A Day in the Life
My name is Batbayar, which means strong joy, and I can ride a horse better than I can ride a bicycle. I am ten, and I am Khalkha Mongol, from the country of the endless steppe.
In summer we live at our family’s ger, the round white felt house on the grasslands, where my grandfather’s herds graze to the horizon. I have my own horse. Mongolian children race in the Naadam festival every July, galloping farther than most adults in your country have ever ridden, and last summer I finished without falling, which my grandmother celebrated like a victory.
In winter we live in Ulaanbaatar, the coldest capital city on earth, where my school is, and where half of all Mongolians now live. City or steppe, we eat the same good things: buuz, steamed dumplings fat with mutton, and milk tea with salt, which every guest is handed before anyone says a word. My grandfather keeps the old ways, a blue silk scarf tied at the sacred cairn on the hill, prayers to the eternal blue sky, a visit to the lama at the monastery.
But something new is in our family too. My aunt follows Jesus. When she was born, there was no church in all Mongolia. Now her church in the city sings in Mongolian, loud as Naadam, and she tells me the story of the lost sheep like it happened on our own steppe. My grandfather shakes his head at her, but he listens.
Fun Facts
- Mongolia is the least densely populated country on earth, a land of grass under an enormous sky.
- The ger, a round felt tent, can be taken down and packed onto animals in about an hour.
- At the Naadam festival, children as young as five race horses across miles of open steppe.
- Milk tea with salt, suutei tsai, is offered to every guest who enters a ger.
- In 1990 Mongolia had almost no known believers. Today its young church numbers in the tens of thousands.
- The complete Bible exists in Mongolian, and Mongolian churches now send missionaries to other peoples.
How to Pray for the Khalkha Mongols
Thank God for one of the youngest churches in the world, and pray it grows deep as well as wide: for trained pastors, for believers who endure when family disapproves, for the gospel to travel from the city back out to the herding families on the steppe. Pray for grandfathers like Batbayar’s, loyal to the blue sky and the lamas, to meet the Lord of the sky. And pray that the church born in 1990 becomes a sending church for all of Central Asia.
How Kids Can Help
Find Mongolia on a map, landlocked between Russia and China. Build a blanket ger and drink tea inside it, the way every Mongolian guest does. Read Luke 15, the lost sheep, and imagine it on the steppe. The May 2026 Wonder Letter visits Mongolia through the eyes of a first generation believer, with a map and vocabulary for your family.
Scripture to Remember
“The heavens are telling of the glory of God.” (Psalm 19:1)
The Mongols have honored the eternal blue sky for a thousand years. The sky was always pointing at someone.