Bread of Life

We were able to start a bread project this spring after the lunar new year.  In the province north of Bayankhongor there is a bread factory run by other Christians who bake the bread over a wood fire.  Bayankhongor Development Partnership Team (through our project funds) were able to bring them down to Bayankhongor and have them build a stove and show us how to use it.

                                                                          

After a few months of getting the permissions.  (Apparently the Mongolian government has to make sure we are not poisoning anyone, go figure).  We started baking bread and selling it to local shops.  We have learned that the most important thing is having the right people working.  We now have 3 full time young people working throughout the week baking bread.  They have also started attending church on Sundays where we have just started a very active young peoples program.

 

Right now we have realized that in order to make a profit and have our workers earning a decent income we need to build a bigger stove.  This first smaller stove cost around 1,000 USD.  The church sold an old Russian van and will take that money to build the bigger stove.  We can not sell the bread fast enough, our major bottleneck is that it takes 3 hours for the yeast to rise.  Not a bad problem to have at all.

 

We praise God that he was able to provide the funds and workers to make this project a success, at least so far.  We are hoping that we can take this concept and reproduce it in the countryside where bread is not always available and more expensive.

Herder Assistance

This spring we were also able to help 100 Bayankhongor herders.  Last summer was very dry and this winter has been very cold.  In Mongolia years like this are called a dzud, harsh winter.  Many animals have died and the spring was exceptionally cold preventing the new grass from growing.  Many different organizations are helping with food and feed for the herder families.  Mongolia's pasture is over grazed so JCS and many others thought it would be best to help only with food so that the herder families could make it through this hard time and rebuild their herds.

 

JCS chose to do their assistance to herders in Bayankhongor through Bayankhongor Development Partnership Team.  We chose 2 countryside locations in the Gobi desert and helped 50 herder families at each location.  We were able to help with Flour, rice, salt, sugar, tea and oil.  We also gave them a book about Psalm 23, the Lord is my Shepherd. 

In one of the locations there is a group of believers that meet occasionally and at the other there are no believers that we are aware of.  At the second location another JCS team is about to work all summer in digging a well so we look forward to what God will do in the lives of those people.  Both locations saw this assistance as coming from a Christian organization even though we are not registered as such.  Our name in Mongolian is very long and the local government could not remember it so they called us "The Christian Development Organization from Bayankhongor City". 

Kitchen Finished!!!

Here are the finishing touches on the kitchen.  The house is pretty much done except odd and end type of jobs.  Thanks so much for all your prayers and support!

House Almost Done!

The house is almost done!!  We are still waiting on our kitchen cabinets which were supposed to be done almost 3 weeks ago.  Sorry we haven't written much but I (Shauna) have been in the states for 6 weeks and am now just finally getting settled in.  When we are completely done we of course will send more pictures of the finished house.  Thanks so much to all of you who have helped.

 

Kaylee's room

 

   hallway to Kaylee and guest bedroom

Our room

   family room     stairwell

 

  living room for entertaining

 

bathroom

 

  eating area  office/school room

kitchen

Major stuff getting done

As you can see we now have a mostly complete bathroom.  I was able to take a full hot bath the other night, it was wonderful.

 

   

 

No that is not my bald head in the picture.  Roy Jackson from Kentucky was here and did a superb job tiling the bathroom and hanging my doors.  A huge THANK YOU to him.  We also have done some painting downstairs and of course all the other "little" jobs that you wouldn't be able to see on a picture.

 

   

 

 

 

I was also able to get a full truck load of coal for the winter.  I realize now that I should have gotten 1/2 a truck load.  As you can see they stacked it pretty high.  We should have enough to last 2 winters now!!!  The taller board in front is about 5 feet 6 inches tall.  That is about 51/2 tons of coal !!!  We will be warm this winter.

 

 

 

2nd Floor

Well the second floor will be finished this week and we will be moving in or at least Jeff will.  Kaylee and I will be staying with our friend Laura until we leave on Sept. 7th.  There are still too many non-kid friendly things hanging around.  Please continue to keep Jeff in your prayers especially as these final stages are quite taxing for him sometimes.

 

 

The wallpapered part is light blue but it is kind of hard to tell.

House

Here is some more updated photos.   While we have been in UB are Mongolian workers finished putting up the drywall on the second floor and insulated the 1st floor.  Unexpectedly our landlord wants to move back into their apartment early.  So, we will be coming back to BH and moving to our very unfinished house in a week.  Kaylee and I will be staying with our friend Laura until we leave for the UB on Sept. 7th.