Jedidiah was born on November 2nd, 1994 in a home birth in his family’s apartment in Erdenet, Mongolia – the first foreign baby ever born in the city. Jedidiah was born into a YWAM family to Brian and Louise Hogan serving on a multinational YWAM church planting team in Erdenet.
His birth ushered in a horiffic time of spiritual attack against the YWAM team and the fledgling Mongolian church. For the next two months they were battered on a daily basis by the enemy. Finally, beginning on Christmas Eve, 1994, the attack culminated in two deaths, a young Mongolian believer and Jedidiah.
Jedidiah was just under two months when he died of SIDS. It was these deaths that ended up being the motivation for the church to fight back and have victory over the kingdom of darkness. The story is told in full in "There’s a Sheep in my Bathtub" by Brian Hogan.
If you want to "visit" Jedidiah’s grave (on google earth), the GPS coordinates are:
49 07.468′ N, 104 09.806′ E
Someone said, "Throughout the ages, whenever the Kingdom advanced, someone first had to pay a terrible price."
For our family and YWAM team, that price was the life of our firstborn son. Yet out of that Christmas of pain and grief and questions came the fruit of a reproducing indigenous Mongolian church planting movement that continues to plant new churches, even across cultural lines today! Worthy is the Lamb who, with His blood, bought men for God from every tribe, people, and nation. He is worthy of any price to see the nations praise him.
And Jed agrees. He awaits us in heaven, glorifying the Lamb.
Brian Hogan, Jed’s daddy
YWAM Church Planting Coaches, Arcata, CA
This is a comment about what seeing a family grieve meant to Mongolian friends…
After the loss of six month old Jed Hogan in Mongolia at Christmas time.
Baika a Mongolian friend speaking,… “My friend shared about the horrible shock of the news of Jed’s death that came during the Christmas party. She also told us about the gathering at your home after the burial and the memorial service. As she told us what you (Brian) had shared and how you and Louise had responded to this tragedy, we began to weep. My own hard heart melted as I cried.”
Brian, “That means a lot to me. We all cried a lot that Christmas.” I assured Baika.
Baika, “That is not why we were crying though. We were crying at our understanding through your grief.”
Brian, I was completely confused, ‘What…?”
“Your grief over the death of your son was the most miraculous thing I have ever experienced”, Baika explained.
As he said this, the memory of several of the believers in Erdenet saying something very similar when we saying our goodbyes a year and a half earlier came rushing back to me. I had quickly forgotten their statements about our grief being a miracle because it made no sense to me. I had felt that my grief, which I couldn’t hide, was a bad advertisement for the Kingdom. I had begged God to allow us to grieve in private with family, and had been completely puzzled when He (God) had made it clear to both of us that we were to stay in Mongolia during the worst months of mourning. I began to get a strange buzzing sensation as if I were about to open a door into a room filled with mystery.
“Could you please explain that for me, Baika?”
“Brian, you can’t really understand what it is like for Mongolians. In your country, everyone seems to believe in life after death. But in Mongolia, no one has any hope for this at all. When loved one die, they are gone forever! You will never meet them or see them again. Mothers in my country sometimes lose their minds when they lose a child.
But you were different. You were the first people we had ever seen, or even heard about, who grieved with hope. It came across in what you said, about going to where your son is, even if he wasn’t returning to you here, in the song you taught during the funeral meal at your flat, and your statement of faith you made at Jed’s memorial service. You were being watched, then and over the months that followed. Seeing you and your family grieve with hope filled the gaping hole that always been in every Mongolian heart. When I heard about your grief, I knew it was all real. The Bible, Jesus, heaven, all of it. That’s why we were weeping on New Year’s Eve— we had just had our faith confirmed. “