Mongolia Mission Week 46 - Change happens

Mongolia Mission Week 46

Our hope with this blog is to share highlights with our !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). 

As you know, last week was unusually amazing, but we always find amazing things here in Mongolia. This week was more "normal," but we have come to understand that unpredictable is normal. And so are changes. We'll start from the end this time.

Our week ended with news that our prophet and president, Russell M. Nelson, had passed away. He was 101 years old and had been very active right up until the end. He dedicated a temple in June. He wrote an op-ed for Time for his 101st birthday. He was an amazing man, leader, and prophet of God. We are grateful that he was blessed with such good health to serve with vigor for so long! We appreciate the guidance he offered through his prophetic insights. His guidance helped us remain spiritually strong and hopeful during Covid. His guidance brought greater clarity to our purpose on earth at this time and further understanding of what it means to be a covenant people. His guidance helped us know what it means to minister and how important it is to receive personal revelation. These are just a few of his lessons we treasure.  

We felt we had our own little miracle here in Sainshand.  The hymn we had planned so sing to open our Sunday church services wasn't available as a programed song on our electronic piano. We decided to sing "We Thank Thee, O God, For a Prophet." It turns out we were singing this great tribute to having a prophet on the earth today at about the same time President Nelson passed away. We were shocked to learn a couple of hours later of his passing, but we felt it a tender mercy to have been thanking God for President Nelson's life at that time. We will miss him and his love and leadership.

We also know that our Heavenly Father has a plan and that our next church president will be who is needed for this period of time on earth. Each of our church presidents has been selected by God before this life and prepared for just their time of service. We are blessed and grateful to know we are in His hands and will always have a leader on the watchtower to provide the guidance and leadership we need. 

And the weather is changing also. In the Gobi, it hasn't gotten cold yet, not like it has in the capital and further north, but it's feeling like fall. Most days are in the 70s (F) with nights usually in the 50s. Most of the trees around Sainshand are losing their green and turning kind of dead-looking. Women have mostly stopped wearing skirts on the streets - they're keeping their legs covered. 

Last week just outside the capital we got
to see some amazing colors, though.

The desert near here is no longer green but has  quite a variety of colors and hues. We still enjoy looking at it!

This picture doesn't do the nuance in the colors justice.

Some of you have been wondering what a normal week looks like. Well, no two weeks are ever the same! But this week we taught our 3 Monday classes and 3 Thursday classes at the secondary school, one of our 2 classes at the medical school, 3 nighttime conversation classes at the church, and our online discussion with Mongolian missionaries working to learn English.

We also assisted with a Family Home Evening that we have on every other Thursday night and with young men and young women activities and church cleaning on Saturday. John planned our Sunday worship services. We helped our elders and sisters as much as we could when they needed another adult involved in a lesson or activity. 

Family Home Evening games

The YM carved soap for an activity. Afterwards, the
whole room smelled like lemon-scented soap!

But on any given week we have to be ready to pivot for all of the above at a moment's notice. Our online missionary classes depend on what other meetings the missionaries need to attend. Sunday School depends on how many people attend, what ages they are, and how much they know about God. English lessons at the church in the evenings depend on who walks in the door that night and how late they are. We've been able to do a lot of improvising because with the Lord's help, we can do anything! These are His children, and He is not going to let them down, in spite of our weaknesses and failings.

Our school students really got into a Pictionary type activity.

As an example, we'll give you a peek into what happened on Thursday (which is our busiest day of the week and held some interesting moments for us). As you will see, even our school assignments require a lot of flexibility even though the students are the same every week. 

• At 10:00 we had our call to help Mongolian missionaries improve their English. Only a few attended, but we had a great discussion with the ones who came. We talked about their English and their plans for the future.
• At 11:30 the electricity went out for a planned (we found out the night before) outage that lasted until about 4:00 pm.
• We went to the school. Here's what happened:
• Class #1 - the teacher didn't show up today. It was just us, no electricity, and some fairly rowdy 11th graders.
• Class #2 - the teacher met us at the door and said we would teach in a different room today (It's not unusual this year to switch rooms). We all walked to another room together, including the students, but that door was locked. After an unsuccessful attempt to get a key, we all went back to the first classroom and held that class with some fairly rowdy 8th graders (the teacher said the rowdiness can't be helped at that age).
• 30 minute break. We were invited to join the teachers in a photo of all those going on strike next week for higher wages (They want to make more than $500/month). We declined being in the picture. Too political for our involvement. And we are volunteers - we don't get paid with money anyway, so striking has no benefit.
• Class #3 - this teacher was there but is the leader of the strike, so she had to go downtown for a meeting. We held the class without her. These 9th graders were pretty good. But at the end of our class, we got ready to leave and the students informed us it was a 2 hour class. What? We only taught it for 1 hour last week. And we had other commitments, so we told them goodbye and just left. We guess when the teacher is there she continues on after we leave. Not sure what happened after we left that day...
• We went to the medical school for our first English class of the year with 12 medical students. It was our introduction class, but we were still without power, so no PowerPoint with pictures of our family. They are great students and it was fun.
• We went to dinner at a Korean restaurant in the area. There is a fair amount of Korean food here because a lot of Mongolians get jobs in Korea, at least for a few years. Some come back and start restaurants. But fully half the things on the menu were not available. Hmmm, was this because the power had been out? Hard to tell.
• We attended Family Home Evening at the church. 24 (mostly kids) of us together for a spiritual message, fun games, and dessert. And we had electricity!

Whew! It was a long day. But good. We like our little city, rowdy students and all. It has a great, friendly vibe. And we've been here long enough we've begun running into people we know. We walked into the market in our apartment complex the other night and heard "Hello" from a man on a ladder fixing the security camera system. He is the dad of one of our English students from our classes at church.

But of course we need to share some tidbits from our trip last week to Ulaanbaatar. We found a place called Molly Malone's Irish Pub, which had little of what we would consider pub food but a lot of pub ambience.

The light fixture has layers of fringe
reminiscent of Chinggis Khan's 
horsehair banners.

  

Surprisingly, it did have a pretty good steak.
And a really cute patron!

We also found a French bakery - we don't find French
food in Sainshand! 

Actually, we ran into people we know in Ulaanbaatar, too. We had a District (our Sainshand group) lunch at Subway. Getting some American food can be a special treat!

We also had a chance to visit BB Butcher. It's the most American-like butcher shop in the country, we think. They have a nice variety of beef and pork and a lot of imported foods (like American cereal!). They also speak pretty good English.

Eclectic offerings at BB Butcher

And we couldn't pass up this seemingly random statue of goats on a street corner. We don't know the significance of the statue, but goats seem to be replacing pigs as John's favorite animal. Oh, but the eyes on those camels are pretty appealing!!

We hope you are all enjoying the change of seasons and weather, wherever you are. Every season of the year can remind us of God and His hand in our lives. Every season of life also brings changes and can be a motivation to reflect on our path and what we can learn from each stage. We can grow and be refined as we prepare for our life after our life on earth. 

Oh, and we're looking forward to seeing General Conference. We all have the chance to hear from God's anointed prophets and apostles. They provide great guidance to assist us in navigating our path through life. We in Mongolia will watch on October 11 and 12, a week later than the actual broadcast, when it's been translated into Mongolian.