The weather doesn’t stop the work.

We don't foresee any melting till March

It is cold in Mongolia. No surprise there. The weather has been cold!  It has been -20 to -30 F  all week. Fortunately there has been little wind. We layer up and we’ve been OK. The Mongolians keep reminding us the worst is yet to come – around the corner in January. There have been no major snow storms to complicate traffic or mobility.

The weather is a lot like North Dakota – cold sunny days except colder temps for December than we would get in the Dakotas. There is always haze in the air because of smoke from home heating.

The buses and bus stops are crowded because of the number of passengers who depend on the buses to get around in this weather. We do a lot less walking now that the weather has turned cold. Our walks are more calculated. We get around and do most everything as normal but well dressed for the weather.



Special lady in Russian hat admiring the ice sculpture

We bundle up with our Russian hats, scarves that cover our faces and big, muffin-like down coats. We have thermal underwear and camel stockings. Once we are in a building, we are as warm as toast and need to start removing layers.

Lately I added the hat also. There are a surprising number of Christmas trees and decorations in UB but mostly for commercial advertising. The big holiday is New Year's Day and that is when Mongolians give gifts to children.

We walked to the Sunday store to shop and back on Saturday about a half hour each way. Otherwise we get a driver to take us to and from our English class and take a taxi to and from church. We walk three blocks for food shopping and two blocks to work.

I was laid up with a cold and other symptoms for most of week. By Thursday, I was back to my normal schedule.  The Mission Doctor, Elder Stewart, gave me some sulfur insure the recovery.

Man talking on a corded phone outside the Post Office. He sets up shop to sell cigarettes.

Guests for dinner. We had two sets of Sister missionaries over for dinner on Saturday evening. They loved seeing our family pictures. One set of missionaries is from the Chingeltae Branch and the other from our Branch, the Sukhbaatar Branch.

Sisters Largin, Duku, Bolortuya, and Schiffler

We forgot to take pictures. It won’t happen again. This picture of our guests was taken the next day.

Cold weather? No problem. Construction workers in -20 F weather doing their thing.

Mailing. We got 3 packages from the US that brightened our day. One package cost $52 postage and the other $17. We also got a nice Christmas CD from our long time friend and business associate. 

Greeters at church on Sunday

We don’t recommend sending us packages unless we have a great need. We mailed out a few family Christmas cards this week – about $4.00 per card but we put a few extra items in each envelope. We mailed a nativity (4 pounds) to Fargo costing $57 in postage so we probably won't be sending much. Most gifts and mementos bigger than envelope size will have to come back with us in our suitcases.

Road crew chipping ice from the curb outside the Chinggis Khan Hotel

Family History work. We have a great plan for next year. We got it approved with President Clark and we are working with the Stake President and two District Presidents to get it implemented.

Loading snow on to dump trucks

We introduced activities and goals for the next three months so as not to overwhelm them with too much all at once. After that we will introduce new goals and activities at three month intervals.

The first part of the plan is to get all members of Presidencies to sign up for Family Tree and complete a 3 or four generation pedigree chart online within the first three months of 2013. The Family History Consultants will be busy – we hope.

In our office getting ready to go outside

We are also going to have a country-wide fast the first Sunday in February and expect members to gather family genealogical information during Tsaagan Car – a national week off in which families visit each other starting with their oldest relatives first. We will also have a kickoff Family History fireside that Sunday evening.


New piano students before church on Sunday

Christmas Choir concert. There will be a major Christmas concert put on by church members for the city of Ulaanbaatar on December 21^st. It will be held at the Circus, a 3,000 seat arena in the heart of UB. VIP invitations will go out to governmental officials, English sponsors, and special friends of the Church. We are making up our own invitations for our English students and others we come into contact with. 

I mentioned that Mongolians are comfortable with doing things at the last minute and having them turn out well. Not in this case. They started rehearsing a 60-70 member, mostly young adult, choir in October and have been practicing religiously ever since.


Christmas Choir rehearsing in early November before a missionary transfer meeting

A lot of devotion and perfection is going into this event. One of the numbers they will be doing is the Hallelulia Chorus in English. We are excited. All in all, they will do 4 events but the main one will be the public concert.  

Sukhbaatar branch choir reheasal

This love of music extends down to the Ward and Branch level. Our Branch will have its own choir and Christmas program. Darlene plays and rehearses with them every Sunday. In the US, getting choir participation is akin to pulling teeth. Not here.


Our first encounter with reindeer - brought to UB from Hovskul for this meeting.

Baukqui! Not here anymore, but I am

The Mongolia we saw when we first arrived isn't so pretty and dramatic anymore.

As some of you are aware, my personal e-mail account has been hacked. All my Inbox was deleted, my contact list and sent messages. I am not getting incoming emails. I am sorry for any inconvenience the phishing email sent out by the hackers may have caused you. I changed my password on the old att.net account but decided not to use it any further.

The upside of all the technology we use has a downside in the hands of evil and malicious people. I still like the trade-off but at times it can be aggravating.

I was planning to switch to g-mail at some point and that time has now arrived. My new email account is drvfarmer@gmail.com. Please use this in the future. 

I guess I am learning to deal with no incoming e-mails until I contact everyone on my email address book. In one fell swoop my online existence was suddenly blotted out except for this blog.  I still exist in Mongolia and all is well.

The grayish horizon and snow-covered landscape of UlaanbaatarCity

Shopping. We had a big shopping day with our driver. We went hunting for a lot of things we were short of. We now have a well-stocked pantry that should carry us through the next month. We bought a big fish from Lake Hovskul, a beef roast and a pork roast too. Darlene likes to out cook the restaurants in UB and conserve our “toogruds” to boot.

Our sponsor Sharadembrel took us shopping

Our sponsor took us shopping for Mongolian scarves and winter hats. It was a nice gesture and I enjoy the feel of oh so sooooft cashmere around my neck.

English teaching and politics.  We administered English tests to 22 prospective student for our next 3 month block of students. I stayed up late into the night scoring the test. I believe 19 of the 22 will make it into our class. We still have a couple of weeks to go with our current students.

It is fun working with motivated students

We had an interesting development with our English class. The new head of TelecomMongolia and two other main telecommunication companies requested that we personally teach him English. We will visit with him this next week to define our role with him. It is a wonderful opportunity to develop a relationship of trust with someone well positioned in the Mongolian government. We are excited to have this prospective relationship even though it will add to our workload.

He is a dynamic young leader in his late 30s whose main drawback is his lack of fluency in English. He has a reputation as being an anti-corruption leader who wants to insure that Mongolia is governed according to transparency and honesty.    

New calling. We had a meeting with President Clark to go over our Family History goals and plans for next year. He approved them all but suggested we give them to the Priesthood leaders in bite sized chunks over the next few months. He is quite supportive of our work and appreciates our initiative. He has his hands full with all his other duties.

He then surprised us by calling me to the Mission Presidency as a clerk. My main duties are to keep track, locate and follow through on members who have received some sort of disciplinary action and have fallen through the cracks. I will be at a Mission Presidency meeting every Wednesday and will contribute my thoughts and feelings regarding all the things the Mission Presidency has to deal with.

Really "baukqui" - not here anymore

Goodbye to the Shropes. It was the Shropes’ last week in Mongolia. We said our farewells and were the recipients of a lot of spices and other foodstuffs. Their replacements, the Englands won’t be arriving for a couple of months. 

We missed their farewell dinner because of teaching commitments

New restaurant. We went out to eat with the Richardsons at a new Asian restaurant about a little over a half a block from the church. We watched this restaurant being worked on 7 days a week all summer and falls. Our anticipation was 90% of the pleasure.

Now open for business

They feature a Chinese and Korean menu. It is a fancy place and their prices reflect the ambiance. They seemed to mix the Chinese food we ordered with a ton of little Korean side dishes. I guess I was looking for American Chinese where we share main courses and not Korean Chinese that to me seemed distracting. It was good food but not great. 

Car in foreground has a map of Mongolia on its roof

Weather, health, and winter. Most days are cold (single digits and below mostly) and clear. It seems like lately we get a sprinkle or dusting of snow every night that is swept off in the morning. 

The heavy duty pollution doesn’t kick in until late December and January. So far, so good! The big problem is the wind. Even a slight breeze can turn something tolerable into a stinging cold on the face. So far it has been just slight breezes, so not so bad! I got a head cold and was congested midweek – still am.

Senior couples getting translations at zone conference

Before this happened we attended a District meeting on Wednesday and were invited to a 5 hour zone conference on Friday. I chose not to attend because of my health problems. Darlene attended and took in the training that was basically for the young missionaries. Darlene also attended a Senior Couple Family Home Evening Sunday night while I rested and worked on this blog.

President Clark talking through a translator at zone conference

A visiting Church authority comes to Mongolia. The weekend ended with a visit from an Asian Area Seventy, Elder Toronto. He lives in Beijing for 17 years and is an attorney. He helped with the 2008 Olympics and currently works for the NBA. He came in to do some training with the East District Priesthood leadership meeting on Saturday afternoon.

Sunday he did some more priesthood training in three priesthood meetings in the Chingeltei church building. He had an appealing teaching method that was down-to-earth and yet very powerful. He is also in charge of governmental relations in the Asian Area and reports directly to the Asian Area Presidency. 

He and President and Sister Clark came late to the Family Home Evening. He answered questions about the progress and status of the Church in China.

Monhkjargal played a private concert for us

Skyping makes us happy. It was great fun Skyping with most of our children and some of our grandchildren over on Darlene’s birthday and Thanksgiving. What a miracle that is! Sunday and Monday mornings are the best times to Skype. Darlene's Saturday morning has filled up with piano students.

Elder Stranski with his new convert

Birthday and Thanksgiving celebrations in Mongolia

And then began the feast

Thanksgiving in Mongolia. We are happy to be where we are, to serve in the capacity we are called, and to experience all that we experience. Through the marvels of technology, we Skype with our children and grandchildren, email with friends and family, and post and read blogs from places like Mongolia, Hungary, Honduras and the U.S. We are away but not really away.

The food was fantastic. Sister Clark searched Mongolia high and low for a turkey and found one. We felt very much at home as we met and feasted together. After dinner we watched a video documentary called "The Weeping Camel."

You'd weep too if you were being chased by a motorcycle

We had one Canadian couple, the Stewarts from Lethbridge, Alberta, who have had two Thanksgivings this year. 

The Stewarts with Sister Clark

One was on the first Monday of October (Canada’s Day of Thanksgiving) and this one was in Mongolia with us Americans. 

Poor Mongolians picking through the garbage looking for pop cans. We have a lot to be thankful for.

On the 4^th Thursday of November, we taught our English class all about the origins of Thanksgiving and how and why we celebrate.  

However, we celebrated Thanksgiving on Saturday instead of Thursday this year because on Thursday 8 new missionaries from Mongolia checked in to serve missions in the Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar Mission. Six of the new missionaries are Sisters and 2 are Elders. They left the next morning for the Missionary Training Center in the Phillipines. They will be back in three weeks ready to serve. They also attend the temple while they are there.

Welcome to the land of Chinggis Khan

We understand that 6 new missionaries (2 Sisters, 4 Elders) from the United States have been called to serve in Mongolia. We believe (and hope) the politics have been straightened out so they will receive visas. They are scheduled to arrive in March. 

They will be the first young foreign missionaries allowed into the country in over a year. One of those called is Elder Odd from Providence, Utah. Lauren's teacher in Providence is Sister Odd.  Her son is one of the four young Elders that will becoming to Mongolia. Think of all the young men and women called to serve missions in the church and only six received this call. What a privilege and a blessing!

The Blue Sky skyscraper with blue sky and a moon above it as seen from our English classroom

Weather and pollution. The weather is cold but very little snow. Dr. Stewart interviewed a  physician from the UK about her research in Mongolia on respiratory diseases. She said that Ulaanbaatar is the 2^nd most polluted city in the world. Mexico City is #1. The air pollution stems from coal burning fires coming from the Ger Districts surrounding the city.

There are around 600,000 people living in gers in UB. In winter, they rely on wood or coal to heat their homes. The geography of Ulaanbaatar is similar to Salt Lake City in that the city is surrounded by mountains and hills and air pressure keep the polluted air from rising and blowing away.

Family History, Marriage workshops and English. We have planned out some aggressive Family History goals for the coming year while waiting patiently for hearts to soften with regard to a records acquisition project for Mongolia. We will be starting a series of workshops on marriage and family communication in January. 

These students are really into it - as is the teacher

We will be ending our English class in mid-December and starting a new one. We’ve grown attached to our students and will miss them. We will start with a new group in January.  This will be the second time we will be teaching this material. We now have lesson plans in place for this next group. It should take less time to prepare.

Robbed but not really. We had one of our debit cards stolen in the mail. We noticed about 4 different charges for food and restaurant bills of $20 or less showing up in New York State and Jamaica (that might be Jamaica NY). We notified our bank and they will be sending us new cards. We felt fortunate the charges weren’t larger – what a strange world.The bank will absorb the fraudulent transactions.

At home in Mongolia

Dinner out. On Friday night, we had dinner with Byamba and his wife, Enkhbayar and their almost 5 year old daughter Nimjin. It was a traditional Mongolian meal with meat dumplings (Byyz), a delicious cold salad that had beef in it, and a hot milk and salt drink (harem). Byamba told us of his new promotion as Senior Officer in the land development office of Ulaanbaatar City. He is our son Tyler’s friend who came to St. Louis for training.

Nimjin was warming up to us

Their apartment is first class and gave us a glimpse of the accommodations of striving, middle class Mongolians. A car, a nice apartment, two solid jobs, and a delightful little daughter – they are doing well. It was fun playing and interacting with Nimjin. We need surrogate grandchildren while we are here.

Birthday girl - the company was great even if the food wasn't

The dinner out on her birthday didn’t work out as well. We tried Ulaanbaatar’s only Mexican restaurant, ”Los Bandidos.” What a disappointment! We did learn that we don’t need to go there again. Mexican food will have to wait. If Darlene can find the ingredients, she can do much better Mexican food than Los Bandidos, hands down.  Oh well, live and learn.

Any resemblance to Mexican food was strictly coincidental

The Mongolian language.  We are studying hard. Darlene always has but she is starting to make progress. Now that the political season is over, I am devoting more time and energy to Mongolian. I received a compliment for Darlene from someone who hardly knows her. The members here are noticing her constant inquisitiveness and practice of the language.  

Next week the Shropes will be looking back on their Mongolian Mission

This next week we will be integrating a little more into District and Zone conferences and meetings with the young missionaries.

Life in Mongolia is “Nam Taйvan” – very peaceful – which is a wonderful expression of pleasure for the Mongolians. Their faces light up when I answer their question, "How do you like Mongolia?" and I answer, "Nam Taйvan".   

Very Peaceful

Opposition in all things

Banner showing Chinggis Khan family tree for our cancelled cemetery records preservation project.

The banner has a quote from Chinggis Khan,
"Parents, don't forget to teach your children about their roots." 

Family Home Evening. Last Sunday we hosted a Family Home Evening for senior couples and Pres. and Sister Clark in our apartment. The subject was on our missionary calls, the impact of technology on missionary work, overcoming opposition and seeing the hand of the Lord in bringing forth His kingdom on earth.

Each couple related how they felt how their call was inspired and how that related to some of their experiences since coming on their missions. We marveled at the unique talents and gifts each couple brought and how they applied them during their missions. 

Pres. and Sister Clark told about the opposition they faced in the work in Mongolia and how the Lord has blessed their efforts. It is a great testimony about how the Lord watches over His church and is in the details of our lives.

Our living room before company arrives

Our English class is going well but attendance is falling off some as winter has set in. The students our really learning and enjoying the class.

Senior couples Family Home Evening in Ulaanbaatar - Pres. & Sis. Clark on the left

Chingeltei Cemetery Project. On Wednesday morning we went with the Richardsons to the Chingeltei cemetery to practice photography on the tombstones. We anticipated how the project could be of great benefit to gaining a secondary source of records for Family History work. It would also be a very meaningful service project for the members in UB. Everything came to a crashing halt about 4:15 pm in the afternoon just 15 minutes before our weekly staff meeting. 

Elder Neuberger and companion along with Sister missionaries

Adiyabold (1st Counselor in the Stake Presidency) told us our project was cancelled. The reason was that someone (I think it might have been him) did some serious investigating into the politics of the development project that was encroaching on cemetery ground.

Prior to this, Nasanbold had secured oral permission from the association in charge of the cemetery. Soyolmaa had checked into it and felt satisfied we were OK with the project despite not having written permission from the governmental authorities.

Adiyabold told us that there were two groups – a pro-development group and an anti-development group that are contesting about whether the cemetery ground should be used for new development. He and others (presumably President Odgerel) felt the church could be viewed and misconstrued as taking sides in the conflict by doing the records preservation project. The anti-development group in particular would be likely to start a rumor that the Japanese (the developers) and the Mormons were conspiring to desecrate Buddhist graves, disrespect Mongolian nationality and unleash evil forces by disturbing the dead.

Rather than the Church being put in an awkward position of being perceived as supporting one side or the other, the project was postponed until further notice. It is better to be safe than sorry so this may be the blessing in disguise.

Some good things have come from our endeavor. One is that the Harringtons saw the value in having a digitizing of records from cemeteries in Asia. The Harringtons are starting a project of gathering records from a run down cemetery near a race track in Hong Kong and are spreading the idea to other countries in Asia.

Danny Chin feels the Church hasn’t funded a cemetery acquisition project in 15 years but believes Mongolia would be the perfect place to have a trial project. He will be submitting a proposal to the Church Family History Department about the value of gathering data from cemeteries, especially from a country like Mongolia where written records are spotty due to political destruction of records and elimination of patronymic surnames by the Russians.



Shoe inserts and stockings for sale

 On Friday, we had a meeting with the Mongolian Funeral Association to learn how cemetery records are kept in Mongolia, how thorough the records are and the process of accessing these records. This meeting was fortuitious. It turned out the Mongolian Funeral Association is in charge of clearing the cemetery at Chingeltei.

They are building a Memory Park in one section of Chingeltei. The memory park will be surrounded a wall consisting of 108 Stupas that will house the cremated remains of the bodies they will exhume. The walls of the Stupa will have the names and dates of birth and death from the graves they will clear. There are over 200,000 graves in the 7 Hills cemetery. 

Outside of the Memory Park land, the rest of the

land will revert back to the government who is

involved in developing the 7 Hills area.

Primary children practicing inviting a friend to church
 

The Mongolian Funeral Association was

interested in knowing about us and meeting us.

They aren't planning on any action (clearing of 

graves) this winter. They will have a data 

preservation project in the areas they plan to clear 

in the spring. They will be participating in 

educating the public on the new Memory Park

and how the graves of the deceased will be

handled. The Government also plans a good effort 

to dispel rumors that are swirling around.

They are interested in our offer to volunteer to 

help them. They also have a budget for recording

the data from the tombstones. They indicated that

all photography should be done by Mongolians. 

The Buddhists would be alarmed if foreigners 

were involved onsite.They suggested that any 

foreigners assist by providing food or other

services offsite. 


Our going ahead with the project as we planned it

would have had several foreigners onsite and

would have greatly upset the Buddhist

community. Also when we volunteer in the

spring, we will be in coordination with their 

system of recording data from the tombstones.

Returned missionary Tugsbaatar holding up my doodle from the Mission conference

They seemed especially interested in our ability to

help them index the data from the tombstones and

have it recorded online. I am sure the church will

be able to secure a copy on all indexed

tombstones.

There are 6 other cemeteries in Ulaanbaatar, some

of which will have the same renovation project as

the 7 Hills cemetery. They will need our help in

the future as future projects unfold. Our project

was a good one but, in the long run, we put our

project and ideas on a much more solid footing by

meeting with people we did.  

Returned missionary Bayarjargal posing for me

"There must needs be an opposition is all things." Danny Chin arrived from Hong Kong just in time for our Wednesday staff meeting. He is in charge of records acquisition for the Asia area. The next day, Danny Chin, our translator Batsengel and ourselves meet with Ulziibaatar, the Director of the National Archives, Erdenbat, the Director of the Civil Archives and Buyan, the leading genealogist who compiled the Chinggis Khan family tree.  

Buyan represents a private, not-or-profit organization that has started a digitizing project with the National Archives. The goal of the meeting was to see if the three organizations would work together in a mutually beneficial way to achieve common objectives.

They stated their goals of having records available so that all Mongolians can trace their lineage through five generations. Accessing data in the National Archives is the main way Mongolian citizens have for tracing their family history. We stated our long term goals of long term records preservation for the world’s genealogical records in the temperature controlled vaults in Salt Lake City. 

A second goal would to be prepare Mongolian names in digitized form to be available online on the Internet so that Mongolians everywhere could trace their personal family history. They will also be responding on a point-by-point basis to a letter of inquiry that we gave to them in September.

The meeting had a promising beginning. We learned that there was a major census in 1918 and a series of four more census data collections during the 1920s and early 1930s. After that the census records were collected every 10 years. 

Mongolian privacy laws extend back to 1932 so that data from the 1932 census and prior census records are in the public domain. Birth, marriage and death records, and military records are available in the National Archives up until 1957. After that year, the civil records are housed in the Central Archives – a separate archival unit that functions under the direction of the National Archives.

Ulziibaatar explained that there has been an upsurge in Mongolians wanting to know their family lineage during the past five years. The National Archives haven’t been able to respond to that need. They are in the process of getting a new building in 2014 where they can consolidate their services and records from 3 buildings into one building. They haven’t been research oriented and deferred that expertise to Buyan and his efforts to compile the Chinggis Khan genealogy.

He stated that Buyan and his organization have started a digitizing project and are awaiting new equipment that will come with the new building that will push the work forward.

We explained all the ways the Church could be helpful in furthering our mutual goals – talking about the equipment, manpower and expertise we could provide in accelerating the digitizing process.

Shopping at the Sunday store

We communicated our respect for the work they are doing and our willingness to fit in to whatever role they wanted us to play. Our only requirement was that the Church receive a copy of the final product. It seemed like an offer they wouldn’t refuse.

I won't go into the details on a public document, but we received an unexpected setback in that they weren't ready to ask our our help or involvement. 

We are making this a matter of prayer and being patient. They need to contemplate what they are turning down. Maybe the discussion will cause some reflection on how mutual cooperation might work out to their benefit.

Danny Chin believes that much was accomplished by this meeting. We could see the dynamics of the people involved and got the real issues on the table. Negotiations like these sometimes take years. This meeting cut through a lot of preliminaries to get to the heart of the issue and also had all the significant players at the table.


Baby boots for winter

Danny Chin has a professional relationship with Ulziibaatar that is strong and will improve with time. He emerged from the meeting more hopeful than any of us because of his experience in long term negotiations.  



Finding a birthday present

Shopping. After such a week, we tried to distract ourselves from our setback by shopping for a sweater for layering up for me and a birthday present, a stone necklace, for Darlene. We include of pictures of our shopping trip and also the Primary and church members from the Sukhbaatar Branch.

BBQ on a cold winter day