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By Jason Ritchie
I knew little of what to expect as I pushed my broken-down luggage cart out of the Soviet Era
airport terminal toward a waiting van. It was already dark, and the 30-below chill of a central
Asian winter bit at my face and hands. Even at that late hour, a throng of would-be drivers,
peddlers, beggars, and travelers pressed in around us. “Be careful of pickpockets,” said the
team leader as he greeted our translator who would take us to our rooms. In that moment I
wondered, “What have I gotten myself into?”
My mind was awhirl during the next few days of that missions trip. I experienced things I had
not imagined. I ate things I could not describe and saw things I could not forget. I was shocked
by the harshness, the poverty, and the spiritual darkness. I made new friends: the children we
visited at a local orphanage, the government official fascinated by American cowboys, our
translator’s retired sister who had been a Russian acrobat, and the teen whose father beat him
black and blue for attending church.
With each new relationship came the growing realization that, for me, Ulaanbaatar was no
longer just a place on the map and the command to spread the Gospel there no longer felt
optional. Suddenly, my banking career seemed far less important than the urgent need to reach
lost souls in that place. I began to feel responsible for the needs of that place in a new way.
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