Mongolia Mission Week 33 - History is being made!

 Mongolia Mission Week 32

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 used our preparation day this week to visit the local museum with the young teachers, working to gain more understanding of the culture and history of this area and giving them a chance to see the artifacts. While museums in Ulaanbaatar cover the history of Mongolia, our local museum really focuses on the history, culture, and artifacts from our area. It's a unique and interesting part of the world, and we enjoy continuing to learn more!

The first scientifically recognized dinosaur
eggs were found in Mongolia in the Gobi.

The museum boasts a "Great White Flag" from the period of Genghis Khan. These banners, which have great symbolic significance, marked the border between this area and China. Mongolian banners are on poles with circular streams of horse hair (which has been restored in this artifact) hanging down from their tops. The trident topper represents the past, present, and future.

But history is still being made in this area - we are blessed to witness such exciting times! Within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are organized by geographic units. A stake is an area which is a group of local congregations called wards or branches and usually has 2000 to 5000 members. A ward is usually 200 to 600 members. A branch is smaller, with 20 to 400 members. As we've previously discussed, in areas too small to be a branch, the congregation is called a group. That's us here in Sainshand - we're a twig just getting started. Our group is technically under the administration of the mission. Our congregation started with a family just over a year ago and has grown to a usual Sunday attendance of 20-35 people. And history is being made! So far in 2025 we have witnessed:

• our first baby blessing
• our first deacon ordained
• our second priest ordained
• additional baptisms and deacon ordinations
• our first Young Women's class president called and set apart
• the establishment of an organized deacons' quorum

Everyone, especially Mongolian youth,
are fascinated by new babies.

All of these are historic and exciting, but we'll focus on the deacons' quorum. One of the main things that makes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unique is having restored priesthood authority. It was restored to the earth by Peter, James and John, who received it from Jesus Christ, so every priesthood holder in the church can trace their authority back to Jesus Christ. Our lives have been richly blessed by the power of Christ's priesthood. Christ uses it to bless the lives of His children today and amplify our abilities in His service.

Those who preside over congregations have priesthood keys, which can only be conferred with the laying on of hands by one having the keys to do so. This is important. John is the group leader here, but it is a position that does not include keys. So the president of our mission, President Namgur, on his last week in the country before being released, drove 6 hours (each way) to confer priesthood keys on a a deacons' quorum president. The first member in Sainshand to hold priesthood keys! He will use those keys to direct his quorum in their priesthood responsibilities and activities, to teach, and to help take care of people in our area. He is so excited to take on this responsibility. We see great leadership potential in his future, but he genuinely is a leader now, just like other deacons' quorum presidents around the world. 

Some members of our group were able to witness
this historic event.

After this special Tuesday meeting, President Namgur and his son, David, took those of us serving in Sainshand to a lunch where we said our final goodbyes. They headed back to Ulaanbaatar and then left for America on Saturday.

Pres Namgur and David say goodbye to Sainshand 
for the last time. For now.

Overlapping with the Namgurs for one day, our new mission president arrived along with his family. We are excited to get to know them and serve with them.

President Kunz served his mission here when he
was younger. He's an attorney from Mississippi.

Elder Bilegsaikhan had a birthday this week. After English class we had a little celebration with the six of us and an English student who likes spending time with us.

He wanted a fancy car for this birthday - and got two of them!

For our youth activity this week, we watched the Book of Mormon video about the tree of life and then had the youth practice "holding to the rod," which in our case was a piece of string. They had voices of good and evil to help and tempt them. None of the youth who attended this week were members. Most of our members were vacationing for the summer, but we have friends who like to come anyway.

We've found that ties make good blindfolds.

We also made marshmallow renditions of the Tower of Babel.

Also this week, we found what we thought from the sign was a new ramen restaurant, so we decided to check it out. It was new, but it didn't turn out to be the type of ramen restaurant we've experienced in the States. What we found was a selection of 13 kinds of ramen - all in packets. 

We chose two different kinds of seafood ramen from
these shelves.

You take your choice to another room in the restaurant, get a metal bowl, and put it on a hot plate machine that adds water, cooks it for the appropriate amount of time, and there you go - make it yourself ramen in a restaurant. They provide the ramen, bowl, spoon, water, chopsticks, and do the dishes. You do the rest. 

(Hats come in handy when you live in
the Gobi.)

The nice lady who helped us (across language barriers!) even gave us each a package of salami-type chunks "on the house" to add to our soup. She turned on the TV to a show of beautiful Mongolian countryside scenes with some pretty Mongolian music to add atmosphere to our ramen experience.

Ramen is pretty prevalent here. You can get all kinds of Korean flavors, with or without kimchee; you can get bone broth flavors - we have yet to scratch the surface of all the amazing possibilities. Next door to the restaurant was a convenience store whose ramen display made us laugh, though. The store has a counter with hot water you can add to your ramen of choice and tables where you can enjoy eating it. But you have to be of age: 

(Google translated). They even check your ID.

There's always something interesting to find in Sainshand!