Asian General Conference weekend

English speakers taking in General Conference

General Conference weekend. We were able to take in all the sessions of General Conference in English while the members here are able to watch the Conference after it has been translated into Mongolian. All the Asian countries have conference one week later so they can hear it in their native languages.

On Sunday we had a potluck dinner between Conference sessions with the other Senior couples. Darlene prepared a beef curry main dish. It was like a Thanksgiving dinner. Was the food ever good!

A beautiful table setting in President and Sister Clark's apartment.

The Clarks and the Senior couples between conference sessions

 Conference was wonderful. We appreciated all of the talks, especially Elder Scott’s talk on Family History. We had a couple of missionaries over for leftovers later in the evening, Elder Woodward from Provo and Elder Flint from Payson, UT. They are so full of enthusiasm for the gospel and they loved the beef curry and dessert.

Joseph and Mary fleeing to Egypt with Jesus

Teaching English. Our English class is going well. We have a much better focus in term of lesson plans and goals. We are aiming to improve their job-related English skills will a focused vocabulary with plenty of practice listening and speaking words and phrases they will actually need and use. We are giving the tools they need to speak in the present, past and future tenses. I say we loosely because it is mostly Darlene that is teaching and I am involved in a supportive role. 

We have a new schedule – Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 5 -7 pm. No more Saturday classes!

A church choir begins reheasing for a Christmas program - they love music in Mongolia  

Marriage enrichment workshops. This coming Wednesday I will be teaching a 2 ½ hour class on marriage and family therapy at the University of Mongolia. There will be a lot of prep time as I get ready for this. The teacher, Alimaa, will be in the hospital for a week and she asked me to teach her class for her.

I have been asked by the Mission President to prepare a course on marriage enrichment for members here in Mongolia. This will be a major commitment of my time. I will share the details of what comes next in my next blog.   

Weather. The weather has finally turned cold. It is still mostly bright and sunny but the temperatures have dropped into the 30s and 40s. That in and of itself isn’t so bad but we got a taste of stiff, cold winds that drop the wind chill dramatically and make being outside unpleasant. This is just the beginning.

There is still no winter pollution yet from coal or wood burning fires from the Ger Districts. (These are felt homes fairly well insulated but heated by an indoor stove/fireplace with a chimney to carry the smoke out of the dwelling.

Chapel, Church offices and Mission Home in Ulaanbaatar.
Sister Farmer is standing by the entrance. This week we will get a new office on the fourth floor.

Living in a Ger. I would say about 1/3 of the city of 1,200,000 live in these homes – on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar. The vast majority of the others live in apartment houses. Living in an apartment is a major step up in lifestyle for Mongolians. There are very few private homes or at least we haven’t seen them.

There a lot of nostalgia and romance in the culture for the nomad and nomadic way of life. But the reality of living in a Ger is hard, especially for young and aspiring middle class families. No privacy – a one room dwelling – or sometimes two rooms if you count an outside kitchen.

A gray building on a gray day in October

The worst of it is no indoor plumbing. The bathroom facilities are outside and are difficult, to say the least, in the winter. The families who live in the countryside who make their living by herding animals are used to this and accept it – but it doesn’t make it easy.

Traffic. The traffic moves better since they restricted the cars that can drive in the City by the license plate numbers. But it is still a nightmare. Just less of a nightmare. When we walk to our English class (about a half hour walk), we would often beat the cars and buses driving along side of us to our destination.

Sunday afternoon traffic in front of the Chinggis Khan Hotel

It seems like there is a huge number of new apartment buildings being built but no visible consideration for parking or the additional vehicles that will be coming into the City.

Apartment buidling and school being built not far from our apartment building. They work on these building day and night. We especially notice the night part. Do you see any new parking?

The standard of living here is rising so more and more families have cars. What is lacking is planning for the traffic volume and additional parking that will be needed.

This is like L.A., Phoenix or Honolulu-type congestion without freeways to offer any relief. I have a great appreciation for the patience and skill of the drivers here as they negotiate in tight spaces and seem to avoid accidents by inches.

Children playing by the Selbe River

Driving here is not for the faint of heart. I am trying to avoid getting a driver’s license and driving if I can possibly do it.

Darlene's great, great grandfather who as a Mission President in Denmark brought many new converts to America

Family History. We are looking forward to the Harringtons’ visit to Mongolia (Family History Missionaries assigned to Hong Kong and a liaison for us with the Area Presidency) at the end of this week. We will travel to Darkhan and Erdenet with them and do more training with the Family History Consultants and Priesthood leaders. We will have one day where we show them the sights of UB.

Recent emigrants to Mongolia

We also have submitted an application for a Family History Center in the Choibalsan Branch and will be training there once the Center is approved and a computer and printer are purchased and shipped.

Choibalsan was named after an iron-fisted Mongolian Dictator in the 1930s who lead a Stalinist purge on intellectuals, Buddhist monasteries and descendants of Chinggis Khan. Over 30,000 people were murdered. Choibalsan protected the independence of Mongolia from China and cushioned Mongolia somewhat from Russia. The city in the far eastern part of Mongolia still bears his name. There is no great affection for the Russians but there is obvious disdain and animosity toward China. Notice the hammer and sickle emblem on the monument. The politics of Mongolia center around the Communist party and the Democrats. The Democracy party won the last big election in Mongolia on July 1st.  

Our meeting with Ulziibaatar, Director of the National Archives, has been postponed until early November. We are hopeful but patient as we anticipate being able to negotiate a successful records digitizing project here in Mongolia.

Hopefully Mongolian family records will soon be accessible online and at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City



A non-alcoholic toast to those who have gone before and gave us our heritage

A semi-routine week

Rug emporium at the Zaak

This week settled into a bit of a routine, if anything in Mongolia is ever routine.

Dressers for the Gers - Felt Mobile Homes

English teaching. We made a major planning effort with our English class to meet the needs of our Customer Care Students. We took our translator to our class and interviewed them about their main dealing and topics with English speaking customers. The class has settled into a group of 14 students with about 13 attending every class. Their main difficulty is in speaking and listening to English. They have pretty fair book knowledge of vocabulary and grammar.

Brass Buddhist items on sale at the Zaak

Our other English class is being consolidated into an earlier class being taught by Elder and Sister Woods. Our students were basically the same students staying on for a second class of English the same evening. We were spending too many evenings out teaching English and this will help us with our schedule.

Post, pans and kitchen goods

Shopping at the Zaak. We went to Zaak to finish buying the lining for my next suit and in the meantime, we picked a lot of other things. Darlene wants to get material for a suit for herself but she wants to pick out a pattern first. We are including more pictures from the Zaak including rugs made in Erdenet. We finished off the day by eating out at a Korean restaurant. Good, but not my favorite.

Colorful buckets, containers and brooms

Family History and Acquisitions.  We will be hosting the Asian Area Family History Advisors on a visit to Mongolia. They are Elder and Sister Thomas and Garnalee Harrington. They are based in Hong Kong. They are coming to Mongolia on Oct. 18 and will be returning to Hong Kong on Oct. 22. We will accompany them to training in Darkhan and Erdenet as well as to a training meeting for all the Family History Consultants in Ulaanbaatar.

Fur coats not on the rack

We learned much to our satisfaction that a budget for a records acquisition project in Mongolia is looking good. No negotiations have taken place yet but we think there are positive feelings on both sides.  We can’t believe how all of this is working out. We stuck our nose in this project and everything is falling into place. We’ll keep you posted on all the developments as they occur.

 The Jaredites leaving Babel 
Albin Veselka - 1979

General Conference. I was able to see one session of Conference (midnight to 2:00 am) streamed live on my computer. The way the church does this here in Asia is they have an Asian Area Conference one week after General Conference. 

All the talks are translated into Mongolian and broadcast one week later to all the members here. There are English sessions for all the Ex-patriots living in Mongolia, the Senior couples and others who want to watch Conference in English. We have a potluck meal in between sessions.

The Senior couples have a once a month Family Home Evening on the first Sunday of the month. Next month, we host the meeting. We enjoy this spiritual get together with our fellow missionaries here in Ulaanbaatar.

Program for Married Members. I was asked by President Clark to submit ideas on a monthly fireside program on helping Mongolia members with their marriages. 

Possible joint presenters at church firesides on how to have strong marriages

I submitted my ideas (12 topics patterned after the Know Your Religion series) and got positive feedback from several people. There will be a planning committee formed in a similar way to the Young Single Adult Conference.

The National University of Mongolia

Alima has asked me to teach her class on Marriage and Family Therapy at the University of Mongolia on Oct. 17. She will provide translators for me. She will be in Korea for a week. I will have to work hard and reengage my brain on all my therapy ideas and techniques. 

Sister Farmer with Harolthsuren and her husband

We ended the week with a visit to Harolthsuren and her husband. They hosted us and the Sister Missionaries for dinner. Our daughter Tawny helped bring her into the church on her mission 12 years ago. We now want to help her husband that that step. 

Two generations of missionaries are working on this family. He is Chinese and we felt he needs to hear the Gospel taught in his own language. The Sisters will bring a Chinese speaker to their next few visits.

Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon
Yu Wen Chich - 1976

Our trip to Darkhan

A monument to miners outside of Darkhan
Darkhan is Mongolia's 3rd largest city of about 80,000 located 225 km straight north of UB. It is on the 49th parallel, the same latitude as the US/Canadian border.  Actually there are two cities sitting side by side, Old Darkhan and New Darkhan. The city was built by the Russians in 1961 to exploit the mines and has mostly Soviet style architecture.

Mongolian language. This week started off with Darlene and I speaking in two local Ulaanbaatar church meetings on Sunday. Darlene prepared part of her talk in Mongolian and rehearsed it ahead of time. The reception was positive and she decided to do her whole talk in Mongolian the following week in Darkhan. She had it translated and then rehearsed it some more, getting critiques and encouragement from a translator we hired to help us.


Rosa provided last minute advice at New Darkhan branch

When the priesthood leaders in Darkhan heard that she would be speaking in Mongolian, they laughed. They said that no senior couple had ever done that.  That made her even more determined to do it and a lot of her week was spent practicing some pretty complicated vocabulary and pronunciation.

 Marta-Old Darkhan branch translator

Actually it may be a good way to learn Mongolian as she increased her vocabulary, became familiar with the various Mongolian suffixes and practiced pronunciation.  Then she had to use what she had learned.

The colorful roof tops of Mongolia

Do you wonder where the colorful roofs come from? - We don't anymore.

When she gave her talk the audiences were attentive, smiling and quiet. Later some members said they understood better than 80% of her talk. The thought that she had a gift.  Darlene assured them it was only hard work with a good translator.  

Choice of colors - if you like bright and bold

The translators in Darkhan were also complimentary. It can only get better. She had the English just above the Mongolian dialogue in smaller print and the Mongolian words in dark letters. She learned what she was saying as she was saying it so the flow of the words coming out of her mouth was fairly natural.

Construction in UB on the way to Bus Station

Trip to Darkhan. Our trip to Darkhan had an auspicious beginning. After our Saturday morning English class, we made arrangements for our driver Baatar to take us to the main bus station of west side of Ulaanbaatar. The traffic was horrendous (as usual) and we were close enough to the bus station to walk the rest of the way.

Colorful playground in UB

As we were walking with our luggage and training materials, we discovered that the main bus station had moved and we were not even close.


If your looking for water storage, have we got a deal for you - if you like blue.

Batbold (who had joined Baatar that day for some reason) found someone who would be willing to drive us to Darkhan for not quite double (still reasonable) what the bus ticket would be.

We piled into a private vehicle which became our taxi and made it to Darkhan in 3 hours – much sooner than had we taken the bus. In Mongolia, you never know when plans will change.

Winter is coming - but in the meantime....

The concept maybe....

When we arrived we had enough time to go out to eat at a Mongolian grill – US style except for the length of time in service. Check out the sign. We liked this restaurant.

Now we are cooking!!!

Our training meeting? We had arranged for “hands on” computer training in Family History with the Family History Consultants and Priesthood leaders only and it was announced as such. Despite that announcement, about 25 members showed up. That was OK because there weren’t enough computers and the new computer wasn’t quite operational.

Improvisation time in Darkhan

Darlene and I gave talks and discussion that lasted at least an hour and we spent the next 2 hours answering questions from the group. Finally the meeting ended and still the questions continued. The interest was intense. In Mongolia, you never know….

Chapel in "old" Darkhan

Sunday in Darkhan. After church the next day we attended church meetings in New Darkhan and Old Darkhan and then prepared to hold a second training session at 3:00 pm. Suddenly we lost electricity at about 2:15 pm and faced the dilemma of not having the Internet for our training. We cancelled our meeting and rescheduled it for 6:00 pm with hopes we would have the electricity back on.

Chapel in "new" Darkhan

As luck would have it, about 2:45 pm the electricity came back on and we phoned everyone to come to our meeting. This time we did have all the key players there and we had a 2 ½ hour training session for about 10 members. Everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves though some of the sign in procedures into new.FamilySearch had glitches.

Finally some hands on training

We got 5 new members signed in besides our regular consultants. We were impressed with the quality of the members called to be Consultants. The overall Director for the Family History Centers in the Darkhan District speaks enough English, is computer savvy and showed real leadership.

Onjie lived two years in Rapid City, SD

Coincidentally she had spent two years in Rapid City, South Dakota and knew a lot of the same people we knew. We had a wonderful meal waiting for us at the Briggs (a senior couple assigned to Darkhan) that evening.

The Briggs from Springville UT were great hosts in Darkhan

A coincidence. The next morning we caught a meeker (a minibus with 10 passengers – sometimes more) to Ulaanbaatar. A Mongolian Army top sergeant took an interest in us. He was self-taught in English while serving as an observer in Sierra Leon. He had also spent a year in Afghanistan.

Tyler with Mongolian commander on left

We showed him a picture of our son Tyler with the Mongolian troops in Kabul. He was amazed. He couldn’t believe it. He recognized several soldiers in the photo, especially his commander. We learned Mongolian and he learned English in our 3 hour trip back to the capital. He was going to UB to serve as a boxing judge and also going for throat singing lessons at the National Song and Dance Cultural Center. He took our phone number and wants to follow up with us while he is UB.

Listening and helping during a English conversation time

English, English and more English. Our Wednesday night English class grew from 27 to about 35 students. It was a high energy and fun class to teach.

English class at the church on Wednesday nights

Our other English classes at TelecoMongolia have settled into a routine of the same 13 students coming every time.

Our class at TelecoMongolia

Before that we kept on adding new students and watched other students drop out. As a result we had a couple of classes that were rough around the edges. This is also a fun class but it takes a lot of planning and preparation.

Cow greeting us after our training session in Darkhan  



A great country, great people, a great Mission!