Mongolia Mission Week 67 - A Happy Tsagaan Sar! (And have you ever wondered what's in a camel hump??)

 Mongolia Mission Week 67

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). 

This past week was the biggest holiday of the year, Tsagaan Sar, or the Festival of the White Moon. It is officially 3 days of celebration, usually coordinating with the lunar new year. This year the schools were out from Tuesday through Friday. Before the festival, everyone deep cleans their homes. It's part of the holiday requirements and invites the new year properly. During the holiday, everyone strives to be free of contention, ensuring that their entire new year will be contention-free. Sainshand is a friendly town, but during Tsagaan Sar there is a distinctly happy air and it's even friendlier, if that's possible.

It's a time of brightly colored deels (traditional clothing) for men, women, and children. It's a family-centered holiday where people visit relatives they see no other time of the year. The first day is reserved for visiting the eldest relatives; grandparents welcome family members and are honored by granddaughters who help cook, serve guests, and do dishes. The next 2 days include visits to other family members, friends, and work colleagues. Each visit includes eating a variety of salads, lots of buuz (steamed dumplings), often a large back of mutton, drinking various forms of milk products (including arag, a fermented mare's milk), and eating dried milk curd. Traditionally, the focus was on foods that are white.

We started with our own celebration. The Heviin Boov tower of 
scone-like breads must be built with an odd number of layers
representing alternating happiness and sorrow and ending on happiness.

We had decided that the 6 of us would make buuz together, so we invaded the butcher shop as a group. Mongolians make 100s of buuz in preparation for the holiday. Butcher shops have several vendors set up selling the meat of sheep, beef, horse, goat, and camel. It's all pretty frozen, sitting out on the counters in huge chunks for shoppers to inspect and request what they want. We decided on camel and bought about three kilos. It is sold with some of the hump, as both the meat and the fat (from the camel hump or sheep tail, if you're using sheep) are usually chopped and mixed together to add juiciness to the buuz. 

Our camel meat selection. Camel is very lean!

Have you ever wondered what the inside of a camel hump looks like?!

John's pretty good at folding buuz with
different traditional types of folds. Kathy, not so much.

You slice off thin slices from the frozen meat, chop it finely,
add onion and some seasonings. For the dough, you roll out
circles of dough (flour and water) with a slightly larger center.

Our celebration was on Bitoon, which is Tsagaan Sar eve. On this night you are supposed
to eat as much as possible. (Stretches out your stomach for the next 3 days)

Sister Grover is from Mississippi, where Mardi-Gras is a big deal. Bitoon was on Fat Tuesday this year, so she helped us celebrate by bringing a King Cake to our event. It was delicious. You know us - we try to work in all the holidays and festivities we possibly can!

King Cake, made with yeast, is like a sweet bread
and is topped with sugar in Mardi-Gras colors.
It has a surprise inside for one lucky person. 

Wednesday, February 18th, was the first day of the holiday. At about 10:30 am, we got our first knock on the door. This goes on each day of the holiday until about 8 pm. Much like trick-or-treating in the USA, we get small visitors with costumes (traditional dress, in this case) and with bags for candy and/or money. They get both throughout the day. We gave out some small bills and/or candy to almost 200 kids who came to our door during the hours we were home. Mongolian currency is measured in tugriks, with bills ranging from 10 to 20,000 (a 20,000 tugrik bill is about $5.60 in US currency, so giving kids such small bills makes them happy and doesn't deplete our bank account much).

Older teens don't usually come door-to-door like this, but our high school students told us that one reason they really look forward to the holiday is because of the gifts and money they get from family and friends. Actually, every time you visit someone's house they send you home with a gift after feeding you, even if you're a foreigner.

These were our first visitors. So cute!

Kids usually accept the candy with Mongolian
formality (holding out their 2 outstretched hands).

We were invited to several homes over the three days. In really formal visits, we all performed zolkokh, an official greeting where the younger person places their arms below the older person's, thus "supporting" their arms, giving air cheek kisses and saying "Amar bain oh," which means "Are you living in peace?"

When you visit someone, they put the buuz in the steamer (often an electric one, sometimes plugged in in the bedroom) and invite you to visit and munch on salads while they steam for 20 minutes. "Capital" salad is a favorite. It's a potato salad with very small chunks of potatoes and ham, sometimes some canned vegetables, and lots of mayo. Pickled, shredded carrot salad comes in jars at the grocery store and is another favorite, as are slices of cucumber, cucumber pickles, and meat jelly. Ham and various sausages are prevalent in slices and salads. We decline the milk tea, unless it doesn't have actual tea in it, as well as the vodka and/or whiskey, since those are not part of our health code in our church. People are gracious about our refusal to drink things we have covenanted not to drink.  

Our sweet Narkhajid invited us to her one-room home.
She served us buuz and pickles. Her small Heviin Boov had
little candies for snacking.

Tungaa, a delightful teacher we work with, invited the 2 of
us to her home, and we met her husband and two sons.

Sanchirmaa, one of our church members, invited us to
her home with her mother and her little sister.

She had relatives drop by while we were there.

Tuvshig, a  young adult English student at the church, hosted
us at his house. He is a wonderful chef.

We really enjoyed our visits with friends in their homes. Mongolians are so hospitable, and we have made some good friends. Even prior to Tsagaan Sar, we joined our friend Molly and her family to make buuz with them for the second year in a row. They are so gracious. 

Tsagaan Sar is a wonderful holiday that emphasizes family and friendship. We love the respect shown for the elderly in this country year-round. This holiday resonates with us because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is well-known as a family-centered church; the family is the most important unit on the earth. All of our church programs are designed to support families in their righteous goals. 

Our temple ordinances allow families to be sealed together forever so our relationships do not end with physical death. We believe in the Old Testament prophet Malachi, who said "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers (Malachi 4:5-6, Holy Bible, King James Version). And we know that prophesy is being fulfilled today. 

Sadly, this week we had to say goodbye to Sister Veile and Elder Paul, who got transferred.

Sister Veile got a goodbye picture with
 Minjirmaa and Sanchirmaa.

Some of the girls came to the church to say goodbye.
Oyuma brought her traditional scarf so she could do the
formal Tsagaan Sar greeting properly.

Elder Anand, Sister Veile, Sister Grover, and us in order, each 
holding up fingers to represent how many transfers we have left-

We helped Elder Paul and Sister Veile wait for their train in our apartment by serving them, their companions, and a couple of the girls buuz (of course). And salads and fruit.

 

It was a pretty tearful goodbye.

Being invited into people's hearts and homes is a special trust. But it makes leaving bittersweet.