Mongolia Mission Week 63 - Oops! We must have been driving too fast!

 Mongolia Mission Week 63

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 are driving back to Sainshand from Ulaanbaatar. The weather is great. Still cold, but sunny with no wind. The roads are nice - with potholes, of course, but no ice or snow. And surprisingly little traffic. 

John doesn't mean to speed, but it seems difficult to hold the car at 80 kph (50 mph) for over 6 hours of driving. Anyway, we're driving along, thinking we're minding our own business, when we come upon a police officer standing along the road with a radar gun. He flags us over to stop on the shoulder. John rolls down the window and we dig for registration materials. John takes off his seatbelt to access his wallet for his driver's license. 

The officer begins talking - in Mongolian, of course. John says, "Only English." The officer turns around, shakes his head, and waves for us to go on. Doesn't even check to see if John actually has a license. Sometimes it's okay that we don't speak the language; apparently the policeman just doesn't want to go to the trouble of dealing with us.

But then the officer turns around and comes back - speaking Mongolian, of course. We still don't understand until he reaches through the window, grabs the seatbelt and indicates to put it on. Considering ourselves appropriately chastised, John rebuckles his seatbelt, we roll up the window, continue on our way, and chuckle. For the record, although we always wear seatbelts, we see many people who don't. In fact, it's common for at least the passenger-side seatbelt to be permanently clipped to itself so the car doesn't beep annoyingly while people drive. Children usually sit on laps or bounce around in back seats.

Besides our interaction with the police, we see other vultures on our journey. We sometimes pass huge birds doing their cycle of life thing with livestock carcasses (usually hit by motorists). But this time there are a whole bunch of vultures close enough to the highway for us to get a good view. Many, spread 10-20 feet apart from each other, are just sitting, staring off into space. These are likely Cinerous Vultures, one of the world's largest birds of prey with a ruff behind their head and a wingspan of up to 10 feet.

Zone conference was a wonderful uplift. We received valuable instruction and enjoyed a spiritual feast. Besides seeing so many other volunteers and missionaries, we were able to spend some time with the other American couples in the country and with Elder and Sister Saunders, who were visiting from Japan. Elder Saunders is the area doctor.

Since we've been in Mongolia, there have basically only been two American couples (including us) other than the mission president and his wife. For a while, we were the only ones. Then Harts arrived in December, Horitos in January, and now the Saunderses were visiting for a few days. Four Mongolian couples serve as senior missionaries. But we don't often get to see them, although sweet Sister Suvdaa was in the online English class we taught before Horitos got here to take it over.

Cleaning awards!

As you know, we enjoy exploring when we're in the city, besides getting our car serviced and gathering supplies for apartments and the church. So we walked to an art museum just under 2 miles away from the mission home. It was -24F so we bundled up. By the time we finished our day, we had logged nearly 5 miles in and out of the cold. We felt like we got our workout for the day! 

We got to see a famous art piece called "A Day in Mongolia." It shows a multitude of activities taking place on any given day in the countryside: a birth, a death, a wedding, the shearing of sheep, making felt to cover the gers, and many, many more things you can imagine that happen in a day. You can spend a long time looking at one of these scenes because there is so much going on.

This is only the top corner of the very busy artwork.

We met a contemporary artist whose paper cutting was on display in a special exhibition. Really amazing and intricate detail done using colored paper and various cutting tools!

Black paper cut into one big piece of art and glued on a white
background. Warriors even had different facial expressions!

On our trek we checked out the annual ice sculptures in Sukhbaatar Square. 

This year featured a train.

The train even had seats.

An igloo.

It's hard to see in the picture, but this is a horse.

Each animal of the zodiac was represented in

a separate piece carved with intricate detail.

We saw a giant ice slide again this year. No, we didn't slide down it.
We may actually leave this country without that experience. 

One of a couple of fun dinners together.

Our first bus ride on the UB city bus.
Not as crowded as the next night's ride!

We attended the Nomadic Legends performance and enjoyed traditional Mongolian music.

And contortionism.

We made it safely back to Sainshand. On our way home we delivered an air purifier to some young volunteers in a city along our path home. (We all use air purifiers in our apartments.) The week closed out with a birthday, a major mission announcement, and a youth activity.

Chimka received a surprise birthday visit at work.

Chimka is a pharmacist who attended our last baptism and loved the gooey butter cake we served. She told us that's what she would like for her birthday, so that's what she got.

Right now the Mongolian Mission is the entire huge country of Mongolia and has about 130 missionaries. We have missionaries and volunteers who have to spend 24 hours on a bus to get to zone conference. Some have to fly in. We have learned that in July the mission will split into two: an East mission, where President Kunz will preside, and a West mission. They're still really big areas but will be more manageable for leaders who have to spend so much time with public transport or on less than ideal roads (tracks out across the steppes). 

For our youth activity we watched the broadcast of the 2026 youth theme for the year, discussed the thought-provoking questions it presented, painted pictures that related to the theme, and ate cream puffs.

The youth theme for the year is "Walk With Me" from Moses 6:34. (see https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/inspiration/2026-is-a-year-to-walk-with-him?lang=eng) It's an inspirational story of Enoch, a young prophet who, like many of us, does not feel equal to the task the Lord has called him to do. And he's not. But he learned, like we are learning, that the Lord will walk with us and give us power to fulfill what we have come to this earth to do. It's a powerful message, and we hope and pray our youth (and all of the rest of us) will take it to heart and put it into practice. 

We can walk on water!

We can feed people with our meager offering of
a few loaves and fishes!