Story number 2 for 29 Aug 2002

(Mongolia)–Meanwhile, the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship has found a way to help combat crippling poverty in Mongolia. In 1999, the group launched a lingua-cultural project; Intervarsity’s Fred Wagner explains how this helps. “The people of Mongolia are in dire economic straits; unemployment in the capital city is about 50-percent. For university students, a college degree is no guarantee of a job. But, if they can pick up English as a second language, it greatly increases their chances for employment.” Wagner says for that reason, if an outsider offers to teach English, they are met with a ready audience. He asks believers to pray for those teaching. “I have seen numbers of students move from the relationship that they have with us, to being willing to look at the life of Jesus, get their nose into a New Testament, and for some, through that reading then, to come to a personal faith in Jesus.”