Our new routine to be followed by a break.



Guests at Sukhbaatar Branch Family Home evening



Apartment warming/Family Home Evening. We were busy going from event to event. Monday night was a Family Home Evening for a member of the Sukhbaatar Branch, Sudjimaa and her son Gansukh.


Sudjimaa cutting the cake


Gansukh



 It was like a combination of a housewarming party and a formal Branch Family Home Evening program followed by full-fledged meal provided to boot.

An elaborate spread

The Khoshuur came later

The kitchen crew was hard at it

It was fun to get together and be included. Our marginal Mongolian is supplemented by a bit of Russian and good interpreters to help us.

Primary President congratulating a young boy who will be baptized later in the week

 The night of his baptism

 

Our overall impression was one where members gave great love and support for each other. Gansukh and his mother had finally saved up enough money to buy an apartment of their own. In Mongolia, this is a big deal.

Batjargal being served a dish of lamb and liver delicacies

They invited many branch members to come and be with them even though the furnishings were sparse.

Our new English class starts. We tested well over 30 employees and 23 qualified to attend the class. We then held our first two classes with the second one being one my birthday.  We were pleased with the lesson plans we developed featuring listening and conversation.

Most of the students (employees of TelecomMongolia) have a good background, having studied English in high school or at college. Their knowledge of grammar and written English is much better than their ability to communicate in the language.  

We have no pictures yet of our new class as we are still adding students with each class. We told them no classes next week as we will be in Hong Kong. We resume on Sept. 24.

Birthday celebration. After class on Sept. 12 we went to a restaurant called the Monet on the 17^th floor of the Central Tower building. We had the best meat dish dinner so far in Mongolia.

The Monet - filled with western visitors including us

Darlene, who  generally is disappointed in restaurants where her own cooking surpasses that of the meals served, enjoyed the food and the atmosphere.   

A surprise desert

We had the best view of downtown Ulaanbaatar next to Sukhbaatar Square. The pictures of the view didn’t turn out. Maybe another time.
 
Monthly UB Family History training. We ended the week with our monthly Family History training of consultants. We are starting to see great progress in our consultants learning the technical aspects of Family Tree.

Demonstrating Family Tree

It shows with greatly improved statistics of members registering and using the program.
 
Next week in Hong Kong. Afterward, we went to a preparation meeting of the 12 members (including us) who are flying to Hong Kong on Monday to spend a week at the temple. Two more members chose to go by train to Hong Kong and we will be meeting them at the temple. We will share a lot of wonderful experiences together this week.

Our temple group - Puje is next to Darlene

We will be staying to Patron Housing at the temple. We went over the schedule and talked about the details of our trip and travel issues for our group.  I gave a talk on “How to get the most from your temple experience. “  

Next week’s blog will be much more dramatic – it is one of the treats of our mission as Senior couples have the opportunity to accompany Mongolian saints on their first time temple visits. This assignment rotates through the Senior couples so most of us have the opportunity to do this once on our mission. We pay our own expenses but nobody complains. 

The next two trips are scheduled for November and January – a more opportune time to get a break from the long, cold Mongolian winter. This time will be extra special as our good friend Puje is going along as our interpreter. 

Six out of the 14 are from the Sukhbaatar Branch and we know one more sister well as we worked her just last weekend while we were in Choibalsan.  

District conference. An Area Seventy, Elder Toronto, is visiting from Beijing this weekend and presiding over our East District conference.

Elders England and Odd - two super tall missionaries getting together as District Conference

Darlene was worn out and had a headache so she didn’t attend the adult session on Saturday evening. 

Elder Toronto and Pres. Benson visiting with two of our temple group - Buyandelger and Enkhtuya

Sunday’s session will be held at the Chingeltei building. We’ll see how all the members will fit into that building.  Then it is packing up and off to Hong Kong Monday morning.

Three snappy dressers at District conference - all three are from our Sukhbaatar Branch. On the left, Munkh-Od, Pres. Davharbayer, and Tuvshinbayer