A Mongolian Night

As the temperatures drops and the snow flies I think back one year, when we traveled literally to the other side of the world, to the nation of Mongolia. We went to observe the work of LifeQwest, the most active and effective Christian ministry in Mongolia. Based in Dallas, LifeQwest is a hands-on, incarnational ministry that is a source of hope in what had previously appeared to be a God-forsaken land.



My report on the church in Mongolia appears in the January 2005 edition of Christianity Today. I can share here my reflections on one night when we visited the children of Mongolia:



It is a uniquely Mongolian night. As a huge red-ball sun sets through the brown haze shrouding the frozen Mongolian capital of Ulaan Bataar (UB), the sprawling city ringed by majestic snow covered mountains prepares for a winter night. Many of the nearly one million people crowd into crumbling Soviet-era apartment buildings, heated by two immense power plants that belch smoke into the valley. Others huddle into small hovels that climb the hills on the outskirts of the city, burning coal and wood fires to ward off the deadly onslaught of temperatures that will sink below negative 30 F.



Four Horsemen

The proud central Asian descendents of Genghis Khan are struggling to rise above centuries of nomadic existence marked by warfare and superstition, and 70 years of Soviet domination, brutality, and neglect. The democracy movement that was massacred on the bricks of Tiananmen Square 15 years ago last summer made its way to Beijing via Mongolia, where 70 years of communism was replaced by democracy the year before.



For thousands of Mongolian children, the struggle is intense and deadly. Stop along the streets of the city and look into the stairwells, sewers, and open markets and you will see the heartbreak of Mongolia—its abandoned street children. There are an estimated 3,000 children living on the streets of the Mongolian capital, the victims of an economy in crisis and a society adrift. The harshness of the north Asian night puts them at risk. If they fail to find shelter through the long winter night, they will freeze to death. Their daily existence is a life and death battle against the four horsemen of the Mongolian apocalypse: cold, hunger, abuse, and hopelessness.



Mongolian children have a natural exuberance. They are polite and friendly, and they smile easily. But look into the eyes of abandoned Mongolia children and you will see a chill that penetrates deep into their souls.



Visiting the Dump

As dusk turns to early dark, garbage trucks race up a winding, gutted dirt road through neighborhoods of small, dilapidated homes barely visible through the smoky air. At the top of the hill is the city dump and a surreal, apocalyptic vision of street urchins huddling around open fires, sorting through trash heaps strewn across a barren landscape. The boys throw themselves at the passing trash lorries, hanging on to anything they can grasp to ride to the area where the new trash is being dumped. This gives the boys who have successfully hitched a ride first dibs on the newly arrived booty. They are searching for pieces of metal, glass bottles, cans, or anything else that can be resold.



Even with the temperature descending from rigidly cold to insanely glacial, the children are not bundled as Western visitors are—in polar jackets, thermal underwear, fur-lined boats and thinsulate gloves. The kids have an extra layer of ragged clothing or at best a light winter coat, thin gloves, and some with tennis shoes. It seems impossible that they could withstand the cold as they wait for the next trash truck and stand sorting through the refuse that contains their dubious booty.



These are street children and the children of the neighborhood down the hill who are scrapping for a few extra cents for themselves or their families. A police officer talks with the children about the child identification center and how they can get out of the cold. Members of a church group invite one of the boys to have dinner with them, but he refuses. It is difficult to know why he would turn down a free, warm meal. He may be afraid of people from outside his neighborhood. It seemed right to ask.



Midnight Visit to the Underground Children

When winter temperatures drop to unbearable levels, the underground system of hot water pipes provides a subterranean labyrinth of survival throughout the frozen city. After 10 p.m., a former street kid led a group to several underground pipe junctions where children spend the night. In one, eight children—seven boys and one girl, all under 16—were tucked into openings and crevices over, under, and around the huge water pipes. After spending the day in the open markets, these underground children find a warm place to sleep in the junction sewers. Underground, the stench of sewage fills your nostrils and clings to your clothes. The children are dirty, their filthy hair tucked under stocking caps. (Some with the Nike swoosh, which has made it to the UB underground).



A Response by the Church in Mongolia

As Mongolia lurched from the dreary certainties of communism to the risks of capitalism in the early 1990s, its children suffered. As government subsidies dried up, the “vodka culture” left by the Soviets kicked in—adding a rise in domestic violence to the country’s array of social ills. With the barely visible social service structure unable to provide much help to the kids of the streets, Christian organizations and the fledgling national church started programs in the major cities.



“As we began planting churches in 1996, we kept discovering the desperate needs of these children and the lack of lifesaving services of any kind,” said Jerry Smith, head of LifeQwest, which rescues children and assists families in the Mongolian cities of Darkhan and UB.



Finding New Hope on a Gray Canvas

There are brilliant strands of hope breaking through the gray despair of a nation struggling to find its way without destroying its children. Fifteen youngsters swarm visitors to an apartment home in Darkhan as a newly rescued child is brought to join their family of orphans and abandoned children. The bounding children are animated and healthy, and they practice their English on anyone who will listen. They are the residents of one of five children’s homes run by LifeQwest. Although officially full, they never turn away a child that has been swept off the streets.



Their new sister is a four-year-old girl with closely cropped hair and an earnest, anticipatory look. She didn’t know her name, so she was given the name Shanea, which means “new.” Shanea was found with a group of children in the market, an open-air series of fruit and sundry stands in an area that is greasy and cluttered like the back lot of a factory. She was abandoned by her mother, left to fend with the band of children skulking in the cold.



Fortunately, this group of Mongolia Christians swept her up and brought her to a new place where she will be cared for, nurtured, and loved. There are huge societal ills to cure, but in the lives of rescued children and the efforts of a young national church, the journey to a Mongolian morning is beginning.

--James Jewell