kyrgyzstan -- kids, students, and businessmen

Kyrgyzstan is a young country. Statistics says 34.4% of its population are under the age of 15 and 6.2% are over 65; my eyes told me whenever I went outdoor or going downtown I saw young workers or school children bustling/roaming on the streets, or toddlers on strollers by their young adult parents.

And kids are not about being shy or bashful, but bright and sprightly here. Say hi to a roomful of kindergarten kids and they all turn and vigorously greet you back. At one of the schools we visited, a 1st-grader-ish boy came up to us introducing himself as a boxer (the school did offer boxing lessons), and asked if we knew of Mike Tyson?... Bruce Lee?... Muhammad Ali?... Jean-Claude Van Damme...



The young, smart, fluent English speaking female principal of the vocational college we visited was actually a graduate from the first Christian school the foundation set up some 18 years ago, who came back to work at the college a couple years ago when it started and grew her way up to the principal position. Talking about sowing and harvesting, fruits of education.



One expressed intent of my trip here was to meet and talk with the university's IT department staff and students, to get a feel and explore the possibility of bringing online development project opportunities to the motivated and talented.

My encounter with the IT students started off at a casual off-campus lunch with four of them (who all later became my group discussion members at the TWTS leadership training course): Abai, the typical, smart, computer wizard kid, Azamat, the pensive one, Iskak, the young and restless, and Aisulu, a bubbly girl who looked every inch like my niece-in-law in Taiwan. All seemed curiously excited about the possibilities I mentioned.

I then met with the IT department staff at school: Polina, the charming department head, Andrei, head of IT services for both the university and the vocational college, and Kochkorov, head of career development. All welcomed the ideas I proposed, as educational and potentially monetarily rewarding opportunities for the students. As a matter of fact, Andrei, who also taught web programming at the schools and had done some online projects himself, had thought about assembling a "programming club"--as many commercial IT companies in Bishkek have been doing for their junior programmers to practice development skills--to take on online projects for some of his students too.



So he informed and gathered a group of around 15 students he pre-selected to meet with me at school, where I introduced myself and my ideas and invited them to share their online development experiences--if any--with me and others. Out of a few who spoke, one 14-year-old said he had done some online project since age 12! Wow, I knew that's what I would find here (like anywhere else in the world)!



International Micro-Enterprise Development (IMED) is a micro-financing program that gives start-up loans to worthy small businesses that the foundation has started doing about a year ago. I got to see and meet those businesses and people who had received loans last year as the Special Project Manager from the foundation took me along for the program's follow-up visits.
Out of those we met--the tin metal maker, the wedding photographer, the carpenter, the plumber, the car repairman, and the beef jerky maker--three struck me with their unusual backgrounds and life stories:

S. was a Uzbek living in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, the most conservative and Islamic part of the country. When he and his brother's conversion to Christianity was known by their neighbors, an angry mob took them to a public ground and demanded that they recant and revert to their Islamic faith. When they refused the Imam turned his back and signaled the mob to stone them to death, but the police cars arrived in time to take them to safety. They and their families had since left their hometown and moved north here to start a new life where S. runs his carpentry business while pastoring and hosting weekly Bible studies for his relatives and other fellow Uzbek Christians here.

V. had an abusive Korean father (whose father was one of those displaced by Stalin from Russian Far East to Kazakhstan in the late 1930's) and an Armenian mother. At age 17 he was in such depression he almost killed his father or himself if not for his new found Christian faith. He graduated from the foundation's university and is now managing John (the Canadian)'s farm, studying for Master's degree on international project management, and starting a beef jerky manufacturing business with his friend/partner A.

A. is a German Kyrgyz of Mennonite descent who nowadays goes to Calvary Church in Bishkek. He had gone to study and got a business degree in Lithuania but decided to come back to fight for orphans' welfare in his home country. He works for World Without Orphans on legal matters while running the sales and marketing side of the beef jerky business he started with V. He is happily married with a lovely wife and 5 daughters, 4 of them orphans they adopted.

kyrgyzstan -- missions and missionaries

In 1992, 64-year-old Captain Yang (楊嘉善), a former merchant marine captain, decided to retire and serve God in full time ministry. He turned over his shipping business to his employees and dedicated the rest of his life to mission work.

From 1995 - 2000, he and his wife ministered among the Dungan Muslim people in Kazakhstan. In spring 2000 they were moved to open Christian schools and orphanages in Kyrgyzstan. Miraculously, Kyrgyzstan's departments of Religion, Justice and Education granted Elder Yang the nation's first Christian school license. He soon set up a Christian charitable foundation and opened its first Christian School of Blessing in September 2000 with 120 students from 1st-4th grades.

As of today, the foundation operates/supports five schools (mostly 1st-11th grades) and two orphanages that serve over 1200 children, and a university and a vocational college that offer business, law, linguistic, pedagogy, international relations, and information technology studies to over 400 students, as well as a gym and a playground with youth and pre-school programs in northern Kyrgyzstan.

 

Christian funded or not, proselytization and open adulation of Christianity is not allowed in Kyrgyzstan. An off-campus student fellowship/counseling program is thus set up and conducted by Jean, a lady pastor from Taiwan who has been residing and hosting weekly meetups, organizing summer/winter camps, providing life coaching, etc., to young adults here for well over a year.

Another off-campus, annual event organized by the foundation is a Christian value based leadership development program (called "The Way To Success") that invites seasoned business people as speakers and mentors to teach and facilitate the training for those who choose to participate.

Spencer and Diane are such speakers. They are a couple originally from Kansas and veterans of corporate world before leaving it for mission fields. They--along with their three young children--had been living among the Uyghurs in Chinese Xinjiang region for 5 years until the Chinese government decided not to renew their visa and moved here a year and a half ago.

Paul is another layman-turned-missionary that I met through the TWTS program (where I cameoed as a mentor). He was originally from Wisconsin and a gifted addiction/crisis counselor by profession, before he met Captain Yang's ministry in the States and decided to become a full time missionary himself. Before coming to Kyrgyzstan six months ago, he and his Chinese wife Angela had spent a couple years in southwestern China (雲南) evangelizing tea growers there.

From a rigid Catholic background (he is the 7th child of two church going Catholic parents), he had "converted" to a pro-active, but very kind and thoughtful evangelical in this land of non-Christian-believers. He told me two contrasting episodes that recently happened to him: In one someone knocked on his apartment door and advised he keep a low profile in his evangelical activism here; In another he was invited to a rural village by a Kyrgyz woman whose recently deceased husband was a non-practicing Scottish Christian to speak in his funeral and he took the opportunity to pronounce his faith and the gospel message at the end of his speech to hundreds of Muslims in the audience, knowing full well what dangers such pronunciation might bring him.

I met Sandra at one of those student fellowship functions Jean organized. She told me she was originally from Ohio but later moved to Arizona and then sold her property there to travel the world on missions. She has been living in a house she bought 5 years ago in the former Mennonite village and working on rescuing and educating women who are victims of bride kidnapping that she said is still quite common practice here.

John is a Canadian who came to Kyrgyzstan 4 years ago and with his churches' backing set up a farm for adult orphans who "graduated" from orphanages without employable skills and/or places to live. He had since extended his farm to include guest houses for back-packers/eco-vacationers and sell handicrafts made by orphanage children to help achieve self-sustenance for the operation.

Last but not least, Butch, a retired chief executive of a big construction company in Illinois, has been the major benefactor and brain trust for the foundation for the past 15 years or so. He happened to be here on one of his frequent visits from the States and staying in the same complex as I so we hit off chatty conversations almost daily at breakfast in the homey kitchen. He struck me as an even-keeled Mid-Westerner and straight-talking Texan (indeed he just bought a ranch in central Texas and moved down there a couple months ago) combined, a rock solid guy befitting his position as chairman of the foundation that is particularly needed since Captain Yang, a very dear old friend of his since the founding of the foundation, had passed away more than two and a half years ago.

kyrgyzstan

For the past couple years we've been sponsoring an international university in Kyrgyzstan through a Christian foundation. I decided to pay an explorative visit to the country and the university while in Taipei.

A straight line flight from Taipei to Kyrgyzstan (3000 miles) would include an overnight stop-over in China that required Chinese visa which I didn't have, so I opted for an alternative route that took me off Taipei in early morning, stopped by Seoul for a couple hours, then a 7-hour beeline to Almaty, Kazakhstan, then a short hour flight to Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, before a driver and two students from the university picked me up at the airport and took me for a one-and-a-half hour drive to the town of my destination, Tokmok, while the night was still young.

To most people--me included--Kyrgyzstan is probably just one of those hard-to-spell "-stan" countries in the middle of nowhere Euro-Asia landmass. Indeed it is first of those "-stan" countries sprawling west of China (Kazakhstan to its north, Uzbekistan to the west and southwest, Tajikistan to the southwest), occupying a key section of the ancient international highway called Silk Road, carrying a mixed-bag of cultural and historical heritage spanning millennia, as ancient civilizations ebbed and flew, East and West met and left, at the heart of the Eurasian continent.

Take two ancient ruins I visited for examples: Suyab (碎葉) was once the principal capital of Western Turkic Khaganate (西突厥汗國) who got defeated by Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty (唐太宗), and the rumored birthplace of the famous Chinese poet 李白; Burana Tower was one of the oldest architectural construction (a minaret) in Central Asia, situated in the old capital of yet another Khaganate established by people of Iranian origin.

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People here still call Chinese "Khitan" (契丹) because that Chinese ethnic group came and established the Western Liao Dynasty (西遼王朝) and ruled them for 100 years during the 12-13th century.

After some unsuccessful rebellions against Qing Dynasty by Chinese Muslims living in northwest China (陝甘回亂) in late 19th century, many of them chose to emigrate to Kyrgyzstan and other parts of Central Asia, whose descendants are now called Dungan ( 東干，東甘 ，甘肅東部 ) people, with whom you can carry on simple conversations in modern Chinese without much trouble.

Around the same time, a group of German speaking Mennonite Christians migrated from Europe to the northeast of Kyrgyzstan to escape religious persecution from the Catholic and other Reformed churches.

And tens of thousands of Korean families living in Russian Far East were force-moved by Stalin to this part of the world for fear of them being used as Japanese spies pre-World War II era.

Economically speaking, Kyrgyzstan is a poor country. It has few natural resources other than some minerals and water from the high mountains. Whatever little manufacturing industry it had collapsed after the Soviet Union breakup, and agriculture remains a major contributor to the country's GDP. Indeed I had tasted great delicious beet soup and potato mash, devoured biggest shish-kabobs ever, and crossed path with horse and cow herds on country roads.

I spent my 9-day stay at the Christian foundation's office-residential building rather than a hotel. It was a small two-story complex with nice meeting hall and homey kitchen, among other things, and a staff of capable and devoted Kyrgyz Christians who have done many great charitable works in a Muslim country for the past 18 years. I gave thanks to each of them and shared my spiritual journey with them in their daily morning devotion on the day I left.

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Crossing path with horses:

https://youtu.be/ENbEoYjrFcc

For more photos and trip details: 

https://www.facebook.com/cdwongx/media_set?set=a.10220522230190907&type=3