to see so many girls with these black and white dresses, until we found out that they’re actually high school students. A good example of the fashion left behind by the Russians. They actually don’t call it dresses, but shirts, and all the while I was thinking they just want to see who can get away with the shortest dress. Just before the summer holidays, during graduation and the many end-of-school-year activities, they usually wear black stockings instead of jeans.