Opening of Mongolian Mission Dormitory and Groundbreaking forMongolian Youth Training Center: For several years, Mongolian Mission (MM) had two special prayer requests. One was for a dormitory building in Ulaanbaatar, which could be used as a Center of Influence. The other was for a youth training center. Both prayer requests were answered in 2014.
The population of Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, is more than 1.2 million, almost half of the national population. As a nomadic country, most of the higher education systems have gathered in the capital city. Students from the countryside who have not found shelter in the university dormitories have to find shelter on their own, but rooms in the city are limited and very expensive. That is why Adventist members around the world decided to pray for a dormitory in Mongolia.
In 2009, MM received the 13th Sabbath Offering to build a dormitory building. It took a long time to find suitable land in the city. Eventually, after several years of consideration, MM decided to add two more stories on top of the MM office building. The 13th Sabbath Offering from the fourth quarter of 2009 helped their dream come true, and the dormitory opened on September 1, 2014. Forty-five students, most of them non-Adventists, found a home in the Adventist dormitory. The dormitory will be a Center of Influence in which non-Adventist students experience the love of Christ.
Since the first two baptisms in 1993, church membership in Mongolia has gone up to more than 2,100 members in 2014. As if reflecting the national median age of 27.1, the majority of the church members are young in their twenties. As the members increase in number, MM has an urgent need to train future leaders. Another problem is finding a suitable place for summer camp meeting,a special time of spiritual growth for church members. Because summer in Mongolia is very short, it is very hard to reserve a camping site. To kill two birds with one stone, training future leaders and finding a place for camp meetings, MM planned to use the 13th Sabbath Offering from the first quarter of 2012 to establish a youth training center.
Hearing about the plan, the Sound of Zion Choir, conducted by Dr. Im BongSoon, a cellist and music professor at Sahmyook University, held a concert in Seoul to raise money for the project. In addition, Mrs. Kim HyoSoon, a deaconess in Seoul, Korea, donated an apartment which had enough value to purchase land. The Lord had already prepared a land of 60,000 square meters, forty-five kilometers away from Ulaanbaatar and two kilometers from the main highway. In the near future, the highway will be developed as the main highway of the country, which will connect Russia and China, crossing Mongolia for transportation, pipeline for gas and oil, and electricity.
Dr. Jairyong Lee, president of Northern Asia-Pacific Division, participated in the groundbreaking ceremony on November 11, 2014, together with Elbert Kuhn, MM president, and two special guests from the North American Division (NAD), Alex Bryant, NAD executive secretary, and Tom Evans, NAD treasurer, andothers. Dr. Lee expressed his wish that the Mongolian Youth Training Center would serve as a Mongolian missionary training center and that someday Mongolian missionaries would go to many countries to share the love of Jesus Christ.
According to Pastor Kuhn, MM president, MM plans to construct a building that includes a cafeteria, meeting rooms, accommodation for about 200 people and a gym. Summer houses for camp meeting, showers and bathroom facilities will be added. When the construction of the Youth Training Center is completed, many kinds of training will be held there, including Global Mission Pioneers who will go to unreached areas to plant churches, AIIAS distant learning courses for pastors, spiritual retreatsand camp meetings.
Kwon JohngHaeng, Director of NSD Office of Adventist Mission