art – Jones Family – MANNA Missionaries

We have just finished back-to-back teams to Mongolia and Thailand with some detours to Korea in the middle. I was talking with our last team, and if my math is correct, Kim and I have spent a whole 8 nights in our own bed since May. The good news is, we get to sleep at home this Friday night! It has been a pretty amazing month. Here is the recap.

We took a medical team to Mongolia for the 3rd year in a row. It really is the ends of the earth type of trip. We were able to visit a crisis pregnancy center in Ulaanbaatar and spend time with at our orphanage as well. It is great seeing the kids and loving on them. The government ranked it as the #1 orphanage in Mongolia several years ago and they had a whole news documentary on it.

From there, we drove 10 hours into the Gobi Desert and had a medical clinic in 2 different villages where we have nutrition centers located. It has been a tremendous outreach to the communities and provided us an audience with the local mayor and given us favor with the schools and people. What has been a treat is getting to see some repeat patients and follow-up on them. There is a stroke patient that Kim worked with the first year and he and his wife have come back every time. The first year he couldn’t walk or talk, the second year he was able to walk with a cane. This year he told Kim, “welcome to Mongolia” for the very first time. It is really incredible to see his progress and the joy.

From there we sent the team home and picked up a team in Thailand. We started in northern Thailand working with the Lahu, which is a Hill Tribe. We have been able to start a tutoring program where we feed the children and the pastor’s wife helps tutor them in school as most kids never make it past 6th grade. She is a school teacher and was able to get us into 2 different schools to help teach English.

Next, we went to southern Thailand and worked at a school for Burmese refugee children. It is a great partnership. MANNA provides the funding to feed the over 200 children breakfast and lunch each day so that they can have good nutrition while learning. This team taught a VBS to 2nd grade for several days, attended chapel, and help do some demolition and painting on the second floor classrooms. It was a huge help to the ministry and the kids. It was amazing to see how excited the kids were to find out they were getting newly painted classrooms. Both teams were a huge blessing to the respective ministries and communities and I cannot wait to see what the long-term fruit is from both of them. We will now be speaking at churches in 3 different states in October and heading back to Thailand at the end of the month until Thanksgiving. Thank you again for your prayers and support!

After we saw our Thailand team off we headed to Japan. We were met with an earthquake and a typhoon. Reaghan seriously thought I had snuck into her room and was shaking her bed not realizing it was an earthquake. I guess that’s going to happen when most of our time is spend in countries in the Ring of Fire. The team arrive the next day and we headed up to the mountains to work at a camp.

Every year this group comes and brings a team to help do renovations on a youth camp in the mountains several hours west of Tokyo. This year we replaced 30 year old carpet with new hardwood floors. Reaghan was my right hand helper too. In addition to the flooring, the team roofed an outdoor kitchen, worked on a rock climbing wall, and did a ton of cleaning. We had a big fellowship with Japanese churches around the Tokyo area and cleaned up the grounds with a chainsaw and a lot of helping hands. We headed back to Tokyo on Wednesday and the first campers showed up the next day. I know the kids really enjoyed the renovations at the camp. Before we sent them home we took the team on a tour of Tokyo and visited Mount Fuji.

Once we sent the team home we headed to China to help with another camp of sorts. We landed in Beijing and met up with a team who was working with kids, teach English and take them to visit cultural sites. We made a lot of new friends along the way. We took a high speed train to Xi’an and met up with the kids there. Around English lessons and programs we took them to visit museums, historical palaces and the Terracotta Warriors. The kids loved it!

After finishing the camp in Xi’an we flew to Shanghai and met with a school and a couple who works with orphanages and special needs kids. We are preparing to help them engage the kids and assist with additional camps for special needs and autistic children in China. All in all, it was an amazing trip and the kids in China will have a special place in our heart for sure.

We made it home and are moving our daughters back to college this week, as we speak. On Monday we are back on a plane as we take a medical team to Mongolia, then head to Thailand for a second team. We should make it home the end of September. I look forward to keeping you updated on those teams.