ULAANBAATAR (UCAN) -- A group of veterinarians and teachers in Mongolia is serving people with professional skills while proclaiming Jesus in a country where Christianity is largely unknown.

"We constantly surround them with the love of Jesus while we provide standard veterinary services," said Karen Smirmaul, an American veterinarian at the Veterinarians and Educators Training Network (V.E.T. Net) clinic in Ulaanbaatar.

"We pray for each and every customer of ours during our daily morning prayer time. Also, we place a box for prayer requests at the reception desk and, of course, we are kind and compassionate to all our customers," she elaborated.

Meanwhile, she added, "we have regular training sessions for our staff not only in professional and technical subjects but also in Christian character-building."

Every year during the summer months of June, July and August, V.E.T. Net, an NGO staffed by seven foreigners and 70 Mongolians, hires about 150 Mongolian teachers to work temporarily in the countryside. All regular staff and summer teachers are Christians belonging to the more than 200 Protestant and Evangelical groups active in Ulaanbaatar.

The teams travel to pre-selected locations and put up a ger, the traditional round Mongolian felt tent, as their classroom and sleeping quarters. Then they spend two months teaching people to care for livestock and the basics of Christianity. They also teach children reading, writing and math to prepare them for school following the summer break.

Many Mongolian families are herders and dependent on livestock for their livelihood. According to the World Bank, animal husbandry in Mongolia represents 87 percent of the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) and 30 percent of the country's total GDP.

V.E.T. Net estimates that Mongolia, a country of 2.5 million people, has 40 million head of livestock and 1 million people involved in herding.

During the spring months of March, April and May, the NGO also conducts weeklong training sessions for groups of veterinarians whom they invite from the sparsely populated countryside. "We invite practicing vets from each province and have training sessions for them," Smirmaul explained.

The training, free of charge, is about cows, horses, sheep, goats and camels and about new medicines, surgery, customer care, budgeting and sound business practices, practical issues that veterinarians face, she added.

"We also have values and medical-ethics sessions, where they role-play situations in which stealing, manipulating papers or drinking occurs," Smirmaul said. She observed that the veterinarians are not Christians and are often surprised, as this behavior is very common and seems normal.

Ganzorig, head of the NGO's veterinarian-training program, told UCA News: "We are trying to instill Christian values and ethics in the vets, but we also want them to be able to teach herders that if they invest just five cents per cow on a de-wormer, they will get much better quality calves, better milk, better meat." Like most Mongolians, Ganzorig uses just one name.

The Ulaanbaatar clinic also runs regular classes for veterinary students, who meet every Wednesday for Bible study and English lessons at the V.E.T. Net office.

Zulaa, one of the many students in the program who have become Christians, recalled that Gerard and Frances Mitcham, a missionary couple from the United States, started meeting with them regularly in 1995. "He (Gerard) and his wife regularly invited veterinary students to their home, shared their food, and shared the Gospel with us," said Zulaa, now head of the NGO's public-health research program.

Gerard Mitcham, a veterinarian, saw needs in the countryside, where medicine was usually not available and many animals were weak because of parasites or the cold, or died during birth. "He started a clinic in 2000 and V.E.T. Net in 2003," Zulaa said. Frances Mitcham is a teacher.

Mercy Corps, World Vision and various U.S.-based Churches and individuals provide most of V.E.T. Net's funding.

About half Mongolia's people are Buddhists, and another 40 percent have no official religious affiliation. Shamanists and Muslims each account for about 4 percent of the population, and 2 percent are Christians, including the less than 500 Catholics. The Mongolian government invited the Catholic Church and other Christian groups into the country in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which dominated the country until then.

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