Dear family and friends,

Noah and I made a 2 day trip to a village last weekend. We have been planning to go ever since the Kazakh guy (Noorken) who sold me lumber and worked on the addition told us that he was from Zhalanash. Noorken is single, in his late twenties, and has been trained to be a “doctor”. He is roughly equivalent to an EMT in America. He never completed his internship because all the scholarships were cancelled. So he sells lumber in the summer. That is how we met. In the winter he just does odd jobs. He has a small house in town which he has gutted and is rehabbing slowly. Another Kazakh named Kairat also went with us on the trip to help translate. Kairat is a believer who works at the seminary near our house.

Our trip was fairly uneventful but we are encouraged by what we found out about the area. We left early Saturday morning in our small Russian car and returned late Sunday night. We spent Saturday evening at Noorken’s house and drove to another village to visit Kairat’s sister on Sunday morning.

Noorken’s parents and two of his brothers also live in the house. The Lord gave us several opportunities to present the Gospel to Noorken, one of his brothers and his brother's wife. Noorken believes in the traditional Kazakh religion of praying to dead ancestors. We are thankful for his hospitality and will keep praying for the Lord to soften his heart and those of his family. Noah played chess with his brother (Erbool) and beat him 3 or 4 times. (Erbool was a regional chess champion but he was a little drunk when he was playing Noah. Still, Noah’s skill in chess is growing.) It was cold and we only had heat for about 2 hours in the evening. Noah had 4 shirts plus a snowsuit, hat, and mittens on in the house. We slept together in a sleeping bag under about 6 inches of blankets and were quite comfortable while sleeping. Outside it wasn’t that cold, just under freezing, but it was damp and snowy. On Sunday, the sun came out and we felt much warmer as we drove around Zhalanash looking for medicine for Noorken’s mom and fuel for the car. We found the medicine after visiting 3 homes, but we never found any fuel with high enough octane for the car. (We made it home on what we had with us!)

Zhalanash is one of the villages we have visited twice before. It is about a 3.5-hour drive from Almaty. There are 2 other villages within a 30-minute drive and 2 more about 45 minutes away. All of these villages have been evangelized by short-term trips several times. Kairat said he only knows of 1 professing believer (his oldest sister who we spent time with on Sunday.) There are no churches in any of these villages. Zhalanash is the largest village. I don’t know the exact population. There are around 250 families and around 500 children in the schools in Zhalanash and at least twice that in total in the other villages.

At one time, the town was very prosperous as is evident by the quality of construction in the homes, and all of the closed or nearly closed businesses. 10 years ago Zhalanash had a supermarket, several smaller stores, 2 nice gas stations, an electric substation, the 2nd largest spruce tree farm in the Soviet Union, a large hospital, a pre-school, a grain elevator, and 2 lumber mills. Also, in one district of Zhalanash (where Noorken lives) all of the houses were built with indoor plumbing. The village is at the foot of the mountains with a 15-mile long plain spreading before it and ending in another lower range of mountains. Every family controls 10 hectors (1 kilometer by 100 meters) of land. About half of the families have left town. In former days each family grew wheat on half of the land and pastured sheep on the other half. Noorken’s family has 50 hectors of land, enough to raise about 500 sheep on. There are a dozen or so families that raise 200-1000 sheep, and much potential for sheep, wheat, and timber farming and the support businesses that go with that. The water is abundant (mostly snow melt and deep wells). The climate is much colder than Almaty, but not as cold as Petropavlovsk. The village where Kairat’s sister lives with her family is about half as big as Zhalanash. It is called Suhtuh. It is more rustic but warm enough to grow fruit. It is also an area that attracts tourists for hiking, camping, and fishing so there are houses for rent and foreigners are not that unusual.
Oct 1999

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