Mongolia Mission Week 50 - Early Halloween

Mongolia Mission Week 50

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). 

Mongolian teachers are still on strike, so no students are in the schools for us to teach. Apparently doctors are also paid by the government, and they're on strike, too.

So the main event this week was the Halloween party at our church. We hold a Family Home Evening every two weeks on Thursday nights. Our church recommends that families have at least one night a week they spend together to focus on family unity, gospel learning, and "wholesome recreation" ("The Family: A Proclamation to the World," https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng, churchofjesuschrist.org). Families are so important to the strength of a society. Most of the people in our group are the only members of the church in their families, so we have a group family home evening to model what such an evening could be like and to build a sense of closeness among our members and friends. 

Since Halloween is not something most Mongolians have ever celebrated, it was fun to share some American culture. We invited as many friends and students as we could, and over 50 people came (It's a good thing some people we specifically invited didn't come!) Our usual attendance is about 20. We told them they could wear costumes, but most costumes were fairly minimal; there's just not much of a tradition for dressing up. One boy proudly sported a worm he painted on his cheek for a costume.

This boy's costume was a plastic knife built to
look like it passes through his head,
but it became his pumpkin decoration.

We made doughnuts and hung them from a
string for a doughnut bobbing contest.

The sisters created a series of boxes with
interesting feeling objects inside.

The Elders created a water pong game.

One of the more elaborate costumes.

It was nice to see the mom of some of our English
students. Most parents are very busy.

The children in this country are so cute! And there are a lot of them. The government actually incentivizes women to have multiple children. Playgrounds are full of happy sounds.  Children call to us from across playgrounds and rush to say "hello!" and "See you later" so they can practice their English on us. A sometimes startling aspect of this culture is that children learn at a young age to be independent, either at home or on the playgrounds. In many situations teens fill a parental role, so toddlers often trail their older siblings around. 

We laugh at the celebrity status we hold as foreigners. People tell Kathy she is beautiful, and many are fascinated by John's hair. Some want to touch it. It's unusual because it is so curly without a perm and is soft and fuzzy-looking. It's also white; it's rare to see a Mongolian man with white hair.

Exciting news this week! Our mission will be divided next July and become two missions! This is further evidence of the exciting growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mongolia. It's the largest Christian church in Mongolia. We will be home before July, so we won't need to worry about which mission we'll serve in. And none of the others need to worry, either. They will serve where the Lord needs them!

In construction news, the apartments being built next door are now 10 stories tall (bet they have elevators, unlike our 6 story building)! They now have platforms all around as the metal framing is put in place to hold the exterior facade panels. In a few months, these won't look the same at all. They will become very sleek, modern apartment buildings. We're fascinated with the construction processes here. Construction workers work all hours of the day and often long into the nights.

Mongolians think American construction is sketchy because we use wood for framing. They use cement blocks and bricks. The building above was constructed with poured concrete. For many buildings, the frame is poured concrete and then the exterior and interior walls are filled in with block and/or bricks.

With this apartment, you can see the 
blocks at the lower levels creating the exterior
walls. Upper ones are recently poured, and 
the supports are still in place.

Through the window, you can see an
interior block wall.

But through this window, in the same building
is an interior brick wall. No bricks or blocks will
show when the building is completed.

Thin metal panels will hook to this grid and cover the
outside of this wall to form a complete facade.

In the food news you've been wondering about for this week, we created goat yakisoba. We had some goat ribs in the freezer (doesn't everyone?) that we boiled to get the meat off the bones; then we used it to make a Japanese noodle dish....

with goat meat and red cabbage. It was tasty!

And when we found a bottle of pitted cherries we decided it was time for a cherry pie. But we only had half the cherries the recipe needed. So we improvised with some frozen wild blueberries. WOW! John said he may have to give up cherry pie for cherry-blueberry pie. Our diet consists of what we can find, plus a lot of creativity and the luxury of having a budget that allows us to be frivolous and buy such delicacies as frozen fruit. And ice cream once in awhile.

The elders and sisters didn't complain!

And in weather news, Jack Frost now visits our windows most nights.

We have a new, unique decoration every morning. 

This frost is on the outside of the windows of our enclosed balcony. Our balcony serves as extra fridge space during the winter months except for the coldest part of the winter when things actually freeze out there. We often open the door to this area during the day right now because the apartment gets too warm for us. We have no thermostat; the apartments in the building are heated with hot water radiators set to keep us all very warm. (In other news, our shower/bath water hasn't been cold for weeks! In fact, sometimes we can't get cold water out of the tap at all - even our toilet tank feels warm from the warm water.)

Warm people, a warm apartment, what more could we want?

Mongolia Mission Weeks 48 & 49

 Mongolia Mission Weeks 48 & 49

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). 

You get two weeks for the price of one again! More happened the second week than the first, so we'll start there. And it was extra special. 

We've told you that every six weeks we have a Zone Conference, where all of us serving in our section of Mongolia come together for instruction and edification. There are four zones:  East, West, Central, and Erdenet. Actually, after this week there will be five zones, with the addition of a North zone.  Then, two weeks later we generally have transfers, where many of the young volunteers get new assignments Anyway, because an apostle visited last month and because a member of the Asia North Area Presidency was doing a mission tour this month, we ended up with Mission tour/Zone meetings this week AND transfers.

So we drove to the city on a Sunday afternoon, spent Monday attending online meetings, getting our car serviced at the dealership and shopping for items we can't get in Sainshand (like turkeys - stay tuned for Thanksgiving!). We got to go to dinner with our dear friends, the Rottweilers, Area Communication Specialists. They are about to leave and spend six months in Palau, so we won't be having dinner together again they get back in the spring.

Tuesday was our conference, with the East and West Zones combined. We received wonderful instruction and guidance from President and Sister Kunz and Elder and Sister Kim. Elder Kim is a counselor in the area presidency. Each area of the church has general authorities who oversee and support church activities. There was a special spirit we felt from Elder Kim, and we each felt personal revelation and insights during the various messages of the conference. 

We spent some time the prior week doing online apartment inspections (One of our jobs is peering at people's toilet bowls through phones!) and, as usual, gave awards during zone conference for the cleanest and tidiest apartment keepers. It's actually hard to narrow down who gets those awards! 

Here's a fun picture of Jay. He's one of our favorite people and indispensable to the mission. On this day his role was photographer as well as translator and a variety of behind the scenes jobs like lunch-getter. We couldn't resist getting a picture of him trying to organize 60 to 70 eager-to-catch-up young people and 6 of us "more mature" ones, as Elder Kim liked to call us.

Sister Kim with the three senior couples
in our two zones.  

We and our Mongolian members were pleased to hear that Dallin H. Oaks was set apart as the new president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the great blessings of our church is having priesthood authority and a solid succession plan. There is no campaigning. It's in God's hands; through revelation prophets are selected years in advance as members of the Quorum of the 12 apostles. We sustain them all as prophets, seers, and revelators, and the most senior one is the president of the church. 

It's no small thing to lead a worldwide church, but we love President Oaks. We look forward to seeing how the Lord works through him and know the church is in good hands.

President Oaks with his counselors, Elder
Eyring and Elder Christofferson

Batmunkh arranged to have our winter tires installed on our car while we were in the capital. He's another friend we couldn't survive without!  The tire folks came to the mission home parking lot and did the change of tires. 

That was much handier than our weaving through
traffic on circuitous roads for the car servicing.

In the transfers we lost (but will always love) Sister Gainer and Elder Jonon. Then we bustled back to the more reasonable streets of Sainshand. In Ulaanbaatar the city temperatures hovered around freezing, and when we got back to Sainshand, our lovely fall temperatures seemed to be gone, too. We woke up the next morning to snow. In fact, it snowed a bit every morning for 3 days. It was never more than an inch, and pretty much melted by the end of each day, but seems a promise of things to come. 

We enjoyed watching these kids have a snowball
fight. It's fairly unusual to have snow in Sainshand.

We have new volunteers: Elder Paul and Sister Veile.
 She moved from the far west to the far east of Mongolia. 

Before going to the city, because transfers were coming, the six of us serving in Sainshand made a trip to Khamariin Khiid. That's the local monastery, energy center, and tourist attraction we visit fairly often, as the missionaries serving here want to see the most important site of the area while they are here.

On this day we saw more tourists and 
worshippers at the various buildings than
we ever have. 

A first for us: we saw a "nun" on this trip, the female
version of a monk. Monks read special scriptures to
applicants who pay for the service.

A monk finds quiet time to chant and meditate.

Elder Jonon practices levitation!

This monastery visitor is Davaadalai, a singer 
who won the 2023 Voice Mongolia contest.

Davaadalai on YouTube.

We're continually delighted with traditions we find out about that are different from the ones on our side of the world. After seeing teachers perform in the talent show we blogged about last week, we found out about student talent shows local schools put on in the fall. We went to several hours of one. Each class, or representatives of each class, competed in different categories of musical and dance numbers. Some numbers were modern; some were traditional (they received more points if they included traditional numbers). 

Everyone in each class participated in what they called a "flash mob" dance, where they all learn a line dance and perform it together. It was impressive to watch these serious teenage competitors, boys and girls, singing and dancing their hearts out whether it was their favorite extra-curricular activity or not. 

Uuriingegee, from our church group, narrates this
story/song about Chinggis Khan.

Ogy, also from our group,  was part of
this number. 

Some numbers were modern. Some were in English.

These students created a mural of Mongolian
script as part of their song/story

The seniors get fairly emotional after their parts because they know they will be graduating in the spring, so this will be their last performance. Click here to see photos and videos from both the student and the teachers' talent shows. (A particularly interesting one is teachers doing a long, traditional dance with bowls of milk on their heads.) The teachers' performances were often more polished than those of the students, but considering the school talent show was pretty much required of all students, it's pretty impressive.

Meanwhile, back in Utah, our Sensation  

Box Elder tree is sensational!

Maddie, Trevor, and Ember help Grandpa (Kathy's dad) sell apples.

We really missed being part of the apple picking and selling this year. Dad's orchard had lots of apples. Luckily some of his kids, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren came to town to help pick. And a few helped with selling them at the New Harmony Apple Festival, which was held in the street this year instead of the park due to all the rain. 

The day before the festival, New Harmony received over 5 inches of rain that came in with such force there was no containing it. Rivers of water broke through basement windows. Several basements, including that of our neighbors (who finished building their house and left for a mission just after we did), got flooded. It was heartbreaking. Our house survived without damage, we've been told.

Never a dull moment, indeed. Thanks for following our blog. We appreciate all the love, support, and prayers we receive from you!

Mongolia Mission Week 47 - Our Almost Pumpkin Spice Week

 Mongolia Mission Week 47

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 thought you'd enjoy seeing what we observed outside a local market (across from the church) this week - a truckload of camels! 

It turns out it doesn't take a big truck to haul camels. You just haul them kneeling. 

There were eight camels in that truck!

The Stillwaughs, who served here and left just before we arrived last year, posted this picture of snow in Sainshand on October 1, 2024.

But this year we happily enjoyed
78 degrees on October 1.

The precious and really warm part of our week happened when Kathy delivered official Young Women jewelry to the girls in our group. None of our young women at church had ever received their Young Women necklaces. We hadn't even thought about it. In fact, the girls didn't even know the necklaces existed until they saw Sister Gainer wearing hers and we realized they all should have one, too. 

We got some during our last trip to the city, so Kathy presented them one night at the end of their Seminary class, along with a document she created (and faithful Elder Jonan translated) explaining the symbolism. The gemstone represents, among other personal interpretations, that they are lights to those around them. The temple represents that they are focused on the importance of living worthily to attend the temple and receive all the blessings of temple ordinances. 

The girls were so excited they clapped
their hands. Then immediately
began snapping pictures.

 

It was wonderful to be a part of the excitement!

It was such a simple thing, yet it was a tender reminder to all of us that the Lord loves His children and that we can all benefit from the amazing resources of the church, even when we are at "the ends of the earth" (D&C 109:23). Every one of these girls is a special daughter of God. We can feel it. These teenage girls, who are typical teenage girls in many ways, have testimonies and divine potential that set them apart. We can see and feel it.

This week Sister Tierney was back for a day as an STL (Sister Trainer Leader)! It's been a minute since she was here as a green, new missionary doing her best to learn the language. And Sister Morton, her awesome companion, was with her to spend the day in Sainshand with our sisters! We invited the four sisters over to eat hamburgers for lunch. Since we haven't found hamburger buns, John made some, complete with sesame seeds on top. They turned out so fluffy and good.  

Her young friends were delighted to see
Sister Tierney again!

They had to show her our bulletin board
of activities that we've held. It's a real
focal point in our church.

What we didn't know was that the Zone Leaders were on the train, too. They also spent the day in Sainshand. We went for a chicken and pizza dinner with the 4 elders.

We're feasting with Elders McFarlane, Johnson, 
Godfrey, and Jonan.

The 8 young people had a great day meeting and talking to people and told us they experienced miracles. It was an uplifting day for people who sometimes struggle to find anyone who wants to talk to them.

Besides hamburger buns, we created more offerings from Roses' bakery this week. We made a chocolate meringue pie to share, but since we don't have a pie plate, we improvised - we have a 9" deep casserole dish sort of thing. Good thing it's a deep dish, because it was needed.

Being American, we felt we needed to pay homage to the season by making pumpkin spice baked goods. So for the pumpkin part of the week, you have to know that cans of pumpkin are not available here. We can find red kuri squash, however, which is similar to a pumpkin. We made it into a puree which became pumpkin chocolate chunk (no chips in Sainshand) cookies for Young Men and Young Women.

It also became pumpkin cinnamon rolls (You just add pureed pumpkin in lieu of mashed potatoes to the bread dough for a fluffy texture). Of course we roasted pumpkin seeds, too.

It was all an appropriate enough celebration of fall, whose days are numbered. Then one night we went to dinner at a restaurant on a hill that overlooks Sainshand. Our mission president recently reinforced the need for senior couples to have date nights. So, we were obedient. After dinner, we walked around the hotel to enjoy the mild temperatures.

One of the "ger districts" between the hill and
the downtown area.

 

We even got the moon to line up with
the post of a local ovoo by the restaurant.

An ovoo is something we see frequently. Ovoos perform a variety of functions, from navigational landmarking to shamanistic sites for ritualistic offerings. When you stop at one, some people believe you are supposed to walk around it three times and add a rock to the pile. People add scarves, birdseed, sweets, or money as offerings, often wishing for good luck.

We drive past this ovoo when we go to the capital.
 It's a smaller pile of rocks but heavily decorated
with colorful scarves.

Last week we shared what a crazy busy day Thursday was. This week was entirely different. It was Teachers Week. On one day of the week, the seniors teach the classes in the school and may also have teachers and school administrators as pupils. Our school classes were cancelled one day due to a teachers' talent show, a two day event spilling into the weekend where teachers from all over the province come to town to showcase their talents. 

We only saw a little each day, but we were blown away by the skills these teachers have developed and were willing to showcase. Beautiful regional costumes, with music and dancing to rival any we've seen in other performances. (Even throat singing!) 

These are teachers!

This instrument looks like a small bow
but has a taut string he's holding to the side.
Something spins on the string, making 
a soft musical tone.

Many of the performances seemed to be traditional songs and dances. This last picture is from a song that told a story of a beautiful cycle of life that we could follow even without English translation. A woman came to the front of the stage and portrayed that she was pregnant, left and came back with a baby, then came back with a rambunctious little boy, then with an accomplished young man, then with that young man carrying her on his shoulders. They portrayed such a beautiful respect for motherhood and for appreciating mothers. It was a very spiritual moment and represents a culture with some great priorities. 

It's a privilege to be a part of it all and see how other people choose to honor mothers as well as teachers. We have benefitted from learning about this culture.