May 18, 2007 - Lost My Camera; Built a Ger

Hello, Hello, Hello

Yeah, no pictures to send this week. I mean, I took pictures, but as of right now I can’t really find my camera. We’re being optimistic and calling it “lost” as opposed to “stolen,” although a missionary’s life is pretty simple and there’s only about a six foot square space that it could be lost in if it’s at my apartment. If it’s not…well, let’s all remember Sister Johnson’s camera in our prayers.

On the plus side, I got to help BUILD A GER this week! That’s one thing I can cross off on my Really Truly Mongolian Things To Do list (next is “milk a yak”). One of our investigator families was moving, and we showed up with some branch missionaries to help just as they had finished laying the floor boards. It really was a unique experience, and the rumors are somewhat true: you can put up the frame of a ger in about an hour, but as for moving in all your things and getting all the felt liners done right, it takes a little longer. I’m just glad I was able to help and that I didn’t end up looking like a ridiculous whitey who had no idea what she was doing.

The hardest part was putting all the poles up that connect the outer walls to the central post. As soon as we’d get ten or so in a couple would fall out, which was fine for those of us walking around the outside of the ger, but my companion and one of the branch missionaries were standing in the middle of the ger holding up the central posts and the falling poles kept missing them by mere inches. The other fun part was that that day Mongolia decided it was winter again, and it was absolutely freezing. It snowed earlier that day and it was still only about 30 degrees out as we were putting the ger together, sans coats or gloves. My hands were bright red by the end, but it was all worth it.

That was Friday night, right after Demchig’s baptism that we were helping that family build their new ger, and the very next morning at 8:30 we were back helping them gather their stuff from the old ger. We asked some of the young adult men in our branch to come help, and guess who was among them? That’s right: Demchig. Not even 24 hours since he’d been baptized and he was already fulfilling his promise to “help lift one another’s burdens.” *Sigh* It’s almost enough to make a little missionary heart burst.

After getting them moved in Sister Nergui and I ran back to the church, bolted past the elders in our jeans and sneakers, and 2 minutes later came out of the bathroom ready for district meeting in skirts and missionary attire. Well, almost. After district meeting we were going to a new member’s house to build a fence for her, so we figured what’s the point in getting all changed and done up just for an hour long meeting with elders? We changed our shoes and put on skirts and showed up to the meeting wearing t-shirts (Village Pizza: Corrales, NM! That’s a shout-out to YOU, Haley!).

The fence building went well, and by “well” I mean “muddy.” The woman we were building the fence for, Tumentsetseg, kinda lives in a river bed. There’s no river there right now, and I’m assuming the river’s not planning on coming back since tons of people are moving in and building their summer gers and fences all over the area, but it was still incredibly wet and mucky and we got dirty and it was fun.

The other day Sister Nergui and I were having lunch at this place we go to every Tuesday and Thursday right after teaching English, and a few tables over there were three caucasians, two guys and a girl, enjoying their meal. I was trying to listen to their conversation to figure out where they were from. After a few minutes of trying and not being able to understand a single thing they were saying I declared them Russians, but then Sister Nergui said no way.

Turns out they were British and apparently I don’t know what English sounds like anymore, but anyway a few minutes later they finished up their meal and went up to the waitress and said “Thank you” a couple times really loudly and the waitress just smiled back blankly. Then they pulled out a tourist map and started saying “How do we get to the market?” really loudly. All the waiters and waitresses gathered together, trying to figure out who knew the most English, and this whole time Sister Nergui and I were just watching and smiling. Finally I said to my companion, “Alright. It’s go time” (not really, but wouldn’t have that been cool?) and we jumped in.

The three Brits were incredibly relieved to find an English speaker. Apparently the three of them were going on a tour of Asia and were only going to be in Mongolia for a few days, so why bother learning the language, right? They were completely blown away that I spoke Mongolian and even more so that I lived in UB. I informed them that their tourist map was pretty much a joke (all the maps of UB have, like, five streets on them and only the main attractions drawn in all cartoony like- not exactly ideal for trying to find your way around), tried to teach them to say “Zakh” and gave them a five minute lesson on how to use Mongolian taxis. Then I patted them on the head and sent them out the door to probably get lost, overcharged, and stolen from. Silly tourists. Actually it felt really good to be able to use what I’ve learned to help other people, and I bet I’ll have a lot more opportunities to help people as the tourist season starts up.

Happy middle of May, everyone!