Your mission offerings at
work in Kinshasa in the Congo,
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the mission field of
Maine in the United States,
00:00:40.14\00:00:43.57
and a children's
mission story from Europe,
00:00:43.61\00:00:45.91
all this and much
more coming up next.
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Hello, and
welcome to Mission 360.
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I'm Gary Krause.
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Today's program is coming to you
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from Portland,
Maine, in the United States.
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And directly
behind me on the street,
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the Bracket Street
School was located.
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And in the 1800s
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Ellen White is
believed to have attended here
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when she was just a young girl
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because the family
live just around the corner
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in Spruce Street.
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When Ellen White
was nine years of age,
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another student threw a
rock, hit her in the face,
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and Ellen was unconscious
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and then took
many months to recover.
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In fact, it's thought
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that perhaps she
never really fully recovered
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from that incident.
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Ellen White, of course,
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was the one who talked
about Christ method of ministry,
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which is the blueprint
for Adventist mission today.
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And on today's program,
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we're going to look at
mission all around the world.
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But first up,
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we're going to
travel to the Congo
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to the great city of Kinshasa
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to see a children's
shelter that was built
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because of your
13th Sabbath Offerings.
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What's the
purpose of a lamb shelter?
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It's a safe place for lambs
to grow strong and healthy.
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In this Congolese Church,
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children are called lambs
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and have their own lamb shelter,
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where they can
worship together on Sabbath.
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Here they are
empowered to be young leaders.
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Misbah is the pastor son.
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He was nine years old
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when he and his
friends began worshiping
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in this lamb shelter.
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Having a place of their own
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gives the children
ownership of the Sabbath School
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and worship service.
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Like his father,
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Misbah happily
leads on Sabbath mornings.
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These children are so grateful
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for the gifts
they received in 2013
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when a portion of
the 13th Sabbath Offering
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was used to build
several lamb shelters
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in Kinshasa.
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With this new building,
this young group has grown
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and welcomes new
faces all the time.
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Next door,
membership in the main church
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has also seen growth.
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Misbah's father
is the head pastor.
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He welcomes guests and
members to church this Sabbath.
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This church
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offers an
interpreter for the deaf.
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Thomas gladly uses sign language
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to share the message
during Sabbath School
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and the sermon.
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He wants to make
sure there are no barriers
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to knowing Jesus
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and being part of
their Adventist community.
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Through song and study,
they celebrate their blessings,
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and pray for the
mission challenges
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of the city of Kinshasa.
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This large city is the capital
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of the
Democratic Republic of Congo
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and Adventist Churches
are scattered throughout.
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Before the lamb
shelter was built,
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children could only
meet outside under a tree
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or in the
entrance way of the church.
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These areas didn't
provide much protection
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from the hot sun or heavy rain.
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So when Adventist
members in Kinshasa
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learned of the 13th
Sabbath Offering project,
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they were so excited.
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I'm really happy to
see that the word church
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is going to give us a support,
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so that we can
realize this project.
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Thanks to your
generous giving to the offering,
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the project was completed,
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and the children now
have a dedicated space
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to worship.
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Please pray for
this mission work
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in this city.
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With more than
11 million people,
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there is a great need for
Jesus in such a vast urban area.
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Adventist in Kinshasa
thank you for your contribution
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to the 13th Sabbath Offering
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and look forward
to Jesus' soon return.
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God bless them. This is my wish.
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I think that one day
we will meet together
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in the Kingdom of our Father.
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My guest is Scott Christiansen
who is the evangelist
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and communication director
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for the Northern
New England Conference
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here in the United States.
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Scott, thanks for
joining us. It's my pleasure.
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In a former life
you were a missionary.
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You served in the
country of Mongolia.
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Describe when that was
and why it was so important?
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Why it's such a critical
time for the Adventist Church?
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Well, you say a former life
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and, you know, I
mean it was 25 years ago.
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Oh, wow, 25 years ago, actually,
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that we landed in Mongolia,
almost to the day, actually.
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And it was a
different world at that time.
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Communism had collapsed,
not too long before that.
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And Mongolia was
part of the Soviet Union.
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And they were
attacked, they were dominated,
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their economy was dominated,
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their government was
directed by the Soviet Union.
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They were not actually...
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They still have their own flag,
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they still have
their own territory
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because the Soviet Union
want another vote in the UN.
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So they were never
absorbed by the Soviet Union.
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But other than that,
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the distinction was meaningless
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because they were
controlled by the Soviet Union.
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So when the
Soviet Union collapsed,
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Mongolia completely pancaked.
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The hospitals stopped working,
the schools stopped working,
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the food supply stopped working,
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it was a
terrible, terrible time.
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And yet it was,
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in one sense a good time
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because for the
first time in over 75 years
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the country was open to people
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coming in missionaries.
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The government wasn't
happy to see them necessarily,
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certainly not the secret police,
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because they still had
momentum going, you know,
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from the Soviet times,
and yet the country opened.
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And that's when ADRA started,
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that's when my family
and I went to Mongolia
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with our two
little kids to start ADRA.
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And to begin work in a country
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that otherwise
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was just not
letting people in it,
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who had no
knowledge of Christianity,
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had even lost
their own knowledge
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of what of their Buddhist past.
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So it was a blank
slate, if you will.
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But full of suspicion,
minds full of propaganda,
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that was never true.
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It was troubling.
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And it was difficult,
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and it was full of opportunity
at that moment in time.
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And that the Adventist Church
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at that stage numbered
in the thousands, I guess?
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Oh, it was huge.
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Yeah, actually, at that point,
there was one baptized member.
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Right.
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In fact, Robert Folkenberg,
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there were two AFM
missionaries in the country.
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There were...
Adventist Frontier Missions.
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Thank you.
Adventist Frontier Missions.
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And they were there
as stealth missionaries.
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And they were ready to
baptize their first member,
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a young woman named Dabahu,
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precious young
woman named Dabahu.
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And they invited
the church president,
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Bob Folkenberg,
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to the country
to do the baptism.
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So while he was there,
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he met with the
President of Mongolia
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and said,
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"We're going to start ADRA."
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And that's how ADRA got started.
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We were in there
shortly thereafter.
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But when we arrived,
still just one member,
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baptized member
and five or six young,
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young kid, I mean,
we're talking 15, 16, 17
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young, young kids
that were curious,
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but certainly
hadn't been baptized,
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weren't members,
weren't committed.
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And yet, upon those young kids,
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God built the Seventh-day
Adventist Church in Mongolia.
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And today, there's thousands
and thousands of members.
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You could write a
book of your experiences
00:09:03.04\00:09:05.44
in Mongolia, that I'm sure.
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When you look back,
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and you look at
the way God has lead.
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Is there something
that really stands out
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that you can share with us?
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Well, actually, yeah, and
I'll try and do it quickly.
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It's a long story
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that I'm going
to try and condense.
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But when we went to Mongolia,
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we were the first
international organization
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to sign and I
speak of ADRA here.
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ADRA was the first
international organization
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to sign an agreement.
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Interestingly enough,
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there, the government
had these huge expectations,
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and yet ADRA had
very limited capacity
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and no budget
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and it was
difficult to get started.
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I had one employee, and
his name was Monk Jurgal,
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an avowed atheist
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who later became a
Seventh-day Adventist pastor.
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And the Adventist
Frontier Mission people,
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they were working very quietly
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and they had a
student missionary
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named Tristan.
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And Tristan was there working...
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The government had told me,
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"Scott, you can't
render any assistance
00:10:02.20\00:10:04.37
to the street children,
00:10:04.40\00:10:05.73
otherwise we'll throw
you out of the country."
00:10:05.77\00:10:07.17
And there were
thousands of street children
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in the country
who is so very poor.
00:10:09.27\00:10:11.21
And they wrenched my heart.
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I wanted to do something
for these street children.
00:10:12.84\00:10:15.28
Well, what I did was,
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I took cases of power bars
that had been delivered by ADRA
00:10:16.68\00:10:19.75
and some children's clothing
and I gave them to Tristan.
00:10:19.78\00:10:22.48
And he and some
of the church members
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were handing out these
things to the street children.
00:10:24.32\00:10:26.79
And so all of this was going on.
00:10:26.82\00:10:29.72
And we were making progress.
00:10:29.76\00:10:33.23
And Tristan was
doing quite a lot.
00:10:33.26\00:10:35.33
But Tristan was
also doing some things
00:10:35.36\00:10:36.73
I didn't know about.
00:10:36.77\00:10:38.23
He was giving English languages
00:10:38.27\00:10:40.40
to members of parliament.
00:10:40.44\00:10:41.94
And he was telling them,
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he was associate
director of ADRA.
00:10:43.34\00:10:45.71
And it turns out, this young man
00:10:45.74\00:10:47.58
was fleeing from the FBI
00:10:47.61\00:10:49.58
and had pretended
to become an Adventist
00:10:49.61\00:10:51.95
and had
pretended to be converted
00:10:51.98\00:10:55.58
and to want to join AFM.
00:10:55.62\00:10:58.29
He had targeted AFM
00:10:58.32\00:10:59.65
as a American
organization in a country
00:10:59.69\00:11:02.56
that he could not
be extradited from.
00:11:02.59\00:11:05.03
Well, all of this fell
apart, the FBI found him.
00:11:05.06\00:11:07.63
The government of
Mongolia arrested him.
00:11:07.66\00:11:10.10
And when that happened,
00:11:10.13\00:11:11.53
all the suspicions came out
00:11:11.57\00:11:13.44
that they culturally
harbored towards Christians.
00:11:13.47\00:11:17.17
And the news
was full of reports.
00:11:17.21\00:11:19.71
ADRA is bringing
criminals to the country
00:11:19.74\00:11:22.24
and the Adventist Church
is trying to corrupt our youth
00:11:22.28\00:11:24.25
and ADRA is
laundering the money.
00:11:24.28\00:11:27.25
Well, I had this one
employee Monk Jurgal,
00:11:27.28\00:11:29.82
and he was terrified.
00:11:29.85\00:11:32.12
He knew he was
going to be arrested.
00:11:32.15\00:11:33.56
He wanted to flee
to the countryside.
00:11:33.59\00:11:35.22
He was telling me, "I
was going to be a thrown
00:11:35.26\00:11:38.16
out of the country."
00:11:38.19\00:11:39.63
And the AFM people were...
00:11:39.66\00:11:41.56
You know, their
house was on fire.
00:11:41.60\00:11:43.60
Things were just terrible.
00:11:43.63\00:11:46.03
Well, we all went to our knees.
00:11:46.07\00:11:48.17
I was begging Monk
Jurgal not to leave
00:11:48.20\00:11:50.44
'cause I
couldn't speak Mongolian.
00:11:50.47\00:11:51.84
He was my only link
and he knew the government,
00:11:51.87\00:11:53.94
he knew his way out.
00:11:53.98\00:11:55.51
Finally, I told
him, "Look, Monk Jurgal,
00:11:55.54\00:11:57.05
if you stay you will
see God work a miracle."
00:11:57.08\00:11:59.88
Well, he sent his
family to the countryside.
00:11:59.91\00:12:01.75
He stayed.
00:12:01.78\00:12:03.12
We worked our way through it.
00:12:03.15\00:12:05.02
I sent a fax off to ADRA
00:12:05.05\00:12:06.65
because the phone
links were so bad.
00:12:06.69\00:12:08.02
I sent a fax off to ADRA saying,
00:12:08.06\00:12:09.72
this is what's happened.
00:12:09.76\00:12:11.09
Everything's collapsing.
00:12:11.13\00:12:12.46
We've only been
here a couple months,
00:12:12.49\00:12:13.83
all of this terrible
things are happening.
00:12:13.86\00:12:15.20
And almost immediately,
00:12:15.23\00:12:16.56
even though they
were 12 hours away,
00:12:16.60\00:12:17.93
almost immediately, I
got an answer back saying,
00:12:17.97\00:12:22.34
"You are on the
world prayer chain.
00:12:22.37\00:12:24.01
Everyone's praying for you.
00:12:24.04\00:12:25.37
Not only that,
but we've swept away
00:12:25.41\00:12:26.74
the budget limits
00:12:26.78\00:12:28.11
and we've sent you $50,000
to begin doing the projects
00:12:28.14\00:12:30.81
you were sent there to do.
00:12:30.85\00:12:32.18
So go to work."
00:12:32.21\00:12:34.98
And we did go to work.
00:12:35.02\00:12:36.95
And we weren't
thrown out of the country.
00:12:36.99\00:12:39.39
The whole thing blew
over with a lot of ulcers,
00:12:39.42\00:12:42.06
but it blew over.
00:12:42.09\00:12:43.76
Monk Jurgal saw a miracle.
00:12:43.79\00:12:45.73
In fact, it was
only three months later
00:12:45.76\00:12:48.06
that the President was on
TV thanking ADRA for the work
00:12:48.10\00:12:51.03
that we were doing.
00:12:51.07\00:12:52.83
ADRA really got its start
in the middle of catastrophe.
00:12:52.87\00:12:56.20
And the church,
that little church
00:12:56.24\00:12:57.67
with those
teenagers went through fire,
00:12:57.71\00:13:01.24
but the teenagers who
remained became church leaders
00:13:01.28\00:13:05.01
and our church leaders today.
00:13:05.05\00:13:07.02
And Monk Jurgal became
00:13:07.05\00:13:08.78
the first Seventh-day
Adventist Mongolian pastor.
00:13:08.82\00:13:11.72
So when
everything was falling apart,
00:13:11.75\00:13:13.66
that's when God was
bringing it together.
00:13:13.69\00:13:15.79
That is a great story.
00:13:15.82\00:13:17.49
Thanks so much for
sharing with us, Scott.
00:13:17.53\00:13:19.03
And when you write that book,
00:13:19.06\00:13:20.40
I'm gonna get the
first copy, all right?
00:13:20.43\00:13:21.76
All right, you'll
get the first copy.
00:13:21.80\00:13:23.13
Okay, thank you. God bless.
00:13:23.16\00:13:24.50
Viewers at home,
00:13:24.53\00:13:25.87
God still does work miracles
00:13:25.90\00:13:27.24
and frontlines of
mission are not easy.
00:13:27.27\00:13:29.70
Scott can detail
story after story
00:13:29.74\00:13:31.77
of the hardships of Mongolia,
00:13:31.81\00:13:33.14
but he remembers the
miracles that God brought.
00:13:33.17\00:13:35.91
We'll be right
back after this break.
00:13:35.94\00:13:37.78