I arrived in the land of Genghis Khan, the mysterious country, Mongolia in January 1998. It was -30C, yet I felt such an excitement and warm feeling inside knowing that I was finally in the land where God had called me.

Over the last decade, the Lord has led me to minister to alcoholics and hurting people in Mongolia. As Mongolia was such a young Christian country, younger than 10 years old at the time, it was a very new concept to be helping addicts through the local church. However, we have seen tremendous release and empowering for the Mongolian churches and individuals to reach the needy. Today, we have over 16 churches running Celebrate Recovery (CR), which is the church based 12 step program we use. It was a great privilege to pioneer Christian recovery in such a needy country, but it was also quite a challenging and lonely journey without many people working in the same field.

In 2003, Darv Smith, who was involved in addiction work in Mongolia, invited me to the ISAAC Madrid Congress. It was eye-opening moment to see hundreds of people gathering from all over the world who were all working in the same field. Why did I think I was alone? In times of difficulties I had often felt I was the only one facing the challenges of working with addicts. I saw the beauty of ISAAC which brings people together to be encouraged and envisioned for sharing God’s compassion for hurting people. I was greatly encouraged.

Over the last couple of years, ISAAC has inspired me with the power of networking and it has become my passion for the Mongolian churches. Treflyn from ISAAC has been visiting us and helping the network develop in the last few years. We have a vision to establish the CR ministry in every province of Mongolia. To reach out the vision we would like to continue developing the activities of networking; visiting the member churches, providing training resources etc. We are so privileged to be the part of ISAAC family to continue to carry on God’s compassion and calling for the nation.

I saw the beauty of ISAAC which brings people together to be encouraged and envisioned for sharing God’s compassion for hurting people.

Jungmi Park