Lunar New Year Festivities

You might think Lunar New Year was about a month ago in China and the rest of Asia.  You would be right.  Mongolia marches to the beat of a different drum most of the time.  These pictures are from the first family we visited on the first day of the Lunar New Year - February 27th.

 Kids enjoy sitting by the big collection of candy and sweet dairy products.

Our colleagues the Currie family on their second Lunar New Year tour are already old pros.

You may recall the customary eating of mutton dumplings and drinking of salty milk tea.  We wish you all the best as we partake of these in Jesus name. 

Basketball Training for Tournament

The kids that didn't make their school's basketball team are delighted to be playing hoops.  Even more, they are excited about the upcoming tournament.  

Here we put the final touches on a couple months of practice to prepare to face their old teams.

Scrimmages are their favorite part, but here we focus on team-building and passing.

Winter Ministries

Renee is teaching "Feed My Lambs" at our Kingdom Leaders Training Center (Bible School) this month.  She is also carrying more bookkeeping load at CAMA since our staff accountant has been in the hospital.

Jeremy is trudging along with transferring oversight of CAMA Services to our Mongolian Manager Dawaa, and helping start CAMA Sports.

We are training 7th and 8th grade boys in Basketball as Outreach in partnership with a local church. Next month we have planned a tournament for them to work toward trying out their growing skill set.

Please pray that players and their parents understand that character is the crux of accomplishment.  In our 10-minute teaching times during 2-hour practice, we use topical and historical examples centered around the theme of Faith.  Pray that some come to church and find eternal life in Christ.

Valentine's Day

Renee and I went out to eat at our favorite restaurant, 'Apollo' on February 14th.

They had special table cloths and flowers on the table.  It's still pretty cold out, so we took a booth away from the door.  The window we sat by was a bit drafty, but that was not strange.

The funny thing was how the Mongolian people celebrating the holiday brought their kids, other adults, and friends along to celebrate this traditionally 'romantic' holiday.

The music was pretty loud, and the lights were up.  The place is usually pretty quiet and empty, but on this festive evening, it was a little hard to hit the mood we were expecting.  Nevertheless, the food was good as usual, and our conversation was enjoyable, if not 'romantic'.

It just struck us as a difference worthy of writing home about.  This small prairie nation wants to play a part on the world stage to this day.  They are not to be left behind, or held up by details of how the rest of the world does things.

Ironically, Women's Day and Soldier's Day are here next month.  So maybe they will play a more romantic part than Valentine's Day.