Mongolia Mission Weeks 69 & 70 - On the Road Again

 Mongolia Mission Weeks 69 & 70

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). 

Here's your humor for this week: when young volunteers in this church get close to their time to go home (usually after 18 months or 2 years), the travel department makes arrangements and sends the itinerary to their parents. So Kathy's dad got our itinerary this week. We haven't received anything yet, but he knows the date, time, and seat numbers assigned to us (on May 16). We thought it was funny. But he sent it to us, so now we know, too.

We spent a few days in the city this week and then drove home to a full slate of activities. First we'll show you the adventure of the drive. The wind was blowing snow again, but we drove during the day, so it wasn't too bad to deal with. 

We had traffic issues as usual.

A couple of places were interesting.

In the city we attended an amazing zone conference. It was actually two zones together this time. Each conference seems to get better. We were richly blessed by great instruction and an outpouring of the Spirit. We also heard the farewell testimony of a sister missionary from Mongolia who was in Sainshand with us for a short time. 

We really love Sister Narantungalag.

Once again, we gave cleaning awards to companionships who kept their apartments the cleanest. It's great that, as busy as they are, nearly all of these young people keep their apartments clean - at least when they know we will be checking.

We indulged in great dinners at 3 of our favorite places in Ulaanbaatar. For a date night dinner we ate at Choijin Temple Restaurant and had "Mediterranean food with a Mongolian flair" and a delicious fruit tea. The next night all the American senior couples went to The Mongolian. They serve a tenderloin on a hot rock that is about the best beef we've had in Mongolia. Except for that which we cook ourselves, of course.

Horritos, Roses, and Harts on the loose again!

While in the city, we met with several people about projects we are working on. Even with an extra day budgeted, we don't always get everything done we would like to. We did try to be useful in helping prepare lunch for another zone conference. We took all the food to a stake center building across the city to be in place for Thursday, as we were headed back to Sainshand that day. Then we just had to go out to dinner again with the other senior couples and introduce them to HePing Chinese. 

Their menu is like an encyclopedia - so many things to choose from. They have pretty authentic-seeming Chinese food and pretty amusing translations of the dishes, so you never quite know what you are ordering. We chose five dishes, and all were delicious. Another win!

We had a great time at dinner together!

This is a lamb dish where you put meat into
little bread pockets. Amazingly delicious!

This is eggplant for people who don't like eggplant.
It's crispy and sweet on the outside and served
in a nest made of crispy egg wisps.

On Thursday we loaded up to head home but made one stop on the way at the Mongolian United Bible Society. We wanted an English Bible for one of our friends who has decided to be Christian and has great English. He likes coming to our church activities even though he doesn't think his parents would let him be baptized. One time when he came to our church he said, "I like it here because you are my people!" We have a number of people who like hanging out at church with us and don't quite know why. They feel the Spirit.

He really wanted an English Bible of his own, though. It's only available at one place in the capital that we know of. Turns out they not only sell Bibles but also have a Bible museum. We saw replicas of the Gutenberg Bible (1454) and the Kennicott Bible. This latter Bible was created in 1476 and is 922 pages long with color illustrations on 238 pages. It is beautiful!

One page of the Kennicott Bible. This artwork looks like the
Mongolian eternity knot we see everywhere here.

It turns out that Christians have been in Mongolia for centuries. The museum described and pictured a stone found in a far western province with inscriptions from 780 AD showing the presence of Christianity. The term 'Erhuun,' which means Christian, appears in a variety of languages in the area. This poster says the widespread use of the term underlines broad geographic spread and integration of Christian communities at the time. 

Our wonderful museum tour guide!

The Mongolian Bible Society also has one of only two Braille machines in Mongolia and has the entire Bible in Braille. 

It takes 50 volumes of binders to hold the Bible in Braille!

The museum covers the history of how the Bible was translated into Mongolian - several different times by several different people over the ages. It really impressed us because of how much work it took for dedicated and inspired people to translate sections of the Bible for Mongolians. Sharing Mongolian Bibles during the time of Communism involved persecution. The first complete version of both the Old and New Testaments was published in 1990. In 2025, a translation straight from the original languages of Hebrew and Greek was completed. There are also additional contemporary versions available now. 

Members of our church who have a Gospel Library App in Mongolian do not have rights to the Mongolian Bible. We have not received permission to use it yet, so members need to find an app from the Mongolian United Bible Society. This creates interesting challenges when we teach from the Bible in church meetings and people in the class have different versions of the Bible.  

But people in this country have really benefitted from the sacrifices of those who brought them the Bible. Some are devout Christians. People on the streets know our English teachers as "the Jesus People." People are drawn to the paintings in our church building and recognize Christ. And many who love what they feel when they visit us take lessons and learn about the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, that the church Jesus established when He was on the earth is restored again in its entirety.

As we left the city, we used Google to show us the less congested streets. There was no issue leaving town, but Google said our highway home was closed and we would need to take a detour - adding 4 hours to our 5.5 hour drive! We prayed it would change and proceeded towards home, as the detour was along the route. By the time we got to the detour point, Google changed and said the road was open. We consider it a double miracle - that stopping allowed us to discover the museum and also delay until the road issue that we didn't know about was nearly resolved.

After we got home it was life as usual; we participated in 4 different activities in quick succession. When the plan for our youth activity fell through and we couldn't play basketball and volleyball, we pivoted in true Mongolian style and had a board game day. It turned out well. 

The girls even schemed to surprise Elder Anand
with cakes for his birthday.

Also that weekend, our first Sainshand returned missionary, Elder Buyan-Ulzii (Boyka), spoke in our sacrament meeting. We had a potluck meal afterwards. It is exciting to have this wonderful brother be an example to our youth and to have his help.

A couple of days later, a baby in our group turned 1 year old. This is a big deal and was the basis of a big party her mom threw for her and their friends and family at our church. Boyka served as the MC for the party and even sang.

Misheel is a member of our church. Last
year John gave a blessing to Odluna, her daughter.
It's hard to believe she is already a year old!

Important relatives made speeches.

Later in the week, we had some friends over for a late Tsagaan Sar celebration. They had been visiting relatives in another part of Mongolia over the holiday, and then we were in the city, so our getting together had been delayed. Now, it finally happened. We made buuz for the event, of course. It's the traditional Tsagaan Sar dinner. But besides that, they had invited us over both last year and this year to teach us how to make buuz. We had to show them that we could actually do it.

We were pretty proud of ourselves with the results.

There are several ways to fold buuz.
This one looks rather like a "rose."

With our friends Michelle and Molly.

We were blessed these two weeks with safety on snowy roads, a spiritual renewal and valuable instruction, discovering some interesting history of the Bible here, and getting to spend time with wonderful friends. We are always blessed and amazed at what we get to see and do and most of all, the people we get to do it all with.

Mongolia Mission Week 68 and Large, Gentle Visitors at Our Garbage Bins

 Mongolia Mission Week 68

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 last entry ended with young women in tears because Sister Veile and Elder Paul left on the train to be transferred to another area. On Sunday, Sister Keogh and Elder Ricks arrived. They got here bright and early in the morning after spending the night on the train. With nothing more than a brief meeting before our 12:00 church, we all got busy setting up the sacrament meeting room and teaching a young woman how to lead music for the day's hymns. And introducing the youth to the new companions!

Fresh from the city. And in Sister Keogh's
case, fresh from America! 

We have to share this next picture that we caught the other day. We're always just running into interesting solutions to everyday problems. When we do have the occasional snowstorm in Sainshand, it doesn't melt because the temperatures don't get above freezing. So it gets scaped by hand (shovels) off the roads, drives, and parking lots. It gets piled up in neat little piles of dirty snow. Sometimes workers shovel it into wheelbarrows (or garbage cans) and dump it away from the foot traffic!

When it does finally melt, there is a slope for the snow to drain away.

Sometimes in the cold we also see small children
out on the playground amusing themselves.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in our apartment complex, we have cows occasionally patrolling the garbage bins. Not overly impressed by some of the things they find, they will continue to search for goodies. Occasionally there are a few horses grazing around, but they haven't disturbed the garbage. That we know of. Maybe they just let the cows and the dogs take the rap.

They must find enough to make it worth coming back;
this is not an unusual sight.

Between the dogs and the cows, there can be quite a mess.

Our Seminary youth (teenagers who attend scripture classes during the week) came over one night for a late Tsagaan Sar celebration. We fed them buuz and salads (because that's what you do, even for a late Tsagaan Sar!) and played games. One surprisingly good salad we've tried here and reproduced for our guests is chopped beets with mayo, tuna fish, and canned, mixed vegetables. Don't knock it until you've tried it.

They brought their teacher Baagii with them. We also
invited the elders to help translate for us.

For our church family night, we had a lesson on Noah's ark, then made paper boats and modelling clay animals. Everyone really got into it, even the adults. And we had a new member join us! Boyka is our first returned missionary in Sainshand. After serving in other parts of Mongolia, he is now ready to help us in any way he can while he's home with his family. 

John demonstrating boat folding in his best Mongolian - not!
Boyka, who speaks good English and Mongolian, translated.

We're not sure there were octopuses on the ark,
but this young man made a wonderful one!

Boyka is shocked at how much our church group has grown. When his family got here a little over 2 years ago, people met in his parents' home for Sunday services. At that time their family had recently moved here to help build the church in Sainshand. There was no official place for Sunday services or for English classes. He had no one his age who was a member of the Church. He was here for 5 months before he left on his mission and left a church group that had just a handful of members and a lot of hope. 

Now the church rents the second floor of a building that we put to good use almost every day of the week. We average 20 in sacrament meeting. There's a nice group of teens who have joined the church who enjoy having friends who share the same standards and values they have, friends they can be comfortable with and grow with. Three robust English classes each happen 3 times a week - beginner, intermediate, and IELTS preparation. We've had some wonderful volunteers who have done a nice job of creating dynamic English classes - besides teaching English classes in schools and at American Corner (sponsored by the US Embassy).

Each person who has served here, if only for a short time, has done their part to nurture this growth and has offered their own inspiration and experience to the development of these people and programs here. Each person who leaves on a train leaves their influence behind in ways that cannot be measured. Each person was sent here for a reason, for who they are and what they could contribute. 

Sometimes it's hard for us to see progress, but Boyka's reaction helped us see what we have heard the Spirit whisper to us: the Lord's hand is in this work, and people's lives are improving. For instance, our prophets and church leaders have an amazing vision of who teenagers are and who they can become. The divinely-inspired programs our church offers these kids are designed to help them as they grow into disciples of Christ, support each other, and develop good leadership skills. We expect a lot, and they deliver.  We're watching kids learn to plan activities, look out for each other, teach, and bear testimonies. What amazing strengths they will have as adults!

Saturday brought a surprise. We had what is called an emergency transfer. This is when one of our teachers or missionaries gets a new assignment in between the normal 6 week transfer schedule. In this case, Elder Ricks went to the city after only six days and Elder Odbayar came to Sainshand. He arrived on Saturday about noon and by 3:00pm was helping with a youth activity.

Elder Ricks made a few quick stops for some memory photos. 

Breakfast with Elders Ricks and Anand just before
heading to Ulaanbaatar for a 6-hour taxi ride.

Our new group at lunch, with newly arrived Elder Odbayar.

For our youth activity that day, the young men went out to a local restaurant and had a gospel lesson followed by eating chicken and pizza. The young women had a lesson and celebrated birthdays.

On that Saturday night, since we learned there would be a major alignment of several planets that would be visible to the naked eye, we went star-gazing. We drove to the edge of the hill that overlooks Sainshand (not far from our apartment) and watched the sun set and the stars and planets come out. It was a peaceful, beautiful, evening date. But chilly enough that we kept getting back in our car to warm up.

Overlooking our town and one of its ger districts,
complete with dirt roads.

Pictures never show planets very well. Take our 
word for it that there is a planet in this picture.

It was nice to take a moment to be alone together and marvel at the beauties of creation. We are blessed to be around wonderful Mongolian people, enjoy beautiful sights, enjoy amazing experiences, and see God's hand all around us in so many ways.

Mongolia Mission Week 67 - A Happy Tsagaan Sar! (And have you ever wondered what's in a camel hump??)

 Mongolia Mission Week 67

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 past week was the biggest holiday of the year, Tsagaan Sar, or the Festival of the White Moon. It is officially 3 days of celebration, usually coordinating with the lunar new year. This year the schools were out from Tuesday through Friday. Before the festival, everyone deep cleans their homes. It's part of the holiday requirements and invites the new year properly. During the holiday, everyone strives to be free of contention, ensuring that their entire new year will be contention-free. Sainshand is a friendly town, but during Tsagaan Sar there is a distinctly happy air and it's even friendlier, if that's possible.

It's a time of brightly colored deels (traditional clothing) for men, women, and children. It's a family-centered holiday where people visit relatives they see no other time of the year. The first day is reserved for visiting the eldest relatives; grandparents welcome family members and are honored by granddaughters who help cook, serve guests, and do dishes. The next 2 days include visits to other family members, friends, and work colleagues. Each visit includes eating a variety of salads, lots of buuz (steamed dumplings), often a large back of mutton, drinking various forms of milk products (including arag, a fermented mare's milk), and eating dried milk curd. Traditionally, the focus was on foods that are white.

We started with our own celebration. The Heviin Boov tower of 
scone-like breads must be built with an odd number of layers
representing alternating happiness and sorrow and ending on happiness.

We had decided that the 6 of us would make buuz together, so we invaded the butcher shop as a group. Mongolians make 100s of buuz in preparation for the holiday. Butcher shops have several vendors set up selling the meat of sheep, beef, horse, goat, and camel. It's all pretty frozen, sitting out on the counters in huge chunks for shoppers to inspect and request what they want. We decided on camel and bought about three kilos. It is sold with some of the hump, as both the meat and the fat (from the camel hump or sheep tail, if you're using sheep) are usually chopped and mixed together to add juiciness to the buuz. 

Our camel meat selection. Camel is very lean!

Have you ever wondered what the inside of a camel hump looks like?!

John's pretty good at folding buuz with
different traditional types of folds. Kathy, not so much.

You slice off thin slices from the frozen meat, chop it finely,
add onion and some seasonings. For the dough, you roll out
circles of dough (flour and water) with a slightly larger center.

Our celebration was on Bitoon, which is Tsagaan Sar eve. On this night you are supposed
to eat as much as possible. (Stretches out your stomach for the next 3 days)

Sister Grover is from Mississippi, where Mardi-Gras is a big deal. Bitoon was on Fat Tuesday this year, so she helped us celebrate by bringing a King Cake to our event. It was delicious. You know us - we try to work in all the holidays and festivities we possibly can!

King Cake, made with yeast, is like a sweet bread
and is topped with sugar in Mardi-Gras colors.
It has a surprise inside for one lucky person. 

Wednesday, February 18th, was the first day of the holiday. At about 10:30 am, we got our first knock on the door. This goes on each day of the holiday until about 8 pm. Much like trick-or-treating in the USA, we get small visitors with costumes (traditional dress, in this case) and with bags for candy and/or money. They get both throughout the day. We gave out some small bills and/or candy to almost 200 kids who came to our door during the hours we were home. Mongolian currency is measured in tugriks, with bills ranging from 10 to 20,000 (a 20,000 tugrik bill is about $5.60 in US currency, so giving kids such small bills makes them happy and doesn't deplete our bank account much).

Older teens don't usually come door-to-door like this, but our high school students told us that one reason they really look forward to the holiday is because of the gifts and money they get from family and friends. Actually, every time you visit someone's house they send you home with a gift after feeding you, even if you're a foreigner.

These were our first visitors. So cute!

Kids usually accept the candy with Mongolian
formality (holding out their 2 outstretched hands).

We were invited to several homes over the three days. In really formal visits, we all performed zolkokh, an official greeting where the younger person places their arms below the older person's, thus "supporting" their arms, giving air cheek kisses and saying "Amar bain oh," which means "Are you living in peace?"

When you visit someone, they put the buuz in the steamer (often an electric one, sometimes plugged in in the bedroom) and invite you to visit and munch on salads while they steam for 20 minutes. "Capital" salad is a favorite. It's a potato salad with very small chunks of potatoes and ham, sometimes some canned vegetables, and lots of mayo. Pickled, shredded carrot salad comes in jars at the grocery store and is another favorite, as are slices of cucumber, cucumber pickles, and meat jelly. Ham and various sausages are prevalent in slices and salads. We decline the milk tea, unless it doesn't have actual tea in it, as well as the vodka and/or whiskey, since those are not part of our health code in our church. People are gracious about our refusal to drink things we have covenanted not to drink.  

Our sweet Narkhajid invited us to her one-room home.
She served us buuz and pickles. Her small Heviin Boov had
little candies for snacking.

Tungaa, a delightful teacher we work with, invited the 2 of
us to her home, and we met her husband and two sons.

Sanchirmaa, one of our church members, invited us to
her home with her mother and her little sister.

She had relatives drop by while we were there.

Tuvshig, a  young adult English student at the church, hosted
us at his house. He is a wonderful chef.

We really enjoyed our visits with friends in their homes. Mongolians are so hospitable, and we have made some good friends. Even prior to Tsagaan Sar, we joined our friend Molly and her family to make buuz with them for the second year in a row. They are so gracious. 

Tsagaan Sar is a wonderful holiday that emphasizes family and friendship. We love the respect shown for the elderly in this country year-round. This holiday resonates with us because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is well-known as a family-centered church; the family is the most important unit on the earth. All of our church programs are designed to support families in their righteous goals. 

Our temple ordinances allow families to be sealed together forever so our relationships do not end with physical death. We believe in the Old Testament prophet Malachi, who said "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers (Malachi 4:5-6, Holy Bible, King James Version). And we know that prophesy is being fulfilled today. 

Sadly, this week we had to say goodbye to Sister Veile and Elder Paul, who got transferred.

Sister Veile got a goodbye picture with
 Minjirmaa and Sanchirmaa.

Some of the girls came to the church to say goodbye.
Oyuma brought her traditional scarf so she could do the
formal Tsagaan Sar greeting properly.

Elder Anand, Sister Veile, Sister Grover, and us in order, each 
holding up fingers to represent how many transfers we have left-

We helped Elder Paul and Sister Veile wait for their train in our apartment by serving them, their companions, and a couple of the girls buuz (of course). And salads and fruit.

 

It was a pretty tearful goodbye.

Being invited into people's hearts and homes is a special trust. But it makes leaving bittersweet.