Home Sweet Home!

I thought you might enjoy seeing where and how we live. Our apartment is small, but for here is considered very nice. The kitchen is approximately 7'x10', just right for 2 of us. The stove is very small, we can fit a small cookie sheet in the oven. When I cook for the Elders and Sisters, we have them go single file to the stove, dish up their food and go back into the Living Room to eat. I have cooked soup, and also lots of rice, they seem to enjoy it.

This is our washing machine. Notice the silver hose into the washing machine - we fill it with the bathroom sink water. The hose is also our shower head in the bathtub. The tub is about 2 1/2' high, the actual tub is probably sits 1' higher than the floor. Also, notice the drain for the washer - yep it drains into the bathtub! I haven't actually brought myself to take a bath yet, the shower works well! Also the water is a pale yellow in color, which doesn't lend itself to a bath! Also, the washer doesn't agitate, it twirls, goes one way, stops, then twirls the other way! As you can imagine our clothes are one big knot when finished!

These are how eggs are sold, you buy them individually. We carry them very carefully from the store! They do have flats of 2 1/2 dozen, but I don't know if that would be any safer to carry an open flat of eggs!

When we first got to Choibalsan, there was a funeral, the food was very interesting! They take a lot of pride in how it looks, which is really very pretty. At the bottom is a plate of meat, like salami, with pickle relish in the center. The bigger plate up on the left is rice and raisins, it actually tasted pretty good. The smaller plate on the right, is potato salad, a lot like our salads. The smaller plate above, on the right, is dill pickles and relish. The bigger plate on the left, above the rice is fruit, grapes and mandarin oranges. The long rectangles are bread, they decorate the bread with different kinds of candy.

They use this same kind of bread with their holidays, they have meaning and notice some are stacked higher than others, I will have to find out more about them. In February they have their New Year's, Tsagaan Sar Holiday, I'm sure I will find out a lot at that time.

Another interesting custom is that they each have a fork, and they all eat off the main plates.

We are learning and still getting use to things.

We are keeping busy though,

with the Elders and Sisters bringing their contacts to our home to teach,

with teaching English Lessons,

and with the activities at the Church.
We love you All!

Our First Baptism!

This is Ounbelick, she is 15 years old. The Elders brought her to our home a couple of times to teach her. She is a cute girl, and bears such a sweet and humble testimony! These are 5 of our 8 missionaries. Elder Willoughby is baptizing her and Elder Naisbitt is the District Leader and the one who helps us alot. They have a baptism almost every week. They just schedule it in - every Saturday at 6:00pm at Church.

The young people love their picture taken! They always ask me to take pictures, which translates - will you give me a copy, too! So I need to find a place to get copies for everyone! None of them, that I know of have a camara and they love pictures. Each one, even the boys have a photo album of their family and friends. I think most of their pictures are given to them by missionaries. The Young Women President is in Ulaanbaatar so the program is being run by her counselors, until she returns, no one know when. Her counselors are in the picture, they are 16 years old. They take charge and everything.

The Young Men do have a President, center in front. He is preparing to go on a mission, which means he is 18 or 19 years old. Some of the Young Women and Young Men are Branch Missionaries, they teach and get referrals for the full time Missionaries, they sometimes teach the investigators class on Sundays. The young people are amazing and very active in the programs of the Church!

Thanks for blogging and putting in information!

It helps to read and see pictures of you!

We Love and Miss all of You!

Oh, and by the way - The Church is true and God loves each of Us!

Why We Love Aunt Trisha!

This Christmas and New Years were awesome.  The Andersons had so much fun.  The boys loved being out of school for two weeks and I even had a couple of days off from work.  Everything was almost perfect.  This will definately go down as one of our favourite Christmas/ New Years thus far.  It is now kind of sad to get back to real life.  One of the best parts of the holidays was having Aunt Trisha come and visit us.  She is a lot of fun to have around.  (And she even does the dishes!)  Trisha traveled up to Boise from Springville to spend New Years with us.  The boys were so excited for her to come.  On the day she was supposed to arrive Jonah wanted me to call her every ten minutes to find out where she was and when she would be here.  The boys sat upstairs by the window hoping to see her vehicle turn into our neighbourhood.  Once Jonah ran downstairs and excitedly yelled "Trisha's here".  She really wasn't but he said he needed to "practice" for when she really did arrive.  Aunt Trisha definately has a couple of admirers in our family.  Even little Bronwyn Sue talked to Trisha and let Trisha hold her.  That is a major event.  The visit probably wasn't very relaxing for Trisha as her attention and time were in high demand.  Trisha played legos with the boys.  She taught then lots of card and board games.  The boys love Mille Bourne.  She went bowling with us on New Years Eve.  We even went snowshoeing and sledding with her in the beautiful mountains surrounding Boise.  When we went snowshoeing we saw a lot of bald eagles and a couple of golden eagles.   The sledding hill was probably the best I have been on.  As you can see we caught a lot of air.  Ethan and Jonah think that Trisha is good luck, and I have to agree.  Thanks for visiting Trisha and we hope you come back soon. 

Happy New Year to All Our Loved Ones!!

I just had to put in this picture.

Sister Andersen, Mission President's wife, had this nativity sitting on her coffee table.

A mother of one of the missionaries made it for her.

It is beautiful, the ger on a wagon, I have seen at a muesum.

I did get me a Nativity, it was hand-carved by a man, here in Mongolia.

It even has 2-humped camels!

I just want to put in one comment Pres. Anderson gave at our Mission Conference.

He said that 1% of the Church membership in Mongolia are currently serving as full-time missionaries.

If 1% of the whole church membership was serving as missionaries right now, we would have 4-times the missionaries out!

The people in Mongolia are truly ready for the Gospel! We are blessed to be here!

These are a few of the kids at the Church.

Seminary is over, today is a holiday, they celebrate New Year's Eve more than New Year's Day.

They have a ping-pong table and the kids are always together and playing, several of them have their own paddles.

I think they find alot of friendship and have alot of fun being together.

Some of them walk quite a ways to come to Seminary, at 6:30 in the morning, and in the dark.

Because there was no school they had a Seminary Party.

They served mutton, rice, potato salad and cabbage salad, the salads are pretty good.

The mutton, we're still getting use to, but we are trying!

I brought a cake, they love their sweets.

When you go into a store, 1/3 is alcohol. 1/3 is bread and food. 1/3 is candy!

I'm not kidding there are shelves and shelves of sweets,

and their candy is good, from Russia and Germany.

There are several small, "mom and pop" stores all over, each neighborhood has some, but we have to walk about 15 minutes to get some American food, which is very little.

You can see the apartment building in the background, our is just to Dad's right, they all look the same. And the playground is out our kitchen window.

We are on the 3rd floor, we walk everywhere, about 10 minutes to the Church.

The weather we have described before, this picture says it all!

It was taken on our way home from Seminary this morning.

With the wind and our breath, we look like frosty-people!

Know that we love all of you!

We think of you often and are so grateful for you, we miss you, but we feel of your love and support!

One of the questions the Mission President ask us when he ask us to come to Choibalsan - "Would your family support you?"

We were so grateful to answer,"Yes!"

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND LOVE TO ONE AND ALL!

Baby Talk

Choibalsan, Mongolia

Choibalsan City Sign - "Hot" means City

We got home from Ulaanbaatar, this evening and I wanted to put some of these pictures into the blog, so I left Dad to unpack and do a load of laundry!

Our Mission Conference was really good.

We learned that Choibalsan is the Branch furtherest away from Mission Headquarters.

The Mission Pres. again said how thankful he was for all his "Countryside" couples, there are 5 of us, we are the Grandma's and Grandpa's to these members.

This picture was taken out of our apartment window.
Choibalsan has several ice skating rinks, they love to ice skate.
It was interesting to watch them build this rink, they carried buckets of water and just threw it out where they felt it was needed.
It is very uneaven, but they still skate and play hocky on it, and there is Mongolian music playing, which is nice, since we have no CD player to play anything.


This was parked out side of our apartment.
The best place to shop, and their idea of a mall is called a "Zaah" they have everything from meat to vegatables to used plumbing supplies. There are lots of small booths and vendors, and if you buy too much or something too big, you can hire a horse and cart to take you home!


They have playgrounds all over the city, each apartment complex has a playground.
You can see the kids playing all the time, even in winter.
This Ger and people are especially well taken care of.
It is located at a kindergarten, about 4 blocks from our apartment.
Isn't it so cute?

Merry Christmas from Mongolia!

We had a Missionary Conference in Ulaanbaatar at the Mission Office.

Some of the Elders dressed in Traditional Mongolian Deel's.

They suggested every one dress up, we will next year.

It has been fun to be in the city, to see friends from the MTC and meet some of the couples from the other parts of the country. We will leave to fly back to Choibalsan Monday afternoon.

This is some of the sisters with their traditional Mongolian clothing.

They are a beautiful people and so quiet and friendly.

They also love having their pictures taken.

President Andersen made an interesting comment about the Mongolian missionary work.

1% of the Mongolian church membership are missionaries.

If 1% of the whole church membership were missionaries, we would have about 200,000 missionaries, 4 times what we have now!

Isn't that amazing!

They are becoming a "beacon of the Church..." just as Elder Neal A. Maxwell promised them in the prayer to open Mongolia to missionary work.

Traditional Mongolian Hats

How do we look?

At the Talent Show, these Sisters did a traditional Mongolian Folk Dance.
The tribe is from the north, they are called Reindeer People.
We saw some pictures, of the reindeer, they look just like Santa Clause's,
I think this is where Santa Clause keeps his reindeer during the off season!

We sure do love all of you and miss you!
Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!!