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How Everything Started
Hello friends,
It was the early 1990s, the iron curtain was down, the communist system was falling apart, and God was working behind the scenes to give His people an opportunity to come to know Him.
In the United States Brad and Cathy Jolly were praying or a work to do for God. Not something ordinary but something challenging. They were searching for a closed country, a place where there was no Seventh-Day Adventist presence.
When Brad and Cathy attended a meeting, the preacher challenged the audience to go to China to preach the gospel. When when they looked at a map, they notice that China was no longer a closed country. But just above China, wow, there was a closed country! What country was this? Mongolia!
After days of prayer, struggles and tears, Brad and Cathy decided to go on their own to a strange and unknown country, trusting that God would open the door and provide for their needs.
Life in Mongolia wasn't easy. There were not many goods to buy apart from meat, potato bread, and flour. Arriving in a strange land with no friends waiting for you at the train station in Ulaanbaatar, not knowing where to go, not speaking the local language, and not having anyone that understands your language is not something we would like to do. But this is exactly what they did. Remember: "God doesn’t always call the most qualified, but He always qualifies those whom He calls."
The work wasn't easy, the house wasn't comfortable, and the food wasn't what they were used to. But their God was the same. They still had the same love, the same comforting words of Scripture, the same promises.
Brad started translating the Bible from an old Mongolian script, a hard task that took many hours. Through it many people would come to know Jesus. On September 16, 1993, three precious souls were baptized by Pastor Robert Folkenberg (see top photo), among them Davakhuu and Enkhbayar, two special and godly people who are still working for the Adventist church in Mongolia.
Unfortunately something very sad happened. Brad started feeling sick and cancer was detected. As a committed Christian he tried to stay in Mongolia to finish what he had started. His physical condition weakened. medical care in Mongolia was nonexistent at that time, and finally in 1996, with a heavy heart, the Jolly left Mongolia. But the seeds they had sown had been thrown into fertile soil. God used this young couple to start His church in Mongolia. After a few months battling with his illness, Brad was laid to rest. But we believe that, like Paul, he could say: "Now the time has come for me to die. My life is like a drink offering poured out on the altar. I have fought well. I have finished the race, and I have been faithful. So a crown will be given to me for pleasing the Lord. He judges fairly, and on the day of judgment he will give a crown to me and to everyone else who wants him to appear with power (1 Tim. 4:6-8, contemporary version).
Now the church in Mongolia has more than 1,300 church members. How did we reach this number in such a short period of time? That is something for our next blog!
PS. Just now I am leaving to spend a week with our new missionaries who are having 40 days training in church planting. Here they are taking their morning exercise in a snow storm last week.
Blessings from above,
Elbert Kuhn
Photographs
1. First baptism: Robert Folkenberg, baptizing Enkhbayar and Davakhuu (click on names to see current photos.
2. First group of Seventh-day Adventist members in Mongolia.
3. Brad helping two Mongolian women to understand Daniel's prophecies.
4. The book of Genesis published by Brad.
5. Mike Ryan of Adventist Mission baptizing Bold Batsukh who later became the first Seventh-day Adventist ordained minister in Mongolia. Click on name to see current photo.
6. Our group of young people on their morning exercise in a snow storm. Soon they will become church planters.
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