Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Catholics in Mongolia

It's a little discouraging sometimes to think that there are only a couple hundred Wesleyans in Mongolia. This was put into a little perspective for me, though, when I read this article, which mentions that there are only 415 Catholics in Mongolia, despite the fact that they have been at work there since 1992 and currently have 70 missionaries in the field. It reemphasizes the difficulty of spreading the gospel in the country, but where else on earth is The Wesleyan Church nearly half the size of the Roman Catholic church?

3 comments:

Luanna Joy Wright said...

Hi Chris,
We are getting a sonogram to see what the new little one is today!

Check out my blog...

Luanna

www.luannajoy.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but the Catholic church in UB is HUGE and pretty sweet. We had a lecture from the priest who runs it, and he was amazing (I'm not Catholic, but this guy made me wish I was ... maybe a little)

As for hiring a translator... just get everything in writing and you should be fine :-) And do some networking, ask around, see who other people have used. Shouldn't be too bad.

Anonymous said...

Oh, one more thing. I'll put all my cards on the table and say up front I'm not exactly excited to have people going to Mongolia looking to "Spread the Gospel". Read up on what the crazy Koreans have done with their overzealousness (or just ask people when you get there)... as for the Catholics, the reason there aren't so many, is that their mission is specifically not for "spreading the gospel"--it is for doing service work for those in need. If people decide to join or are curious to learn more, than so be it, but the father in UB was very adamant about the role of the Church in Mongolia. The Russian Orthodox Church has a similar philosophy regarding their work. The same can't be said for the protestants, and even less so for the freaking Mormons, who are pretty much just out of their minds.

Ugh.

But I lived with a family of Mongolian protestants (the father is one of the leading preachers) and must say I was impressed by their lack of dogmatism. But Christianity in general is going to spend a long time just repairing the damage already done by those doing work "in His name".