Happy Valentine's!

The senior missionaries got together for a little Valentine's celebration last evening. And it was one of the nicest get togethers we have had. Everyone brings a potluck dish and so how we just happened to all bring really great things! Several commented that it was exceptional.

So here'e some pictures of the group. The first is of us having dinner together. Notice the Happy Valentine's sign on the wall in the background. The pictures will show most of our group which is assigned here in the capitol city. However, one couple had a branch obligation and arrived late and one other couple were in Hong Kong -- the other missionary who broke his arm but found it necessary to have surgery to correct it.

The two brethren at the pool table are our mission president (President Andersen - standing upright) and our mission doctor (Elder Anderson-taking the shot). And we have another senior couple stationed outside of Ulaanbaatar who are another Elder and Sister Anderson. Yes, it is sometimes confusing!

Elder Nelson of the Quorum of Twelce arrives at 11:00 pm tonight. We are excited about that and look forward to his visit! He'll be here for a couple of days and we will have opportunity to visit and talk with him.

Oh, by the way, it was minus 36 degrees this morning! Ouch!

Teaching English

We have been teaching English for some time now and are becoming much more comfortable with the process. Sister Caldwell has taken most of the burden in preparing those lessons and they have been going very well.

We teach two classes; one to a group of the local court judges and their secretaries and one to employees of the national archives here in Ulaanbaatar. In each group, we have had one ask us this week if they could come to our church with us. That is pretty exciting!

The first photograph you will see is of the court. The one circled (Judge Saikhansetseg) is the one who has asked to come to church. Those sitting on each side of her are also judges. The man sitting on the other side of the table is the Chief Judge. The others are secretaries.

The second photograph is of the archive employees. That’s the group we have the most fun with! The one with the arrow pointing at her is Ganaa and she is the one who has asked to come to church from that group. She started talking to us after the class and then pointed at my name badge and the name of the Church. Then she asked if she could come. Well, twist our arm a little bit harder! We also have name badges that just say “Deseret Charities International”. We are asked to judge carefully which to wear in that we can not teach about the Church in these classes at all. But I was glad I was wearing the one with the name of the Church on it!

Both of these ladies will be bringing their husbands and we are excited!

This week we have been talking about holidays. There is a national holiday this month in Mongolia called Tsangan Sar or White Month. It comes with the new moon (which will be the 24th and 25th this year) and is their celebration of the beginning of the spring season. That seems a bit premature to us! The temperatures have just dropped back down into the officially frigid range and we are in the middle of a snow storm!

But we had them tell us about their celebration and we told them about Valentine’s Day. Everything will shut down here for the two days of Tsagan Sar, including our mission offices. It is a very big celebration here with lots of food (especially white dairy products), visits with family, gifts are given and more.

Then we told them about Valentines. They had fun with that! Sister Caldwell made Valentine cookies which we had them put frosting on. If you look closely at the picture of the Court Class, you can see the cookies. We also had them make a Valentine card and explained about Cupid and his “arrows”. We had them make up sentences using their new vocabulary. One young girl drew the word arrow. Her sentence was “I arrow husband.” And she meant it in the good way!

Teaching English to foreign speaking people is an interesting process. We do use an English to Mongolian dictionary when we need to but usually we can pantomime and they can figure it out! In the process, we come across things in the Mongolian language which we think are really strange. Like different words that are used for exactly the same thing and we think that is really awkward and silly. That is until we realize that English is even worse at doing the same thing! We are just so used to it that we don’t give it a second thought.

One thing they have a lot of trouble with is words ending in -ed. They always want to pronounce them work-ed (two syllables) rather than worked (one syllable). And the exceptions (such as worded, forwarded or forested) don’t help the process any!

And they don’t seem to use articles here as much. They would say something like they are ‘to store going’ (also notice the reversed order), when we would always add an article like ‘the’ – ‘we are going to the store’ or maybe 'we are going to a store'. That is to say, we always add an article except when we don’t. Like ‘we are going to work’.

Oh well.

Nalaikh

We thought you might enjoy a few pictures of the Branch we are assigned to and what the city is like. Nalaikh is a mining town about 40 kilometers from where we live in Ulaanbaatar.

The first picture is a warning to drivers along the road to Nalaikh. The inscription says something like, "Speed kills."

The second, is of a cow obviously wrapped in a blanket.
We have been fascinated by the inclination of some local farmers to use this method to keep their cattle warm. On the other hand, we can certainly understand. It is a bit on the chilly side here! Not all farmers choose to thusly protect there livestock, but many do.

This is a picture of a typical ger district. There are many such districts both in Nalaikh and in Ulaanbaatar. People are given the land free but must fence in there ground as a condition of ownership. Many then build some sort of structure on the ground, as well. Some are homes, some are just out buildings. The wooden homes are only occupied in the summer. It is much easier to heat a small ger in the winter, than the larger wooden structures.

The next picture is of the Nalaikh Branch Building, probably one of the nicer buildings in town. Notice the bars on all the windows. But that's not unusual, anymore. All the buildings in our Stake in Magna have them as well. There is a brick structure by the front gate which is also visible. We haven't asked about that but the property is enclosed by a fence and we assume the structure can be used as some sort of guard station.

And this is the Branch President -- President Gankhuyag -- a young, single Elder who finished a full time mission about four months ago. He is a really good young man but is scheduled to leave in April to attend BYU Hawaii.

The next picture is of Nalaikh's main street. Those building are actually mostly businesses and there are quite a few along the street there. They are just not what we are used to. No nice parking lots nor 'typical' store fronts. Just buildings that have businesses inside. Ulaanbaatar has a more US typical city structure.

The last picture is of Elder Caldwell and the newly baptized member we have mentioned to some of you. His name is Ganaa. He has been a wonderful addition to the branch and there are many of his friends who are now investigating the Church.

We are really puzzled!

We attended a puzzle museum in town today. It is actually a private museum run by a puzzle master from Ulaanbaatar. He must really be a wiz! The puzzles this guy has created are phenomenal. Everything from little brain teasers to very, VERY large chess sets that are also puzzles (i.e. each piece, the board and the table can all come apart in large puzzle pieces). It would have filled a small room about 10-12 feet square. He has made thousands of chess sets and many were on display but we could not take pictures of any of them.

The puzzleman (don't know his name) has won the world puzzle making championship (yah, I know -- I didn't know there was such a thing either), five times and took second once. Very impressive.

Unfortunately, there were only a couple of things they would allow us to take pictures of.

The 'man' Elder Caldwell is standing next to is also made of puzzle pieces. The dinosaur was in the background of that picture so I enlarged it so you could at least see that. It is also made of about a dozen or so pieces.

They had a couple of small brain teaser type puzzles with which they challenged us. "If you can put this back together in ten minutes, we'll give you $10,000!"


The gentleman stretches a point sometimes but the gers are included because they have a lot of wood in them and do come apart and are put back together again. Hey, it is a private museum and he can do whatever he wants with it!











As you can see, gers can be quite ornate inside. The only thing they really lack (aside from very much space) is indoor plumbing. And they do, sometimes put them on a large cart without breaking them down and move them around, using oxen to move them. Kind of like our camping trailers ('cept we do have indoor plumgin' in 'em)!

Pictures!

We finally received the last of the Christmas stuff! Boy did Christmas last a long time this year! Or was it last year? Anyway . . .

It's a good thing this one arrived late. As it was, Grandma sat down, looked through the book and had a good old cry! Then she got the visiting doctor's wife crying, too! Grandma's!

This is really a cool picture book! Great pictures and great job of putting it all together. We're goin' haf'ta keep this one!

We have such wonderful, smart, intelligent, thoughtful and creative children! Why, they must all take after their . . .

And they lived happily ever after!

We recently attended a wedding here in Ulaanbaatar (‘recently’ being a relative term – it was prior to Sister Caldwell’s accident). Weddings here can be (as one might expect) a bit different than we are used to. We are accustomed to the reception being held on the same day as the wedding, in the majority of cases. However, some even in the states have departed from that custom and will hold a reception as much as a week or two following the wedding itself.

Here in Mongolia, the bride and groom can hold a formal reception as much as one year after the wedding. That custom evolved due to the difficult financial struggles witnessed so much here. If the couple can not afford a nice reception when they are married, they often postpone it while money is saved sufficient to pay for one. Going into debt for a reception is rare here. Perhaps we could learn a bit from our Mongolian brothers and sisters!

As you can see from the pictures, it is a rather nice affair. This is, once again, the chapel in the building where our office is. All of the podium furnishings are removable, as well as the chairs and other furnishings. The area where the repeat of the wedding vows was performed, is the area we refer to as the stand or the podium. The Elder performing the ceremony is President Clark, 2nd Counselor in the mission presidency. He and Sister Clark have done much to help Sister Caldwell and I through our little broken bone ordeal.

This was a very nice evening, though we missed part of it as a result of obligations we had downstairs by our office. But they were kind enough to save us a nice serving of the evening meal and we enjoyed the portion of the festivities we were present for.

And you might note that the traditional sheep’s head was also present as part of the meal provided for the evening.