Mongolia Mission Week 35 - The biggest festival of Mongolia - Naadam

 Mongolia Mission Week 35

Our hope with this blog is to share highlights with our family and friends about our exciting opportunities and awesome responsibilities in Mongolia. It's an impossible task, though, because it's hard to condense everything into a few words and pictures. So ask us individually if you'd like to know more about anything! You can contact us by email (jrose219@gmail.com or krose213@gmail.com), Facebook messenger, or you can text Kathy's phone (515-537-3273). 

For this week, we drove to Ulaambaatar on Monday, had Zone Conference with our new mission president on Tuesday, then stayed in the city and went with two other American senior couples to the Naadam opening ceremonies in the Central Stadium. It was such a celebration! So much going on all at the same time for two hours!

This large stadium is set among new apartment
buildings. The city is truly a mix of old and new.

There is really no way to adequately describe our experience. Naadam is the biggest holiday/festival of the year in Mongolia. It's a celebration of several different things: the establishment of the first statehood of Mongolia, the anniversary of the Great Mongol Empire, the anniversary of restoration of national independence, and the anniversary of the People's Revolution. Naadaam celebrates the "three manly sports" - archery, horse racing, and wrestling. The traditional food for the holiday is khuushuur - fried, hand-held meat pies. Naadam gets celebrated on different days in different towns and provinces of the country, but the official opening is in the capitol city.

This was our ticket to the festivities.
It describes what we were celebrating.

The first organized statehood of Mongolia was the Xiongnu Empire in 209 BC, as you can see on our ticket. Then 819 years ago was the formation of the Mongol Empire by Chinggis Khan in 1206. It's also been 114 years since Mongolia's independence from China's Qing dynasty and 104 years since the Russian Red army defeated the White army, creating the Mongolian People's Republic in 1921. So they celebrate all of the above in this one festival. The first truly democratic elections were held in July, 1990, but that doesn't seem to be part of Naadam celebrations. That evidently is part of a smaller celebration of Democracy and Human Rights Day in December.

We enjoyed the pageantry of the opening ceremony.

The "Nine White Banners" were brought out and carried
by riders on white horses before being placed in the
stadium. Round banners with horse hair.

Streets were lined with vendors.(The
white tents in the background.)

The riders paused before entering the stadium.

There was a rotating stage in the background.

The track was a nice place for horse
demonstrations, including fast riders
who shot arrows at a target while riding.

Patriotic fireworks

The program began with a parade of people riding horses, the setting up of the banners, a speech by a very important person (maybe the President? We're not sure), and the singing of the national anthem. Following that, we listened to singers, saw different kinds and ages of dancers and contortionists, and watched trick horse riding. There were multiple stages with a variety of performances happening at the same time. Pretty awesome!

Outside the stadium were seemingly hundreds of tents selling goods and food, mostly khuushuur.  Khuushuur are usually half-moon shaped, folded over on one side with a seam along the arc side. For Naadam they are flat like a pancake. (We bypassed several vendors whom we thought were selling only flat bread - then we realized that Naadaam khuushuur is flat!) A dough circle is made, chopped meat and onions are encased in it (basically a ball of dough filled with meat); then it is rolled out flat and fried. We stood in line for a very long time to get a few for lunch. When the ceremonies finish at 1:00, everyone is hungry and heads to the vendors! But it was worth the wait.

Then we went back in to watch some of the wrestling, with many matches going on simultaneously. We were told that anyone who wants to participate can go on the field and find an opponent. Certain strategic positioning happens, however, between the most important competitors. Wrestling was  traditionally used as a way to train warriors and demonstrate prowess, and the wrestling uniforms have many layers of symbolism if not much fabric. Lore has it that the uniforms accentuate the bare chests of the wrestlers because there once was a girl who beat all of the male wrestlers, so the uniform now leaves no room for doubt.

The match is lost when someone touches the ground with anything other than hands or feet. So when you watch the sport, you see lots of men standing fairly still while they push against each other's shoulders or arms. 

Most of the people in boot-length clothes are coaches
who hold their wrestlers' hats and offer encouragement.

Also outside, we saw many of the American teachers and some of the Mongolian missionaries. Several ended up being interviewed and shown on local news casts. We got interviewed, briefly, but don't know if the footage was ever used. The point was that Mongolians appreciate foreigners wearing their traditional clothing and participating in their culture. They were excited to see us at least trying to fit in.

The horse racing venue is at another location 30 km to the west of Ulaanbaatar, and we needed to head east to get home, so we didn't see that. The archery took place in a nearby stadium, but we didn't know about it at the time. We were told by Mongolians that it's pretty boring to watch anyway. But we had a great time experiencing as much as we did and look forward to seeing what Naadaam is like in our area.

For more pictures and videos of what we saw, check the Google photos link: Naadam photos

As mentioned above, we were in the city for Zone Conference. It was the first with our new mission president, President Kunz, and his family. It was a wonderful, spiritual meeting. President Kunz, Sister Kunz, the Assistants to the President, our Zone Leaders, and Sister Training Leaders provided wonderful training and a spiritual lift. As with all callings in the Church, each leader is called with divine timing for special purposes. President Namgur and his family accomplished miracles while here. Now it is President Kunz's time, and his impact is already evident. He's been here two weeks and landed on his feet, already working and leading the mission - and hasn't stopped since. It's amazing to see how smoothly transitions can work. But President Kunz says it's like boarding a moving train.

The Kunz family. They had 4 zone conferences this week!

Even though our leaders are only mortal, and even though President Kunz may (gasp!) have some failings (which we haven't found), the Spirit has borne witness to us multiple times in our lives that in spite of failings by mortal leaders, the Lord's work goes on and He blesses our lives anyway. His work goes on within His timetable and in His way. In spite of, and sometimes because of, weaknesses. In fact, we have both had leadership callings and have been very grateful for that principle and grateful to people who have shown us charity and supported us in spite of our failings.

President Kunz in action, teaching the gospel.

Sister Kunz is also a wonderful teacher!

Our District

And, as is becoming more common when we go to zone conference, we found some old (young) friends who served with us in Sainshand.

Sister Taylor, who is about to go home.

Sister Tumenjargal, who is now a Sister
Training Leader

While in the capital we found a "Costco." Well, not really. It's a small store sandwiched into a maze of other shops. It's about the size of our living room. But it uses the signage and sells a few Kirtland products, like a nice selection of nuts. 

 

We found miniature Reeses cups!
And chili and lime gummy bears-

We are always looking for food items in Ulaanbaatar that we can't find in Sainshand. During our search for powdered sugar in a local grocery store, we came across frozen sheep heads. Two days later they were all gone.

And we found the biggest and best hamburger we think exists in Mongolia. The fries were delicious, too. These were actually slightly salted, which seems to be unusual based on the places we've tried French fries. Most fries have no salt.

As we headed home, we appreciated how much the roads are improved! Most potholes have been filled since our March and May trips, and some sections are completely repaved. On our way to the city, we had to take an alternate (dirt and dust) route that paralleled the road they were repaving. But a lot of projects like this are very fast. It resulted in a nice drive home back to Sainshand.

As we left the city, there must have been 15-20 trucks parked along the road, pretty evenly spaced, all selling watermelons! And a few semis, as well. Of course, we had to stop and take one with us - a watermelon, not a truck.

We also saw multitudes of people camping along the streams in the wide open spaces. Just like Americans, Mongolians use holidays for an opportunity to go camping. These are probably the people who bought up all the sheep heads in the grocery store!

People camp in tents next to friends and relatives'
gers, some with a whole community of horses, too. 

Horses going home from the races, evidently.

And a ger packed on top of a car instead of a camel. 
That's modernization, for you!

Also, the main Naadam festival may be in Ulaanbaatar, but every province, city, and village has its own. Most areas hold them on the weekends around July 8-15. In Ulaanbaatar, the official holidays are July 10-15. But in our Dornogobi province, it's July 29-31. So stay tuned for how it's celebrated here in a later post!

Mongolia Mission Week 34 - In the summer we get a break unless we break the break

 Mongolia Mission Week 34

Our hope with this blog is to share highlights with our family and friends about our exciting opportunities and awesome responsibilities in Mongolia. It's an impossible task, though, because it's hard to condense everything into a few words and pictures. So ask us individually if you'd like to know more about anything! You can contact us by email (jrose219@gmail.com or krose213@gmail.com), Facebook messenger, or you can text Kathy's phone (515-537-3273). 

We worried that, with the end of the school year, we would find ourselves with too much extra time this summer.  We wondered how we would earn our keep with only our evening church classes and the online class for Mongolian missionaries. 

So we came up new ideas. We thought we could meet with local English teachers to help them improve their oral skills. Some of our English words are so tricky to pronounce! We met with the province education department and a representative from Deseret International Charities (our sponsoring organization) to discuss this. But because the teachers are off for the summer, the education department proposed that we teach that class in the fall. They asked us if we would teach two English classes at the American Corner (sponsored by the US embassy), one for 6-9 graders and one for 10-12 graders. Each would meet 3 times a week for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. People are so eager for their kids to learn English! The young teachers got the younger class and we took the older class. 

Our other idea was to develop an IELTS class for people who want to take the international test to certify their English abilities. This class, targeted for adults or high school seniors, now happens for 1 1/2 hours three times a week after our evening classes at the church. So we added 6 classes to our summer, each 1 1/2 to 2 hours long. Guess we'll earn our keep. And we broke our summer break!

However, the young missionaries and English teachers got permission to visit the local Khamariin Khiid monastery and energy center on preparation day, and we drove them. It's about a 30 minutes drive out of the city into the desert. It's a great area to visit and the main tourist highlight of the area. On the way, this fellow was along the road guarding his harem. 

We are not sure about the green sash he was sporting. Most goats have their ownership documented with a bit of spray paint on the back of one horn or with notches in the ears (They are cashmere goats, so it would be a shame to brand them). But maybe his documentation is a green sash. Lovely horns. But his hair was filled with cockle burrs! Good thing we didn't want to pet him anyway; he didn't look like he was really wanting affection from us.

At the intersection along the road is a scorpion statue. It's very impressive even if we don't fully understand the significance. In Buddhism, a scorpion represents the transformation of negative elements into enlightened wisdom.

Past the monastery is a canyon with many caves and rock structures. This area is fascinating. During the period where Mongolia was a satellite state of the USSR, they adopted the socialist attitude about the evils of religion. Many of the monasteries were destroyed and the monks put to death. Some monks hid out in these caves. These caves still have active visits by Buddhists who come to pay tribute, respect, honor, or pray. The caves have incense, bird seed, candy, money, scriptures, etc. in them. It's a beautiful, remote area filled with small rock piles placed there as wishes by families hoping for something important in their lives, like the ability to bear children. 

We found crazy thick spider webs.

A second area is the Outer Shambhala or Energy Center. This is an area purported to give one energy by laying on the rocks. 

John said it didn't do much for his energy. 

There are many structures here and places to make offerings and prayers. It's very quiet, except for the wind, and an impressive place to visit.

The white structures honor the dead of individual families.

Unfortunately, by the time we finished playing around in the rocks and trying to absorb energy, the actual monastery was closed, but we enjoyed wandering around that area, too.

We found a herd of camels on the way home. They sure look naked and skinny (especially their humps!) in the summer without all of their winter shag.

One fun blessing of the week was to have Alex Schefer and his father visit us and some of the people he knew in Sainshand. Alex served here about a year and a half ago and was one of the first English teachers in our town. He left Mongolia before we came, but we met him briefly at the training center in Provo, Utah, where he works as a translator who helps teach Mongolian. When he visited the church building, he was so impressed. When he first came here, the group met in a member's apartment, then they moved to our building (the second floor), but it's been remodeled since he left and is very different now. 

Dinner with Alex, his dad, and some of Chukka's family.

The sisters came up with the idea to celebrate our Independence Day.

July 4th pancake breakfast with Schefers and those
of us serving in Sainshand 

Since there's never a dull moment in our summer (we actually never expected that!), our new young women's class president came up with a service project for the youth to visit a senior center here. We made a visit on Thursday to arrange things, then on July 4th after the pancake breakfast, our apartment turned into a cookie factory to make treats.

Running the beaters for the cookies was an exciting new
experience! Mongolians don't really bake much; some
apartments don't have ovens. Gers certainly don't.

Later that day, while we were teaching a class, the rest of the teachers, missionaries, and youth went to the senior center to deliver hand made decorations and cookies. They played games with the residents and got invited back to make a monthly visit. 

Our new Young Women's class president also taught an excellent Sunday School lesson for the youth, with some mentoring from Kathy. We're standing back in amazement at this young girl stepping forward into this role and elevating herself to fit the call. The Lord's program for the youth of His church is designed to develop leaders, and it works. Not only that, it spreads a lot of good in this world in ways that only youth can spread it. They benefit from looking outwards towards serving other people, and other people benefit from their enthusiasm, optimism, and testimony. Now, do we have a perfectly planned lesson and activity every week? Of course not! We experience growing pains just like any other youth-led group in the church. But the Lord supports us and them and ensures the growth of His children in ways we never could have predicted.

And while we may be living far away, we still are grateful for the blessings of being Americans and enjoying a land of liberty and so many blessings that we often take for granted. We taught about Independence Day three times in our classes on the 4th of July. We may not have had a break for the holiday, but we found a way to explain its importance to our students. And while we were teaching it, we found a renewed sense of amazement about how a ragtag bunch of patriots (with God's help) were able to break away from one of the most powerful nations in the world. God had a plan for America, and when Joseph Smith was born, it was into a country where true freedom of religion was possible. 

Stay tuned next time for the beginning of Naadam, Mongolia's Independence Day.

Mongolia Mission Week 33 - History is being made!

 Mongolia Mission Week 32

Our hope with this blog is to share highlights with our family and friends about our exciting opportunities and awesome responsibilities in Mongolia. It's an impossible task, though, because it's hard to condense everything into a few words and pictures. So ask us individually if you'd like to know more about anything! You can contact us by email (jrose219@gmail.com or krose213@gmail.com), Facebook messenger, or you can text Kathy's phone (515-537-3273). 

We used our preparation day this week to visit the local museum with the young teachers, working to gain more understanding of the culture and history of this area and giving them a chance to see the artifacts. While museums in Ulaanbaatar cover the history of Mongolia, our local museum really focuses on the history, culture, and artifacts from our area. It's a unique and interesting part of the world, and we enjoy continuing to learn more!

The first scientifically recognized dinosaur
eggs were found in Mongolia in the Gobi.

The museum boasts a "Great White Flag" from the period of Genghis Khan. These banners, which have great symbolic significance, marked the border between this area and China. Mongolian banners are on poles with circular streams of horse hair (which has been restored in this artifact) hanging down from their tops. The trident topper represents the past, present, and future.

But history is still being made in this area - we are blessed to witness such exciting times! Within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are organized by geographic units. A stake is an area which is a group of local congregations called wards or branches and usually has 2000 to 5000 members. A ward is usually 200 to 600 members. A branch is smaller, with 20 to 400 members. As we've previously discussed, in areas too small to be a branch, the congregation is called a group. That's us here in Sainshand - we're a twig just getting started. Our group is technically under the administration of the mission. Our congregation started with a family just over a year ago and has grown to a usual Sunday attendance of 20-35 people. And history is being made! So far in 2025 we have witnessed:

• our first baby blessing
• our first deacon ordained
• our second priest ordained
• additional baptisms and deacon ordinations
• our first Young Women's class president called and set apart
• the establishment of an organized deacons' quorum

Everyone, especially Mongolian youth,
are fascinated by new babies.

All of these are historic and exciting, but we'll focus on the deacons' quorum. One of the main things that makes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unique is having restored priesthood authority. It was restored to the earth by Peter, James and John, who received it from Jesus Christ, so every priesthood holder in the church can trace their authority back to Jesus Christ. Our lives have been richly blessed by the power of Christ's priesthood. Christ uses it to bless the lives of His children today and amplify our abilities in His service.

Those who preside over congregations have priesthood keys, which can only be conferred with the laying on of hands by one having the keys to do so. This is important. John is the group leader here, but it is a position that does not include keys. So the president of our mission, President Namgur, on his last week in the country before being released, drove 6 hours (each way) to confer priesthood keys on a a deacons' quorum president. The first member in Sainshand to hold priesthood keys! He will use those keys to direct his quorum in their priesthood responsibilities and activities, to teach, and to help take care of people in our area. He is so excited to take on this responsibility. We see great leadership potential in his future, but he genuinely is a leader now, just like other deacons' quorum presidents around the world. 

Some members of our group were able to witness
this historic event.

After this special Tuesday meeting, President Namgur and his son, David, took those of us serving in Sainshand to a lunch where we said our final goodbyes. They headed back to Ulaanbaatar and then left for America on Saturday.

Pres Namgur and David say goodbye to Sainshand 
for the last time. For now.

Overlapping with the Namgurs for one day, our new mission president arrived along with his family. We are excited to get to know them and serve with them.

President Kunz served his mission here when he
was younger. He's an attorney from Mississippi.

Elder Bilegsaikhan had a birthday this week. After English class we had a little celebration with the six of us and an English student who likes spending time with us.

He wanted a fancy car for this birthday - and got two of them!

For our youth activity this week, we watched the Book of Mormon video about the tree of life and then had the youth practice "holding to the rod," which in our case was a piece of string. They had voices of good and evil to help and tempt them. None of the youth who attended this week were members. Most of our members were vacationing for the summer, but we have friends who like to come anyway.

We've found that ties make good blindfolds.

We also made marshmallow renditions of the Tower of Babel.

Also this week, we found what we thought from the sign was a new ramen restaurant, so we decided to check it out. It was new, but it didn't turn out to be the type of ramen restaurant we've experienced in the States. What we found was a selection of 13 kinds of ramen - all in packets. 

We chose two different kinds of seafood ramen from
these shelves.

You take your choice to another room in the restaurant, get a metal bowl, and put it on a hot plate machine that adds water, cooks it for the appropriate amount of time, and there you go - make it yourself ramen in a restaurant. They provide the ramen, bowl, spoon, water, chopsticks, and do the dishes. You do the rest. 

(Hats come in handy when you live in
the Gobi.)

The nice lady who helped us (across language barriers!) even gave us each a package of salami-type chunks "on the house" to add to our soup. She turned on the TV to a show of beautiful Mongolian countryside scenes with some pretty Mongolian music to add atmosphere to our ramen experience.

Ramen is pretty prevalent here. You can get all kinds of Korean flavors, with or without kimchee; you can get bone broth flavors - we have yet to scratch the surface of all the amazing possibilities. Next door to the restaurant was a convenience store whose ramen display made us laugh, though. The store has a counter with hot water you can add to your ramen of choice and tables where you can enjoy eating it. But you have to be of age: 

(Google translated). They even check your ID.

There's always something interesting to find in Sainshand!