Bummer!

Within the last couple of days, we have learned that 18 or so of our missionaries are going to have leave Mongolia sooner than expected. That includes 10 young missionaries and four senior couples. Bummer! It seems that their residence permit/registration has expired and Mongolia is no longer able to renew them.

An explanation is in order -- Readers Digest version.

Missionaries not only have to have a VISA to enter the country, we also are required to obtain a residence permit within a few days of arrival. Both are required -- one to enter the country for longer than 90 days and the other to actually live and remain here. The Church has not been able to obtain new VISA's for some time now. But all, including those of us with current VISA's, also must also obtain the referred to permit which is then good for a period of one year. That permit must then be renewed annually. Mongolia can not longer renew those permits under the current structure of the Church, here, and renewing or obtaining the is giving us the latest challenges to overcome.

When permits were renewed a while back for those who have been here a while, Mongolia would only renew them until June 5th. They hadn't fully decided, yet, what they were going to do and, therefore, renewed them for a shortened period of time. So, both new arrivals and old timers are facing this particular difficulty.

But, we have come to understand some things from a little different perspective over these last few days. Mongolia has, in fact, been very kind and generous to us for many years, making exception to laws which have been on their books for a long time. It seems that we have been far above our legally allowed quota, probably for many years. And now, Mongolia is expanding and growing at an increasing rate with much foreign interest in their rich mineral deposits. And they have a need to protect who and what they are, at the same time.

That is not unusual. The U.S. has had strict entry requirements for a long time, too. Most countries do. Those who do not, have often paid a price, some having lost most of their culture and much of their identity. Inner Mongolia (now part of northern China) is one of those.

We no longer disagree with what is being done. We are only sad that it has to be. The saddest of all, are those who must leave within the next few days and will finish their missions elsewhere.

The senior couples mentioned must leave, but, with Mongolia's help, it looks like a mutual acceptable and beneficial way has been found to allow them to return. We should know for certain within a couple of days, it looks like.

We also hope that a solution can be found for the younger missionaries so that they will be able to return within a fairly short time. The sisters, however, have been permanently reassigned to Washingtion, D.C. Their shorter time of service does not make it likely that they would be able to return.

Bummer!

Stop the World, I Want to Get Off!

Things are happening here faster than we can tell you about them! Here's a couple of the latest.

Friday night, the Branch closest to where we live had a baptism. Nothing really unusual in that. They have baptisms pretty much every week. But this baptism was unusual, just the same.

The first to be baptized was a really cute 8 year old girl. That's still not unusual. All the kids here are the cutest you have ever seen and lots of them are baptised every month!

But the second person to be baptized, was this 99 year old grandmother. That's right, 99 years old! That is a record for Mongolia and we wonder what the record is for the entire Church!

Her family has been members for some time. But a while back, she told them she didn't want to stay home anymore on Sunday. She wanted to go to Church with them. So, she did!

It also seems that she had been having some dreams. In her dreams, her husband (who past away 30 years ago -- he was only 71 or so!) had appeared to her and he was all dressed in white. She said, "I want to go to church and if I see someone dressed all in white, I'm goin' to hang on to them!"

Well, she was soon the one dressed in white! She no longer has the use of her legs and had to be helped by two Elders as they went entered the font. They held her up, offered the baptismal prayer and then immersed her. But, not having any control of her legs, they floated to the surface! It only took a second attempt to succeed and she was thrilled.

"I don't have long left here and I want to leave prepared," she said.

This was one of THOSE baptisms, can you tell?

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Also on Friday night, KSL News in Utah ran a story on the difficult winter Mongolia is having. Bruce Lindsay of KSL is a neighbor to the couple now serving as the Humanitarian couple here -- Elder and Sister Lasson. Bruce phoned Elder Lasson and conducted an interview from half way around the world. It is a pretty accurate story. You can see it at this link:

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=9829662

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Thought you might get a kick out of this picture. We have seen this sort of thing in many countries. People try to use English words but don't really know what they mean.

Hair cut anyone?
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Tsagaan Sar

We just finished celebrating Tsagaan Sar (literally, 'White Month'). The holiday is celebrated on the day in which a new moon appears in February -- the same as the Chinese New Year celebration. This year, it also happened to fall on Valentines Day, February 14th. Tsagaan Sar celebrates family and friends (with emphasis on family) as well as the beginning of Spring. Members of families may travel long distances in order to be with their family, as circumstances permit.

This year (us being 'old' veterans and all, now) we were invited to many homes to share in their celebration. Traditional Mongolian food is served such as rice, a large variety of dairy products which most of you would find . . . interesting, and buuz (pronounced more like boadz).

This first picture is with the Grandpa and Grandma from Naliakh Branch. They are the best! We were in their sons home, which used to be a small restaurant, at one time.

The second picture is of the Nalaikh missionaries at the same home. The first day of Tsagaan Sar, we visited homes with our missionaries. It was fun!

The third picture is in a more traditional ger. This is the home (ger) of what we call a "mini-missionary" who served in Nalaikh for a short time. That time included Tsagaan Sar. Mini-missionaries are members who are close to mission age, and are asked to 'fill in' temporarily as missionaries when there are not enough companions temporarily. Then we get a group of missionaries back from the MTC and the mini-missionary returns home.

As for the beginning of spring -- yah, right! Sort of hard to believe when the day before Tsagaan Sar, it was 34 F below zero! But this is our second winter here and we now believe them. Well, sort of. The day after Tsagaan Sar, the temperature did, in fact, start going up! And it has continued a very slow but steady improvement almost everyday since! Recently, we hit a balmy 20 degrees and the snow on darker colored surfaces actually has been melting! What a wonderfully warm day!

It will likely take a while for it to even reach the freezing mark, but it has been very tantalizing on some days.

And it is very needy. Livestock losses have hit the 2.3 million mark and are still rising. It will take Mongolia a few years to fully recover from this one.

Make a note

Two weeks ago today on Thursday, February 4, 2010, the first Patriarchal Blessing was given in Mongolia.

One down, and about 6000 more to go!

Haiti, Part 2

The conclusion of our report about Haiti and the faith and resilience of those saints, as related by a senior couple there.

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Their lessons and talks were sophis- ticated and scripturally based, as if they had a library and computer at their fingertips to prepare instead of what ever they had been able to salvage, stacked at the side of the road.

Sacrament meeting began with strains of “Come, come ye Saints, no toil, nor labor fear, but with joy wend your way.” For most of us who come from other nations, we would be hard-pressed to find joy in impoverished and broken Haiti before the earthquake, let alone now, but they sang like they meant it, “Happy day, all is well.”


They prayed, “We are all thankful to be counted among the living. We are grateful to know of thy truth. There are many outside the walls of this church who do not have this truth to sustain them through the trials. We know we were kept alive because we have a mission to complete. Bless us all that we can be strong and take care of each other.”

We listened tearfully.

The sacrament was passed and each of the seven children sitting on the row next to us took not a single piece of bread but a scoop each. They are hungry.

Then we heard a talk, a surprising, enriching talk from France Nathalie Desir — so beautifully done.

She told the audience:

“For some of the adversity we face, we can place the weight on our own shoulders because we are not obeying God’s laws. That adversity we can control, but there are some kinds of adversity we can’t control like the earthquake. We didn’t do anything to attract it. We all had friends and families who were killed as a result of it. A lot of people are discouraged and have lost faith, but we as members of the Church now have a mission.

“We know why we have adversities. They are to make us stronger. We have the freedom to either let them overcome us or to make us strong. Just as we send little children to school, the Lord has sent us here for a school.


“Our big enemy is our pride that keeps us from loving our neighbor and obeying the commandments. Since January 12, we all have experienced sleeping outside. As I was lying in the courtyard looking up at the stars, I knew this was the time to manifest charity and mourn with those who mourn, give food to those who need food.


“We have a certain joy, and the joy is knowing these things are temporary. The trials we are given on earth are for us. The Lord knows everything we are going through and they are to augment our faith and bring us to God.”

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We came on a mission to teach and help others. We continue to marvel at how much people such as these, teach us, instead. Wow!

Haiti

As one might expect, we suppose, senior missionaries from other areas sometimes share their experiences. We hear often from relatives serving in Thailand, for example.

Well, we recently heard from a couple serving in Haiti. They shared with the rest of us, some of the details surrounding the recent earthquakes there. We thought it was worth sharing.

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Much of Haiti lies in rubble. Collapsed roofs lie at angles, smashed against the floor below them. Cinder blocks slant in heaps along the roads. Some streets in Port-au-Prince look like old pictures of bombed-out Berlin after World War II. It’s a horror, an apocalypse.


Yet, amidst the shambles of this neighborhood, stands a jewel - the Croix-des-Mission and the LDS church. And sounding through the air is a hymn, "How Firm a Foundation."


It is a particularly well-chosen song in a land whose physical foundations could not stand the earth’s tremors, but whose Latter-day Saints have proven to be remarkably resilient. They know that though all but a handful have lost their homes, their foundation is in the gospel of Jesus Christ and that is firm.


Attending the 3-hour church block on Sunday felt remarkably normal to us. There were the Saints well dressed, many in crisp, white shirts that looked newly ironed. The deacons wore their white shirts and ties as they reverently passed the sacrament.


How can this be?
Without any homes left, they have been living on the street in hastily-assembled, makeshift shelters raised wherever they can find a level spot. The walls may be sheets hung over ropes or pieces of cardboard. Their beds are concrete or hard earth. Everything they owned — and that already wasn’t much — has been stripped from them by an initial quake that lasted about 45 seconds and then after shocks that continued for days.

Haiti, right now and for the foreseeable future, is a land 'sleeping out'. People fill the church’s courtyards at night, but instead of woe, they laugh and talk. And remember, their homes are shanties on the median strip between two lanes of riotous traffic.

We asked member after member, how can you be so beautifully groomed on Sunday, given what you have been through? Their answer? Yes, most everyone is now living in the street, and, yes, they are indeed dirty during the week, plagued by all the ills that befall a newly-made street person. But, they added, though they had no water clean enough to drink, they did have water clean enough to wash their clothes.


So, there they were singing about what really is their 'firm foundation' and looking like any other LDS congregation across the world — except that these saints are homeless.

Maybe someone forgot to tell them how miserable they are supposed to be.

More next time.