Mongolia Mission Week 29 - Mongolia - known as "the land of the eternal blue sky"

Mongolia Mission Week 29

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'll just start with WOW. We shared recently how Sainshand was spruced up this spring. But Mongolia itself is sprucing up. A couple of trips to the city ago, John was struck with an idea that all the dry, dead stuff we drove past might actually turn green. What is yellow might once have been green, he suggested. And it's true! The steppe is turning green! As we drive to the capital now we also see lots of babies: goats, lambs, and horses. Even a yellow bloom or two and a few clusters of a small purple flower that looks like an iris. All beneath an amazingly big sky.

How can we but reflect on the scripture from the Book of Mormon where a prophet is trying to convince a non-believer that there is a God. "....all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator." Alma 30:44. Indeed, this much beauty and variety could not have happened by chance.

It might not look all that green to some of you, but remember
that we live in the Gobi.

This is so exciting when all we've seen for months
is sand and dry grass.

Another exciting event for us was a coincidental/maybe not coincidental meeting. John and Scott Scovel worked on a large project together as American Express employees over 20 years ago, when John was based in Salt Lake City and Scott was in New York City. They've each gone down separate paths over the years but stayed in touch. Scott recently reached out to tell us that he and his girlfriend, Winsome, would be visiting Mongolia in May. It turned out to be the week of our Zone Conference when we had come to Ulaanbaatar anyway!

We were able to meet up with Scott and Winsome one night for dinner and to attend a cultural experience of music, dance, and dress. Click here to hear some examples we heard of Mongolian throat singing and to see some of the characteristic shoulder-shaking dance moves, Buddhist mask dancing, and a picture of a guy playing a percussion piece made of ankle bones. We failed to take a picture with Scott and Winsome, which is so sad! 

Traditional instruments included a horse head fiddle
which features a carved horse head at the top and
includes notes sometimes played with fingers
underneath the strings on the neck of the instrument.

The performance included a contortionist and
 claimed that contortionism began in Mongolia.

It turns out there was a group of 44 global business students from Brigham Young University (BYU) attending that night. They are on a month long trip to various countries in Asia.

One of the students in the group was Alex Schefer, who was one of the first to serve in Sainshand when English volunteers first went there a year and a half ago. We had met him when he worked as a translator in the MTC in Provo back in November, so it was a treat and a reunion to see him again, too!

Zone Conference was great, as usual!

We presented cleaning awards again

This Zone Conference was unique; President Namgur and his family are completing their three years of service in Mongolia at the end of June, and we may not see them again before they leave. They are amazing and inspirational and have sacrificed a lot for their service here. We love and appreciate all they do for the missionaries and English volunteers who serve in Mongolia. 

In an emotional ending to the conference, Namgurs
received gifts from the zone.

Between David's visit and Zone Conference, the two of us slipped out of the city. Senior couples are encouraged to participate in cultural activities. We couldn't think of a better way than to experience the countryside of another part of Mongolia. So we enjoyed the steppe and found a couple of very cultural experiences.

Good thing we had a driver and a guide who knew 
where to go!

Visited and ate with a nomadic family

Our hostess made rolls as she sat on the edge of a 
bed by the stove. These rolls were then steamed.
The horse tapestry lined the interior wall of the ger.

Mutton soup and fried flatbread. 

Gers can be assembled and disassembled within hours,
depending on how many people help. These are stiff
pieces of leather, not screws holding the framework together.

Made friends with a Bankhar dog, the 
dog breed of Mongolia.

Herded sheep and goats in a landscape that goes on
forever. Nomads herd on horseback, by motorcycle,
by car, or by ATV.

So hard not to keep these two!

We slept in our own ger, complete with a stove (and
plenty of dried sheep dung) in case we got cold.

Our ger had its own sink, furnished with water carried 
in from a well. The floor is linoleum laid on the ground. 

The family, two of their three dogs, and our guide,
President Adiyabold. Notice the solar panel for the ger.

 President Adiyabold is the president of the second stake in Mongolia (a stake is a geographic collection of congregations in the Church, generally consisting of 3000-5000 people).  He co-owns a tour company that caters to English-speaking people, for which we were grateful. Click here if you'd like information about his company.

One educational tidbit we gained was seeing and learning about the Przewalski or Takhi horse. Native to Mongolia, and named for a Russian explorer who discovered and described them in the 1800s, these horses were declared extinct in the wild in the 1960s. In the 1990s, 84 were airlifted from European zoos into Hustai National Park in Mongolia in a repopulation attempt. There are now about 1000 - a real success story. 

They are genetically different from domestic horse and cannot be tamed. (Mustangs, considered wild in America, are feral horses, not naturally wild.) Because Przewalskis are wild and their hierarchies are not selected by humans, the stallions fight for ownership of their harems. We got close enough to hear some of that.

Przewalski horses are all the same color and
have some striping on their back legs. We didn't
get close enough to actually see the stripes.

We always hit the museums to continue our quest
to learn as much about Mongolia as we can! These
clay figurines were found in a tomb.

The oldest monastery in Mongolia

We had to go in search of sand dunes. Our part of 
the Gobi doesn't actually have sand dunes. And what
a sky!

After zone conference, we headed back home to Sainshand. The potholes have always done a good job of keeping us awake on the road and giving us bursts of adrenalin as we dodge them and the other cars and trucks also dodging them. 

The roads to the capital were not good for alignments. 

We're sure we got extra points for dodging trucks
 and potholes both at once!

We also went joy-riding over places actively being
repaired

But workers are filling (some of) them right now, so the ride home was not quite as exciting. Except for a car fire which closed the road. Not a problem. We all just drove out over the steppe, like the nomads do. 

On the way home there were great improvements!

One of our big takeaways is that this world is a marvelous place with many wonderful people doing interesting things, and there's no one "right" way to make music, make a living, or feed your family. Nomads have been roaming this area for centuries, finding ways to adapt, succeed, and be happy. We're glad to catch a glimpse of other ways than our own. And we thoroughly enjoyed the peaceful feeling of a land that is open as far as eyes can see, and nights when you can see stars upon stars upon stars. Indeed, there is a God.