Mongolia Mission Weeks 65 & 66 - Random Tidbits and Birthday Happenings

Mongolia Mission Weeks 65 & 66

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). 

This week we want to share tidbits from the last couple of weeks:  

Introducing our current cat, who sneaks into our
apartment building to be warm near the hallway pipes that
are full of hot water - it's the way the buildings are heated.

In other animal news, we were greeted
by the cutest little fluff ball one day!
This one stayed outside, hopefully with its mom.
Dogs pretty much run free here.

-In case you were wondering, we again found a way to celebrate Groundhog's Day on Feb 2. We always have a dinner featuring "ground hog," this year in the form of some big link sausages we found in Ulaanbaatar when we were there. They were good but didn't have the familiar sage in them.

Our guinea pigs trusted us-

-School responsibilities are ramping up for us. We've been assigned an English Club at the high school with over 20 students choosing to attend each week. Several students communicate with us to some extent in English and many look at us hoping to. We also gained an IELTS class for 10th, 11th, and 12th graders, also of various abilities, which is a challenge as we try to do the most good for the most students in the class.

Grouping students allows more proficient students to help others.

-For those of you worried about our brown water last week, this week it was clear! But completely cold. The rust was mostly coming through with the hot water, so the hot water was turned off and we heard lots of banging on the pipes in the building throughout the week. We assume that meant people were working on the water issues. We (gratefully) got warm water a day before the elders did, so they came to use our shower that day. Now the rust issue is a bit better.

-President Kunz and Enkhjiguur, the mission secretary, came to Sainshand to interview our English teacher volunteers and our Mongolian missionary. It was great to get to spend some time with them here in Sainshand, even for just a few hours.

-Then it was Kathy's birthday on the 13th. It meant lots of birthday wishes on her birthday here, and many more on the 14th, which was her birthday back home. Her birthday was pretty low key for us - we taught and went about our normal schedule, except that we made a cherry/blueberry pie. It's our new favorite. A while back we wanted to make a cherry pie but were short on cherries, so we used blueberries to make up the shortage. It was even better than either cherry pie or blueberry pie. So she requested it again for her birthday.

Cherry blueberry pie in the pie pan Horitos 
brought from the States for us when they heard
we had a hard time finding one!

The sisters made mac and cheese to celebrate our birthdays 
and for District Council meeting snack - it was wonderful!

-On Saturday our youth activity was a celebration of Valentine's Day and all the Group birthdays. We have many members with birthdays in February. Of course! That's the best month. We played games and ate several kinds of cake, including banana, which John requested, since his birthday is on the 19th. It's his favorite, and our Mongolian friends really like banana bread, so we were sure the cake would be a hit.

The group schemed and connived to surprise us
with a thoughtful birthday card featuring lavender roses
made from ribbons. 

Also, our apartment door was "heart attacked." We felt so special!

Now for a couple of humorous stories. We hope the humor comes through in our translation for you:

-During our Fast Sunday sacrament meeting at the beginning of February (see last week for our discussion about Fast Sundays), John decided to share his testimony and asked Chuka, our member who served a mission in Nebraska 20+ years ago, to translate for him. But when John greeted everyone in Mongolian (which he's been working on): "Sain bats ganuu akh duu naraa," Chuka dutifully translated it for him. Into English: "Hello, brothers and sisters!" Chuka is a character and caught everyone off guard, including John. Translations usually go the other way for us! 

-Then last week, 14 year old Sanchirmaa was speaking in church. She has a 3-year-old sister, Enkhrii, who sometimes comes to church with her. During the talks, Elder Paul sits on the stand between us to translate for us. Enkhrii was over by the electric piano at the front of the room and several times told Elder Paul to "Shhh!" After all, he was talking while the speaker, her sister, was talking. Finally she walked over, planted herself right in front of him, put a finger to her lips, and told him rather loudly to "shhh." None of the three of us could keep from laughing (in front of everyone) due to her insistence and intensity.

The real blessing this week, though, was the baptism of two young men. Last week we mentioned our trip to the countryside to get a parent's signature. Now the reason for the trip became a reality as Uilstuguldur was baptized. Jonon, who served here in Sainshand as a missionary, came back for the baptism and confirmation of Buyandelger, whom he had helped teach. Buyandelger had waited until he was 18 so he needed no one else's permission to be baptized. 

Jonan, Elder Paul, Buyandelger, Uilstuguldur, Elder Anand.

The elders gave each young man a tie, followed by
Elder Anand teaching them how to tie them.

We had a nice group for the baptism.

It's a beautiful thing to see these young people learn about and glow with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We know we've mentioned this before, but most teenagers who join the church here are the only members in their families. They are truly pioneers. Many church leaders in Mongolia are in their 30s, 40s, or 50s and joined the church as teenagers. People need to be willing to open up their hearts and minds to the whisperings of the Spirit and willing to make changes in their lives to walk on the covenant path. As we age, we get set in our ways and it becomes harder, it seems. 

It was great to see and spend time with Jonon again! When he was here as a missionary, we admired his diligence and his dedication. Jonan was one of those Mongolians who joined the church when he was a teen. He's now serving in a leadership position in a congregation in Ulaanbaatar. 

Sister Veile, Jonan, and Sister Grover with their game faces on.

 

On Sunday, our 2 new members were confirmed members of the Church and received special priesthood blessings. A fairly large group of people attended that day, including a couple of adult women visitors and a young woman we don't see very often - it was indeed a special day. Each individual is important to us and to our Heavenly Father. We sometimes get a glimpse of how special His children are to Him and how happy He is when they choose to be close to Him. We've learned to rejoice in even one person learning or feeling something important from our meetings, knowing the Lord is working miracles one by one. 

We'll sit there on a Sunday morning thinking no one is coming, and then they trickle in: deacons who seemingly have little reason to be there, a grandmother who understands very little, teenage girls whose lives are full of drama, and our one family who often have work or family situations that take them away but are such a light when they come. 

Just like members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in other places, we all make sacrifices to be in church, but we are all drawn to the light and the feelings we have when we attend. We know what covenants we've made, and we want spiritual power in our lives. We actually believe that "a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation" (Smith, Joseph. Lectures on Faith [1985], 69). 

When it comes right down to it, however, there is no sacrifice we can make that comes close to repaying God for the blessings He has given us. He has given us everything. And he will forgive us of our sins through the sacrifice of our Savior if we do our best to turn to them. What joy we find in doing that and in watching his children do that!

Mongolia Mission Week 64 - We Have Seen the Nethers

Mongolia Mission Week 64

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). 

Our week included seeing the nethermost part of Mongolia. To many Americans, Mongolia is very far away, remote, and unknown. Most of us don't learn much about Mongolia in school - if anything, maybe a little bit about Chinggis Khan (it's Genghis Khan in our books, but the Mongolians pronounce it with a Ch and don't pronounce the K). So, Mongolia itself seems pretty remote, and our home base of Sainshand is a remote part of Mongolia. But on Tuesday this week, we took a drive to Ulaanbadrakh, which is an even more remote part of our province. 

There was some road congestion along the way.

Speed along this section of road is monitored by the locals.

It was a trip to meet our investigator's mom. If someone under the age of 18 wants to be baptized a member of our church, they need not only parental permission to take lessons about the church, but also the written consent of a parent just before they are baptized. Many youth from rural parts of Mongolia go to a city for school and stay with relatives or in a dormitory during the school year. We have a 15-year old student living in a dormitory who wants to join our church. His mother lives in Ulaanbadrakh, so we needed to take a drive to get her signature on the baptism consent form.

To get there, we drove to the local famous monastery, Khamariin Khiid, 26 miles (45 minutes) away and then turned south to follow dirt or gravel roads/paths for 55 miles (another 2 hours). We felt like we were in the nethermost part of the vineyard (see Jacob 5 in the Book of Mormon). 

The gate for Ulaanbadrakh is very impressive.
We were impressed that we actually found the town.

The elders with Uilstuguldur's mom in front of her home.
The tire acts as a weight for the roof of the ger.

Her next door neighbor was burning the hair off a
slaughtered animal with a blow torch.

These are typical furnishings in a ger. We are always
impressed at the way people beautify their living spaces.

The stove in the middle of the ger heats the place nicely. They had to prop
the door open to let some cool air in.

Uilstuguldur's mom was very gracious and fed us (meat and noodle soup), which is a common and a lovely example of Mongolian hospitality.

The rest of the week was pretty eventful, too. We started teaching at the 3rd school again on Monday and Wednesday after the long New Year holiday. It was great to see some of our students again, but we also have some new classes this semester. We were told more students need the opportunity to have us in their classrooms. We're the native English speakers everyone wants a chance to hear. We come by it naturally-

But life in the nethers is full of surprises. Sometimes we go to class and find the teacher teaching Russian that day ("Come back later, please!"). Sometimes they rotate classrooms we teach in. Often students come looking for us when we don't know where to go. 

Tuesday was another surprise - our worst apartment water of the whole time we've been here. 

It's a good thing we have water filters for drinking and cooking.

We, of course, celebrated National Blueberry Pancake Day when the zone leaders came in on the 7:30 am train on Thursday. Sometimes wild blueberries and/or frozen blueberries are available here in the stores. It was great to have Elder Higginbotham back for a day! 

On Friday, we judged the speaking portion of an English Marathon our school hosted for 8 twelfth grade classes from the area. We enjoyed spending time with these students who are working so hard to learn English. There were some very good talks given - when their name was called they drew a topic, had one minute to prepare, and got 2 minutes to speak.

The students took individual written tests. They also participated in 
group activities including Kahoot, a game where they had to answer
online questions on their phones. 

Representatives from the winning schools pose with us and Elders Anand and Paul.

But the biggest event of the week was the Dornogobi (our province) camel festival, which ran for two days. Each soum (small town) sets up an official receiving ger for guests and brings their best camels and riders from their area's individual competitions (races, polo matches, best dressed couple, etc.) Saturday was our p-day for the 6 of us this week so we could attend. We saw so many camels, so many people wearing traditional dress, so much music and pageantry. And it wasn't as cold as last year's - temps were only in the teens instead of below 0 degrees Fahrenheit!

We saw Amgaa, who belongs to our church and is the mayor
of Saikhandulaan, in that soum's official ger. The pictures
are famous camel trainers from the soum.

We ate a delicious soup in the ger of the Dornogobi province. Notice the
artfully placed fruits, candies, and sliced cucumbers and hams. The lattice
is the portable framework that holds up a ger.

John loves the white camels and is
trying to figure out how to bring one 
back to New Harmony.

This camel's reaction to John's idea! 
But it has curlers in its hair - cockleburs.

One of the performers, who sang
while riding around the arena.

A goal of the festival was to set a Guinness world record for the number of female camel riders in a single event. Each participating woman had a special purple badge on a lanyard.

There were 350 women riders.

Good seating next to the staging area before the camels
paraded in for the opening ceremony.

The cutest and youngest camel riders we saw!

Khandmaa, one of our church members (with an orange belt), was a dancer.

If you want yet more of the camel festival, there are other photos and some videos here: 

2026 Camel Festival

We left the festival about 3 pm for a family history fair at our church. Five women from Ulaanbaatar came to Sainshand to provide information about the importance of family history and tools that are available to assist people with their genealogy and recording family stories.

We had several computers for attendees to use;
some used an app on their phone. 

Our week ended with another powerful Sunday. Our members fast for two meals once a month on the first Sunday of the month, then donate the money to provide food, shelter, clothing, medicine, etc. to those in need. On Fast Sunday our church meeting consists of people spontaneously sharing testimonies of the gospel. Besides the blessing of donating to help others, we find that fasting builds us personally, both spiritually and physically. Our testimonies strengthen as we ponder them and as we hear other testimonies. We always individually pick someone or something special to fast for, which adds special power to our prayers. A highlight of our meeting was a non-member who shared a beautiful testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our Sunday ended with a fireside broadcast to kick off a For the Strength of the Youth (FSY) conference that will be held in Mongolia in June. This is a week long conference for youth 14-18 years old, filled with lessons, classes, and activities that build social skills, spiritual knowledge, and closeness with God. The youth who have attended in the past really love the experience! Our little group in Sainshand could have 10 or 11 participants that attend.

We ended the week feeling not just tired but blessed beyond measure for all that we experienced, accomplished, and for the miracles! It's a good tired. The Lord is very aware of the nethermost parts of His vineyard.

Mongolia Mission Week 63 - Oops! We must have been driving too fast!

 Mongolia Mission Week 63

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 are driving back to Sainshand from Ulaanbaatar. The weather is great. Still cold, but sunny with no wind. The roads are nice - with potholes, of course, but no ice or snow. And surprisingly little traffic. 

John doesn't mean to speed, but it seems difficult to hold the car at 80 kph (50 mph) for over 6 hours of driving. Anyway, we're driving along, thinking we're minding our own business, when we come upon a police officer standing along the road with a radar gun. He flags us over to stop on the shoulder. John rolls down the window and we dig for registration materials. John takes off his seatbelt to access his wallet for his driver's license. 

The officer begins talking - in Mongolian, of course. John says, "Only English." The officer turns around, shakes his head, and waves for us to go on. Doesn't even check to see if John actually has a license. Sometimes it's okay that we don't speak the language; apparently the policeman just doesn't want to go to the trouble of dealing with us.

But then the officer turns around and comes back - speaking Mongolian, of course. We still don't understand until he reaches through the window, grabs the seatbelt and indicates to put it on. Considering ourselves appropriately chastised, John rebuckles his seatbelt, we roll up the window, continue on our way, and chuckle. For the record, although we always wear seatbelts, we see many people who don't. In fact, it's common for at least the passenger-side seatbelt to be permanently clipped to itself so the car doesn't beep annoyingly while people drive. Children usually sit on laps or bounce around in back seats.

Besides our interaction with the police, we see other vultures on our journey. We sometimes pass huge birds doing their cycle of life thing with livestock carcasses (usually hit by motorists). But this time there are a whole bunch of vultures close enough to the highway for us to get a good view. Many, spread 10-20 feet apart from each other, are just sitting, staring off into space. These are likely Cinerous Vultures, one of the world's largest birds of prey with a ruff behind their head and a wingspan of up to 10 feet.

Zone conference was a wonderful uplift. We received valuable instruction and enjoyed a spiritual feast. Besides seeing so many other volunteers and missionaries, we were able to spend some time with the other American couples in the country and with Elder and Sister Saunders, who were visiting from Japan. Elder Saunders is the area doctor.

Since we've been in Mongolia, there have basically only been two American couples (including us) other than the mission president and his wife. For a while, we were the only ones. Then Harts arrived in December, Horitos in January, and now the Saunderses were visiting for a few days. Four Mongolian couples serve as senior missionaries. But we don't often get to see them, although sweet Sister Suvdaa was in the online English class we taught before Horitos got here to take it over.

Cleaning awards!

As you know, we enjoy exploring when we're in the city, besides getting our car serviced and gathering supplies for apartments and the church. So we walked to an art museum just under 2 miles away from the mission home. It was -24F so we bundled up. By the time we finished our day, we had logged nearly 5 miles in and out of the cold. We felt like we got our workout for the day! 

We got to see a famous art piece called "A Day in Mongolia." It shows a multitude of activities taking place on any given day in the countryside: a birth, a death, a wedding, the shearing of sheep, making felt to cover the gers, and many, many more things you can imagine that happen in a day. You can spend a long time looking at one of these scenes because there is so much going on.

This is only the top corner of the very busy artwork.

We met a contemporary artist whose paper cutting was on display in a special exhibition. Really amazing and intricate detail done using colored paper and various cutting tools!

Black paper cut into one big piece of art and glued on a white
background. Warriors even had different facial expressions!

On our trek we checked out the annual ice sculptures in Sukhbaatar Square. 

This year featured a train.

The train even had seats.

An igloo.

It's hard to see in the picture, but this is a horse.

Each animal of the zodiac was represented in

a separate piece carved with intricate detail.

We saw a giant ice slide again this year. No, we didn't slide down it.
We may actually leave this country without that experience. 

One of a couple of fun dinners together.

Our first bus ride on the UB city bus.
Not as crowded as the next night's ride!

We attended the Nomadic Legends performance and enjoyed traditional Mongolian music.

And contortionism.

We made it safely back to Sainshand. On our way home we delivered an air purifier to some young volunteers in a city along our path home. (We all use air purifiers in our apartments.) The week closed out with a birthday, a major mission announcement, and a youth activity.

Chimka received a surprise birthday visit at work.

Chimka is a pharmacist who attended our last baptism and loved the gooey butter cake we served. She told us that's what she would like for her birthday, so that's what she got.

Right now the Mongolian Mission is the entire huge country of Mongolia and has about 130 missionaries. We have missionaries and volunteers who have to spend 24 hours on a bus to get to zone conference. Some have to fly in. We have learned that in July the mission will split into two: an East mission, where President Kunz will preside, and a West mission. They're still really big areas but will be more manageable for leaders who have to spend so much time with public transport or on less than ideal roads (tracks out across the steppes). 

For our youth activity we watched the broadcast of the 2026 youth theme for the year, discussed the thought-provoking questions it presented, painted pictures that related to the theme, and ate cream puffs.

The youth theme for the year is "Walk With Me" from Moses 6:34. (see https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/inspiration/2026-is-a-year-to-walk-with-him?lang=eng) It's an inspirational story of Enoch, a young prophet who, like many of us, does not feel equal to the task the Lord has called him to do. And he's not. But he learned, like we are learning, that the Lord will walk with us and give us power to fulfill what we have come to this earth to do. It's a powerful message, and we hope and pray our youth (and all of the rest of us) will take it to heart and put it into practice. 

We can walk on water!

We can feed people with our meager offering of
a few loaves and fishes!