When Discovering the Joy of Parenting was first published in 2002, I never imagined it would be used in any languages other than English and Japanese. But two years later, God began opening the door to take this resource into Mongolia as well. At our first “All Asia” Asian Access retreat held in March 2004, I met Ariuna, wife of our pastors training coordinator in Mongolia.
I showed Ariuna the text we had published in English and Japanese, and we talked about the importance of teaching biblical principles of parenting. She liked the content and format, and began to think and pray about how a translation of this book might be accomplished for Mongolia. In 2007, we met again at our fortieth anniversary Asian Access gathering in Malaysia, and renewed our discussions. But with busy schedules and geographical distance creating a major hurdle, it was difficult to move ahead.
Then, in 2009 the Lord provided airline miles for Gary and I to travel to Mongolia. We felt God calling us to pursue Ariuna’s vision for her people. Our one-week trip in June gave us a peek into the main challenges of families in Mongolia as well as some of issues common to Asian cultures. And in God’s amazing provision, we met Moogie, our future translation coordinator, as we stayed in her home the entire week and saw her begin to catch God’s vision for this text.
Progress was slow, but gradually Moogie put together a team of five translators to work on the project. These women not only translated the text—they met weekly to study the principles and apply them to their own families.
God miraculously provided help in another way as well. When we first met Moogie, she was a single mother with five children not yet in their teens. (Her husband had left her when she was pregnant with their fifth child.) During the translation process, God brought a fine Christian man into Moogie’s life to be her husband and father to her children. And guess what? He owns a small printing company! You don’t have to guess where the Mongolian version of this text was printed.
During the four days I was there (from the evening of October 31 to the afternoon of November 4), it was an honor to hold the completed Mongolian text in my hands as I shared biblical parenting principles with over 130 people in three separate seminars in both rural and urban Mongolia.
I am humbled by the words Ariuna shared with me: “This resource is God’s miracle for Mongolian families.”
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