Bill and Kwai Lin Stephens

Missionaries to Mongolia

Prior to going to Mongolia, Bill graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. Later he worked with inner-city immigrants for three years. His visit to India in 1988 made a significant impact on his calling to serve in Asia. Kwai Lin is a native of Malaysia. She studied and worked in Hong Kong and the Philippines. Kwai Lin met Bill in a church while she studied in America; they married in 1992.

Bill and Kwai Lin went to Mongolia in the summer of 1993 with their nine-month-old daughter, Jasmine. Later they finished their studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where Bill completed his MA in mission, and Kwai Lin her PhD in education. They returned to Mongolia for long-term service in the summer of 1994.

For the first three years Bill taught English and trained national English teachers with the Ministry of Education. Then in 1997 they began their involvement with Union Bible Training Center (UBTC). The mission of UBTC is to train and equip the first generation of Mongolian church leaders in modern times. Bill and Kwai Lin have been full-time teachers with UBTC since 1999. Bill was appointed the Dean of Student Affairs and Kwai Lin the Principal. Their challenge has been to develop mature men and women in all areas of life, upgrade the educational standards to the level of the Asia Theological Association (ATA), and train national teachers and staff.

They have taken many trips to visit the students’ and graduates’ churches in the countryside to encourage the young leaders. They have taken students to the Gobi Desert to help plant a church by reaching nomads and small-town people for Christ. They are the first missionaries to reach and plant a church among the minority Hoton people (a nominal Muslim group with shamanist and animist practices related to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China) in the far west of Mongolia, in the Altai mountain range.

Outside of school, the Stephenses do relational evangelism with the families of students and former students, and speak in students’ churches. Kwai Lin advises the leaders of a Chinese church, and serves on the board of a Chinese Christian community center which she helped start in 1997.

Bill and Kwai Lin have two daughters, Jasmine (13) in the ninth grade, and Jacinda (11) in the seventh grade. Mongolia, with its long, sub-zero weather winter is a challenging country for active growing children! Since August 2004 the girls have done their schooling at Hebron School, a Christian British international school in South India. Bill and Kwai Lin thank God for the good adjustment the girls have made so far, and the family looks forward to school breaks together.