Mongolia Mission Week 35 - The biggest festival of Mongolia - Naadam

 Mongolia Mission Week 35

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). 

For this week, we drove to Ulaambaatar on Monday, had Zone Conference with our new mission president on Tuesday, then stayed in the city and went with two other American senior couples to the Naadam opening ceremonies in the Central Stadium. It was such a celebration! So much going on all at the same time for two hours!

This large stadium is set among new apartment
buildings. The city is truly a mix of old and new.

There is really no way to adequately describe our experience. Naadam is the biggest holiday/festival of the year in Mongolia. It's a celebration of several different things: the establishment of the first statehood of Mongolia, the anniversary of the Great Mongol Empire, the anniversary of restoration of national independence, and the anniversary of the People's Revolution. Naadaam celebrates the "three manly sports" - archery, horse racing, and wrestling. The traditional food for the holiday is khuushuur - fried, hand-held meat pies. Naadam gets celebrated on different days in different towns and provinces of the country, but the official opening is in the capitol city.

This was our ticket to the festivities.
It describes what we were celebrating.

The first organized statehood of Mongolia was the Xiongnu Empire in 209 BC, as you can see on our ticket. Then 819 years ago was the formation of the Mongol Empire by Chinggis Khan in 1206. It's also been 114 years since Mongolia's independence from China's Qing dynasty and 104 years since the Russian Red army defeated the White army, creating the Mongolian People's Republic in 1921. So they celebrate all of the above in this one festival. The first truly democratic elections were held in July, 1990, but that doesn't seem to be part of Naadam celebrations. That evidently is part of a smaller celebration of Democracy and Human Rights Day in December.

We enjoyed the pageantry of the opening ceremony.

The "Nine White Banners" were brought out and carried
by riders on white horses before being placed in the
stadium. Round banners with horse hair.

Streets were lined with vendors.(The
white tents in the background.)

The riders paused before entering the stadium.

There was a rotating stage in the background.

The track was a nice place for horse
demonstrations, including fast riders
who shot arrows at a target while riding.

Patriotic fireworks

The program began with a parade of people riding horses, the setting up of the banners, a speech by a very important person (maybe the President? We're not sure), and the singing of the national anthem. Following that, we listened to singers, saw different kinds and ages of dancers and contortionists, and watched trick horse riding. There were multiple stages with a variety of performances happening at the same time. Pretty awesome!

Outside the stadium were seemingly hundreds of tents selling goods and food, mostly khuushuur.  Khuushuur are usually half-moon shaped, folded over on one side with a seam along the arc side. For Naadam they are flat like a pancake. (We bypassed several vendors whom we thought were selling only flat bread - then we realized that Naadaam khuushuur is flat!) A dough circle is made, chopped meat and onions are encased in it (basically a ball of dough filled with meat); then it is rolled out flat and fried. We stood in line for a very long time to get a few for lunch. When the ceremonies finish at 1:00, everyone is hungry and heads to the vendors! But it was worth the wait.

Then we went back in to watch some of the wrestling, with many matches going on simultaneously. We were told that anyone who wants to participate can go on the field and find an opponent. Certain strategic positioning happens, however, between the most important competitors. Wrestling was  traditionally used as a way to train warriors and demonstrate prowess, and the wrestling uniforms have many layers of symbolism if not much fabric. Lore has it that the uniforms accentuate the bare chests of the wrestlers because there once was a girl who beat all of the male wrestlers, so the uniform now leaves no room for doubt.

The match is lost when someone touches the ground with anything other than hands or feet. So when you watch the sport, you see lots of men standing fairly still while they push against each other's shoulders or arms. 

Most of the people in boot-length clothes are coaches
who hold their wrestlers' hats and offer encouragement.

Also outside, we saw many of the American teachers and some of the Mongolian missionaries. Several ended up being interviewed and shown on local news casts. We got interviewed, briefly, but don't know if the footage was ever used. The point was that Mongolians appreciate foreigners wearing their traditional clothing and participating in their culture. They were excited to see us at least trying to fit in.

The horse racing venue is at another location 30 km to the west of Ulaanbaatar, and we needed to head east to get home, so we didn't see that. The archery took place in a nearby stadium, but we didn't know about it at the time. We were told by Mongolians that it's pretty boring to watch anyway. But we had a great time experiencing as much as we did and look forward to seeing what Naadaam is like in our area.

For more pictures and videos of what we saw, check the Google photos link: Naadam photos

As mentioned above, we were in the city for Zone Conference. It was the first with our new mission president, President Kunz, and his family. It was a wonderful, spiritual meeting. President Kunz, Sister Kunz, the Assistants to the President, our Zone Leaders, and Sister Training Leaders provided wonderful training and a spiritual lift. As with all callings in the Church, each leader is called with divine timing for special purposes. President Namgur and his family accomplished miracles while here. Now it is President Kunz's time, and his impact is already evident. He's been here two weeks and landed on his feet, already working and leading the mission - and hasn't stopped since. It's amazing to see how smoothly transitions can work. But President Kunz says it's like boarding a moving train.

The Kunz family. They had 4 zone conferences this week!

Even though our leaders are only mortal, and even though President Kunz may (gasp!) have some failings (which we haven't found), the Spirit has borne witness to us multiple times in our lives that in spite of failings by mortal leaders, the Lord's work goes on and He blesses our lives anyway. His work goes on within His timetable and in His way. In spite of, and sometimes because of, weaknesses. In fact, we have both had leadership callings and have been very grateful for that principle and grateful to people who have shown us charity and supported us in spite of our failings.

President Kunz in action, teaching the gospel.

Sister Kunz is also a wonderful teacher!

Our District

And, as is becoming more common when we go to zone conference, we found some old (young) friends who served with us in Sainshand.

Sister Taylor, who is about to go home.

Sister Tumenjargal, who is now a Sister
Training Leader

While in the capital we found a "Costco." Well, not really. It's a small store sandwiched into a maze of other shops. It's about the size of our living room. But it uses the signage and sells a few Kirtland products, like a nice selection of nuts. 

 

We found miniature Reeses cups!
And chili and lime gummy bears-

We are always looking for food items in Ulaanbaatar that we can't find in Sainshand. During our search for powdered sugar in a local grocery store, we came across frozen sheep heads. Two days later they were all gone.

And we found the biggest and best hamburger we think exists in Mongolia. The fries were delicious, too. These were actually slightly salted, which seems to be unusual based on the places we've tried French fries. Most fries have no salt.

As we headed home, we appreciated how much the roads are improved! Most potholes have been filled since our March and May trips, and some sections are completely repaved. On our way to the city, we had to take an alternate (dirt and dust) route that paralleled the road they were repaving. But a lot of projects like this are very fast. It resulted in a nice drive home back to Sainshand.

As we left the city, there must have been 15-20 trucks parked along the road, pretty evenly spaced, all selling watermelons! And a few semis, as well. Of course, we had to stop and take one with us - a watermelon, not a truck.

We also saw multitudes of people camping along the streams in the wide open spaces. Just like Americans, Mongolians use holidays for an opportunity to go camping. These are probably the people who bought up all the sheep heads in the grocery store!

People camp in tents next to friends and relatives'
gers, some with a whole community of horses, too. 

Horses going home from the races, evidently.

And a ger packed on top of a car instead of a camel. 
That's modernization, for you!

Also, the main Naadam festival may be in Ulaanbaatar, but every province, city, and village has its own. Most areas hold them on the weekends around July 8-15. In Ulaanbaatar, the official holidays are July 10-15. But in our Dornogobi province, it's July 29-31. So stay tuned for how it's celebrated here in a later post!