Mongolia Mission Week 34 - In the summer we get a break unless we break the break

 Mongolia Mission Week 34

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 worried that, with the end of the school year, we would find ourselves with too much extra time this summer.  We wondered how we would earn our keep with only our evening church classes and the online class for Mongolian missionaries. 

So we came up new ideas. We thought we could meet with local English teachers to help them improve their oral skills. Some of our English words are so tricky to pronounce! We met with the province education department and a representative from Deseret International Charities (our sponsoring organization) to discuss this. But because the teachers are off for the summer, the education department proposed that we teach that class in the fall. They asked us if we would teach two English classes at the American Corner (sponsored by the US embassy), one for 6-9 graders and one for 10-12 graders. Each would meet 3 times a week for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. People are so eager for their kids to learn English! The young teachers got the younger class and we took the older class. 

Our other idea was to develop an IELTS class for people who want to take the international test to certify their English abilities. This class, targeted for adults or high school seniors, now happens for 1 1/2 hours three times a week after our evening classes at the church. So we added 6 classes to our summer, each 1 1/2 to 2 hours long. Guess we'll earn our keep. And we broke our summer break!

However, the young missionaries and English teachers got permission to visit the local Khamariin Khiid monastery and energy center on preparation day, and we drove them. It's about a 30 minutes drive out of the city into the desert. It's a great area to visit and the main tourist highlight of the area. On the way, this fellow was along the road guarding his harem. 

We are not sure about the green sash he was sporting. Most goats have their ownership documented with a bit of spray paint on the back of one horn or with notches in the ears (They are cashmere goats, so it would be a shame to brand them). But maybe his documentation is a green sash. Lovely horns. But his hair was filled with cockle burrs! Good thing we didn't want to pet him anyway; he didn't look like he was really wanting affection from us.

At the intersection along the road is a scorpion statue. It's very impressive even if we don't fully understand the significance. In Buddhism, a scorpion represents the transformation of negative elements into enlightened wisdom.

Past the monastery is a canyon with many caves and rock structures. This area is fascinating. During the period where Mongolia was a satellite state of the USSR, they adopted the socialist attitude about the evils of religion. Many of the monasteries were destroyed and the monks put to death. Some monks hid out in these caves. These caves still have active visits by Buddhists who come to pay tribute, respect, honor, or pray. The caves have incense, bird seed, candy, money, scriptures, etc. in them. It's a beautiful, remote area filled with small rock piles placed there as wishes by families hoping for something important in their lives, like the ability to bear children. 

We found crazy thick spider webs.

A second area is the Outer Shambhala or Energy Center. This is an area purported to give one energy by laying on the rocks. 

John said it didn't do much for his energy. 

There are many structures here and places to make offerings and prayers. It's very quiet, except for the wind, and an impressive place to visit.

The white structures honor the dead of individual families.

Unfortunately, by the time we finished playing around in the rocks and trying to absorb energy, the actual monastery was closed, but we enjoyed wandering around that area, too.

We found a herd of camels on the way home. They sure look naked and skinny (especially their humps!) in the summer without all of their winter shag.

One fun blessing of the week was to have Alex Schefer and his father visit us and some of the people he knew in Sainshand. Alex served here about a year and a half ago and was one of the first English teachers in our town. He left Mongolia before we came, but we met him briefly at the training center in Provo, Utah, where he works as a translator who helps teach Mongolian. When he visited the church building, he was so impressed. When he first came here, the group met in a member's apartment, then they moved to our building (the second floor), but it's been remodeled since he left and is very different now. 

Dinner with Alex, his dad, and some of Chukka's family.

The sisters came up with the idea to celebrate our Independence Day.

July 4th pancake breakfast with Schefers and those
of us serving in Sainshand 

Since there's never a dull moment in our summer (we actually never expected that!), our new young women's class president came up with a service project for the youth to visit a senior center here. We made a visit on Thursday to arrange things, then on July 4th after the pancake breakfast, our apartment turned into a cookie factory to make treats.

Running the beaters for the cookies was an exciting new
experience! Mongolians don't really bake much; some
apartments don't have ovens. Gers certainly don't.

Later that day, while we were teaching a class, the rest of the teachers, missionaries, and youth went to the senior center to deliver hand made decorations and cookies. They played games with the residents and got invited back to make a monthly visit. 

Our new Young Women's class president also taught an excellent Sunday School lesson for the youth, with some mentoring from Kathy. We're standing back in amazement at this young girl stepping forward into this role and elevating herself to fit the call. The Lord's program for the youth of His church is designed to develop leaders, and it works. Not only that, it spreads a lot of good in this world in ways that only youth can spread it. They benefit from looking outwards towards serving other people, and other people benefit from their enthusiasm, optimism, and testimony. Now, do we have a perfectly planned lesson and activity every week? Of course not! We experience growing pains just like any other youth-led group in the church. But the Lord supports us and them and ensures the growth of His children in ways we never could have predicted.

And while we may be living far away, we still are grateful for the blessings of being Americans and enjoying a land of liberty and so many blessings that we often take for granted. We taught about Independence Day three times in our classes on the 4th of July. We may not have had a break for the holiday, but we found a way to explain its importance to our students. And while we were teaching it, we found a renewed sense of amazement about how a ragtag bunch of patriots (with God's help) were able to break away from one of the most powerful nations in the world. God had a plan for America, and when Joseph Smith was born, it was into a country where true freedom of religion was possible. 

Stay tuned next time for the beginning of Naadam, Mongolia's Independence Day.