8th Grader Converts Sunday Church in Mongolia

Every morning, the boy climbed a mountain and prayed, “Please, God, use me.”

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

Eighth grader Bumchin Erdenebat wanted to go to church when his family moved to a mountainous town in rural Mongolia.

But the town didn’t have a Seventh-day Adventist church. Many of the 10,000 residents were Buddhist, just like his parents. But there was one Christian church that met on Sundays — in the home of Bumchin’s new math teacher.

Bumchin was scared to go to his math teacher’s home.

“I was a bad student in math, so I was worried to go to her church,” he said.

Several months before moving, Bumchin started attending the Adventist church in his old town. An Adventist relative had invited him to go the first time. Then the Adventist pastor had taken him to an Adventist youth conference in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. Bumchin realized at the conference that missionaries were needed in share the gospel in Mongolia, but he wondered how he could be a missionary in his new town.

As Bumchin pondered his next move, he began climbing up a mountain near his home every morning. At the top of the mountain, Bumchin sang Christian songs and prayed to God to guide him.

“Please, God, use me,” he prayed.

One morning after prayer, he charged down the mountain and went straight to the Sunday church. He felt a little awkward when he walked inside and realized that he was the only child in a room of 20 adults. But he soon forgot about his discomfort as he listened to the adults talk. The church was about to close.

“This is the last meeting of our church,” a church member said.

“Why go on with so few members?” said another.

The church members were discouraged that many people had stopped coming to worship.

Bumchin stood up and opened his Bible to 1 Corinthians 15:58. He read, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (NKJV).

He then gave a Bible study on how Christians shouldn’t lose hope. The church members listened intently as the boy spoke, and when he finished, they exclaimed, “This is no longer our last meeting! This will be our first meeting as we start out new!”

A few days later, several church members joined Bumchin in climbing up the mountain to pray.

Bumchin contacted the pastor of his old Adventist church and invited him to preach at the Sunday church. The pastor agreed if Bumchin helped him, and the two gave Bible presentations once a month for the next six months.

“I didn’t try to convince the church members to become Adventists,” Bumchin said. “I just joined them in worshipping and praying.”

But he changed his mountaintop prayer. Instead of only asking God to use him, he prayed, “Please use me to turn the church members into Adventists.”

The church’s membership grew to 27, and Bumchin’s classmates also began to attend the services.

At the end of the year, all 27 church members traveled to the Adventist pastor’s church to pray with the Adventist members at a special Christmas program. When the church members returned home, they voted unanimously to turn their church into an Adventist church. It was the only time that a whole church has been converted in the Adventist Church’s 26-year history in Mongolia.

The new church grew to 40 members by the time that Bumchin moved to Ulaanbaatar as an adult. But Bumchin, now 27, hasn’t stopped planting Adventist churches. Today, he is a Global Mission pioneer and the leader of Mongolia’s only Pathfinder church, which he and his wife opened in 2012 in their home, a traditional Mongolian yurt. The Khutul Seventh-day Adventist Church has an average Sabbath attendance of 60 people, including 45 Pathfinders. The Adventist Church in Mongolia recognized it as an official church in March 2017, and its first 10 baptisms are scheduled for June.

Bumchin’s eighth-grade math teacher, meanwhile, still teaches math. But now she lives in Ulaanbaatar and teaches at Tusgal School, the only Adventist school in Mongolia and a recipient of the Thirteen Sabbath Offering in 2015.

What does Bumchin want to do next?

“I want to plant churches around Mongolia,” he said.