March 21, 2008 - Loving It in the Selenge Branch

I’m writing from Darkhan today. We came early this morning and are spending our preparation day here. The six Selenge missionaries as well as four branch missionaries all just stormed the Darkhan zakh together, gathering up shoes, shirts, hair gel, tights, and all other sorts of things that they don’t have in Selenge where the selection is limited. Sister Oyunbat and I have our interviews with President Andersen tonight, and then we have zone conference tomorrow.

I thought I was going to have another zone conference after this but we just did the math and it looks like this is going to be my last one. That means they’re going to have me bear my last zone conference testimony, which really is just an excuse to get the missionaries who are almost finished to start crying about everything way before it’s time. I still have another month, but now it’s going to be “last” everything: last zone conference, last fast Sunday, last half-transfer. Ёooe! Yamar khetsuu yuum be!

In branch news, we started a branch choir! And, since Elder Humphries has to translate for Elder Thueson in branch meetings right at the only time we can hold choir practice, so I became the choir director! For those of you who know my level of musical expertise, this should be a riot, and for those of you who don’t, I can help you understand why this is so funny: I don’t know a lot about music! I can lead music (if it’s 3-4 or 4-4 time, 2-2 just throws me for a loop), I can sing parts (alto and soprano-good luck to the boys), but I don’t know how to teach ‘em. I can play the top hand of the hymns (one finger at a time), and I have lots of cool musical vocabulary words floating around in my brain, but I don’t know what they are in Mongolian. Roll all of that together and I’m still above and beyond any of the branch members in terms of musical knowledge, so that is just how it goes here. I’m not super worried though. I have seen Sister Act I and II, which I think will prepare me better than any musical knowledge I may have. I think we’re going to make wonderful music together.

Hallelujah! It’s spring break time in Selenge. The khuukhduud are taking two weeks off, which means no teaching high school students! We’ll start back up just in time for me to be almost done with teaching English here in Mongolia, but not forever… I’ve made lots of good friends here with students and teachers alike. I’m planning on staying in contact with some of the teachers after I go home and see what I can do about sending supplies and cool hands-on stuff for English class. Dang it if I haven’t gotten all caught up in the Mongos Learn English cause.

We had our Relief Society anniversary celebration yesterday. We would have had it earlier but there were so many programs and activities already planned at the church that they had to push it off a few days. Last Sunday the RS president came up to me and was like, “Hey, why don’t you write and put on a play of some church history event for the activity? Yeah, you should do that. Thanks.” Oh, Sister Undra. I let you get away with a lot because I like you. Anyway, long story short, 5 minutes after (NOT before) the activity started I was able to get some sisters to do a quick run-through of the skit that Batzaya and I pretty much wrote by ourselves with a little bit of help from the Mongolian translation of Our Heritage that we found in the branch library. We had a prop so maybe that made up for the lack of voice projection or any idea of what was happening on the part of the actresses. I love my Selenge Branch.

Then, they had Sister Thueson giving a talk about Emma Smith and her life history. There is a sister in our branch who served a mission in Las Vegas, and she usually translates for Elder and Sister Thueson, but it has been a while since she served and she’s not very confident in her translation skills. Before the activity started she asked me for some help translating some difficult phrases in preparation for the talk, but when they called Sister Thueson up, Khongorzul shot her glance at me and was like, “YOU do it!” Ah! Up to the stand I go.

Sister Thueson starts off, “Emma Hale was born in the lush green environs of Some City in such and such a year to two fine parents. While she was considered skinny as a youth she soon grew into a stately young woman with luxurious dark hair and captivating brown eyes.”

So we’re gonna play it that way, eh Sister Thueson? I glanced down the page of her notes and saw the words “cleave,” “dignified,” “noble frame” and the like and thought, “This is going to be cute.” I fought back the urge to laugh as I found a roomful of Mongolians waiting for me to interpret. Elder Humphries, the only other person in the room who understood both English, Mongolian, and the utter ridiculousness and difficulty of the task ahead, gave me a quick boost of support by doubling over in silent laughter and mouthing me a “good luck!”

I think that first sentence came out as something like, “Emma Hale was born to parents. She was skinny but then she grew up and got all pretty” in Mongolian. Luckily Sister Thueson didn’t know how much I was chopping up and tossing out all the flowery language she had probably spent a long time putting into her well prepared talk, and the branch members got all the facts without realizing all that was being lost in translation. Everyone was satisfied in the end. Oh, and as she finished up, Sister Thueson failed to give me time to translate the last few sentences and leave her “in the name of Jesus Christ, amen” off until the very end and so I said “amen” out of habit into the microphone before anyone else knew that her talk was finished. I love translating.

Then when we came home from work that night our lock was stuck, and our landlord and the elders combined couldn't muscle our front door open. We spent the night at the couples’ place and wore the same clothes the next day. They got it fixed later that day so now all is well.