Mongolia Mission Week 25 - In search of blossoms

Mongolia Mission Week 25

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). 

The view out of our 6th floor window always amazes us. One morning there was an interesting layer on the horizon. Smog? There is no city north of us for hundreds of miles, if at all! Clouds? Looked rather brown, but maybe it was sun reflection. Dust storm? Likely, but everything was so clear that day. As the day went on, it dissipated and didn't affect us.

A few days later, it was dark storm clouds. Once in a while (not often!) we have a cloud cover, but we hadn't seen clouds like this in Sainshand since we got here. We were rather excited that we might have a real rain storm. Nope! Just a few raindrops that didn't amount to much and definitely didn't interfere with the basketball being played on the court outside. We understand rains may come in August-

This view is fun. An apartment building like ours on the right edge of the view. Small group of traditional gers just to the left of it. And solar panels at the bottom of the picture. 

Such a blend of the traditional and the modern
living in harmony here.

It was a week of change. Here we are on our final night for this group. Dylan McWhorter and Rylee Tierney left us for assignments in other parts of Mongolia. Bittersweet! We know they and their special gifts are needed elsewhere. We love and admire these two and will miss them.

And the work just keeps rolling along - here we are with two new replacements. Grace Gainer and Elder Jonon joined us in Sainshand. We are excited for them to join us in serving here. They jumped right in with our group activities, even after 2 straight nights of sleeping on a train.

And what a unique place Sainshand is for some of us. There aren't really fences between the city and the surrounding open range. We've posted pictures of our local "wildlife" before, but always find it interesting to be headed home from school and find a cow next to a playground or apartment building. We tend to live harmoniously together unless the cows start pulling garbage bags out of the trash dumpsters and scattering it. Then the cows win.

For our preparation day (day off from teaching), we went to the Khamariin Khiid Monastery area with Chuka, our English speaking church member who treats us so generously with his time and talents. There are some special Sakura blooms from seeds someone brought from Japan that are planted out there in the desert, and the bushes bloom for only a few days around May 1.

The monastery covers a lot of ground and has several different buildings and monuments. It is known as an energy center with special properties. Inside this building, the walls are covered with (maybe bronze?) wall sculptures that are very detailed and amazing. We could spend hours in there, but we arrived just as it was closing, and Chuka convinced them to let the volunteer English teachers look around. So we tried not to spend too long. Chuka said it's the first time he's even seen them because the building is not always open.

 

Near the monastery complex are some caves we have visited before. These caves were hiding places when the Russians were killing all the monks. Monks have historically used them as places of meditation, and people visit them now to leave offerings and offer prayers.

Then we found the elusive flowers in a small ravine. Apparently we were a few days early, but we did find some blooms! There were a lot more buds than blooms, but we were delighted with their delicate beauty in the desert. 

People come from miles around to see the blossoms.

These were a different bloom. Also 
so refreshing!

We also found little stacks of rocks everywhere. People stack rocks together in kind of a ger shape to make a special wish. They believe the structure also creates or signifies unity in their family.

The first baby calves we've seen. 

We never get tired of camels wandering along the road.

We also went to Wish Mountain, which is extremely busy on the first sunrise of the lunar new year. We understand that this is the highest hill in the area. People climb to the top and make wishes. Women are allowed to go as high as the structure on the right and men climb to the higher level on the left. The small white monuments are memorials honoring the dead of individual families.

Chuka said his wife's family paid for
one recently for their family's dead.

Some of the artwork in this area features
 scorpions, which are an important symbol.

With Spring also comes construction! Everywhere. A couple of weeks ago, we shared a picture of a two guys precariously perched on the second floor of a building who looked like they were working on rebar. That building now is 5 stories tall and changes every day. This is a side view of the building. The front looked like this for a while, but now all the space between the concrete floors have been filled in with blocks, mostly of the same size and shape. And there are piles of bricks on each floor. We are curious to see if those are for the interior or exterior, but seems it would be hard to apply them to the exterior.

What the building front looked like
a few days later.

Construction for us also means that a hot water heater was installed in the church! We haven't seen one that can be mounted horizontally before, so that was fun (for those of us fascinated by such things).

We are excited for something we will never take for granted again. We so appreciate having hot water. And this water heater will certainly be a blessing to the people who get baptized in our church! 

The font in the background now has a
stainless steel spigot instead of PVC pipe
hanging out of the wall.

On May 4th we had a baby girl blessed and given a name in our church meeting. Here are the mom and baby along with the four priesthood holders who participated in the blessing. The mom asked John to perform this ordinance. What a special privilege for him to get to bless a baby in Mongolia! Babies aren't baptized in our church; we believe they are pure and haven't committed any sins. But this ordinance is a special blessing of health and guidance in the name of Jesus Christ. What a great experience for that mature spirit now in a mortal body. What a special experience for her family to be reminded of who she is, where she came from, and what she can become.