Dashtsend Tsetseg Suren was just three years old when she first walked into the church com-pound in Ulaanbaatar holding the little finger of her Buddhist father, who was one of the workers engaged in constructing the parish church.
During the Easter Vigil this year, the 14-year-old Suren will receive the baptism in the now-completed St. Sophia parish, which is under the Apostolic Prefecture of Ulaanbaatar, based in Mongolia’s capital.
The ninth grader started her catechism classes in 2021 with the guidance of Father Thomas Ro Sang-Min, the parish priest of St. Sophia parish.
“In the initial years, I did not know that this place was a religious place. I was still small and just came to eat something delicious,” she told.
“But now I come here to pray because I know the church is a place to meet with God.”
Her constant contact with the church people for almost a decade in her childhood, which also meant she joined church celebrations and feasts, helped her to become a part of the tiny Catholic community.