Almost here!

Christmas is right around the corner, now!
Our District organized a choir for Christmas. You know, the equivalent of the Stake Choir thing! Or maybe not! They held a fireside on Sunday which we attended. This choir was really quite good! In fact, they were really good! They sang songs in both languages (English and Mongolian) and presented quite a program. It was so good, that we invited some people we met on our flight here from Seoul, to come to a Christmas open house the mission held which included a repeat of the choir presentation tonight. There names are Beaver and Rebecca Eller. These folks are here with another church (the Christian Ministry) and are trying to bring in and operate a small airplane here to help reach remote areas for different needs, such as emergency medical evacuations.

It has been rather challenging, apparently. The Mongolians have no concept of a private aircraft. It is either commercial or it doesn't exist. So these folks are needing to convince them of the concept, and then obtain permission to fly as a private enterprise. They would, of course, be the first private aircraft to fly here. But our church has an interest in this service for cases of emergency evac of people we associate with -- members and none members alike. So Sister Caldwell and I are sort of spearheading the effort to for form some sort of
cooperation with them (as if we didn't have enough to do!).

They did come to the concert, along with one other member of their group (see our picture together with them). It was a nice evening and we had a very enjoyable time visiting with them and introducing them to others in the mission, though, as it turns out, they had actually met some of our missionaries before! But no one knew what the Eller's purpose was in being here! We will need to keep in touch with them and hopefully work together here.

We also thought you might enjoy some pictures of our Christmasdecorations in the apartment, particularly of the Mongolian nativity we purchased. It's kind of nice around here. We were able to put the smaller nativities in other areas of the apartment so we had more decorations than just in one room.

Tomorrow we start three days of meetings, conferences and social get togethers. We'll let you know how that all turns out.

To answer Cindy's question under comments in the last post, we have no problem keeping the apartment warm. It is heated by steam from a central location in the city and we have no control over it -- can not adjust the temperature or nothin'! Often, it is too warm in here! I actually wrapped a blanket around the heater in the bedroom and partially open a window to cool it down enough to sleep at night. Go figure!