Emily Graves spoke with Rev John Green about his experiences in Mongolia

Rev John R Green with Mongolian Pastor & his wife

Mongolia is a relatively small central Asian nation with a population of just under three million, whose fortunes are changing thanks to a huge new copper and gold mine. Through watching a documentary about a different side to the country; children living down manholes in the winter to keep warm, because their parents were addicted to cheap Russian vodka; Reverend John Green developed a passion for Mongolia. Emily Graves spoke with him about a series of supernatural circumstances that confirmed that he should be going out there and what he saw on his trip.

Emily: Please could you tell us a bit about yourself?

John: That's interesting 'cause I have quite a root here in Stoke. For a period of time I was with my family living here and I worked at UCB; I actually started UCB TV and built that when it was non-existed. Once it was finished then the Lord I felt called me away and I went into full-time pastoral ministry. My whole time in media was a 28 year diversion away from the original call. When I first moved here from America, I was in North London. I might have an accent still.

Emily: Yes just a little bit.

John: So that gives it away. Then I moved to where I am now, Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. When the opportunity came to pastor a church there, Rosedale Community Church, it just felt the obvious great step and that's where we've been for five years.

Emily: Now, tell us a little bit about Mongolia and how that came about.

Manhole sewers where children sleep when it's cold

John: It's a very interesting story. In television one of my primary responsibilities was what we were called to screen documentaries, which is to watch all these things before they ever go out over the air and make the decision, are these the kinds of things people might want to watch. I would watch them ahead of time and consider it and I have to say after a period of time you become a bit desensitised when you watch missions' programmes. I say that because we all watch things and I'd be very cruel when I say, when you've seen one swollen belly you've seen many of them. I'd watched so many of these things and become a bit hardened to it, like a policeman would to murder or a doctor would to blood.

I started watching these happening in Southern Siberia and Mongolia then and there was a real tug in my heart because these people especially children, there's always a soft spot you know for children, but children living down in manholes in the winter to keep warm because their parents were addicted to cheap Russian vodka and then because of that become addicted to glue sniffing and the aerosol type things. It's just horrible stories and I find myself with tears in my eyes thinking, why'd that happen?

So fast forwarding to where I've now been in the pastorate, the opportunity came up for me to go and visit Mongolia and see it first hand and I jumped at the opportunity to do that. Then there's a strange series of events, if you want me to share I will, but some of those I think are very supernatural that took place to confirm that this was the right thing to go and to consider.

Emily: When you say supernatural what do you mean?

John: I went and had this opportunity to go to Mongolia. I actually had a very short window of opportunity to go and get my jabs, which I wasn't happy about; the nurse asked and said, you know you're normally supposed to come six weeks in advance and I said, so can you do it and she said yes, but it's going to cost you two arms and a leg. Then when it came time for the Mongolian visa I went down and had a fast track. I submitted it at ten o'clock and I was supposed to come back at twelve noon and collect it. I had two hours to kill in London in June with the sun shining, so I started walking around and day dreaming because I had nowhere to go and nothing to do. I had a really wild bizarre day dream about a guy walking up to me and handing me a diamond; so now I have to write a fiction story in my head. I thought ok he's a gangster and he's mistaken me for his contact because I had green socks on and I'm just creating this stupid time killing story and just let it go. I wrote it in my head and just forgot it; I went and picked up the visa. Then a little bit later on when I was standing in the train platform, with the sun still shining, I caught a kind of little twinkle on the ground. I see this and I thought that's a piece of glass; you know it is, but part of me thought back to this little day dream and I thought I'm going to reach down and just pick it up. It was in the dirt and I scraped with my nail and pulled it out and it was a heart-shaped diamond that had fallen out of somebody's ring. I had to scrape it off and look at it and think, this isn't just a speck, this is a heart-shaped diamond. I put it aside and went home and of course friends were saying that's confirmation you should be going to Mongolia, this is great and were all excited about it. I just thought, great, but it felt like it had more meaning than I didn't have yet.

Emily: Sort of a bit odd?

The Riverside where a man gave me my 2nd heart-shaped diamond

John: Yes. So now I'm in Mongolia and I'm still praying and saying, why am I here? I'm sitting on the river bank out in the countryside and out of the blue, a guy walked up to me and handed me a heart shaped diamond; a little bit bigger. These are not worth talking about in terms of being valuable gems. This one was plastic, but it had the same shape and it was colourless. He handed it to me and he said is this yours? I said, no and he said, well have it because it's nothing. I kept it and I thought, what's that about? So I went back to the compound where I was staying and told friends and we prayed about it and said, is there something weird about this? Nobody had any advice or words or anything for me and I just left and went back to my room. I was going back to my room and I froze; I just stopped in my tracks because outside of my bedroom window is this huge heart shaped planter. There were no plants in it, just dirt and I started looking around and there are planters all around me; they're round and they have plants in them. Then there's this one empty and heart shaped in front of my bedroom window. I ran back in and got the guys and brought them back out and said, look at this. Now everybody's freaked to be honest. We asked why is this out here. Why was it heart shaped? What's going on? The guys from the compound were a bit freaked as to why we were so upset. They said, well we just happened to think a heart shaped was a good idea; it wasn't nothing supernatural. The reason it didn't have any plants is because we just finished it before you came. We were left still wondering what's going on.

When I returned home and I was trying to get over jet lag, I couldn't sleep. I went through most of the night and it was now early morning and I got up and headed for the coffee shop. I was just thinking and praying and on the pavement in front of me is a heart shaped plastic diamond. I picked it up and now, of course a listener couldn't see this and I can't hold the microphone down and show it to them, but each of them was bigger than the last. It was at that stage that I realised, this is because it is a desire of God that I go and it's like a seed being planted and it's growing each time getting bigger and there's nobody else doing it; the planter was a picture of there just being nobody else is planting anything and you're welcome to go. So I viewed that whole circumstance, course I'm a reverend, I viewed that as a very supernatural way of God confirming that this was the right thing to do. Even though I'm very nervous and don't know what I'm doing there, I know I should be doing something.