January 18, 2008 - Mother Tree and Snice

I’ve just had the coldest week ever on my mission. It was crazy, but okay. What else happened? Oh yeah, our investigator went in for her baptismal interview, but it turns out she had drunk tea the night before. TEA! The bane of a Mongolian missionary’s existence! It’s okay though. We pushed her baptism back a week and she’s doing pretty good now. There’s lots of pressure from family and friends but I think she can do it.

Our other investigators, unfortunately, seem to have gone a little bit insane this past week. We had investigators lying to us, having their kids lie to us, and one investigator got to the point of running in the other direction to catch a meeker and peal out o’ town just to avoid us. I don’t know what the deal is! I STILL wear the deodorant, even though it’s -40 degrees outside. It’s more of a formality and homage to my former, more civilized life—there’s no actual sweating going on around here!

Actually, we do know what the deal is with little miss hop-on-a-meeker-and-zutga. We found out in one of our previous visits that the reason why she was so reluctant to set a baptismal date is because she doesn’t know if she can give up praying to the Mother Tree. Ah, the Mother Tree. She’s a big tree. A really big tree. And in a country where trees are usually small and wrinkly, I can see why those who belong to the native Mongolian religion of nature-worship would want to worship her. We had a big, long talk with this investigator about the Mother Tree.

The main problem is that she has always prayed to the Mother Tree, and all of her prayers have been answered. Yakh uu? By the end of the lesson she seemed to understand that there really is only one God and that it really was Him who answered her prayers, so what was with the running? We found out later from her friend that since our last visit, she had gone back to the Mother Tree for another visit and was afraid of seeing us again and us finding out. It’s a bizarre feeling to have someone run away from you in fear, but with a face like mine it’s something I’ve just gotten used to. Mostly I just think it’s funny. Now if we can just get her to meet with us again and convince her that we’re not angry…

We spent another 3 hours outside cleaning up the “snice” at the church this past week. Three weeks ago we cleaned up the road outside the church, which took even longer. What is snice, you say? It’s the snow that falls and never melts and just gets packed tighter and tighter as cars, people, and horses trample over it until it becomes rock hard ice. It requires lots of stabbing at with shovels and other metal things to loosen it up first and then a second round of sweeping and scooping to pick up the pieces. It was good to do service though, and the church looks great now.

That’s all fo’ now! Tsagaan Sar [Mongolian New Year] is coming! Ah!

Family Home Evening in a ger

Sunset in Selenge