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?