Mongolia Mission Week 27 - It's a Whole New World (or at least a new Sainshand)

 

Mongolia Mission Week 27

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 city went through some big changes in the last couple of weeks. Street sweepers and bench painters were everywhere. Even all the glass panels surrounding bus stops got polished. We thought that Sainshand must get really serious every spring about sprucing up and were so impressed. Then a couple of friends laughed about it and told us it was because the Prime Minister was coming to town for some meetings. 

Very acrobatic cleanup and fixup

Street sweepers

Tree trimming 

Hole digging for watering around the roots

Painting the bridge took several days.

Repair and sprucing up the signage.

Scraping the desert off our walk down the hill

Change of subject. We get by pretty well using Google Translate. But you really can't always trust it. Often we have to just laugh. For example, we recently used the camera function on a menu, only to find that one of the options was "Roasted Cow Disease." That's appealing!! The Meat Collection (assorted meats) and and Chicken Collection translated fine, but whatever the title was for a platter of beef brisket didn't translate well. We didn't order it, by the way.

This is what Google Translate revealed on the menu.

We also did a Google Translate on one of the hymns in our hymnbook. It's a song called, "Now Let Us Rejoice" but the hymn in the Mongolian hymnbook, "Бүгд хөгжилдөн баясъя" becomes "Let's All Have Fun" when put through Google. But truly, our goal is to find and feel joy. The most joyful people we know live in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is joyful when we understand our Heavenly Father's plan and know that His children (all of us) can be guided around obstacles and tempting choices that will result in a loss of joy and peace. The title and song lyrics are actually talking about rejoicing in the knowledge of the gospel, which we also do!

Even when the power is out. When we came to Mongolia - and especially to Sainshand - we expected unreliable power or frequent outages, but we've been pleasantly surprised. We reported a few weeks ago about a scheduled outage that lasted for 20 hours. This weekend was another planned outage for upgrades for 14 hours each day on Saturday and Sunday (6 am until 8 pm). We knew in advance, planned for appropriate meals (cold cereal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, etc.) It's light from 5 am until at least 8 pm at night, so we all went about our normal activities and did fine - Mutual activity followed by cleaning the church, and Sunday meetings were all as normal - except that instead of an electric organ we had cell phone accompaniment for our songs.

For the youth activity we made modeling
clay creations and played games.

There was so much creativity - There's
even a figure of Jesus!

For dinner Saturday, we were invited to a member's house for a service project and buuz (dumpling) making and eating. They have a wood cook stove, so that was a nice dinner without electricity. Having a wood stove can be a real blessing.

Making buuz and filling the steamer

Then, for Sunday dinner, the six of us assigned to Sainshand all gathered in our apartment, where we had found a butane camp stove, thanks to the Stillwaughs, the senior couple who lived in the apartment before us. We heated water for ramen and ate side dishes we had prepared in advance. It was a delightful evening as we discussed special happenings in Sainshand.

Grateful that there is a small stove on the balcony!

Thinking ahead, we had put whipping cream
in a little cooler, but neglected to think 
about needing electricity to whip it-

The Sisters peeled eggs for deviled eggs.

Enjoying our dinner together by the light of the window.

It was a wonderful weekend! We have a renewed sense of gratitude for electricity, but learned that we can accomplish all we need to and have a great time doing it, even when the power is out. The elders and their muscles made perfectly whipped cream! And we all had fun, just like the hymn suggested. We know that our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ want us all to be happy; they are cheering us on every step of the way, and we can feel their love if we look for it.