Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Be Strong Part 2

When the day of the youth conference arrived (Thursday, June 17th -- see previous post), we went over to the Church early, to help provide breakfast and a sack lunch for the some of the kids (the ones who had needed to travel in from the countryside) before they left. We arrived at a little past six o'clock. Thought we might find things still a bit quiet, there.

Wrong!


The kids who had traveled in from the countryside, had stayed overnight in the mission offices, sleeping anywhere they could find a piece of floor big enough to through out a blanket or two.

As you can see from the pictures, when we arrived that morning, the kids where already up and were cleaning the church building!! We were astonished! They really did a job on that place, too! They had a fireside at the building a bit later,
cleaned everything up, and packed there belongings before leaving. You can see them all in their youth conference T-Shirts waiting for the fireside to start.
This is the scripture upon which the conference was based. "Be strong and of a good courage" (Joshua 1:9)

Finally, we sent them off to camp. It was about an hour to an hour and a half ride on buses to get them there. Half of the drive was getting through to the other side of the city. Then they hit the bad dirt 'roads'. And that's after the three day ride some of them had just getting to the city! But we never heard a complaint.

We were unable to go with them that first day, being obligated to teach English. But we did go up for the day on Friday. When we reached the camp (and part of the drive was on some of the worst 'roads' we have seen here), we found a very unexpected surprise. It was in the middle of some heavily tree'd forest! We had no idea there was that kind of forest anywhere near Ulaanbaatar.

This last picture shows the camp where they stayed. It was really a pretty nice place. Similar to Mill Hollow (a public school system in the Salt Lake City area), but actually nicer in some ways. Not perfect, but it more than did the job for us.


We share more of the actual conference in the next post.

4 comments:

Bressler Bunch said...

I believe that scripture (the one on the shirts) is the theme for the YW/YM churchwide for this year. It's so cool to see the kids there using the same theme as the kids here. I love it!

Ryan Cowley said...

I'm impressed! Up at 6 am...to clean? Wow!

The Fendleys said...

They sound like wonderful kids, grateful for everything they have and not taking anything for granted. Speaking of Mill Hollow, that is where Lex is and has been for 3 days now. I get to pick her up in an hour, can't wait. Megan can't wait either, she cried so bad when Lexi got on the bus. It was sad, but sweet that she loves her big sis so much. I am sure she will be so excited to tell you all about it.

Marcia said...

Don't you just love youth?
WOW!!!