Mongolia Mission Week 19 - Pi Day, Rubik's tournament, and Transfers

 Mongolia Mission Week 19

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 sat down to write our blog and thought, "This was a pretty quiet week. What is there to share?" Then we looked back through our pictures and realized there are so many random things that would be fun to share. First, Pi Day, always important for the math nerds in our family. 

Chicken pot pie!

Chicken pot pie is always a winner. Then we thought we'd try a banana pie. Hear us out on this. First, we don't really have a pie pan. The one we used for the pot pie is a very large lid from a casserole dish. So we made our banana pie in a 7" x 9" pan. That works out to the same area as a 9" pie pan (using pi to calculate this, of course). And we can't find vanilla pudding or banana pudding, but we did find a light colored pudding imported from Turkey (most grocery items in this country are imported from somewhere else - our jar of pickled beets said "We love vegetables!" on its lid in Polish). Our pudding turned out to be honey almond flavor. And the whipping cream doesn't really whip into peaks, but it is delicious. The result was a success and probably impossible to ever recreate. 

We ate the pies when the sisters came over to watch the Relief Society broadcast with Kathy. It was for the commemoration of the beginning of the Relief Society, 183 years ago, broadcast from the red brick store in Nauvoo clear to Mongolia! They shared a sweet experience in watching and talking about the broadcast and feeling a part of what is considered by many to be the oldest, largest women's organization in the world. We'll watch it again in Mongolian if the broadcast gets translated. Then we can include the one adult sister in our group and maybe some of the teenage girls as well.

Walking home from school one day there was some sort of military event going on.  Not sure what, but we watched the formation and listened to a soloist sing a beautiful number in a wonderfully deep voice. It may have been a rehearsal of some sort, because there was no audience and because kids were running around on the parade ground while it was happening. The mysteries keep piling up.

One day when we were with Sister Taylor and Sister Tierney, we went walking along the top of the hill overlooking our little city of Sainshand right at sunset. Our apartment complex is on the hill, but we've never done a lot of exploring because of the cold.

There's a memorial of a war hero up there,
as well as a tank.  

So is a monastery - you can see the silky scarves
people have hung from a line between two poles.

There's a row of gers at the foot of the hill.

There's a fun footbridge that crosses
above the highway

The students we teach at the school were part of a Rubik's Cube tournament this week. There were both individual competitions and class competitions (where the clock keeps ticking until all members of the class finish). It was painful watching the last person of a class trying to finish, with the pressure of the entire class upon their shoulders. Sometimes the time just ran out. The school had decided that holding a competition like this would motivate students to spend less time on their phones. We'd been wondering why so many students have been obsessed with the cubes in class - while we are trying to teach-

The competition was held in the elementary school gym.

These are some of our 8th grade students.
Students here wear school uniforms.

These are some of the cute students that attend
English class at the church. Some are taking church
lessons, too. They  love learning about the Savior.
 

They learned that one teacher was being
transferred and would leave Sainshand
the next day. Serious sadness.

On Thursday, all of our young teachers headed to the city. Ally Taylor and Bryant Higginbotham both got new assignments after spending over 12 weeks in Sainshand. They all left Thursday night, spent the night on the train, went to meetings Friday, then the ones coming back got on a train for another overnight train ride. Good thing they are young! We wouldn't survive with that kind of a schedule.

Headed to the city for transfers - we miss
them already!

Dylan McWhorter and Rylee Tierney got to stay in Sainshand. When they got back, we got to meet Roman Eves and a sweet native Mongolian missionary, Sister Tumenjargal. And that afternoon they all got right to work. For Mutual, we picked up garbage around an outdoor basketball court near our church. We had a small but mighty crew, including a girl we picked up along the way. We had actually seen her when we walked to the church that day. 

Many times when we walk past kids, we hear them yell "Hello!" Most don't know how to answer us when we try to have conversations or even when we ask "How are you?" But, assuming we are English-speakers (a fair assumption), they like to call out the English word they do know and have us respond. And it makes us feel like celebrities. One the other day yelled, "Hello, Grandma!" and "Hello, Grandpa!" Anyway, this one girl greeted us on our way to church, and when she saw us later with our little band, she stayed to help.

A small but very hard-working crew

John's partner

Afterwards, the elders joined a game.

Sunday was another amazing day. All of our cleaning crew from the prior day came to church and stayed for the entire two hours. We had other investigators, too. Again, translations worked and important messages were received through the Spirit. The adult Sunday School lesson was on personal revelation. After discussing it for awhile, Kathy asked our investigator who is getting baptized on April 5 about his experiences with personal revelation. He said he'd never had any. Then she asked him how he knew he needed to be baptized, and he launched into a story about his first discussion with the elders and how warm and happy it made him feel. He can't wait until he is baptized. He is so excited about everything he is learning. His life has changed enough that people have noticed a big difference in him. Kathy then had a chance to clarify that those feelings are, indeed, personal revelation. 

We are humbled to feel the Lord's guidance. He continues, in His divine way and within His divine timeline, to bless this area, the people here, and the small group of us who are working to serve them.