The problems and issues of this city become more real - and more clear - every day I walk outside our apartment. Poverty is a cruel master. If poverty is a cruel master, alcoholism is doubly wicked. As need confronts me each day, I actually have to resist the temptation to become hard-hearted. It's a daily assault. Young boys asking for food. Little girls asking for money. A man with no hands waits outside the grocery store. Another man with no legs plays a flute for toogriks in an offering box. Drunks by the dumpster, hoping to get the dregs of thrown away vodka bottles and scraps of food thrown out with the trash. There is constant need. This week a couple of little girls followed us home from a restaurant. One had no coat. As we neared our home they met up with a little boy who had no shoes, just socks. I see these kids almost every time I go get groceries.
Most Mongolians see it every day, as well. They are pretty hardened to it all. Frankly, I have found that it's possible to acquire calluses relatively quickly. I don't like that. However, it does seem that generally speaking most Mongolians are unmoved by the plight of the poor. Perhaps it's because so many are only a step away from poverty themselves.
Renee' and I are doing a language practicum this week (finishing today, actually). Our practicum topic has been the plight of at risk children in Mongolia. We have had the opportunity to visit two different orphanages, plus the "
Save the Children" offices in UB. This has given us the opportunity to be exposed to what many different organizations are doing for the poor, and particularly for children of poverty. One organization that I was impressed with is the "
Christina Noble Foundation". ABC news has a pretty interesting
article and
video about this foundation's work in Ulaanbaatar.
I watch this video and am glad what this and other organizations are doing. However, I watch this video and I am also grieved. I am grieved that there is not an equipped church in Mongolia that is able to meet these needs with the compassion of Christ. The "Christina Noble Foundation" is a great organization, and my hat is off to them. However, I long for the day when there will be something a million times better. I long for the day when the Mongolian church will rise up strong and merciful, with a message that does more than help the poor. It's a message that eternally changes everything (and helps the poor). When the church proclaims that message and backs that message up with compassion and mercy and justice for the poor and needy and orphans and widows, then Christ is exalted and God is glorified throughout eternity. He becomes famous. That's what I want to see. I am not interested in personally meeting all of the needs in front of us. I am most interested in seeing an equipped Monoglian Church facing the consequences of the fall head on, with great courage and power.
All of this drives me back to the task at hand. Renee' and I must saturate our minds and our hearts with this language and this culture in order to gain the appropriate tools, skills, resources and relationships required for the equipping of the saints in Mongolia, that mercy, compassion, truth and justice will proceed from an equipped church. Then - and only then - will we see needs being met in a way that meet eternity's standards.
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
(Amos 5:24 ESV)
For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the LORD.
(Psalms 33:4-5 ESV)
Bernie Anderson
