So much has been happening this month that is is hard to sit and write a prayer letter. Organizing a continuing education program which included new drugs and equipment for the country of Mongolia is a great undertaking. This is our second year of doing this so one would think it would get easier and we would get more proficient at doing so. As I write this and we are less than one week from presenting the new 2006 curriculum and program, I realize there is still more to prepare. I think, "My goodness, what have we been doing for these past months?" As I write this even now I can sense the peace from the Holy Spirit and the Lord assuring me that all will get done. Thank you for your prayers for these past months - you must be praying now.

Preparing a whole new CE curriculum with new drugs and equipment for half the country of Mongolia (we will reach at least 12 of the 21 states this year) is an enormous undertaking. I praise God for the help of many veterinarians around the world who have helped prepare power points and notes for our 2006 curriculum. Without their help the preparation would be even greater. But that is only one of the many steps until final completion of the curriculum and it is actually taught in a classroom setting.

Any foreign prepared CE module must be "Mongolized" meaning it must be modified and adapted for the Mongolian veterinarian. More specifically, for the countryside veterinarian who has been without reliable and good drugs, equipment and update teaching for so long. All material must be translated into Mongolian (or English, if it was written in Mongolian first), reworked, understood by our V.E.T. Net veterinarians who will be teaching it, reviewed by our funders, edited, reviewed again, edited, practiced, reviewed again, edited and finally sent to the publisher. And this in only the teaching material. In addition to this, tests over the material to be taught must be written and finalized so we can check for knowledge and knowledge retention. And in order to have successful drug and equipment distribution at the time of CE, types and drugs and equipment must be selected, put out to a world-wide bidding process, lowest bidders chosen, and then the lengthy drug registration process begins. Drug registration involves obtaining the drug dossier from each company, detailing much of the information for the Mongolian Drug Registration Committee, translating all drug inserts, testing all drugs at the Mongolian Drug Testing Laboratory and coordinating this with all the right Mongolian government officials.

Sally inserting veterinary lessons into the Continuing Education books of V.E.T. Net

In addition, ministry team activities are being planned to share the Gospel in the evening times. George and Sally will be teaching skits to the team so they may reach the lost.

Needles to say, none of this could be done without the help of so many people including the foreign veterinarians who volunteer their time writing some of the CE modules, the Mongolian and foreign V.E.T. Net team who spend countless hours in preparation. Richard who works through the process of obtaining the drug and equipment, Gerald and Frances Mitchum who had the vision of reaching veterinarians for Christ through veterinary medicine and your dedicated prayers to give us all strength to accomplish this.

All of this is for the specific purpose of improving Mongolian lives and livestock, improving veterinary medicine and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a country which has been without the Gospel for so very long. Each veterinarian who is trained is exposed to the Gospel and many seeds planted, many seeds watered and lives changed through Jesus Christ. The fields are white for harvest here in Mongolian and it is an honor to be part of this.

Before closing this letter I must tell you about the recent "Ballenger Bean Battle". Living on the mission field has its hardships - like living without tortilla corn chips and Bushes Baked Beans. Once a year, a group of foreign missionaries bring in a container of needed supplies. Usually this container has a few "delicacies" for the other missionaries.
These items are then sold at a reasonable price out of a room in the same building where George and Sally attend the home school co-op. This is a time which we usually stock up on our Bushes Beans. Any V.E.T. Net shuttle (short term worker) who comes to Mongolia will tell you that one of our favorite meals to feed our workers is the famous Ballenger One pot dinner. This most definitely must include at least one or two cans of Bushes Beans whenever we have access to them. When we heard that the "store" was open, Richard and I grabbed our back packs and went shopping for beans. Sure enough the beans were there… not exactly Bushes, but beans none the less. We had also been told that bags of tortilla corn chips were there also.

The veterinarians of V.E.T. Net (2 are missing). Yes, that is Mary with longer hair!

Now, this is enough to make us literally run over there, or at least, tell the taxi driver to hurry. As we rush into the room, or rather, I mean "store", the beans were on the table!!!! We grab them up but find that there are not very many of them and all the chips are gone!!!! Trying to maintain our Christian attitude, we exclaim, "Who took all of the tortilla chips!" As we gather up a few more items such as SOFT brown sugar, real Pringles, and vanilla pudding mix, the little Mongolian girl drags out a whole box of beans. Getting so very excited, we forget our distress over the loss of tortilla chips and begin bagging up the beans. Now, by this time, the word has gotten down to the home school co-op that the Ballenger's are hoarding the beans! and the school principal comes up to investigate. When he finds that the rumor is indeed true and that the Ballenger's are hoarding the beans he begins to plead with us to leave some beans. Once again, checking our Christian attitude once more, we ask him how many cans we should leave, he says three cans. Ok, we can do that. However, we now want to give him several cans for his family. As we wrestle back and forth (verbally, of course), he finally takes the cans. Oh, by the way, we say, who "hoarded" all of the chips?? A sheepish smile creeps on his face, and says that he was not fast enough to stop that hoarder. Anyway, it was time for him to go back to the school and for Richard and I to go back to work, as I was waiting on Richard all of a sudden, the school principal bounds up the stairs with what looked like a pillow under his shirt. All of a sudden what does he pull out but a bag of tortilla chips!!!! He shared one of his two bags of chips with us in exchange for our beans! Now that is Christian love! So for now we are restocked on our beans and ready to feed shuttles again. Oh, one more funny note. The other day Sally brought home one can of beans. It seems that only 2 of the three cans of beans which we returned were sold and they gave us the last can. Evidently not many others have the "Bean Ministry" like we do. So when we come home on furlough this summer and we are lingering by the chip bowl and savoring each bite, you will know why.

We will arrive in Seattle, Washington on June 27 which will be the start of our furlough. Our next prayer letter will give more details of our itinerary. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible. We want to thank so many of you in person for the wonderful love and support you have shown us these past two years. We will be returning to Mongolia around September 9 to begin another term of service. Once again we are honored to be here and honored to have you part of our support team. Thank you so much for your prayers.

In His Service,

Richard, Mary, George and Sally