Thursday, January 30, 2025

Mongolia Mission Week 11 - Train ride to "the city"

 Mongolia Mission Week 11

Our hope with this blog is to share highlights with our family and friends about our exciting opportunities and awesome responsibilities as missionaries. 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).

Teaching English is very fulfilling. But we've learned from our experiences that teaching lessons and giving talks in church can be a truly amazing (and humbling) experience. When you do your best to prepare, and realize that you cannot really do it very well on your own, the Spirit fills in your weaknesses and you can feel that what you do is acceptable to the Lord (if you push past second-guessing yourself). You end up doing what you need to do in the way you need to do it. These are His children, and He takes an active role in their learning, if they let Him. Thoughts come into your head about what people should hear. You can even feel like you are filling some of their needs. 

We've had some small miracles in working out what to teach on Sundays and for Mutual. In an area like this where the group is so small, you never know who is going to show up. So you prepare as best you can for what you might say for whoever shows up each time (realizing that the whole thing will need to be translated, and realizing that much of the participation comments will be indistinguishable to you), and then you just jump in and do your best. 

It's such an awesome partnership! The Sunday School lesson where you are teaching parents as well as teens with different desires and difficulties as well as different levels of knowledge. The outdated calendar you bring back from Zone Conference that ends up being exactly what you need to cut up and give to the teens in Mutual because the calendar has 12 different pictures of the Savior and each one speaks to a different person, even one who is a non-member and has been immersed in nasty, untrue materials being posted about the Church.

This calendar page quotes Psalms 147:2-3
and shows the miracle of Christ healing the blind man.

Ahh, Zone Conference. Our experience going to Zone Conference in Ulaanbaatar (also known as "the city" or UB) was great in many ways. We acquired a boost of the Spirit, took care of some business, and accumulated miscellaneous material things, including the leftover calendar from an activity. When we arrived in Mongolia seven weeks ago, we spent two days in the capital city before coming southeast to Sainshand. Half of the country's 3 million people live in the capital. We didn't have time to see or do much when we first arrived, but we had 3 days this time.

Of course getting there was an adventure - a 12 hour overnight train ride. (The drive takes 5-6 hours by car.) We approached our train ride with trepidation because of the stories we'd heard from other missionaries. We'd been warned not to drink anything all afternoon or on the train, due to the condition of restrooms. We actually brought camp sleeping pads from America to make our train ride sleeping softer. But since our expectations were pretty low, we were surprised. To be fair, we were in a car with only 4 bunks and had requested it for just the two of us (perks of being a senior missionary). The bathrooms for these "private" cars were pretty decent. The linens were clean, unlike on the overnight train we took in rural China. The biggest issue was waking up at all the stops. (There were less stops on the way home, and that trip only took 10.5 hours.)


The Sainshand station. Interesting that there is no ramp.
All luggage must be carried up the stairs.

Our train

Our cozy little cabin.

We had a little visitor who kept coming 
by to check on us. She was so cute!

Mongolia is all one mission within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of 450 in the world. Pretty big area - about 2.5 times as large as Texas. It's divided into 4 "zones." Each zone meets together periodically for a conference. Ours was last Thursday, with missionaries getting together from the eastern parts of the country for training and updates. And a spiritual feast. It was great. 

Our zone has 37 missionaries. Pictured are those 37
plus Pres. and Sister Namgur and the Leavitts, a 
senior couple who help with all zone conferences.

Each zone is divided into districts. Our district has 10 missionaries from 2 remote areas. We meet online each week, but this was our first time meeting the missionaries from the other city.

Our district. The six on the right of this picture
are those of  us in Sainshand.

Being in the city was like being in a whole new world. No buildings in Sainshand are taller than about 6 floors. Markets are small. Restaurants are few. You can walk across town in an hour. That's very different from a metropolitan city of 1.5 million. UB has some very cosmopolitan sections with malls and electronic signs and things you would expect in a big city. It also has nightmarish traffic jams and delays and one of the highest pollution indexes in the world, especially in January and February. The mission provides us with N-95 masks for the pollution.

But we were awed by some of our grocery store options - things we had given up on. We resupplied on things we can't find in our local stores: packable brown sugar, powdered sugar, whipping cream, Parmesan cheese, and hamburger. We even got what we think are tortilla chips. We haven't dared open them to see. 

We also checked out some of the stores. 

This store was full of cute and fancy
children's clothes - and some Spiderman stuff.

John really didn't have warm shoes to 
tramp around in, so he found some in
the city. Notice the fur lining - necessary!

We checked out a few restaurants, got an okay sushi fix, and tried out the MexiKhan restaurant the elders talked us into.


We took a large empty suitcase to bring back our food finds, a new water filter for our apartment, and almost got a laser printer for the church to fit in there. Luckily the elders went back on the same train we did or we would not have been able to get that printer home. Another tender mercy.

There was a piano in the UB train station, so Elder Abbott and Elder Higginbotham entertained the waiting passengers before we left the city. It was so fun! Of course, they always attract crowds of young admirers.




Headed home! Hoping for a nap-

When we got home Saturday morning,
there was almost an inch of snow on the ground.
This is our 3rd snow in 8 weeks -
the most we've received in a single storm.


And all of the sidewalks are cleared by hand
because even one inch of snow won't ever melt.

Thanks for following our adventure!

5 comments:

Sheron Stevens said...


WOW - what amazing adventures you are having!! Loved it!

Anonymous said...

We didn't say not to use the bathrooms.....sometimes in the public cars they are hard to get into, but they are normally very clean. The linens are also always clean. Cleanliness on the train is not an issue at all. Glad you have sleeping pads! Your posts make me miss it very much....

Anonymous said...

This is Sister Stillwaugh😊

Shauna Morris said...

Wow. You two are sure enjoying a lot of adventures! I love reading about them. Craig and I keep you in our prayers always.

Cindy P said...

Kathy & Robin, I LOVE reading all about your new adventures! Thanks for being so detailed in everything. It really makes a big difference and it helps me appreciate more all that I have and enjoy.