December 14, 2007 - Madeline Moment in Mongolia and Mail

Word to the wise: don’t put icy refreshing Burt’s Bees chap stick on right before stepping out into -20 degree weather.

The other night my companion and I were truckin’ around (when you wear boots as big as I do you can’t do anything else but “truck”), and all of a sudden I had a Ms. Clavell [from the children’s books Madeline] moment: something was not right. I stopped my companion and said, “Khuue, where are the gers???” We looked around, and everything was just baishin baishin baishin (regular “square” houses made out of wood ‘n stuff- like in America)! It took me a couple of weeks to notice, but there are absolutely no gers in this town! Everybody lives in buildings! It’s like bizarro-Mongolia or something! Before I came to Selenge I hadn’t gone a single week on my mission without going into a ger, and now here, 15 miles from the Russian border, everyone’s all stuck on cheap Russian wood. Okay, I’ve had some time to adjust to the idea, and since that time we realized the lack of gers, we have actually located 3 in the city, so I think I’ll be okay, but seriously people! Am I in Mongolia or what? Today, to make up for the lack of Mongo-ness, my companion and I are going in to get new deels [traditional costumes] made for the Christmas party.

We’ve had a lot of visits from UB people this past week. On Wednesday the new English Teaching couple (bye bye Baileys!) came to check out the English-teaching scene in Selenge, and here’s the best part: they’re British! Elder and Sister Hitchmough were both born and raised in England AND for the last 30 or so years they have been living in Canada! British Canadians! It’s almost too cool to handle. We all went out to eat together with the Thuesons (the Selenge branch couple), and the two old guys started swapping jokes about WWII. It was funny until Elder Thueson asked, “How many Brits does it take to defend Paris?” and the answer was “We don’t know, it’s never been done.” Slight awkward pause…forced laughter…then everybody started digging in to their tsuivan and tumstei khuimag. Yummmm…tumstei khuimag.

Yesterday Elder and Sister Stroud came up for a little training meeting. President Andersen has had Elder Stroud give this training on overcoming oppositions to our church using the Book of Mormon to every district in the mission. No matter what the person’s objection is, it all comes down to one question: If this is true, don’t you think you need to know about it? It was really cool, and the Strouds are just dear to my heart because they went through the MTC while my group was there. They don’t usually have the couples meet up with missionaries going to the same mission in the MTC, but we spotted their Mongolian nametags in the cafeteria one day and invited them to chat in our classroom for a while. If President and Sister Andersen are the father and mother of the mission, couple missionaries are the grandparents, and what is this world without grandparents?

Speaking of President Andersen, he himself is coming up to Selenge tomorrow for interviews. I got a look at the itinerary he faxed up and was a little disappointed to find out that it’s only about a 3-hour drive here from UB. It doesn’t seem as isolated when you think of it that way. Oh well.

We are working on the ALA (Assigned Less-Actives) program here in the Mongolia UB mission. Sister Bayarmaa and I received 5 families from the branch president to befriend, meet with, and try to invite back to church. We had a branch missionary go with us the first time, and when he saw the list of names we had he was like, “Puukh! You got all the scary, hard people!” I guess now that there are sisters in Selenge, they wanted to try sending us to the really hardened less-active people to use our sisterly charm. We went to one of the houses and knocked on the door. The father came out, took one look at our nametags and yelled, “Get outta here! We stopped going to church 6 years ago and we don’t need it now” and then stormed back inside.

We were a bit taken aback, but then the Spirit whispered to me, “cookies” and I knew all would be right. Then I was faced with the harsh reality that there is no baking powder, brown sugar, vanilla extract, OR flour in Selenge. Okay, I’m kidding about the flour. We have a flour factory in Selenge. There’s as much flour here as there is dust on the ground. Half the people here make bread for a living. Anyway, the point is we can’t make cookies until after we’ve gone down to UB for Christmas and stocked up on baking supplies, so Sister Bayarmaa and I did the next best thing: we prayed, and then we went back. We armed ourselves with two branch missionaries this time and lo and behold we were allowed in! I even showed scary yell-y guy my album! We just chatted for a while and they invited us back. Yeah for ALA!

Merry Christmas to all of you! I hope you are enjoying the season!

P.S. With the couples’ arrivals from UB, there also came in a bagful of mail! I got the camera and glasses, a package postmarked from BYU from “The Johnson Family,” and a package from Chihiro. I also got letters from Brad Colton, Sterling and Ellie Colton, Bonnie, and Allison Palmer. Please send my thanks and regards to each. We are going back down to UB by train on the night of the 23rd so I will get more mail then.