Our Dear Family:
Happy New Year! We pray that 2009 will bring all of you health, happiness, and prosperity. And, for Cameron, a wonderful experience in the MTC and a great mission.
This week has been busy with mostly mission meetings. We had a mission conference on Wednesday, transmission of he First Presidency Fireside on Thursday morning and lunch and entertainment by very talented missionaries in the afternoon. Friday we had a senior missionary conference in the morning and a celebration with the faculty and students of a college I helped set up here in 1994.
I played Santa Claus on Tuesday. I wish you could have been here to enjoy it with me. The president of our branch, Khan-Uul, and his wife went with me to five families. Four of them live in tiny houses in the slum area, the other lives in a ger. One was a single mother with a tiny baby who lives in the ger with her handicapped father. We bought a one and one-half ton truck full of coal and shared it with the families. We also took one hundred pounds of flour, twenty-five pounds of rice, and five quarts of milk to each family. For the children we bought clothing and toys, and formula for the little baby. One of the tiny houses, a single room, was built of warped plywood only.
Tuesday night a beautiful district choir presented a Christmas concert in our headquarters building. We had a VIP reception just before the concert and most of the people who attended were people in government whom I have befriended over the past fifteen years, including two former ambassadors to the U.S. and their wives. Gonchidorj could not come so Ariuna (who stayed with us in Orem for many months) came in his place.
Yesterday, Odnyam took Josh and me to the black market shopping. Josh bought some very nice, very warm high boots and warm gloves for him and Kim. I bought a large piece of high density foam, four inches thick, for Linda. We have been sleeping on deluxe air mattresses which I enjoy very much. She moves too much during the night and felt she was not resting well on the air mattress. I cut the foam to fit her bed, slid the bed next to the wall, and put the other half of the foam between our beds. Hopefully this will keep her from sliding her mattress off the bed.
I bought two very nice antiques: a burnished bronze bull with intricate brass decorations on it, and a bronze vase with a phoenix forming each side. They are perhaps hundreds of years old; and with tourists almost non-existent in the winter here, they were inexpensive.
We spent the afternoon at our branch Christmas party. It was almost like Christmas in Fremont when I was a child: Santa Claus (one of the Elders) with his huge bag of gifts (food and drinks), songs by over twenty Primary children in beautiful clothing, and numbers by other age groups. It was very pleasant.
Odnyam and his wife's sister (who is home from Germany for the holidays) took Josh, Kim, Linda, and I to a Korean restaurant for dinner. We were served by Andrew's favorite waitress. She speaks some English and does remember serving Andrew there.
Our Sabbath has been very pleasant. There is a sweet spirit in Khan-Uul branch.
We had light snow most of the day yesterday. This layer of snow on top of the ice already on the sidewalks makes walking a bit dangerous.
Josh and Kim have stayed with us in our apartment most of the week. There have been water problems in their apartment complex which should have been repaired before yesterday. The job was not finished last night, so they stayed over until today. They will go home later today. Hopefully the water problems will be taken care of.
We love you. We pray for you always.
Love, Mother and Dad
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Have a Very Happy Christmas
Our Dear, Dear Family:
We feel so lonely away from you, especially as Christmas approaches. How we wish we could be with you for the family Christmas party. We know it will be a special time for all of you. Our hearts, prayers, and spirits will be with you.
We do pray that all of you will have a very happy and spiritual Christmas and a healthy and prosperous new year.
We do not at all miss the commercialization of Christmas back home. And, the big stores are even doing some of the same here.
Let us all remember that Christmas is intended to be a time of spiritual rejoicing to remember the birth, life, and atonement of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. For this we give our deepest thanks to our Father in Heaven.
May God be with and bless each of you this Christmas season and always. We love you dearly.
We feel so lonely away from you, especially as Christmas approaches. How we wish we could be with you for the family Christmas party. We know it will be a special time for all of you. Our hearts, prayers, and spirits will be with you.
We do pray that all of you will have a very happy and spiritual Christmas and a healthy and prosperous new year.
We do not at all miss the commercialization of Christmas back home. And, the big stores are even doing some of the same here.
Let us all remember that Christmas is intended to be a time of spiritual rejoicing to remember the birth, life, and atonement of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. For this we give our deepest thanks to our Father in Heaven.
May God be with and bless each of you this Christmas season and always. We love you dearly.
Weekly Report from Grandma
Dear President Andersen,
I have already carbon copied three emails to you this morning that Danny Chin requested by telephone Saturday evening.
At our last quarterly consultant training meeting we had the sisters sign up for Saturday Training in PAF. We will have 4 sisters come in each Saturday so that we can personally help them understand the Church's Personal Ancestral Program (PAF). In the future I hope it will be possible for each FH consultant to have a computer so that they can help members in their own chapel. I know the work is going to progress rapidly in the future. The consultants could arrange for different branch members to come in and help them with their FH. It will slowly evolve. When new.familysearch.org is released we will need more frequent and closer supervised help from the branch family history consultants and the members. There are many new concepts and "steps" that need to be taught.
We are having a District FH Fireside on January 11, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. It will be held in the Chapel. We will talk about TRIBE names and help the members identify theirs. If it fits your schedule and is convenient, we would like to invite you and Sister Andersen to attend and speak on the importance of FH work and how it can help us get our own temple in Mongolia. As you know, I feel that Oyuna was inspired to mention the TRIBE name listing on the National Identify Card that each Mongolian citizen over 18 carries with them at all times. Knowing one's TRIBE name will greatly assist them in identifying their ancestors and facilitating their FH research.
On April 19th we have reserved the Chalpel at 6:00 p.m. for a FIRESIDE open to all members of the church where we will discuss "GOLDEN GENERATION/GENEALOGY" (identifying your true TRIBE name). We are inviting an expert to teach the Saints.
I want to thank you for talking to Oyuna about her concerns. She came back from your interview with more peace than she has had since I first knew her. THANK YOU! It is wonderful to have the priesthood direction and wisdom that you share with all of us. I am so relieved that you told her NOT to resign. She is the backbone of our FH Center!
I also appreciated your response to my last weekly report. Only the Lord did knew how to slow down Elder Jackson. He is feeling much better now, but it was a rough 2 weeks to keep going as much as he did. He has "true grit".
I am feeling well. I get tired too easily, but I guess that's what happens as we age. I love my calling and feel the Lord is guiding and directing me to know how to serve the Saints here in regards to doing their FH.
We are grateful to you and your sweet wife for all that you do for us and your continued direction.
Love, Sister Linda Lou Jackson
This weekend it will be 30 degrees below Fahrenheit. But we bundle up and are warm.
Missing all of you so very much. 4 months down, only 19 to go. We'll make it with your support. We are both so proud of all that you are doing.
I have already carbon copied three emails to you this morning that Danny Chin requested by telephone Saturday evening.
At our last quarterly consultant training meeting we had the sisters sign up for Saturday Training in PAF. We will have 4 sisters come in each Saturday so that we can personally help them understand the Church's Personal Ancestral Program (PAF). In the future I hope it will be possible for each FH consultant to have a computer so that they can help members in their own chapel. I know the work is going to progress rapidly in the future. The consultants could arrange for different branch members to come in and help them with their FH. It will slowly evolve. When new.familysearch.org is released we will need more frequent and closer supervised help from the branch family history consultants and the members. There are many new concepts and "steps" that need to be taught.
We are having a District FH Fireside on January 11, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. It will be held in the Chapel. We will talk about TRIBE names and help the members identify theirs. If it fits your schedule and is convenient, we would like to invite you and Sister Andersen to attend and speak on the importance of FH work and how it can help us get our own temple in Mongolia. As you know, I feel that Oyuna was inspired to mention the TRIBE name listing on the National Identify Card that each Mongolian citizen over 18 carries with them at all times. Knowing one's TRIBE name will greatly assist them in identifying their ancestors and facilitating their FH research.
On April 19th we have reserved the Chalpel at 6:00 p.m. for a FIRESIDE open to all members of the church where we will discuss "GOLDEN GENERATION/GENEALOGY" (identifying your true TRIBE name). We are inviting an expert to teach the Saints.
I want to thank you for talking to Oyuna about her concerns. She came back from your interview with more peace than she has had since I first knew her. THANK YOU! It is wonderful to have the priesthood direction and wisdom that you share with all of us. I am so relieved that you told her NOT to resign. She is the backbone of our FH Center!
I also appreciated your response to my last weekly report. Only the Lord did knew how to slow down Elder Jackson. He is feeling much better now, but it was a rough 2 weeks to keep going as much as he did. He has "true grit".
I am feeling well. I get tired too easily, but I guess that's what happens as we age. I love my calling and feel the Lord is guiding and directing me to know how to serve the Saints here in regards to doing their FH.
We are grateful to you and your sweet wife for all that you do for us and your continued direction.
Love, Sister Linda Lou Jackson
This weekend it will be 30 degrees below Fahrenheit. But we bundle up and are warm.
Missing all of you so very much. 4 months down, only 19 to go. We'll make it with your support. We are both so proud of all that you are doing.
Monday, December 15, 2008
So Close to Christmas
Our Dear Family:
The closer it comes to Christmas, the more we miss all of you. We did have a little Christmas party at our apartment last night with Josh and Kim and two of their friends whom they knew at their school in China--Brian and his nine-year-old daughter. He also teaches art here at the International School (Kim and Josh teach at the American School of Ulaanbaatar); his daughter, Savannah, is a very sweet little girl and seems to practically worship Joshua and Kimberly. She had written a sweet little Christmas card for us. We gave her a small gift. After dinner we watched the DVD "Joy to the World." Brian went to sleep; Savannah loved it.
Both of us have spent the week on our main assignments: Linda on family history and I on my missionary search. My search is going better as the branch presidents are more responsive (if they do not report as I have asked, I invite the ones in Ulaanbaatar to my office with the records I have sent them and we review them together. The come back each week and will continue to do so until we have found or know we cannot find the missionaries called from their branch. We are also having some continued success in reactivating some of the missionaries we are finding.
My artist friend, Tsegmed, continues to attend sacrament meeting with us. Today one of the speakers in Sacrament Meeting referred mostly to the book of Genesis. After his talk, Tsegmed asked where he could get a Bible. Tsegmed was baptized in Provo when I brought him there for treatment for brain trauma after a fall into a deep canyon and I gave him an English Book of Mormon then. He and his wife, Tuya (also a very talented artist) have been inactive until we got here. I gave him a Mongolian Book of Mormon; now, together with the Bible in Mongolian, I will give him a triple combination in Mongolian.
We had one day of snow here this week and it was soon compacted into ice. The traffic on the roads keep them almost clear of ice;but the sidewalks are very icy. We usually walk to and from our offices together, and Linda holds tightly onto my arm so she will not slip and fall. When I go to the office earlier, she will take a taxi. It costs about 90 cents from our apartment to the headquarters building.
Despite the very cold weather--we have had mornings with the temperature twenty-five degrees below zero, we do keep plenty warm in our apartment. The heat for the buildings here comes from the power plants in the form of hot water. This is circulated through the ceilings and walls of the apartments in the buildings and heats radiators inside. We have two of these heat radiators, one in our main room and one in the bedroom. We can control the heat only by opening or closing a valve in the pipes that lead to the radiators. Right now, we have the pipes shut off completely. The heat radiating from the walls and our floor keep us plenty warm.
I am just about over my flu and feeling much better. Linda gets tired easily, but otherwise if feeling well. My secretary, Zula, who was in my branch at the MTC and who has studied nursing here, found where we can get flu shots. I asked our mission doctor about this in October and he said we couldn't get them here. The Mission was supposed to see if they could get the shots from Hong Kong but did not do it.
We have been drawn into help plan for almost a week of meetings and parties for Chistmas. I guess the other senior missionaries thought we were a bit crazy when we told them that rather than paying US$30 each for a Christmas lunch we would prefer to use the money to help the two poor ger families we want to help. The told us, though, that we "had to" participate, so I guess we will. I would prefer less parties and more service.
The CES director from Hong Kong, Brother Cheuk, was here this week. He was shocked when I spoke with him in Cantonese; but before he returned to Hong Kong, he and I had some very pleasant conversations about Hong Kong and the history of the Church there.
Today in Sacrament Meeting, the branch president sustained my two counselors and secretary in the Sunday School. Neither counselor speaks any English, so it is a blessing that sister who was in my branch at the MTC, Ariunbolor, is our secretary. She is a professional translator and speaks perfect English. She and her husband have been married in the civil court for a few years. They will be married in the Church on Wednesday and sealed in the Hong Kong Temple on Christmas Day. We have also been invited to attend the wedding at the Wedding Palace for Brother Purevsuren's daughter who has been home for a semester from her studies at BYU-Hawaii. She is marrying an American member. Purevsuren is the brother who slept on the couch in Kona, Hawaii, when all of the women and girls were there in the house Tamar rented for a month.
We miss all of you so very much. We love you and pray for you always.
Love, Mother and Dad
The closer it comes to Christmas, the more we miss all of you. We did have a little Christmas party at our apartment last night with Josh and Kim and two of their friends whom they knew at their school in China--Brian and his nine-year-old daughter. He also teaches art here at the International School (Kim and Josh teach at the American School of Ulaanbaatar); his daughter, Savannah, is a very sweet little girl and seems to practically worship Joshua and Kimberly. She had written a sweet little Christmas card for us. We gave her a small gift. After dinner we watched the DVD "Joy to the World." Brian went to sleep; Savannah loved it.
Both of us have spent the week on our main assignments: Linda on family history and I on my missionary search. My search is going better as the branch presidents are more responsive (if they do not report as I have asked, I invite the ones in Ulaanbaatar to my office with the records I have sent them and we review them together. The come back each week and will continue to do so until we have found or know we cannot find the missionaries called from their branch. We are also having some continued success in reactivating some of the missionaries we are finding.
My artist friend, Tsegmed, continues to attend sacrament meeting with us. Today one of the speakers in Sacrament Meeting referred mostly to the book of Genesis. After his talk, Tsegmed asked where he could get a Bible. Tsegmed was baptized in Provo when I brought him there for treatment for brain trauma after a fall into a deep canyon and I gave him an English Book of Mormon then. He and his wife, Tuya (also a very talented artist) have been inactive until we got here. I gave him a Mongolian Book of Mormon; now, together with the Bible in Mongolian, I will give him a triple combination in Mongolian.
We had one day of snow here this week and it was soon compacted into ice. The traffic on the roads keep them almost clear of ice;but the sidewalks are very icy. We usually walk to and from our offices together, and Linda holds tightly onto my arm so she will not slip and fall. When I go to the office earlier, she will take a taxi. It costs about 90 cents from our apartment to the headquarters building.
Despite the very cold weather--we have had mornings with the temperature twenty-five degrees below zero, we do keep plenty warm in our apartment. The heat for the buildings here comes from the power plants in the form of hot water. This is circulated through the ceilings and walls of the apartments in the buildings and heats radiators inside. We have two of these heat radiators, one in our main room and one in the bedroom. We can control the heat only by opening or closing a valve in the pipes that lead to the radiators. Right now, we have the pipes shut off completely. The heat radiating from the walls and our floor keep us plenty warm.
I am just about over my flu and feeling much better. Linda gets tired easily, but otherwise if feeling well. My secretary, Zula, who was in my branch at the MTC and who has studied nursing here, found where we can get flu shots. I asked our mission doctor about this in October and he said we couldn't get them here. The Mission was supposed to see if they could get the shots from Hong Kong but did not do it.
We have been drawn into help plan for almost a week of meetings and parties for Chistmas. I guess the other senior missionaries thought we were a bit crazy when we told them that rather than paying US$30 each for a Christmas lunch we would prefer to use the money to help the two poor ger families we want to help. The told us, though, that we "had to" participate, so I guess we will. I would prefer less parties and more service.
The CES director from Hong Kong, Brother Cheuk, was here this week. He was shocked when I spoke with him in Cantonese; but before he returned to Hong Kong, he and I had some very pleasant conversations about Hong Kong and the history of the Church there.
Today in Sacrament Meeting, the branch president sustained my two counselors and secretary in the Sunday School. Neither counselor speaks any English, so it is a blessing that sister who was in my branch at the MTC, Ariunbolor, is our secretary. She is a professional translator and speaks perfect English. She and her husband have been married in the civil court for a few years. They will be married in the Church on Wednesday and sealed in the Hong Kong Temple on Christmas Day. We have also been invited to attend the wedding at the Wedding Palace for Brother Purevsuren's daughter who has been home for a semester from her studies at BYU-Hawaii. She is marrying an American member. Purevsuren is the brother who slept on the couch in Kona, Hawaii, when all of the women and girls were there in the house Tamar rented for a month.
We miss all of you so very much. We love you and pray for you always.
Love, Mother and Dad
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Life in Mongolia
I have finished my work for today and am waiting for Linda to finish her English class in about fifteen minutes, so I thought I would write and tell you some of the more mundane and daily things I have not really written before:
Our apartment is small: we have the entrance which has the hangers for our heavy coats and hats and doors to the small bathroom and small bedroom. This hallway opens into the one room that is our kitchen, sitting room, and dining room. It is about ten feet wide and twenty feet long. The west end of this room is all a bay window and looks out over the center of Ulaanbaatar City. As you saw in the pictures we sent, the room is adequately furnished. We do have an old TV with channels mostly in Mongolian. Those in English are geared to a Russian and Australian audience.
Our bedroom has two beds that were made up when we arrived with a plywood mattress covered by a sheet and a comforter. We have since added high quality air mattresses (the only soft mattresses in the country) and pairs of sheets. We both brought our own pillows. The beds are pushed together with about one foot on either side. There is a closet about eighteen inches from the foot of the beds. It has enough space to hang only very basic clothing. There are a few small storage areas on the side and the too and two small drawers on the bottom. We have stored our suitcases on top of the closet and at the head of our beds. It is adequate for sleeping in, so we have no real complaint.
We do have an automatic washer which is in our small bathroom. It works quite well, but is filled with water direct from the outside water line which is not very clean (we have three filters for our drinking water and when we change them, they are very dirty). Our refrigerator and stove are very small. We cannot get a regular sheet cake pan in the oven. We do have a small microwave.
Starting the day with a bath is a bit time-consuming: we do get heated water from the main line from the power plant, but it is never hot enough for a good bath, so we heat water in a two-quart electric water heater while I check my laptop for new e-mails, news, and weather. I usually cook breakfast and eat it while I am at the computer. I usually let Linda sleep longer, and she often comes to the office after I do.
We walk the half mile to the office, and now our walking is on very slippery sidewalks (it has snowed the last two nights and we will probably not see clear sidewalks again until March). If Linda comes later now, I insist she comes by taxi.
We usually bring sandwiches or something we can carry in a small plastic container for lunch and eat in my office. Occasionally we will eat our lunch at a nearby restaurant. Within five minutes of our building we have an Indian restaurant, a European/Mongolian restaurant, a Ukrainian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a restaurant in the large Chinggis Khaan Hotel, and numerous small cafes we prefer not to enter.
Linda teaches an English class each Tuesday and Thursday and does not finish until about 7:30, and I always have enough work to keep me busy until then. We preside at a family home evening for three branches once in three weeks; the other Mondays I attend a returned missionary fireside. On these nights we get home at about 9:00 p.m. So, we have Wednesday and Friday nights to be at home and are occasionally invited out by friends.
We can buy almost any food we want here. It is imported and more expensive than in Utah. Needless to say, we do not buy Chinese milk anymore. One Mongolian company produces good pasteurized milk, but the taste is not quite what we are accustomed to.
We do have a housekeeper: we have hired one of the two female custodians at the headquarters building to come once a week after work. She cleans our apartment in about three or four hours. We pay her about $50 per month.
Occasionally we help people who are badly in need of food or clothing; but, we have to watch carefully for scams.
The traffic is terrible and pedestrians have no rights at all, so we have to be extremely careful in crossing a street, even when we have a green light and a policeman trying to control traffic.
With the colder weather, the air in the Ulaanbaatar basin is horrible, mostly due to people living in thousands of gers around the city trying to keep warm burning coal and anything else they can find to feed their fires. On bad days we wear surgical masks to and from the office.
We are not yet fully settled in--too many things are different; too many things are unpredictable.
Being here, though, is what we want right now; and the work and the people may it very much worthwhile.
We love you.
Love, Dad
Our apartment is small: we have the entrance which has the hangers for our heavy coats and hats and doors to the small bathroom and small bedroom. This hallway opens into the one room that is our kitchen, sitting room, and dining room. It is about ten feet wide and twenty feet long. The west end of this room is all a bay window and looks out over the center of Ulaanbaatar City. As you saw in the pictures we sent, the room is adequately furnished. We do have an old TV with channels mostly in Mongolian. Those in English are geared to a Russian and Australian audience.
Our bedroom has two beds that were made up when we arrived with a plywood mattress covered by a sheet and a comforter. We have since added high quality air mattresses (the only soft mattresses in the country) and pairs of sheets. We both brought our own pillows. The beds are pushed together with about one foot on either side. There is a closet about eighteen inches from the foot of the beds. It has enough space to hang only very basic clothing. There are a few small storage areas on the side and the too and two small drawers on the bottom. We have stored our suitcases on top of the closet and at the head of our beds. It is adequate for sleeping in, so we have no real complaint.
We do have an automatic washer which is in our small bathroom. It works quite well, but is filled with water direct from the outside water line which is not very clean (we have three filters for our drinking water and when we change them, they are very dirty). Our refrigerator and stove are very small. We cannot get a regular sheet cake pan in the oven. We do have a small microwave.
Starting the day with a bath is a bit time-consuming: we do get heated water from the main line from the power plant, but it is never hot enough for a good bath, so we heat water in a two-quart electric water heater while I check my laptop for new e-mails, news, and weather. I usually cook breakfast and eat it while I am at the computer. I usually let Linda sleep longer, and she often comes to the office after I do.
We walk the half mile to the office, and now our walking is on very slippery sidewalks (it has snowed the last two nights and we will probably not see clear sidewalks again until March). If Linda comes later now, I insist she comes by taxi.
We usually bring sandwiches or something we can carry in a small plastic container for lunch and eat in my office. Occasionally we will eat our lunch at a nearby restaurant. Within five minutes of our building we have an Indian restaurant, a European/Mongolian restaurant, a Ukrainian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a restaurant in the large Chinggis Khaan Hotel, and numerous small cafes we prefer not to enter.
Linda teaches an English class each Tuesday and Thursday and does not finish until about 7:30, and I always have enough work to keep me busy until then. We preside at a family home evening for three branches once in three weeks; the other Mondays I attend a returned missionary fireside. On these nights we get home at about 9:00 p.m. So, we have Wednesday and Friday nights to be at home and are occasionally invited out by friends.
We can buy almost any food we want here. It is imported and more expensive than in Utah. Needless to say, we do not buy Chinese milk anymore. One Mongolian company produces good pasteurized milk, but the taste is not quite what we are accustomed to.
We do have a housekeeper: we have hired one of the two female custodians at the headquarters building to come once a week after work. She cleans our apartment in about three or four hours. We pay her about $50 per month.
Occasionally we help people who are badly in need of food or clothing; but, we have to watch carefully for scams.
The traffic is terrible and pedestrians have no rights at all, so we have to be extremely careful in crossing a street, even when we have a green light and a policeman trying to control traffic.
With the colder weather, the air in the Ulaanbaatar basin is horrible, mostly due to people living in thousands of gers around the city trying to keep warm burning coal and anything else they can find to feed their fires. On bad days we wear surgical masks to and from the office.
We are not yet fully settled in--too many things are different; too many things are unpredictable.
Being here, though, is what we want right now; and the work and the people may it very much worthwhile.
We love you.
Love, Dad
Monday, December 1, 2008
Catching up on Posts from Grandpa/Grandma Jackson
Thanksgiving Week
Our Dear Family:
Our e-mail address is: malanjackson@gmail.com. Our letters to the family have gone mostly unanswered. It is lonely here and we miss all of you so very much. We would like very much to know how you are doing , what is happening in your family, about school, about work, about your health, about your time together, about the fun things you do, and so on. Please write to us. We loved the telephone call from Tamar this week.
We did celebrate Thanksgiving here on Wednesday, and it was a quite a different experience: the six senior couples here in Ulaanbaatar prepared lunch on Wednesday for a total of 110 people, including the 90+ missionaries serving in the city. We did quite well considering the fact that there are no turkeys in Mongolia (someone said they saw a few for sale at an important market for $20 per pound). We had chunks of chicken in gravy over reconstituted potatoes, pumpkin cake, imported cranberry sauce, fresh imported peppers and tomatoes, rolls, and home-made stuffing. The missionaries loved it; some went back for as many as four re-fills. It was good, but just not like being with our family.
We still struggle with the approach to Church activity here by too many of the members. Dependability in Church matters is very unpredictable with too many of them; and being on time for meetings and appointments is not a priority. The Mongolian culture is so very different; and as Elder Oaks once wrote, "It takes three generations for the Church to settle in." We are getting used to it; Linda lets it bother her more than I do.
My returned missionary search is improving as the branch presidents better understand the need to re-activate these people and respond my repeated reminders. We are having some good successes in re-activating a few, but it is not easy for them or for us.
Linda works hard on her family history research and instruction, but again the lack of dedication of some of the people who she has called to help her is a bit discouraging.
We had a fun experience on Thursday: Bat-Ulzii, who I took to Utah in the mid-nineties to study, and who is an inactive Church member, invited us to one of his restaurants for lunch. He was thrilled to learn that we are here since I did help him a lot as a young student. He and his brother started with a food import business that is very successful and now have three restaurants and will open the fourth in March. The name of their restaurants is "Altai Mongolian Barbecue." He learned the idea in Utah and thought there should be Mongolian barbecue restaurants in Mongolia. The restaurants are first class; the food is much better than the Mongolian barbecue in Utah. And his restaurant signs and ads show the statement "Since 1203." He said Chinggis Khan and his warriors barbecued meat on the inside of their metal shields, so Mongolian barbecue began from that time.
The Mongolian legislature has not yet passed a viable mining law, so many of the foreign companies that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars here and pulling out. This will have quite a negative effect on the economy. Returned missionaries who have worked at these mines come to my office often to see if I can suggest possible work for them. I am able to help some of them; and we do have a senior couple here in charge of LDS Employment Services, so they are helping as well.
One couple we have gotten to know well from the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine visit we made have been laid off and came to my office early last week to see if I could help them. But, on Friday they came in and said that another member of the Church here is flying to Hong Kong on business tomorrow and offered to pay their airfare to take their young son with them and be sealed in the Hong Kong Temple.
As you can imagine, they are elated. They had been saving money to go by train in June.
Last night we had dinner with a young woman who assisted us with our livestock project in 2000. She also visited us in Utah and is now married. They have just bought a new apartment near the mountain on the south city of the city, not too far from where Josh and Kim teach. We had a wonderful dinner, but mostly were amazed at the size and beauty of their apartment. It has three bedrooms and a modern kitchen. The interior finish work is as good as anything back home. Their parking is under the building in a heated parking area. The owner of the building has a second one nearby. The two have forty-five apartments and only four are sold. This city is way over-built but the construction goes on.
Linda still gets tired easily, but we are in good health. The weather is getting colder: mornings have been about zero degrees Fahrenheit but the forecast for this week is for some snow and temperatures down to seventeen degrees below.
We love you. Please do write to us.
Mother and Dad
Week Fifteen Already
Our Dear Family:
It hardly seems possible that we have been in Mongolia for almost four months. Times seems to pass slowly only when we think of all of you and how much we miss you. We love you so very much.
With Joshua's help I sent a few photos to you earlier this evening. These should give you some idea of our life here and prove that we are still alive. Not only are we alive, but we are doing quite well. We have been busy this past week; but it has been a good week and we have not gotten too tired.
We appreciated talking with Mother and Tamar. It is good to get news from home first-hand. We spoke with Mother just after she had returned from Aunt Marjorie's funeral. She said it was a good funeral and she was not tired even after the long day traveling to Richfield, going to the funeral and then the cemetery and then riding back to Orem. She said that she still gets lonesome but is very grateful for those of you who visit her. She sleeps well and said that she has no pain at all.
Linda's family history work keeps her very busy, and the assistant she has trained have been very helpful. Now, however, they want to change to something else. I do hope they stay with her so that she can get the work done and not have to train new people.
Tomorrow morning will be my last English class with the judges in the district court. The new couple, Elder and Sister Caldwell, who
arrived a week ago will take the class and I will begin teaching seminars and teachers at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology, the university I have worked most closely with since 1995.
The last senior Elder assigned to try to find and reactivate returned missionaries, who returned home a month ago, told me that he gave up looking for them after a few months because it was just too frustrating. I can understand the even better now: my secretary and I are finding long-lost missionaries quite regularly, but reactivation is a real challenge and the process and difficult and tedious. It is worth all of the challenge, though, and I will probably be doing it right up until the time we come home. Too, the branch leaders upon whom I must depend to help find the returned missionaries just do not seem to sense the need to go out and find the lost ones.
I continue to see and enjoy the company of close friends I have made over the past fifteen years. Last night we had dinner at the home of Sodnomdorj and Yanjin. They are especially close to us, and it was pleasant being with them.
Joshua and Kimberly came to our apartment after their church meetings and we had dinner and enjoyed a long visit. They are doing well but do get frustrated with the behavior of other foreign teachers at their school.
Each day gets a little colder now. Yesterday and today were especially cold. We are grateful for our warm apartment and our warm clothing.
We love you and miss you so very much.
Love, Grandpa and Grandma Jackson
Update on Mongolian life for the Jacksons
My dearest Children and Cherished Siblings,
How great it is to get a weekly letter from some of you. I will try to be as diligent also. It is go good to know how and what all of you are doing. It sounds from your letters, that all of your family, including youselves, are extremely busy in worthwhile things.
We have had a busy week ourselves, and the next week of Thanksgiving, will be even more so. I canceled both my Tuesday and Thursday evening classes to help prepare for all the Mongolian missionaries in the Ulaanbaatar area (99). All of the sisters are helping. I am to make 2 large batches of dressing, a pumpkin cake, and buy 8 dozen couisants. Today I cut all of the bread so it could dry out by Wednesday (the day we are serving the missionaries) and cut and cooked the onion and celery. I'll put it together Wednesday morning and bake it at the church. My little 2-burner stove is too small for a regular dripper-size cake pan. Sister Anderson our Mission Mother had a training meeting in Hong Kong and brought home canned pumpkin and cranberry sauce. One of the English-speaking members, who has a private plane, brought 2 turkeys to Mongolia. They are going to roast them and chunk the meat and put it in chicken gravey to serve over instant potatoes. We'll have dressisng, cranaberry sauce, and many other goodies for the missionaries.
I am feeling well and working hard at genealogy. I have good assistants who come into the center and help the mongolian members transfer their Mongolian information to English PAF.
Dad goes on a walk-about every Saturday morning to the big black market called the "Zaa", which is a nice walk for him and he really enjoys it. I usually stay at home to do the washing and cooking for the week. It is too cold now for me to walk that far. It is below 0 most of the time now. Dad loves it! Oh, it will get much colder, about 40 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit.
Our apartment is lovely and nice and warm, in fact, we've even have had to turn the temperature down!
Our daily 1/2 mile to the Service Center, where our offices are, takes me about 25 minutes. Dad will walk with me when it gets icy. Next week it is supposed to snow Tuesday and Wednesday and after the people pack down the snow, it will be icy the rest of the winter. Our clothes are very warm and comfortable, that is not a problem. We sure pile on the layers, though.
We are so grateful that all of our family spent time together cleaning up the yards. Thank you so much. It is great to hear of all of you doing things together!
We want to express our love to all of you and tell you how proud we are of each one of you! We certainly do miss all of you!!! But, the work we are doing here is very important!
Take good care of yourselves.
Love Eternally, Your Mother, Sister Linda Lou Jackson
Message from a Re-Activated German Brother Here
Dear loved ones,
As you well know, we are getting closer to my birthday. Every year there is a celebration in my honor and I think that this year the celebration will be repeated. During this time there are many people shopping for gifts, there are many radio announcements, TV commercials, and in every part of the world everyone is talking that my birthday is getting closer and closer.
It is really very nice to know, that at least once a year, some people think of me. As you know, the celebration of my birthday began many years ago. At first people seemed to understand and be thankful of all that I did for them, but in these times, no one seems to know the reason for the celebration. Family and friends get together and have a lot of fun, but they don't know the meaning of the celebration.
I remember that last year there was a great feast in my honor. The dinner table was full of delicious foods, pastries, fruits, assorted nuts and chocolates. The decorations were exquisite and there were many, many beautifully wrapped gifts. But, do you want to know something? I wasn't invited. I was the guest of honor and they didn't remember to send me an invitation. The party was for me, but when that great day came, I was left outside, they closed the door in my face .... and I wanted to be with them and share their table.
In truth, that didn't surprise me because in the last few years all close their doors to me. Since I wasn't invited, I decided to enter the party without making any noise. I went in and stood in a corner. They were all drinking; there were some who were drunk and telling jokes and laughing at everything. They were having a grand time. To top it all, this big fat man all dressed in red wearing a long white beard entered the room yelling Ho-Ho-Ho! He seemed drunk. He sat on the sofa and all the children ran to him, saying: "Santa Claus, Santa Claus" .. as if the party were in his honor!
At 12 Midnight all the people began to hug each other; I extended my arms waiting for someone to hug me and ... do you know .... no one hugged me. Suddenly they all began to share gifts. They opened them one by one with great expectation. When all had been opened, I looked to see if, maybe, there was one for me.
What would you feel if on your birthday everybody shared gifts and you did not get one? I then understood that I was unwanted at that party and quietly left.
Every year it gets worse. People only remember to eat and drink, the gifts, the parties and nobody remembers me. I would like this Christmas that you allow me to enter into your life. I would like that you recognize the fact that almost two thousand years ago I came to this world to give my life for you, on the cross, to save you. Today, I only want that you believe this with all your heart.
I want to share something with you. As many didn't invite me to their party, I will have my own celebration, a grandiose party that no one has ever imagined, a spectacular party.
I'm still making the final arrangements. Today I am sending out many invitations and there is an invitation for you. I want to know if you wish to attend and I will make a reservation for you and write your name with golden letters in my great guest book. Only those on the guest list will be invited to the party. Those who don't answer the invitation will be left outside. Be prepared because when all is ready you will be part of my great party.
See you soon.
I Love you!
Jesus
P.S.
Please share this message with your loved ones, before Christmas.
Our Dear Family:
Our e-mail address is: malanjackson@gmail.com. Our letters to the family have gone mostly unanswered. It is lonely here and we miss all of you so very much. We would like very much to know how you are doing , what is happening in your family, about school, about work, about your health, about your time together, about the fun things you do, and so on. Please write to us. We loved the telephone call from Tamar this week.
We did celebrate Thanksgiving here on Wednesday, and it was a quite a different experience: the six senior couples here in Ulaanbaatar prepared lunch on Wednesday for a total of 110 people, including the 90+ missionaries serving in the city. We did quite well considering the fact that there are no turkeys in Mongolia (someone said they saw a few for sale at an important market for $20 per pound). We had chunks of chicken in gravy over reconstituted potatoes, pumpkin cake, imported cranberry sauce, fresh imported peppers and tomatoes, rolls, and home-made stuffing. The missionaries loved it; some went back for as many as four re-fills. It was good, but just not like being with our family.
We still struggle with the approach to Church activity here by too many of the members. Dependability in Church matters is very unpredictable with too many of them; and being on time for meetings and appointments is not a priority. The Mongolian culture is so very different; and as Elder Oaks once wrote, "It takes three generations for the Church to settle in." We are getting used to it; Linda lets it bother her more than I do.
My returned missionary search is improving as the branch presidents better understand the need to re-activate these people and respond my repeated reminders. We are having some good successes in re-activating a few, but it is not easy for them or for us.
Linda works hard on her family history research and instruction, but again the lack of dedication of some of the people who she has called to help her is a bit discouraging.
We had a fun experience on Thursday: Bat-Ulzii, who I took to Utah in the mid-nineties to study, and who is an inactive Church member, invited us to one of his restaurants for lunch. He was thrilled to learn that we are here since I did help him a lot as a young student. He and his brother started with a food import business that is very successful and now have three restaurants and will open the fourth in March. The name of their restaurants is "Altai Mongolian Barbecue." He learned the idea in Utah and thought there should be Mongolian barbecue restaurants in Mongolia. The restaurants are first class; the food is much better than the Mongolian barbecue in Utah. And his restaurant signs and ads show the statement "Since 1203." He said Chinggis Khan and his warriors barbecued meat on the inside of their metal shields, so Mongolian barbecue began from that time.
The Mongolian legislature has not yet passed a viable mining law, so many of the foreign companies that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars here and pulling out. This will have quite a negative effect on the economy. Returned missionaries who have worked at these mines come to my office often to see if I can suggest possible work for them. I am able to help some of them; and we do have a senior couple here in charge of LDS Employment Services, so they are helping as well.
One couple we have gotten to know well from the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine visit we made have been laid off and came to my office early last week to see if I could help them. But, on Friday they came in and said that another member of the Church here is flying to Hong Kong on business tomorrow and offered to pay their airfare to take their young son with them and be sealed in the Hong Kong Temple.
As you can imagine, they are elated. They had been saving money to go by train in June.
Last night we had dinner with a young woman who assisted us with our livestock project in 2000. She also visited us in Utah and is now married. They have just bought a new apartment near the mountain on the south city of the city, not too far from where Josh and Kim teach. We had a wonderful dinner, but mostly were amazed at the size and beauty of their apartment. It has three bedrooms and a modern kitchen. The interior finish work is as good as anything back home. Their parking is under the building in a heated parking area. The owner of the building has a second one nearby. The two have forty-five apartments and only four are sold. This city is way over-built but the construction goes on.
Linda still gets tired easily, but we are in good health. The weather is getting colder: mornings have been about zero degrees Fahrenheit but the forecast for this week is for some snow and temperatures down to seventeen degrees below.
We love you. Please do write to us.
Mother and Dad
Week Fifteen Already
Our Dear Family:
It hardly seems possible that we have been in Mongolia for almost four months. Times seems to pass slowly only when we think of all of you and how much we miss you. We love you so very much.
With Joshua's help I sent a few photos to you earlier this evening. These should give you some idea of our life here and prove that we are still alive. Not only are we alive, but we are doing quite well. We have been busy this past week; but it has been a good week and we have not gotten too tired.
We appreciated talking with Mother and Tamar. It is good to get news from home first-hand. We spoke with Mother just after she had returned from Aunt Marjorie's funeral. She said it was a good funeral and she was not tired even after the long day traveling to Richfield, going to the funeral and then the cemetery and then riding back to Orem. She said that she still gets lonesome but is very grateful for those of you who visit her. She sleeps well and said that she has no pain at all.
Linda's family history work keeps her very busy, and the assistant she has trained have been very helpful. Now, however, they want to change to something else. I do hope they stay with her so that she can get the work done and not have to train new people.
Tomorrow morning will be my last English class with the judges in the district court. The new couple, Elder and Sister Caldwell, who
arrived a week ago will take the class and I will begin teaching seminars and teachers at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology, the university I have worked most closely with since 1995.
The last senior Elder assigned to try to find and reactivate returned missionaries, who returned home a month ago, told me that he gave up looking for them after a few months because it was just too frustrating. I can understand the even better now: my secretary and I are finding long-lost missionaries quite regularly, but reactivation is a real challenge and the process and difficult and tedious. It is worth all of the challenge, though, and I will probably be doing it right up until the time we come home. Too, the branch leaders upon whom I must depend to help find the returned missionaries just do not seem to sense the need to go out and find the lost ones.
I continue to see and enjoy the company of close friends I have made over the past fifteen years. Last night we had dinner at the home of Sodnomdorj and Yanjin. They are especially close to us, and it was pleasant being with them.
Joshua and Kimberly came to our apartment after their church meetings and we had dinner and enjoyed a long visit. They are doing well but do get frustrated with the behavior of other foreign teachers at their school.
Each day gets a little colder now. Yesterday and today were especially cold. We are grateful for our warm apartment and our warm clothing.
We love you and miss you so very much.
Love, Grandpa and Grandma Jackson
Update on Mongolian life for the Jacksons
My dearest Children and Cherished Siblings,
How great it is to get a weekly letter from some of you. I will try to be as diligent also. It is go good to know how and what all of you are doing. It sounds from your letters, that all of your family, including youselves, are extremely busy in worthwhile things.
We have had a busy week ourselves, and the next week of Thanksgiving, will be even more so. I canceled both my Tuesday and Thursday evening classes to help prepare for all the Mongolian missionaries in the Ulaanbaatar area (99). All of the sisters are helping. I am to make 2 large batches of dressing, a pumpkin cake, and buy 8 dozen couisants. Today I cut all of the bread so it could dry out by Wednesday (the day we are serving the missionaries) and cut and cooked the onion and celery. I'll put it together Wednesday morning and bake it at the church. My little 2-burner stove is too small for a regular dripper-size cake pan. Sister Anderson our Mission Mother had a training meeting in Hong Kong and brought home canned pumpkin and cranberry sauce. One of the English-speaking members, who has a private plane, brought 2 turkeys to Mongolia. They are going to roast them and chunk the meat and put it in chicken gravey to serve over instant potatoes. We'll have dressisng, cranaberry sauce, and many other goodies for the missionaries.
I am feeling well and working hard at genealogy. I have good assistants who come into the center and help the mongolian members transfer their Mongolian information to English PAF.
Dad goes on a walk-about every Saturday morning to the big black market called the "Zaa", which is a nice walk for him and he really enjoys it. I usually stay at home to do the washing and cooking for the week. It is too cold now for me to walk that far. It is below 0 most of the time now. Dad loves it! Oh, it will get much colder, about 40 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit.
Our apartment is lovely and nice and warm, in fact, we've even have had to turn the temperature down!
Our daily 1/2 mile to the Service Center, where our offices are, takes me about 25 minutes. Dad will walk with me when it gets icy. Next week it is supposed to snow Tuesday and Wednesday and after the people pack down the snow, it will be icy the rest of the winter. Our clothes are very warm and comfortable, that is not a problem. We sure pile on the layers, though.
We are so grateful that all of our family spent time together cleaning up the yards. Thank you so much. It is great to hear of all of you doing things together!
We want to express our love to all of you and tell you how proud we are of each one of you! We certainly do miss all of you!!! But, the work we are doing here is very important!
Take good care of yourselves.
Love Eternally, Your Mother, Sister Linda Lou Jackson
Message from a Re-Activated German Brother Here
Dear loved ones,
As you well know, we are getting closer to my birthday. Every year there is a celebration in my honor and I think that this year the celebration will be repeated. During this time there are many people shopping for gifts, there are many radio announcements, TV commercials, and in every part of the world everyone is talking that my birthday is getting closer and closer.
It is really very nice to know, that at least once a year, some people think of me. As you know, the celebration of my birthday began many years ago. At first people seemed to understand and be thankful of all that I did for them, but in these times, no one seems to know the reason for the celebration. Family and friends get together and have a lot of fun, but they don't know the meaning of the celebration.
I remember that last year there was a great feast in my honor. The dinner table was full of delicious foods, pastries, fruits, assorted nuts and chocolates. The decorations were exquisite and there were many, many beautifully wrapped gifts. But, do you want to know something? I wasn't invited. I was the guest of honor and they didn't remember to send me an invitation. The party was for me, but when that great day came, I was left outside, they closed the door in my face .... and I wanted to be with them and share their table.
In truth, that didn't surprise me because in the last few years all close their doors to me. Since I wasn't invited, I decided to enter the party without making any noise. I went in and stood in a corner. They were all drinking; there were some who were drunk and telling jokes and laughing at everything. They were having a grand time. To top it all, this big fat man all dressed in red wearing a long white beard entered the room yelling Ho-Ho-Ho! He seemed drunk. He sat on the sofa and all the children ran to him, saying: "Santa Claus, Santa Claus" .. as if the party were in his honor!
At 12 Midnight all the people began to hug each other; I extended my arms waiting for someone to hug me and ... do you know .... no one hugged me. Suddenly they all began to share gifts. They opened them one by one with great expectation. When all had been opened, I looked to see if, maybe, there was one for me.
What would you feel if on your birthday everybody shared gifts and you did not get one? I then understood that I was unwanted at that party and quietly left.
Every year it gets worse. People only remember to eat and drink, the gifts, the parties and nobody remembers me. I would like this Christmas that you allow me to enter into your life. I would like that you recognize the fact that almost two thousand years ago I came to this world to give my life for you, on the cross, to save you. Today, I only want that you believe this with all your heart.
I want to share something with you. As many didn't invite me to their party, I will have my own celebration, a grandiose party that no one has ever imagined, a spectacular party.
I'm still making the final arrangements. Today I am sending out many invitations and there is an invitation for you. I want to know if you wish to attend and I will make a reservation for you and write your name with golden letters in my great guest book. Only those on the guest list will be invited to the party. Those who don't answer the invitation will be left outside. Be prepared because when all is ready you will be part of my great party.
See you soon.
I Love you!
Jesus
P.S.
Please share this message with your loved ones, before Christmas.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
The Blessings God has Promised You (Letter to Returned Mongolia Missionaries)
Our Dear Returned Missionaries:
Always remember how much we love and respect you. You are Children of God and He, too, is very concerned about you. We are pleased that so many of you are still fully active in the Church; we pray for those of you who may be less active now and do hope that you will come back to your Savior and the Church soon.
Especially, I thank those of you who wrote to me during the past week. It is so very good to hear from you. I hope that more of you write this week. Some of you sent e-mails this week with e-mail addresses for returned missionaries that we did not have in our records. Thank you very much. We do ask that all of you send us e-mail addresses of returned missionaries that you correspond with. We still lack more than 300 e-mail addresses for our returned Mongolian missionaries. Please help us.
The Lord's work continues to go well in Mongolia but will go much better when all of the returned missionaries come back to activity and accept leadership and teaching responsibility in the branches and districts. The Lord love you and needs you.
I have recently been assigned by President Andersen to attend and be an adviser to Khan-Uul Branch. It is good to see a returned missionary, President Tsog, serving so well there. However, he needs a lot of help in all of the organizations in the branch. I will work with him to strengthen the returned missionaries there. Also, we contact all of the branch presidents in Mongolia each week to encourage them to find and strengthen returned missionaries in their branches. We are making progress, but we need your help both in always being fully active and serving in your branch or ward and in helping us find and strengthen other missionaries.
I have thought a lot about two scriptures this week that remind us of our blessings in the Gospel and our responsibility to our fellow-members. The first is Doctrine and Covenants 76:5-10. Please read this. It tell us of the blessings God has prepared for us, and in verses five and six, the Lord says: "...I, the Lord, am merciful and gracious unto those who fear me, and delight to honor those who serve me in righteousness and truth unto the end. Great shall be their reward and eternal shall be their glory." The second is, Mosiah 3:8-10.
Here, Alma tells his people before their baptism what being baptized really means. Please read this and note especially our duties to help our fellow-members in verse 9.
Please write soon. We love you. May God bless you always.
Elder Malan Jackson
Always remember how much we love and respect you. You are Children of God and He, too, is very concerned about you. We are pleased that so many of you are still fully active in the Church; we pray for those of you who may be less active now and do hope that you will come back to your Savior and the Church soon.
Especially, I thank those of you who wrote to me during the past week. It is so very good to hear from you. I hope that more of you write this week. Some of you sent e-mails this week with e-mail addresses for returned missionaries that we did not have in our records. Thank you very much. We do ask that all of you send us e-mail addresses of returned missionaries that you correspond with. We still lack more than 300 e-mail addresses for our returned Mongolian missionaries. Please help us.
The Lord's work continues to go well in Mongolia but will go much better when all of the returned missionaries come back to activity and accept leadership and teaching responsibility in the branches and districts. The Lord love you and needs you.
I have recently been assigned by President Andersen to attend and be an adviser to Khan-Uul Branch. It is good to see a returned missionary, President Tsog, serving so well there. However, he needs a lot of help in all of the organizations in the branch. I will work with him to strengthen the returned missionaries there. Also, we contact all of the branch presidents in Mongolia each week to encourage them to find and strengthen returned missionaries in their branches. We are making progress, but we need your help both in always being fully active and serving in your branch or ward and in helping us find and strengthen other missionaries.
I have thought a lot about two scriptures this week that remind us of our blessings in the Gospel and our responsibility to our fellow-members. The first is Doctrine and Covenants 76:5-10. Please read this. It tell us of the blessings God has prepared for us, and in verses five and six, the Lord says: "...I, the Lord, am merciful and gracious unto those who fear me, and delight to honor those who serve me in righteousness and truth unto the end. Great shall be their reward and eternal shall be their glory." The second is, Mosiah 3:8-10.
Here, Alma tells his people before their baptism what being baptized really means. Please read this and note especially our duties to help our fellow-members in verse 9.
Please write soon. We love you. May God bless you always.
Elder Malan Jackson
Sunday, November 16, 2008
A Garage Sale in Mongolia?
Our Dear Family:
We just returned from our meetings at the Khan-Uul Branch. They were very good. Linda and I both spoke, she on families and family history and I about how blessed we are to be members of the Church and our responsibility to help our brothers and sisters who are less-active or need help in other ways. From the scriptures I read Ephesians 3:19-21, Doctrine and Covenants 76:5-10, and Mosiah 18:7-10. Our words seemed to stir some souls in the congregation.
Both Tsegmed and Erica were at the meeting with us. Tsegmed is the artist I brought to Utah for training (he was then President of the Mongolian University of Culture) and then back again after he feel into a canyon and suffered brain trauma; we brought Erica to Utah to study, and just after she graduated from UVSC cancer developed in her brain. We arranged for brain surgery, but after the second time, the doctors said they could do no more. We brought her back with us when we came to Mongolia. She seems to be doing better now, despite her need for seizure and pain medications from the U.S.
After our meeting we saw a very precious young woman whom we brought to Utah to study when she was seventeen years old. When she graduated from UVSC, we lost track of her until we saw her on Temple Square wearing a missionary nameplate. She had gone from UVSC to BYU-Idaho and was baptized and called on a mission there. She is a bright light in her branch here.
We are now preparing dinner for the new senior couple, the Caldwells from Magna, who arrived here this week. Josh and Kim will join us also. We are roasting a chicken and will also have cooked beets, carrot salad, Mongolian meat-filled bao-tzu called boz, and whipped potatoes with chicken gravy (I actually found a electric hand beater this week. It was made in Turkey and is very good quality). We will have bottled peaches for dessert.
On Thursday of this week, we attended a zone conference (there are three zones in Ulaanbaatar and conferences were held on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday). I spoke about our missionary search program and asked the missionaries to strengthen their help in this effort--actually I gave the same speech in all three conferences. Being there brought good memories, especially since President Andersen referred often to his mission in Taiwan with us.
I have finally gotten agreement from both BYU-Hawaii and the Mongolian University of Science and Technology that they will meet in the spring and work out a cooperative arrangement between them. President Wheelwright at BYU-H was one of President Andersen's professors at Harvard; all of the people I am working with at the university here were in my training groups in Utah. They have not had English teachers from the Church, so I will start teaching there soon.
I have located quite a few missing missionaries this week: one of them walked into my office on Monday and asked if I was Elder Jackson. Another missionary had forwarded my weekly e-mail to him. He was converted in the Czech Republic while attending University there and called on a mission from there. He served in Roseville California and then came back to Mongolia for a few months. For the past five years he has been in Korea working in a hotel. He is anxious to be active here; too, I introduced him to the front desk manager at the Chinggis Khan Hotel (a returned missionary) and he will probably get a job there.
On Thursday morning Bat-Ulzii came to my office to see me while I was out with Jargal, the missionary from Korea. He left his number so I called him. He said he had heard I was here and wanted very much to see me. He was in my branch at the MTC. He now owns two "Mongolian Barbecues" here, patterned after the ones he saw in Utah. He wants to treat us to dinner but will be out of town this week. We will get together next week.
Yes, a garage sale in Mongolia. When we attended the election party in the clubhouse of Star Apartment, where most of the embassy personnel and wealthy business people live, I picked up a flyer advertising a garage sale yesterday. Being somewhat of an expert on garage sales, I went about an hour early and with my honorary consul ID was allowed into the compound without waiting for the 2:00 p.m. start time. I did get some good things we need, and even a copy of Porter Rockwell: A Biography. I have one at home, but it will be fun to read in this one occasionally here. I had what I wanted when they let the crowd in at 2:00. I looked out the window and thought for sure Chinggis Khan with his horde was bearing down on us. A crowd of Mongolians were truly rushing the door. I got out of the way just in time to save my neck and my treasures, but the horde were soon shoving, elbowing, kicking, and crushing the tables. I made my way to the door and walked back to our apartment, picking up our blue bucket filled with six liters of fresh milk on the way. Our elevator has been out of order for four days, so I quite wore myself out climbing the nine flights of stairs to our apartment.
It continues to cool down almost daily now. This morning it was a few degrees below zero. We hardly notice it with our warm coats on, and fortunately the little bit of snow that has fallen is melted.
We love you.
Love,
Mother and Dad
We just returned from our meetings at the Khan-Uul Branch. They were very good. Linda and I both spoke, she on families and family history and I about how blessed we are to be members of the Church and our responsibility to help our brothers and sisters who are less-active or need help in other ways. From the scriptures I read Ephesians 3:19-21, Doctrine and Covenants 76:5-10, and Mosiah 18:7-10. Our words seemed to stir some souls in the congregation.
Both Tsegmed and Erica were at the meeting with us. Tsegmed is the artist I brought to Utah for training (he was then President of the Mongolian University of Culture) and then back again after he feel into a canyon and suffered brain trauma; we brought Erica to Utah to study, and just after she graduated from UVSC cancer developed in her brain. We arranged for brain surgery, but after the second time, the doctors said they could do no more. We brought her back with us when we came to Mongolia. She seems to be doing better now, despite her need for seizure and pain medications from the U.S.
After our meeting we saw a very precious young woman whom we brought to Utah to study when she was seventeen years old. When she graduated from UVSC, we lost track of her until we saw her on Temple Square wearing a missionary nameplate. She had gone from UVSC to BYU-Idaho and was baptized and called on a mission there. She is a bright light in her branch here.
We are now preparing dinner for the new senior couple, the Caldwells from Magna, who arrived here this week. Josh and Kim will join us also. We are roasting a chicken and will also have cooked beets, carrot salad, Mongolian meat-filled bao-tzu called boz, and whipped potatoes with chicken gravy (I actually found a electric hand beater this week. It was made in Turkey and is very good quality). We will have bottled peaches for dessert.
On Thursday of this week, we attended a zone conference (there are three zones in Ulaanbaatar and conferences were held on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday). I spoke about our missionary search program and asked the missionaries to strengthen their help in this effort--actually I gave the same speech in all three conferences. Being there brought good memories, especially since President Andersen referred often to his mission in Taiwan with us.
I have finally gotten agreement from both BYU-Hawaii and the Mongolian University of Science and Technology that they will meet in the spring and work out a cooperative arrangement between them. President Wheelwright at BYU-H was one of President Andersen's professors at Harvard; all of the people I am working with at the university here were in my training groups in Utah. They have not had English teachers from the Church, so I will start teaching there soon.
I have located quite a few missing missionaries this week: one of them walked into my office on Monday and asked if I was Elder Jackson. Another missionary had forwarded my weekly e-mail to him. He was converted in the Czech Republic while attending University there and called on a mission from there. He served in Roseville California and then came back to Mongolia for a few months. For the past five years he has been in Korea working in a hotel. He is anxious to be active here; too, I introduced him to the front desk manager at the Chinggis Khan Hotel (a returned missionary) and he will probably get a job there.
On Thursday morning Bat-Ulzii came to my office to see me while I was out with Jargal, the missionary from Korea. He left his number so I called him. He said he had heard I was here and wanted very much to see me. He was in my branch at the MTC. He now owns two "Mongolian Barbecues" here, patterned after the ones he saw in Utah. He wants to treat us to dinner but will be out of town this week. We will get together next week.
Yes, a garage sale in Mongolia. When we attended the election party in the clubhouse of Star Apartment, where most of the embassy personnel and wealthy business people live, I picked up a flyer advertising a garage sale yesterday. Being somewhat of an expert on garage sales, I went about an hour early and with my honorary consul ID was allowed into the compound without waiting for the 2:00 p.m. start time. I did get some good things we need, and even a copy of Porter Rockwell: A Biography. I have one at home, but it will be fun to read in this one occasionally here. I had what I wanted when they let the crowd in at 2:00. I looked out the window and thought for sure Chinggis Khan with his horde was bearing down on us. A crowd of Mongolians were truly rushing the door. I got out of the way just in time to save my neck and my treasures, but the horde were soon shoving, elbowing, kicking, and crushing the tables. I made my way to the door and walked back to our apartment, picking up our blue bucket filled with six liters of fresh milk on the way. Our elevator has been out of order for four days, so I quite wore myself out climbing the nine flights of stairs to our apartment.
It continues to cool down almost daily now. This morning it was a few degrees below zero. We hardly notice it with our warm coats on, and fortunately the little bit of snow that has fallen is melted.
We love you.
Love,
Mother and Dad
Monday, November 10, 2008
Changes Always; Family is Constant, We Love You
Our Dear, Dear Family:
Today we attended the branch that President Andersen assigned to us last week. The branch president and his wife are both returned missionaries and they have fairly good attendance at their meetings. However, the branch president is carrying most of the load in the branch. His two counselors need training; he has no Elder's quorum president, no Relief Society president, no Sunday School president, no home teachers, and very few visiting teachers. His members just do not seem to accept the fact that they, too, have responsibility for the functioning of the branch. He had no end of questions and no translated handbooks. We will be doing a lot of training; and he asked me to be Sunday School president. He asked Linda to help with family history, Relief Society, and primary. Also, he asked both of us to speak in Sacrament Meeting next Sunday. With everything else we are doing, this will make us almost too busy.
I spent most of this past week working on our returned missionary project. Unfortunately, I am not getting the help from the branches in the mission that I must have. I will call of the branch presidents again, and this time I will ask that they report by the end of November on each missionary called from their branch. My secretary has typed up all of the information we have received and I reviewed it, only to find that not only have not received much information but that some of the RM names have been dropped from our master list. I can see now that I will work on this project every day I am here and there will still be a lot to do. I have considered every possible reason I can think of for member inactivity and still cannot understand why even returned missionaries can forget their mission activity and the testimony they bore so many times in their mission field. I will stay with it; it will take a lot of work and a lot of prayer.
I talked with BYU-Hawaii President Wheelwright on the telephone on Thursday to discuss their interest in relationships with higher education in Mongolia. They have had some exchanges with the Medical University here, but this institution is not a good fit for them.
He had a lot of questions that I could answer because of my work with the colleges and universities here and said that by spring he would like me to help them set things up with the Mongolian University of Science and Technology, the university I have worked most closely with over the past twelve years. They have implemented the things I taught the university presidents I had in Utah best of all the colleges and universities here.
We were invited to an election night party by the American Embassy and watched the returns on several television sets. I was surprised at the large number of Americans there; and almost without exception they were Obama supporters. We have found, too, the the people here who are aware of American politics are very pleased with Obama's victory.
Thank you, Tamar, for calling us. It was wonderful talking with you. Also, I called James this morning and we had a fun talk. Thanks to each of you, too, who has written to us. Our e-mail's are very important to us.
The weather is still warm for this time of the year, and our friends tell us it is most unusual. Morning temperatures have not quite dropped to zero; and the days are always sunny. The few snow showers we have had melted the day we had them.
We had dinner last night with Josh and Kim in their apartment at the American School of Ulaanbaatar. The school is at the base of the mountains just south of Ulaanbaatar. This area has built up just over the past few years and is very popular because it is above the coal smoke in the Ulaanbaatar basin.
Odnyam and his wife picked us up after dinner since taxis do not ordinarily show up out there at night. They hope to go to the U.S. for two or three months (she is pregnant and would like to have her child born in California). Odnyam has a multiple-entry visa; she will apply for her visa in the morning (Monday).
Tsegmed (the artist I brought to Utah for medical treatment and who was baptized there together with his wife, Tuya) came to Sacrament meeting with us again today. He has been inactive since he returned to Mongolia, but coming to Church with us seems to be re-kindling his testimony.
We are waiting now for Sodnomdorj, his wife Yanjin, and two of their children to join us for dinner. I trained Sodnomdorj in Utah when he was president of one of the universities here; Yanjin lived with us for several months while she learned English.
AT 8:00 tonight I will go to the mission office to set apart Elder Taylor. He is the son of Sumkhuu and Chimgee, two of the very first group of people I met here in 1993. I am not quite sure how he got the name Taylor; and his little brother's English name is Robert.
Linda and I had quick lunch at the Chinese restaurant near our offices and were very pleased to meet a former ambassador to the U.S., Choinhor, and his wife. We hosted them in Utah and worked closely with him in the Mongolian Embassy in Washington. It was a very pleasant occasion.
We are both in good health but tired. We are just going to have to take more time to do all of things we have been assigned. Slow down, I guess if possible.
We love you.
Today we attended the branch that President Andersen assigned to us last week. The branch president and his wife are both returned missionaries and they have fairly good attendance at their meetings. However, the branch president is carrying most of the load in the branch. His two counselors need training; he has no Elder's quorum president, no Relief Society president, no Sunday School president, no home teachers, and very few visiting teachers. His members just do not seem to accept the fact that they, too, have responsibility for the functioning of the branch. He had no end of questions and no translated handbooks. We will be doing a lot of training; and he asked me to be Sunday School president. He asked Linda to help with family history, Relief Society, and primary. Also, he asked both of us to speak in Sacrament Meeting next Sunday. With everything else we are doing, this will make us almost too busy.
I spent most of this past week working on our returned missionary project. Unfortunately, I am not getting the help from the branches in the mission that I must have. I will call of the branch presidents again, and this time I will ask that they report by the end of November on each missionary called from their branch. My secretary has typed up all of the information we have received and I reviewed it, only to find that not only have not received much information but that some of the RM names have been dropped from our master list. I can see now that I will work on this project every day I am here and there will still be a lot to do. I have considered every possible reason I can think of for member inactivity and still cannot understand why even returned missionaries can forget their mission activity and the testimony they bore so many times in their mission field. I will stay with it; it will take a lot of work and a lot of prayer.
I talked with BYU-Hawaii President Wheelwright on the telephone on Thursday to discuss their interest in relationships with higher education in Mongolia. They have had some exchanges with the Medical University here, but this institution is not a good fit for them.
He had a lot of questions that I could answer because of my work with the colleges and universities here and said that by spring he would like me to help them set things up with the Mongolian University of Science and Technology, the university I have worked most closely with over the past twelve years. They have implemented the things I taught the university presidents I had in Utah best of all the colleges and universities here.
We were invited to an election night party by the American Embassy and watched the returns on several television sets. I was surprised at the large number of Americans there; and almost without exception they were Obama supporters. We have found, too, the the people here who are aware of American politics are very pleased with Obama's victory.
Thank you, Tamar, for calling us. It was wonderful talking with you. Also, I called James this morning and we had a fun talk. Thanks to each of you, too, who has written to us. Our e-mail's are very important to us.
The weather is still warm for this time of the year, and our friends tell us it is most unusual. Morning temperatures have not quite dropped to zero; and the days are always sunny. The few snow showers we have had melted the day we had them.
We had dinner last night with Josh and Kim in their apartment at the American School of Ulaanbaatar. The school is at the base of the mountains just south of Ulaanbaatar. This area has built up just over the past few years and is very popular because it is above the coal smoke in the Ulaanbaatar basin.
Odnyam and his wife picked us up after dinner since taxis do not ordinarily show up out there at night. They hope to go to the U.S. for two or three months (she is pregnant and would like to have her child born in California). Odnyam has a multiple-entry visa; she will apply for her visa in the morning (Monday).
Tsegmed (the artist I brought to Utah for medical treatment and who was baptized there together with his wife, Tuya) came to Sacrament meeting with us again today. He has been inactive since he returned to Mongolia, but coming to Church with us seems to be re-kindling his testimony.
We are waiting now for Sodnomdorj, his wife Yanjin, and two of their children to join us for dinner. I trained Sodnomdorj in Utah when he was president of one of the universities here; Yanjin lived with us for several months while she learned English.
AT 8:00 tonight I will go to the mission office to set apart Elder Taylor. He is the son of Sumkhuu and Chimgee, two of the very first group of people I met here in 1993. I am not quite sure how he got the name Taylor; and his little brother's English name is Robert.
Linda and I had quick lunch at the Chinese restaurant near our offices and were very pleased to meet a former ambassador to the U.S., Choinhor, and his wife. We hosted them in Utah and worked closely with him in the Mongolian Embassy in Washington. It was a very pleasant occasion.
We are both in good health but tired. We are just going to have to take more time to do all of things we have been assigned. Slow down, I guess if possible.
We love you.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Weekly Update - "To The North"
Our Dear, Dear Family:
I am writing this letter to you rather late tonight from the Kiwi Hotel in Darkhan, a city north of Ulaanbaatar.
We left Ulaanbaatar early Friday morning (Linda, Kim, Josh, and I). I was assigned by the mission president to conduct a re-convened disciplinary council for two returned missionaries in Darkhan and then to visit all five branches in the Darkhan District to implement my returned missionary search and re-activation program.
Yesterday, Friday, we drove to the Zuunhara Branch, the last thirty kilometers being on very rough dirt roads. Zuunhara is a city of about 25,000 people with branch membership being about 250 people. They rent an old hospital building there and are renovating it into a very nice chapel. The branch president is a Mongolian missionary. There are one non-Mongolian and two non-Mongolian Sisters serving there. We returned back to the main highway and drove on to about five miles from the Russian border to the Selenge Branch in the city of Sukhbaatar. Again, the branch president is an outstanding Mongolian missionary. There we met a senior couple and several American missionaries. I went over the RM program with the branch president; we delivered mail; and Linda discussed family history. Sukhbaatar is in the mountains and we saw some very beautiful scenery. We also got snowed a bit.
We returned back to Darkhan and the Kiwi Hotel last night and then I convened the disciplinary councils. Both went well. The district president, President Zorigt, is a very fine man; the branch president, President Chukka, was in my branch at the MTC. There are two branches in Darkhan; we had the council in the first branch.
It snowed during the night, and we drove the three hours to Erdenet on very slick roads. There I went over the RM program with the very strong branch president, an older man who works at the big copper mine there. We had lunch with Elder and Sister Hodges who were in the MTC with us. Erdenet is the carpet-weaving center of Mongolia. Kim bought a beautify 9 x 12 rug for their apartment. We bought a smaller one for ours. Erdenet has a beautiful red brick chapel.
Back in Darkhan, we had dinner at the Texas Steak House with Zenemedeer, and old friend from the University here whom I trained in Utah, and his wife.
Tomorrow we will go to sacrament meeting in Darkhan 2nd Branch and then return to Ulaanbaatar.
On Wednesday night of this week, we invited Tsegmed and Tuya to our apartment for dinner. They are the two artists whom we brought to Utah when Tsegmed was injured and we got free critical medical treatment for him. I asked Tsegmed to paint a picture for me similar to red one in our basement but without the lines in the sky. He did paint one, about four feet by five feet. It is framed in a gold frame. The painting itself shows a man on horseback on a ledge overlooking a valley somewhat like monument valley with a magnificent red and orange sunset.
Also this week I met another old friend, Idevkten. I helped his daughter study at UVSC. She graduated, went to BYU where she was baptized, and now works in New York. We also brought his son who had a serious cleft palate and hare lip. We found doctors and dentists to help him. He is back in Ulaanbaatar now, is married, and has a baby. Idevkten will be named Deputy Minister for The Environment and Tourist this coming week. Dawagiv, past chief of the Police Academy, whom I also trained in Utah, brought us five kinds of wheat to try for cereal and cooking. We tried one on Friday morning; it was delicious.
The Ulaanbaatar weather is still not too cold. Perhaps this winter will not be as cold as anticipated.
Both of us are doing well. Linda has enjoyed this trip very much. She seems quite rested tonight.
We love you.
Love, Dad
I am writing this letter to you rather late tonight from the Kiwi Hotel in Darkhan, a city north of Ulaanbaatar.
We left Ulaanbaatar early Friday morning (Linda, Kim, Josh, and I). I was assigned by the mission president to conduct a re-convened disciplinary council for two returned missionaries in Darkhan and then to visit all five branches in the Darkhan District to implement my returned missionary search and re-activation program.
Yesterday, Friday, we drove to the Zuunhara Branch, the last thirty kilometers being on very rough dirt roads. Zuunhara is a city of about 25,000 people with branch membership being about 250 people. They rent an old hospital building there and are renovating it into a very nice chapel. The branch president is a Mongolian missionary. There are one non-Mongolian and two non-Mongolian Sisters serving there. We returned back to the main highway and drove on to about five miles from the Russian border to the Selenge Branch in the city of Sukhbaatar. Again, the branch president is an outstanding Mongolian missionary. There we met a senior couple and several American missionaries. I went over the RM program with the branch president; we delivered mail; and Linda discussed family history. Sukhbaatar is in the mountains and we saw some very beautiful scenery. We also got snowed a bit.
We returned back to Darkhan and the Kiwi Hotel last night and then I convened the disciplinary councils. Both went well. The district president, President Zorigt, is a very fine man; the branch president, President Chukka, was in my branch at the MTC. There are two branches in Darkhan; we had the council in the first branch.
It snowed during the night, and we drove the three hours to Erdenet on very slick roads. There I went over the RM program with the very strong branch president, an older man who works at the big copper mine there. We had lunch with Elder and Sister Hodges who were in the MTC with us. Erdenet is the carpet-weaving center of Mongolia. Kim bought a beautify 9 x 12 rug for their apartment. We bought a smaller one for ours. Erdenet has a beautiful red brick chapel.
Back in Darkhan, we had dinner at the Texas Steak House with Zenemedeer, and old friend from the University here whom I trained in Utah, and his wife.
Tomorrow we will go to sacrament meeting in Darkhan 2nd Branch and then return to Ulaanbaatar.
On Wednesday night of this week, we invited Tsegmed and Tuya to our apartment for dinner. They are the two artists whom we brought to Utah when Tsegmed was injured and we got free critical medical treatment for him. I asked Tsegmed to paint a picture for me similar to red one in our basement but without the lines in the sky. He did paint one, about four feet by five feet. It is framed in a gold frame. The painting itself shows a man on horseback on a ledge overlooking a valley somewhat like monument valley with a magnificent red and orange sunset.
Also this week I met another old friend, Idevkten. I helped his daughter study at UVSC. She graduated, went to BYU where she was baptized, and now works in New York. We also brought his son who had a serious cleft palate and hare lip. We found doctors and dentists to help him. He is back in Ulaanbaatar now, is married, and has a baby. Idevkten will be named Deputy Minister for The Environment and Tourist this coming week. Dawagiv, past chief of the Police Academy, whom I also trained in Utah, brought us five kinds of wheat to try for cereal and cooking. We tried one on Friday morning; it was delicious.
The Ulaanbaatar weather is still not too cold. Perhaps this winter will not be as cold as anticipated.
Both of us are doing well. Linda has enjoyed this trip very much. She seems quite rested tonight.
We love you.
Love, Dad
Monday, October 27, 2008
Weekly Update
Our dear, dear Family:
Josh and Kim came to our apartment after our Church meetings and we talked and had dinner together. So, I did not get the letter to you written on Sunday as planned. It is now 4:15 p.m. on Monday, and I have been trying all day to write to you. We never lack for something to keep us busy here.
The past week has been very good but very busy (to a point, I guess busy is good; to a point).
We appreciate the e-mails we have received from you. Thanks to all of you who helped with the work on the house in Fremont. Especially, thanks to you, Les, for spearheading this and doing so much of the work yourself. We did receive several pictures from Tamar and Joe. The work and cleaning on the house look outstanding. Again, thank you. Now, we can hardly wait to get home to enjoy it (can you believe, though, that we have been here already three months?).
President Anderson has had our employment missionaries teaching a one-day seminar to all missionaries when they are released mostly about finding work when they get home. They have also taught about marriage and a bit about staying active. I have been assigned to teach the newly-released missionaries Gospel topics that will help them adjust to their release and stay strong and be leaders in the Church. I taught my first group on Monday and it went very well. I will meet with the ones who live in and near Ulaanbaatar each Monday evening for the next three weeks, and then once a month for the next five months. For those outside Ulaanbaatar, I will keep in touch by telephone and e-mail and travel to their branches as possible (some are a day's drive or more from here). I do think this will help us in keeping returned missionaries active.
After weeks of preparation, we had our annual returned missionary conference on Saturday. We had a meeting in the morning, lunch here at the headquarters building, Gospel workshops in the afternoon, and then a party and dance in the evening. I spoke on repentance in the meeting; President Andersen spoke on dating and marriage. We informed the returned missionaries that we will have two returned missionary trips to the Hong Kong temple next year, one in June the other in November. Some of the missionaries have not been to the Temple yet; others who have married since their mission have not been sealed in the temple. Linda will help them to not only get prepared themselves but prepare to do Temple Work for their parents, grandparents, etc. I also challenged every missionary to help reactivate at least one inactive missionary during the coming year. There are 656 returned missionaries called from Mongolia (many went back to the U.S. after their missions or are in other countries and we are trying to find all of them). We did have about 150 at the Conference.
On Tuesday, President Andersen and I had lunch with Amarjargal (I wrote about him earlier: he has been prime minister of Mongolia, foreign minister, and is now a member of parliament). Amarjargal heads the committee on finance and economics in parliament; President Andersen has been an international financial and business expert in Hong Kong for twenty-five year. They had a good talk together, and President Andersen made some suggestions about what can be done to strengthen the economy here. He also offered to help parliament with economic and financial concerns. I feel a lot of good can come from this meeting.
During the week I wrote an article for the Church News entitled "Mongolian Church in the Wilderness" about the little group meeting at the mine in the Gobi, and I selected a few of the pictures I took to accompany the article. President Andersen approved its being sent, so I will get it off soon. Did you see the article in the Church News about your All-Mongolia youth conference? t was quite good. But, because of this coverage of Mongolia I do not know how soon my article might be published.
I have also been planning our trip to the branches north of Ulaanbaatar: Darkhan I, Darkhan II, Zuunhara, Erdenet, and Selenge. I will visit all of them and spend some time with their leaders. Linda will teach family history to their specialists. It will be a lot of driving, but we have a fairly new Land Cruiser to drive, so it should not be too bad. I will tell you more about the trip next week. We return home on Sunday.
Many of us have been reading about Curtis Johnson's battle to get a new liver; I have also had that challenge here: a young mother came to my office just on the chance that our being Christian might mean we would help her son, who is in a hospital in Hohot, Inner Mongolia, for a new liver. I gave her all I could afford right now, and her son had had the transplant but is not getting the nutrition and medication he need. I will help more from our money for next month. And some money from a small "consolation" payment I will get from Linda's phen-phen case. China charges even more than the U.S.-- $63,000. This couple have sold everything they own, including their apartment and their cell phone to help.
Today we had lunch with one of Linda's assistants, Dashka, and her family. Her husband, Enkhtuvshkin, was the first member of the Church here. He was baptized in Germany and then came back home. They have a son in Provo, a daughter who just came back for a break from her studies in BYU-Hawaii, another returned missionary son, and three younger daughters. We had a very nice lunch in their ger on the outskirts of the city.
We are both in good health, but Linda still tires easily. I am making certain the she does not overdo.
The weather is not as bad as expected. The streets and sidewalks are clear of ice and the days are sunny. Morning temperatures are sometimes below twenty degrees but well above freezing in the afternoons.
We love you; we miss all of you very much.
Dad
Josh and Kim came to our apartment after our Church meetings and we talked and had dinner together. So, I did not get the letter to you written on Sunday as planned. It is now 4:15 p.m. on Monday, and I have been trying all day to write to you. We never lack for something to keep us busy here.
The past week has been very good but very busy (to a point, I guess busy is good; to a point).
We appreciate the e-mails we have received from you. Thanks to all of you who helped with the work on the house in Fremont. Especially, thanks to you, Les, for spearheading this and doing so much of the work yourself. We did receive several pictures from Tamar and Joe. The work and cleaning on the house look outstanding. Again, thank you. Now, we can hardly wait to get home to enjoy it (can you believe, though, that we have been here already three months?).
President Anderson has had our employment missionaries teaching a one-day seminar to all missionaries when they are released mostly about finding work when they get home. They have also taught about marriage and a bit about staying active. I have been assigned to teach the newly-released missionaries Gospel topics that will help them adjust to their release and stay strong and be leaders in the Church. I taught my first group on Monday and it went very well. I will meet with the ones who live in and near Ulaanbaatar each Monday evening for the next three weeks, and then once a month for the next five months. For those outside Ulaanbaatar, I will keep in touch by telephone and e-mail and travel to their branches as possible (some are a day's drive or more from here). I do think this will help us in keeping returned missionaries active.
After weeks of preparation, we had our annual returned missionary conference on Saturday. We had a meeting in the morning, lunch here at the headquarters building, Gospel workshops in the afternoon, and then a party and dance in the evening. I spoke on repentance in the meeting; President Andersen spoke on dating and marriage. We informed the returned missionaries that we will have two returned missionary trips to the Hong Kong temple next year, one in June the other in November. Some of the missionaries have not been to the Temple yet; others who have married since their mission have not been sealed in the temple. Linda will help them to not only get prepared themselves but prepare to do Temple Work for their parents, grandparents, etc. I also challenged every missionary to help reactivate at least one inactive missionary during the coming year. There are 656 returned missionaries called from Mongolia (many went back to the U.S. after their missions or are in other countries and we are trying to find all of them). We did have about 150 at the Conference.
On Tuesday, President Andersen and I had lunch with Amarjargal (I wrote about him earlier: he has been prime minister of Mongolia, foreign minister, and is now a member of parliament). Amarjargal heads the committee on finance and economics in parliament; President Andersen has been an international financial and business expert in Hong Kong for twenty-five year. They had a good talk together, and President Andersen made some suggestions about what can be done to strengthen the economy here. He also offered to help parliament with economic and financial concerns. I feel a lot of good can come from this meeting.
During the week I wrote an article for the Church News entitled "Mongolian Church in the Wilderness" about the little group meeting at the mine in the Gobi, and I selected a few of the pictures I took to accompany the article. President Andersen approved its being sent, so I will get it off soon. Did you see the article in the Church News about your All-Mongolia youth conference? t was quite good. But, because of this coverage of Mongolia I do not know how soon my article might be published.
I have also been planning our trip to the branches north of Ulaanbaatar: Darkhan I, Darkhan II, Zuunhara, Erdenet, and Selenge. I will visit all of them and spend some time with their leaders. Linda will teach family history to their specialists. It will be a lot of driving, but we have a fairly new Land Cruiser to drive, so it should not be too bad. I will tell you more about the trip next week. We return home on Sunday.
Many of us have been reading about Curtis Johnson's battle to get a new liver; I have also had that challenge here: a young mother came to my office just on the chance that our being Christian might mean we would help her son, who is in a hospital in Hohot, Inner Mongolia, for a new liver. I gave her all I could afford right now, and her son had had the transplant but is not getting the nutrition and medication he need. I will help more from our money for next month. And some money from a small "consolation" payment I will get from Linda's phen-phen case. China charges even more than the U.S.-- $63,000. This couple have sold everything they own, including their apartment and their cell phone to help.
Today we had lunch with one of Linda's assistants, Dashka, and her family. Her husband, Enkhtuvshkin, was the first member of the Church here. He was baptized in Germany and then came back home. They have a son in Provo, a daughter who just came back for a break from her studies in BYU-Hawaii, another returned missionary son, and three younger daughters. We had a very nice lunch in their ger on the outskirts of the city.
We are both in good health, but Linda still tires easily. I am making certain the she does not overdo.
The weather is not as bad as expected. The streets and sidewalks are clear of ice and the days are sunny. Morning temperatures are sometimes below twenty degrees but well above freezing in the afternoons.
We love you; we miss all of you very much.
Dad
Friday, October 24, 2008
Letter from Grandma - "Our Life in Mongolia"
Dearest Family,
Life here is much busier than I thought it would be, but we're loving it. Last week we flew to the Gobi and spent 3 days with the saints down there - all 5 of them. It was a wonderful experience!! They are such great people. They work 56 days straight - 12-14 hour days, and then 14 days off. I don't know how they do it - most are young, of course. Next weekend we will drive to Darhan and teach. I will meet with the family history director there who is the District President's wife. She came to UB for our last training meeting. Next week we have a member of the Asia Area FH coming to UB. We will go with him to the Archives and hopefully he can advise us on some equipment requests from Hong Kong and give us advice. We've ordered a large backup drive to store all the FH records on. I'm sure he can suggest the best storage organization. All of the Mongolian Genealogical Records are stored in this office. Most branches don't even have computers. We prepare all the names for the temple on PAF and then email them to the HK Temple. We are going to fill out request forms to establish at least 2 new FH centers in the Mission at Darhan and Erdenet.
Hope all of you and yours are well. Dad's room is in the basement and it got flooded with gray water for the second time this year. It really stinks and he was concerned about black mold so since he couldn't find alcohol, he went out and bought two bottles of vodka and sprayed the room to kill the mold. Things are sometimes even funny here. The District President came in and took the rest of the Vodka he was going to spray again tomorrow to spray his room.
Cooking here is another story. Dad somehow got a large wooden box and some insulation from a shipment that came to the Service Center where we work. We are using these and several old blankets we've scrounged to store vegetables on our open patio out our bedroom door. We bought carrots, beets, potatoes cabbage (red and green), onions and garlic. I bought a combination white rice, brown rice, slow cooker (3 hours only) and then keeps your food warm (I sometimes reset it for another 3 hours if I am home and it needs to cook longer), congee (I'm cooking Cantonese juk tonight for tomorrow am, and a steamer. There is no such thing as a crock pot here - this is the closest thing I could find. I've made borsch, chilli, stew, lima beans, etc. in it. It's so nice to come home to a hot meal.
It has turned very cold here now. There is a little snow on the ground and the wind is fierce. I have several layers on today. Dad wore his sheepskin coat and a mink Russian style hat that he bought and some large leather lined gloves. He looked warm. I haven't started to wear my fur coat, but I will soon.
I am teaching English 2 times a week and Malan teaches 2 classes also. We teach 1 hour and 45 minute classes. I do the preparation of the lessons and Dad uses them also. I found a great on-line source: esl-lilbrary.com. They have lesson plans and masters to duplicate. The students seem to really enjoy them. My class is mixed abilities. Some are very advanced and some just barely understand. There are usually 42 in my classes.
We are also going to be assigned the responsibility to oversee some missionaries apartments and assigned to a branch to help. We keep VERY busy.
Our walk to the Service Center is nice. I am concerned how it will be when it is just a sheet of ice all the way, though. So far the boots I bought are working just great. They have really good tread on them and keep my feet really warm.
We sleep on air mattresses on our single beds we have pushed together. We sleep very comfortably. Our apartment is plenty warm. Dad learned how to adjust the temperature, so it is much more comfortable now.
It is so good to read your emails. Thank you all for keeping in touch. You are in our hearts and minds constantly.
Love Eternally,
Your mother, Linda
Life here is much busier than I thought it would be, but we're loving it. Last week we flew to the Gobi and spent 3 days with the saints down there - all 5 of them. It was a wonderful experience!! They are such great people. They work 56 days straight - 12-14 hour days, and then 14 days off. I don't know how they do it - most are young, of course. Next weekend we will drive to Darhan and teach. I will meet with the family history director there who is the District President's wife. She came to UB for our last training meeting. Next week we have a member of the Asia Area FH coming to UB. We will go with him to the Archives and hopefully he can advise us on some equipment requests from Hong Kong and give us advice. We've ordered a large backup drive to store all the FH records on. I'm sure he can suggest the best storage organization. All of the Mongolian Genealogical Records are stored in this office. Most branches don't even have computers. We prepare all the names for the temple on PAF and then email them to the HK Temple. We are going to fill out request forms to establish at least 2 new FH centers in the Mission at Darhan and Erdenet.
Hope all of you and yours are well. Dad's room is in the basement and it got flooded with gray water for the second time this year. It really stinks and he was concerned about black mold so since he couldn't find alcohol, he went out and bought two bottles of vodka and sprayed the room to kill the mold. Things are sometimes even funny here. The District President came in and took the rest of the Vodka he was going to spray again tomorrow to spray his room.
Cooking here is another story. Dad somehow got a large wooden box and some insulation from a shipment that came to the Service Center where we work. We are using these and several old blankets we've scrounged to store vegetables on our open patio out our bedroom door. We bought carrots, beets, potatoes cabbage (red and green), onions and garlic. I bought a combination white rice, brown rice, slow cooker (3 hours only) and then keeps your food warm (I sometimes reset it for another 3 hours if I am home and it needs to cook longer), congee (I'm cooking Cantonese juk tonight for tomorrow am, and a steamer. There is no such thing as a crock pot here - this is the closest thing I could find. I've made borsch, chilli, stew, lima beans, etc. in it. It's so nice to come home to a hot meal.
It has turned very cold here now. There is a little snow on the ground and the wind is fierce. I have several layers on today. Dad wore his sheepskin coat and a mink Russian style hat that he bought and some large leather lined gloves. He looked warm. I haven't started to wear my fur coat, but I will soon.
I am teaching English 2 times a week and Malan teaches 2 classes also. We teach 1 hour and 45 minute classes. I do the preparation of the lessons and Dad uses them also. I found a great on-line source: esl-lilbrary.com. They have lesson plans and masters to duplicate. The students seem to really enjoy them. My class is mixed abilities. Some are very advanced and some just barely understand. There are usually 42 in my classes.
We are also going to be assigned the responsibility to oversee some missionaries apartments and assigned to a branch to help. We keep VERY busy.
Our walk to the Service Center is nice. I am concerned how it will be when it is just a sheet of ice all the way, though. So far the boots I bought are working just great. They have really good tread on them and keep my feet really warm.
We sleep on air mattresses on our single beds we have pushed together. We sleep very comfortably. Our apartment is plenty warm. Dad learned how to adjust the temperature, so it is much more comfortable now.
It is so good to read your emails. Thank you all for keeping in touch. You are in our hearts and minds constantly.
Love Eternally,
Your mother, Linda
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
A Week to Remember
Our Dear, Dear Family:
We did make it back from the Gobi alive, arriving in Ulaanbaatar just before noon today. The trip by plane is not bad: 560 km, less than one and one-half hours.
We left our apartment at 4:30 a.m. Friday morning to get to the Chinggis Khan Airport for a 7:00 a.m. departure. The mining company, Ivanhoe Mines, had arranged for us to travel on their charter flight which flies their workers back and forth from the mines for time at home. Most of the workers work 56 days at the mines and then have two weeks at home. There are about 600 workers there now, 100 of them day workers from the local area.
The assistant to the vice president in charge of this mine, Bayarmaa, and the leader of our Church group there, Aibek, met us at the company air strip. Bayarmaa was assigned to be with us all of the time; Aibek and other members joined us as they could. Bayarmaa is married to a Canadian (Ivanhoe Mines is based in Canada); she spent one year in medical school here and then graduated from the National University of Mongolia with a law degree. She was a very pleasant and delightful person to be with.
There are about twenty members of the Church working at the mines (the Mongolian name is Oyu Tolgoi, which means Turquoise Hill), but maybe half of them are less active and some actually avoided any contact with us. We met with up to ten of the members in three meetings: an informal meeting in our apartment (a modular studio apartment that was very comfortable); a fireside on Saturday night; and Sacrament Meeting on Sunday night. Linda and I both spoke in the fireside and the sacrament meeting. The chapel there is a ger where two returned missionaries who married two or three years ago live. The meetings were very spiritual and pleasant. We ate all of our meals in the company cafeteria, together with our members, the miners, translators, and administrators. We became good friends with the chef, who is French. One of his assistants is from India, another from north China. The meals were excellent. The cook being French, he even prepared croissants, chocolate eclairs, home-made ice cream, and French bread. They had two lines: one serving Mongolian food, the other European.
During working hours, when we could not be with the members, Bayarmaa took us sightseeing. We visited the Soum center (a soum is like a county in Utah) named Khan Bogd. It was very different from the many others I have visited: there were new brick homes and quite a number of Land Cruisers. Bayarmaa told us that the people of this town surface mine gold in the nearby canyon. We drove up the hill beside the canyon and walked to the edge to see some very spectacular rock formations and old cottonwoods.
Bayarmaa lived in the Gobi for twenty-eight years. Her first trip out of the desert was when she was eighteen years old. Her family had raised camels and other livestock, so she was able to tell us a lot about life in the Gobi. We saw no green grass anywhere, but the camels, horses, cows, sheep, and goats were fatter than the animals I see on green pastures here. There was a carpet of dried grass and plants in the area we traveled, and Bayarmaa said it was very nutritious for animals. The only water we saw other than the wells at the mine site was in a pool in a canyon at the edge of a rocky range of hills. It was a very beautiful spot with turquoise-colored water in a pool forty feet across and old gnarled cottonwoods among the huge rocks.
We also stopped early one morning at the ger of a camel herder. He had about twenty-five young camels tethered near his ger and we could see the mothers in the distance. At almost exactly 10:30 the huge mother camels came trotting toward the ger and were soon feeding their babies. We went out among the herd and quite enjoyed watching and hearing them. The herder said that he sold the male camels and sometimes the younger ones. A large camel would bring about $1,000.
In the afternoon we drove into a more remote area with huge ledges, not unlike the ones above Fremont. Here we visited the site of a Buddhist temple constructed in the early 1800's. The Russians destroyed it in about 1940. The walls of what had been quite a large complex are still standing; and the CEO of Ivanhoe Mines donated $130,000 to build a huge stupa eight smaller stupas surrounding it in round circles, the whole things shaped like a lotus. The main stupa was painted brilliant white, with a gold Buddhist lotus on the tip of the spire. There is a golden, seated Buddha inside the stupa; and the inside and the eaves are decorated in rainbow colors, similar the inside wood of our ger.
All in all, this was quite a trip. I will try to send a few photos.
This week we met with two old friends, both of whom I trained in Utah: Amarjargal, former prime minister and foreign minister, and now a member of parliament; and Batayev, who just retired as chief of the Mongolia Police Academy. It was very pleasant seeing them again. Amarjargal treated us to Indian food in a luxury hotel near the parliament building; Batayev treated us to a very nice European lunch at a hotel owned by his daughter.
Linda has taught family history to a lot of people during the past week; I have gotten a lot done on our lost missionary search.
The weather here is still surprisingly warm; in the Gobi it was almost like summer in Utah.
We are both in good health. Linda, however, is quite tired today from the rigors of the trip. She stayed home and I came directly to my office.
This afternoon I taught the first seminar for Mongolian missionaries just being released from their missions. I taught almost four hours about skills for adjusting to their release and for their futures: the Church, education, family, work, etc. It was enjoyable. I will meet with them weekly for the next three weeks and then monthly for the following five months. In this way we hope we can help them get well settled in their lives and stay active in the Church.
Each Monday night we have a fireside in the mission home for all returned missionaries who would like to come. I must leave now to be with them.
We love you.
Grandpa and Grandma Jackson
We did make it back from the Gobi alive, arriving in Ulaanbaatar just before noon today. The trip by plane is not bad: 560 km, less than one and one-half hours.
We left our apartment at 4:30 a.m. Friday morning to get to the Chinggis Khan Airport for a 7:00 a.m. departure. The mining company, Ivanhoe Mines, had arranged for us to travel on their charter flight which flies their workers back and forth from the mines for time at home. Most of the workers work 56 days at the mines and then have two weeks at home. There are about 600 workers there now, 100 of them day workers from the local area.
The assistant to the vice president in charge of this mine, Bayarmaa, and the leader of our Church group there, Aibek, met us at the company air strip. Bayarmaa was assigned to be with us all of the time; Aibek and other members joined us as they could. Bayarmaa is married to a Canadian (Ivanhoe Mines is based in Canada); she spent one year in medical school here and then graduated from the National University of Mongolia with a law degree. She was a very pleasant and delightful person to be with.
There are about twenty members of the Church working at the mines (the Mongolian name is Oyu Tolgoi, which means Turquoise Hill), but maybe half of them are less active and some actually avoided any contact with us. We met with up to ten of the members in three meetings: an informal meeting in our apartment (a modular studio apartment that was very comfortable); a fireside on Saturday night; and Sacrament Meeting on Sunday night. Linda and I both spoke in the fireside and the sacrament meeting. The chapel there is a ger where two returned missionaries who married two or three years ago live. The meetings were very spiritual and pleasant. We ate all of our meals in the company cafeteria, together with our members, the miners, translators, and administrators. We became good friends with the chef, who is French. One of his assistants is from India, another from north China. The meals were excellent. The cook being French, he even prepared croissants, chocolate eclairs, home-made ice cream, and French bread. They had two lines: one serving Mongolian food, the other European.
During working hours, when we could not be with the members, Bayarmaa took us sightseeing. We visited the Soum center (a soum is like a county in Utah) named Khan Bogd. It was very different from the many others I have visited: there were new brick homes and quite a number of Land Cruisers. Bayarmaa told us that the people of this town surface mine gold in the nearby canyon. We drove up the hill beside the canyon and walked to the edge to see some very spectacular rock formations and old cottonwoods.
Bayarmaa lived in the Gobi for twenty-eight years. Her first trip out of the desert was when she was eighteen years old. Her family had raised camels and other livestock, so she was able to tell us a lot about life in the Gobi. We saw no green grass anywhere, but the camels, horses, cows, sheep, and goats were fatter than the animals I see on green pastures here. There was a carpet of dried grass and plants in the area we traveled, and Bayarmaa said it was very nutritious for animals. The only water we saw other than the wells at the mine site was in a pool in a canyon at the edge of a rocky range of hills. It was a very beautiful spot with turquoise-colored water in a pool forty feet across and old gnarled cottonwoods among the huge rocks.
We also stopped early one morning at the ger of a camel herder. He had about twenty-five young camels tethered near his ger and we could see the mothers in the distance. At almost exactly 10:30 the huge mother camels came trotting toward the ger and were soon feeding their babies. We went out among the herd and quite enjoyed watching and hearing them. The herder said that he sold the male camels and sometimes the younger ones. A large camel would bring about $1,000.
In the afternoon we drove into a more remote area with huge ledges, not unlike the ones above Fremont. Here we visited the site of a Buddhist temple constructed in the early 1800's. The Russians destroyed it in about 1940. The walls of what had been quite a large complex are still standing; and the CEO of Ivanhoe Mines donated $130,000 to build a huge stupa eight smaller stupas surrounding it in round circles, the whole things shaped like a lotus. The main stupa was painted brilliant white, with a gold Buddhist lotus on the tip of the spire. There is a golden, seated Buddha inside the stupa; and the inside and the eaves are decorated in rainbow colors, similar the inside wood of our ger.
All in all, this was quite a trip. I will try to send a few photos.
This week we met with two old friends, both of whom I trained in Utah: Amarjargal, former prime minister and foreign minister, and now a member of parliament; and Batayev, who just retired as chief of the Mongolia Police Academy. It was very pleasant seeing them again. Amarjargal treated us to Indian food in a luxury hotel near the parliament building; Batayev treated us to a very nice European lunch at a hotel owned by his daughter.
Linda has taught family history to a lot of people during the past week; I have gotten a lot done on our lost missionary search.
The weather here is still surprisingly warm; in the Gobi it was almost like summer in Utah.
We are both in good health. Linda, however, is quite tired today from the rigors of the trip. She stayed home and I came directly to my office.
This afternoon I taught the first seminar for Mongolian missionaries just being released from their missions. I taught almost four hours about skills for adjusting to their release and for their futures: the Church, education, family, work, etc. It was enjoyable. I will meet with them weekly for the next three weeks and then monthly for the following five months. In this way we hope we can help them get well settled in their lives and stay active in the Church.
Each Monday night we have a fireside in the mission home for all returned missionaries who would like to come. I must leave now to be with them.
We love you.
Grandpa and Grandma Jackson
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Conference Here Too
Our Dear, Dear Family:
Yesterday and today we have enjoyed General Conference on DVD recorded in Salt Lake and sent to us. It has been a beautiful experience. I do not recall a Priesthood meeting that was more inspiring. Especially the talks by the First Presidency were exceptional. The senior couples and other English-speaking members here met at the mission home for the conference; and, last night we went together for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Between sessions today we had pot-luck. It was a good meal. But, most of all Conference lifted us up so very much.
Andrew called us this morning and told us of his week in Fremont. It was so good to hear his voice and to share that experience by telephone. As much as we love the work here, we do miss all of you very much and do miss both Springville and Fremont a lot.
Les, Tamar, Joshua, Amanda, and Aspen are going to Fremont this week to put the new windows in. The cost will be about $2,000. We hope that all of the family can contribute toward this amount. We can pay some, of course, but our expenses here are much more than we had anticipated.
Tamar called and we talked about Becki's situation. Thank you, Tamar, for you concern for her and help for her and us. And, Becki, keep in touch. In times like this, a good support system is critical.
The weather here so far is unbelievably warm. The mornings are barely down to freezing; the afternoons are in the high fifties. We know, though, that the cold is coming. Ulaanbaatar ordinarily does not get a lot of snow, the cold will be extreme.
Thursday afternoon one of the first college presidents I brought to Utah for training in 1996 unexpectedly walked into my office and talked for hours. He repeated told me how much he appreciates and how much he has used what we taught him in Utah and followed up in sessions here. I taught Steven Covey's "Seven Habits" the first time ever at his college in 1996. He wants me to teach them at his college again and also lecture to his graduate students. Most gratifying was his statement that because some of his graduates had been dishonest in their jobs, he had changed the emphasis in many of his classes, teaching honesty and ethics (based in part on Covey's book). I have also learned that the book I helped write on the U.S. higher education system is still the "bible" for the colleges and universities here; and the accreditation system I helped establish is functioning very well. This president was on the commission for five years and is an advisor for it now. Their members travel to the U.S. to meet with accreditation commissions there to improve their performance here.
We continue to find and begin the re-activation of returned missionaries. This is most pleasant and meaningful. I have to do a lot of follow-up and training because the branch leaders are not experienced enough yet to understand and fully appreciate what we are trying to do. And, then there is the Mongolian attitude of no urgency, no follow-up (generally speaking).
It seems our challenges with the government are quite well settled down. We have the visas for the next group of missionaries, who will arrive here in a couple of weeks and our Church registration seems solid now.
I bought a two- or three-month supply of potatoes, carrots, beets, and onions this week and have created a "root cellar" on our balcony with a large wooden box and lot of insulation. We also have a good supply of canned and dried foods inside the apartment. We even have a fair amount of filtered water we have stored in plastic one-liter grapefruit juice bottles we have enjoyed the juice from.
On Thursday night we enjoyed dinner at the apartment of Brother Richard Huei, a German brother who was baptized forty years ago and at one time even lived in Salt Lake. He found us here and has now received the Aaronic and Melchizidek Priesthood. He and his son are in Mongolia doing several kinds of business. He is an attorney and an international investment banker as well. I have thought for years of finding support to build low-cost housing here to sell to people who now live in gers on the outskirts of the city. In the winter, the coal they burn for heat buries the Ulaanbaatar valley in heavy smoke. Brother Huei is now moving ahead on this project and we reviewed his plans before dinner Thursday evening. His units will each have twenty apartments. The apartments will sell for about US$10,000. They will have solar heat and light. The walls will be built with a special concrete and styrofoam mixture that will be pressed in a German-made press. The blocks will resemble "lagos" and will fit very tightly and very very insulated.
Batayev, recently-retired chief of the Mongolia Police Academy, whom I trained in Utah in the late '90's, and who introduce us to the legal advisor to the Mongolian president, called Friday morning and said he was coming to pick us up at 1:30. He did not say for what, but when he came, he to us to the headquarters of a large congolomorate of companies he directs. They have meat-packing plants and other livestock product companies and also have the only food testing lab in Mongolia. We toured his lab with him. It was most impressive, almost like something we would see in the U.S. He then took us to his daughter's small hotel where we had an excellent late lunch.
Batayev is a very special man. I gave him a Book of Mormon when he was in Utah, and he has read it. He also told me that one night he was driving on a rough back-country road and picked up two young men who were trying to get home. He recognized them as our missionaries from their badges (I had introduced missionaries to him before). He took them to their apartment; and when he went to his car the next morning he found the Book of Mormon and a Church pamphlet in the back of his car. His good impression of he Church will continue to be very helpful to us here.
I visited the headquarters of the Ivanhoe Mines Company (a large Canadian company that manages a number of smaller mining companies in the Gobi Desert) to get permission to visit their site next weekend to meet with members of the Church who work there. Many of them are returned missionaries. I have communicated with them by e-mail; they are very anxious for us to visit them, and so are we.
Joshua and Kim continue to do very well. Josh is proving to be a very good teacher at the American School and enjoys it a lot. They are here now and will have dinner with Bother Huei, his fiancee, and us.
We love you. Please do write. And, please visit Mother. She is so very lonely. I do call her at least once a week, but she does need family visitors.
We love you.
Mother and Dad
Yesterday and today we have enjoyed General Conference on DVD recorded in Salt Lake and sent to us. It has been a beautiful experience. I do not recall a Priesthood meeting that was more inspiring. Especially the talks by the First Presidency were exceptional. The senior couples and other English-speaking members here met at the mission home for the conference; and, last night we went together for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Between sessions today we had pot-luck. It was a good meal. But, most of all Conference lifted us up so very much.
Andrew called us this morning and told us of his week in Fremont. It was so good to hear his voice and to share that experience by telephone. As much as we love the work here, we do miss all of you very much and do miss both Springville and Fremont a lot.
Les, Tamar, Joshua, Amanda, and Aspen are going to Fremont this week to put the new windows in. The cost will be about $2,000. We hope that all of the family can contribute toward this amount. We can pay some, of course, but our expenses here are much more than we had anticipated.
Tamar called and we talked about Becki's situation. Thank you, Tamar, for you concern for her and help for her and us. And, Becki, keep in touch. In times like this, a good support system is critical.
The weather here so far is unbelievably warm. The mornings are barely down to freezing; the afternoons are in the high fifties. We know, though, that the cold is coming. Ulaanbaatar ordinarily does not get a lot of snow, the cold will be extreme.
Thursday afternoon one of the first college presidents I brought to Utah for training in 1996 unexpectedly walked into my office and talked for hours. He repeated told me how much he appreciates and how much he has used what we taught him in Utah and followed up in sessions here. I taught Steven Covey's "Seven Habits" the first time ever at his college in 1996. He wants me to teach them at his college again and also lecture to his graduate students. Most gratifying was his statement that because some of his graduates had been dishonest in their jobs, he had changed the emphasis in many of his classes, teaching honesty and ethics (based in part on Covey's book). I have also learned that the book I helped write on the U.S. higher education system is still the "bible" for the colleges and universities here; and the accreditation system I helped establish is functioning very well. This president was on the commission for five years and is an advisor for it now. Their members travel to the U.S. to meet with accreditation commissions there to improve their performance here.
We continue to find and begin the re-activation of returned missionaries. This is most pleasant and meaningful. I have to do a lot of follow-up and training because the branch leaders are not experienced enough yet to understand and fully appreciate what we are trying to do. And, then there is the Mongolian attitude of no urgency, no follow-up (generally speaking).
It seems our challenges with the government are quite well settled down. We have the visas for the next group of missionaries, who will arrive here in a couple of weeks and our Church registration seems solid now.
I bought a two- or three-month supply of potatoes, carrots, beets, and onions this week and have created a "root cellar" on our balcony with a large wooden box and lot of insulation. We also have a good supply of canned and dried foods inside the apartment. We even have a fair amount of filtered water we have stored in plastic one-liter grapefruit juice bottles we have enjoyed the juice from.
On Thursday night we enjoyed dinner at the apartment of Brother Richard Huei, a German brother who was baptized forty years ago and at one time even lived in Salt Lake. He found us here and has now received the Aaronic and Melchizidek Priesthood. He and his son are in Mongolia doing several kinds of business. He is an attorney and an international investment banker as well. I have thought for years of finding support to build low-cost housing here to sell to people who now live in gers on the outskirts of the city. In the winter, the coal they burn for heat buries the Ulaanbaatar valley in heavy smoke. Brother Huei is now moving ahead on this project and we reviewed his plans before dinner Thursday evening. His units will each have twenty apartments. The apartments will sell for about US$10,000. They will have solar heat and light. The walls will be built with a special concrete and styrofoam mixture that will be pressed in a German-made press. The blocks will resemble "lagos" and will fit very tightly and very very insulated.
Batayev, recently-retired chief of the Mongolia Police Academy, whom I trained in Utah in the late '90's, and who introduce us to the legal advisor to the Mongolian president, called Friday morning and said he was coming to pick us up at 1:30. He did not say for what, but when he came, he to us to the headquarters of a large congolomorate of companies he directs. They have meat-packing plants and other livestock product companies and also have the only food testing lab in Mongolia. We toured his lab with him. It was most impressive, almost like something we would see in the U.S. He then took us to his daughter's small hotel where we had an excellent late lunch.
Batayev is a very special man. I gave him a Book of Mormon when he was in Utah, and he has read it. He also told me that one night he was driving on a rough back-country road and picked up two young men who were trying to get home. He recognized them as our missionaries from their badges (I had introduced missionaries to him before). He took them to their apartment; and when he went to his car the next morning he found the Book of Mormon and a Church pamphlet in the back of his car. His good impression of he Church will continue to be very helpful to us here.
I visited the headquarters of the Ivanhoe Mines Company (a large Canadian company that manages a number of smaller mining companies in the Gobi Desert) to get permission to visit their site next weekend to meet with members of the Church who work there. Many of them are returned missionaries. I have communicated with them by e-mail; they are very anxious for us to visit them, and so are we.
Joshua and Kim continue to do very well. Josh is proving to be a very good teacher at the American School and enjoys it a lot. They are here now and will have dinner with Bother Huei, his fiancee, and us.
We love you. Please do write. And, please visit Mother. She is so very lonely. I do call her at least once a week, but she does need family visitors.
We love you.
Mother and Dad
Monday, October 6, 2008
Something was Lost in the Translation
Our Dear Family:
Linda and I had lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant today and I copied these descriptions from the menu. Obviously, the translation into English is an attempt to make it readable after having been translated from Chinese into Mongolian:
* the farmer is a fresh
* fire paper elbows
* the farmer is small to fry
* however mutton
* sheet iron bean su shrimp
* heavenly crushed hot son chicken
* take shelter from wind the soy
* water chicken
* lost soup doll vegetables
* loose rat fish
There were more, but these were the best. We had flied lice.
We love you.
Dad
Linda and I had lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant today and I copied these descriptions from the menu. Obviously, the translation into English is an attempt to make it readable after having been translated from Chinese into Mongolian:
* the farmer is a fresh
* fire paper elbows
* the farmer is small to fry
* however mutton
* sheet iron bean su shrimp
* heavenly crushed hot son chicken
* take shelter from wind the soy
* water chicken
* lost soup doll vegetables
* loose rat fish
There were more, but these were the best. We had flied lice.
We love you.
Dad
This week in Mongolia, week ending October 3rd
Our Dear, Dear Family:
I hope you can open all of these attachments. Finally, I had Joshua teach me yesterday how to upload photos from my camera and attach them to a message. There are a lot of them; in the future I hope I can send pictures as I take shots of anything I think will be interesting to you.
The photos include Ulaanbaatar at sunrise taken from our apartment window, our all-Mongolia youth conference (yellow shirts), photos at ceremonies where we distributed the 500 wheelchairs the Church gave to Mongolia, a short trip to the countryside, and Kimberley and myself in front of a painting Tsegmed did for us (Linda was still in her house robe and Joshua took the picture).
This past week I have spent a lot of time on government relations resolving some problems and trying to prevent others. There have been some legal questions, so we have also spent time on conference calls with Church attorneys in Salt Lake and Hong Kong. One of them arrives here this evening to meet with us tomorrow. We are getting things properly taken care of that should have been done quite a while ago.
We are having success with our lost missionary project and it has been rewarding this week to find several that were missing. And now the returned missionaries themselves are getting more involved in the search. I do not remember if I told you last week of our Returned Missionary fireside on last Sunday night: I think we had over 300 people attend in the beautiful chapel at our headquarters building and probably about 70 of them were returned missionaries.
On Thursday afternoon I spent quite a bit of time with Brother Aibek who is our group leader for members of the Church who work at mines in the Gobi Desert. He and I talked about twenty members there, most of whom are returned missionaries. They get paid much better there than anyplace else in the country; however, it is very hard work and very hard on their families. Some of the returned missionaries are English teachers there, others serve as interpreters. Others work underground in various jobs. They do meet in Sacrament Meeting each Sunday night, but it is difficult to get everyone there because of long and changing shifts--they work there three weeks without a day off and then have a week or so home. I plan to fly down there and spend four days with them later this month. I will have to get permission from the company, Ivanhoe Mines, a Canadian company that manages many smaller mining companies. I have found a lost member who was baptized in Utah, however, and he is helping me.
I have gone over my returned missionary search plan with the Ulaanbaatar District presidency and all of the branch presidencies in the district. Now I am trying to meet with their branch councils to get them more involved. It is going to take a lot of follow-up. I now need to get to Darkhan District to the north and to the four branches directly under the Mission and get them started on the project. I will do this after the trip to the Gobi.
Linda continues to keep very busy with Family History. She assists the family history directors in all of the branches (those in Ulaanbaatar come to her center; those in the other areas came once for training and now she works with them by telephone and internet. She will have occasional training sessions here.
The weather is still surprisingly warm, but Kim especially has been concerned about winter clothing. She was worried because a friend had told her that a good, long, down winter coat would cost up to $500. Yesterday, I took Josh and Kim to the black market (a big open market that was outside the system when the Russians controlled Mongolia and still called the black market even though it is totally legal now) and bought mink fur winter hats for Linda and Kim, and long down-filled coat for Kim (for $25), and high leather boots for Kim that are just large enough to wear winter socks inside. We will probably have winter clothes custom made for Joshua; and what I did not bring from home I have already purchased here.
Linda has already left for the Church building. She is helping a group of local missionaries who have been called to serve in Mongolia with their family history and with getting everything ready for them to go to the Hong Kong Temple. They will travel by train and will gone about two weeks. I am going early to meet with two branch councils before our Sacrament Meeting starts. Also President Andersen has asked me to meet with a returned Sister missionary who will apply for her visa to go to BYU to study English and then get into an undergraduate program. It is difficult to get visas, especially to study English. However, I have been successful with several I have helped with since we arrived here; and I do know the process well.
We love you very much. Please do write; we miss you so much. And do visit Mother. I called her this morning and again she told me how very lonely she is.
We love you dearly.
Mother and Dad (grandpa and grandma)
I hope you can open all of these attachments. Finally, I had Joshua teach me yesterday how to upload photos from my camera and attach them to a message. There are a lot of them; in the future I hope I can send pictures as I take shots of anything I think will be interesting to you.
The photos include Ulaanbaatar at sunrise taken from our apartment window, our all-Mongolia youth conference (yellow shirts), photos at ceremonies where we distributed the 500 wheelchairs the Church gave to Mongolia, a short trip to the countryside, and Kimberley and myself in front of a painting Tsegmed did for us (Linda was still in her house robe and Joshua took the picture).
This past week I have spent a lot of time on government relations resolving some problems and trying to prevent others. There have been some legal questions, so we have also spent time on conference calls with Church attorneys in Salt Lake and Hong Kong. One of them arrives here this evening to meet with us tomorrow. We are getting things properly taken care of that should have been done quite a while ago.
We are having success with our lost missionary project and it has been rewarding this week to find several that were missing. And now the returned missionaries themselves are getting more involved in the search. I do not remember if I told you last week of our Returned Missionary fireside on last Sunday night: I think we had over 300 people attend in the beautiful chapel at our headquarters building and probably about 70 of them were returned missionaries.
On Thursday afternoon I spent quite a bit of time with Brother Aibek who is our group leader for members of the Church who work at mines in the Gobi Desert. He and I talked about twenty members there, most of whom are returned missionaries. They get paid much better there than anyplace else in the country; however, it is very hard work and very hard on their families. Some of the returned missionaries are English teachers there, others serve as interpreters. Others work underground in various jobs. They do meet in Sacrament Meeting each Sunday night, but it is difficult to get everyone there because of long and changing shifts--they work there three weeks without a day off and then have a week or so home. I plan to fly down there and spend four days with them later this month. I will have to get permission from the company, Ivanhoe Mines, a Canadian company that manages many smaller mining companies. I have found a lost member who was baptized in Utah, however, and he is helping me.
I have gone over my returned missionary search plan with the Ulaanbaatar District presidency and all of the branch presidencies in the district. Now I am trying to meet with their branch councils to get them more involved. It is going to take a lot of follow-up. I now need to get to Darkhan District to the north and to the four branches directly under the Mission and get them started on the project. I will do this after the trip to the Gobi.
Linda continues to keep very busy with Family History. She assists the family history directors in all of the branches (those in Ulaanbaatar come to her center; those in the other areas came once for training and now she works with them by telephone and internet. She will have occasional training sessions here.
The weather is still surprisingly warm, but Kim especially has been concerned about winter clothing. She was worried because a friend had told her that a good, long, down winter coat would cost up to $500. Yesterday, I took Josh and Kim to the black market (a big open market that was outside the system when the Russians controlled Mongolia and still called the black market even though it is totally legal now) and bought mink fur winter hats for Linda and Kim, and long down-filled coat for Kim (for $25), and high leather boots for Kim that are just large enough to wear winter socks inside. We will probably have winter clothes custom made for Joshua; and what I did not bring from home I have already purchased here.
Linda has already left for the Church building. She is helping a group of local missionaries who have been called to serve in Mongolia with their family history and with getting everything ready for them to go to the Hong Kong Temple. They will travel by train and will gone about two weeks. I am going early to meet with two branch councils before our Sacrament Meeting starts. Also President Andersen has asked me to meet with a returned Sister missionary who will apply for her visa to go to BYU to study English and then get into an undergraduate program. It is difficult to get visas, especially to study English. However, I have been successful with several I have helped with since we arrived here; and I do know the process well.
We love you very much. Please do write; we miss you so much. And do visit Mother. I called her this morning and again she told me how very lonely she is.
We love you dearly.
Mother and Dad (grandpa and grandma)
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Our Week, 9/21 - 9/27
Our Dear, Dear Family:
We miss all of you so very much. Please do write; we need to hear from you.
Linda is finally over her illness, but jumping right back into her busy schedule has worn her out some. I am keeping very busy and am in good health. The weather is still unbelievably good here. Snow has been forecast several times, but even though we have had some cold rain, we have had not snow. Now snow is forecast again for next week. The afternoons are in the sixties, the mornings are barely down to freezing. I did, however, buy the rest of my winter clothing at the open market yesterday: a padded del (long robe) over which I will wear the sheepskin coat I brought from home, and a heavy mink hat made in Russia with ear flaps and a back neck flap. Linda brought the fur coat I bought for her here several years ago and a good supply of other winter clothing from home. We both have heavy, insulated boots with rubber cleats. The city has turned the heat on, so our apartment is actually too warm; and finally we have plenty of hot water.
Brother Mak from Hong Kong and Elder and Sister Phillips from Taiwan were here most of the week training us and our public affairs council and advisory board. They taught some good information that will help us with our work. This was Elder and Sister Phillips' first trip to Mongolia so they wanted to get out into the countryside, and Elder Phillips especially wanted to ride a yak. So, on Thursday afternoon Linda and I took them to Terelj, a resort in the mountains about two hours from the city. This was my first time driving in Mongolia, and having ridden with others and walked across many streets here, I found it much easier than I expected. The city traffic was a bit difficult to negotiate, but the rough country roads were a bit easier. The mountain sides were in full autumn color and very beautiful. We found a yak for Elder and Sister Phillips to ride (at the same spot where James rode a camel). We also arranged for them to ride a camel. They did enjoy their rides; but I did wish I had had a video camera to record Sister Phillips' facial grimaces and tight grip on the camel saddle when the animal got up and then down again (they raise up on their back legs first and then up on their front legs. It is a bit rough). We were very surprised to see a golf course along the way--the nineteen holes were surrounded by bright green artificial turf and in between everything was "the rough." And then the resort, which used to be an old Russian-built hotel, is now a five-star magnificent building, classical style in beautiful colors.
On Thursday I presented my returned missionary search and re-activate plan to the district presidency in the Ulaanbaatar District and their branch presidencies (there are twelve branches in Ulaanbaatar and another ten scattered around the country). The presentation went well, and now I will meet with the branch councils and speak in their sacrament meetings to get all of the branch members involved in this project.
I enjoyed a special experience on Friday morning: several of us met with the Red Cross in one of the ger districts (almost like a slum district) to present some of the 500 wheelchairs the Church sent here for needy people. It was a very touching experience: many of the wheelchairs were given to disabled children.
We had lunch on Friday with Orgil and his mother. His mother, Narangerel, is a former of parliament. I brought Orgil and his wife to UVSC to study. He later went on to Hollywood in study in an acting and directing school. He has made several movies here and directed others. He is now acting in a movie in Russia and another in Korea. He played the role of Genghis Khan in the BBC movie "Genghis Khan." It is interesting that when Orgil's wife gave birth to their first baby girl in Orem, we gave them the white crib that our babies had slept in. Now that little girl, Uroo, is in both Joshua's and Kim's classes at the American School here.
Yesterday Linda and her assistants held a Family History Training Seminar for the Family History representatives in the branches in Ulaanbaatar and other branches within a two-hour ride from here. They made cookies for the group at our apartment in the morning and then trained in the afternoon. Linda was very tired when she came home; but very pleased with how well the seminar went.
We are having a returned missionary fireside here in the headquarters building chapel tonight. The full-time missionaries, the returned missionaries, the branch presidents, and my office have worked together to get this together. We are hoping that many of our less-active missionaries will join us. I will speak; and the departing CES advisor, Elder Straud from Eager, Arizona, will also speak to them. This is also something of a farewell for Elder and Sister Straud. They leave on Tuesday.
Yesterday I found a short string of extremely nice Tibetan turquoise nuggets that matched a similar string I found a few weeks ago ($4.00 for the string) and then bought another necklace that had a nice pendant and small carved silver beads between rather ugly green beads. I took the necklace apart and strung the turquoise with the silver and added the pendant with two of the turquoise nuggets to create a beautiful necklace for Linda. She loves it and will wear it today. She said it is different, though, having someone make a necklace for her. It is opera-length, which she especially likes.
We love you and respect you so very much. You are a wonderful family. Our prayers are with you always.
Mother and Dad
We miss all of you so very much. Please do write; we need to hear from you.
Linda is finally over her illness, but jumping right back into her busy schedule has worn her out some. I am keeping very busy and am in good health. The weather is still unbelievably good here. Snow has been forecast several times, but even though we have had some cold rain, we have had not snow. Now snow is forecast again for next week. The afternoons are in the sixties, the mornings are barely down to freezing. I did, however, buy the rest of my winter clothing at the open market yesterday: a padded del (long robe) over which I will wear the sheepskin coat I brought from home, and a heavy mink hat made in Russia with ear flaps and a back neck flap. Linda brought the fur coat I bought for her here several years ago and a good supply of other winter clothing from home. We both have heavy, insulated boots with rubber cleats. The city has turned the heat on, so our apartment is actually too warm; and finally we have plenty of hot water.
Brother Mak from Hong Kong and Elder and Sister Phillips from Taiwan were here most of the week training us and our public affairs council and advisory board. They taught some good information that will help us with our work. This was Elder and Sister Phillips' first trip to Mongolia so they wanted to get out into the countryside, and Elder Phillips especially wanted to ride a yak. So, on Thursday afternoon Linda and I took them to Terelj, a resort in the mountains about two hours from the city. This was my first time driving in Mongolia, and having ridden with others and walked across many streets here, I found it much easier than I expected. The city traffic was a bit difficult to negotiate, but the rough country roads were a bit easier. The mountain sides were in full autumn color and very beautiful. We found a yak for Elder and Sister Phillips to ride (at the same spot where James rode a camel). We also arranged for them to ride a camel. They did enjoy their rides; but I did wish I had had a video camera to record Sister Phillips' facial grimaces and tight grip on the camel saddle when the animal got up and then down again (they raise up on their back legs first and then up on their front legs. It is a bit rough). We were very surprised to see a golf course along the way--the nineteen holes were surrounded by bright green artificial turf and in between everything was "the rough." And then the resort, which used to be an old Russian-built hotel, is now a five-star magnificent building, classical style in beautiful colors.
On Thursday I presented my returned missionary search and re-activate plan to the district presidency in the Ulaanbaatar District and their branch presidencies (there are twelve branches in Ulaanbaatar and another ten scattered around the country). The presentation went well, and now I will meet with the branch councils and speak in their sacrament meetings to get all of the branch members involved in this project.
I enjoyed a special experience on Friday morning: several of us met with the Red Cross in one of the ger districts (almost like a slum district) to present some of the 500 wheelchairs the Church sent here for needy people. It was a very touching experience: many of the wheelchairs were given to disabled children.
We had lunch on Friday with Orgil and his mother. His mother, Narangerel, is a former of parliament. I brought Orgil and his wife to UVSC to study. He later went on to Hollywood in study in an acting and directing school. He has made several movies here and directed others. He is now acting in a movie in Russia and another in Korea. He played the role of Genghis Khan in the BBC movie "Genghis Khan." It is interesting that when Orgil's wife gave birth to their first baby girl in Orem, we gave them the white crib that our babies had slept in. Now that little girl, Uroo, is in both Joshua's and Kim's classes at the American School here.
Yesterday Linda and her assistants held a Family History Training Seminar for the Family History representatives in the branches in Ulaanbaatar and other branches within a two-hour ride from here. They made cookies for the group at our apartment in the morning and then trained in the afternoon. Linda was very tired when she came home; but very pleased with how well the seminar went.
We are having a returned missionary fireside here in the headquarters building chapel tonight. The full-time missionaries, the returned missionaries, the branch presidents, and my office have worked together to get this together. We are hoping that many of our less-active missionaries will join us. I will speak; and the departing CES advisor, Elder Straud from Eager, Arizona, will also speak to them. This is also something of a farewell for Elder and Sister Straud. They leave on Tuesday.
Yesterday I found a short string of extremely nice Tibetan turquoise nuggets that matched a similar string I found a few weeks ago ($4.00 for the string) and then bought another necklace that had a nice pendant and small carved silver beads between rather ugly green beads. I took the necklace apart and strung the turquoise with the silver and added the pendant with two of the turquoise nuggets to create a beautiful necklace for Linda. She loves it and will wear it today. She said it is different, though, having someone make a necklace for her. It is opera-length, which she especially likes.
We love you and respect you so very much. You are a wonderful family. Our prayers are with you always.
Mother and Dad
Monday, September 22, 2008
Winter is Coming
Our dear family:
We have had a rather pleasant fall here, but now it is cooling down. Temperatures this week will be in the mid-forties during the day and down to freezing at night. The city turned the heat on this week (it comes in hot water pipes from three power plants on the outskirts of the city) and we are almost too warm in our apartment. We open our windows occasionally, but the air is quite dirty so we keep them open very little.
Linda has been ill for a week with what appears to be flu; I have had a light touch of it as well. Our mission president is also ill and told me a couple of days ago that half of the missionaries are sick as well. The air is bad now, but will be really bad as it gets colder. There are hundreds of thousands of people living in gers and small wooden houses on the outskirts of the city and the heat from the power plants does not reach them. So they burn soft coal or anything else they can find to keep warm. I am told that the air gets so bad that you can barely see your hand in front of your face. Josh and Kim will fare much better: their school and apartment are on the side of a mountain south of the city where the pollution does not reach them.
We had our first meeting with our public affairs council and advisory board Friday night. They are a very good group and the meeting went well. We will have training with them by the Asian public affairs directors from Taiwan on Wednesday of this week. Then we will meet monthly with each group. The Church does have a good image here generally, but there are some people in government who need to know more about us. We had advisors from the Mongolian president's office to President Andersen's home for dinner on Thursday evening. One of them attended the BYU symposium on religion and law last year he other will go this year. Both are quite impressed with the Church and what we are doing here.
I continue to find more of our missing missionaries and will present my search and re-activation plan to all of the branch presidencies in their monthly meeting with the district presidency on Thursday. Then I will go to each branch and meet with their branch council and speak in their sacrament meeting. We will appoint a returned missionary representative in each branch who will report to me weekly on the progress in each branch. I will drive north to the Darkhan District on October 11th to do the same for their district and branches.
Linda, Joshua, Kimberly, and I had dinner with an old friend and his family at noon in their home. His name is Peruserven, and some of you know him. I first trained him in Utah in 1996 for our Consortium of Universities here, then saw him off and on when I visited Mongolia. He and his family all joined the Church. He has been a branch president and CES director. His son is at BYU-Hawaii following a mission in Idaho; his daughter just returned from BYU-Hawaii with a degree in communications. She has a boy friend from Colorado and it seems serious. Peruserven is on our public affairs advisory board; he also slept on the couch in the house on the Big Island when so many of our family was there.
We spent a couple of hours with our artist friend Tsegmed yesterday; and, now, we have two of his very fine paintings hanging on our wall. He is painting two more for us, one of Monument Valley the other of edge of the Gobi Desert.
We appreciate so very much the e-mails we receive. Please, all of you, write as you can.
Also, please visit mother. I talked to her again this morning. She appreciates nothing more than visits from family.
We love you.
Mother and Dad
We have had a rather pleasant fall here, but now it is cooling down. Temperatures this week will be in the mid-forties during the day and down to freezing at night. The city turned the heat on this week (it comes in hot water pipes from three power plants on the outskirts of the city) and we are almost too warm in our apartment. We open our windows occasionally, but the air is quite dirty so we keep them open very little.
Linda has been ill for a week with what appears to be flu; I have had a light touch of it as well. Our mission president is also ill and told me a couple of days ago that half of the missionaries are sick as well. The air is bad now, but will be really bad as it gets colder. There are hundreds of thousands of people living in gers and small wooden houses on the outskirts of the city and the heat from the power plants does not reach them. So they burn soft coal or anything else they can find to keep warm. I am told that the air gets so bad that you can barely see your hand in front of your face. Josh and Kim will fare much better: their school and apartment are on the side of a mountain south of the city where the pollution does not reach them.
We had our first meeting with our public affairs council and advisory board Friday night. They are a very good group and the meeting went well. We will have training with them by the Asian public affairs directors from Taiwan on Wednesday of this week. Then we will meet monthly with each group. The Church does have a good image here generally, but there are some people in government who need to know more about us. We had advisors from the Mongolian president's office to President Andersen's home for dinner on Thursday evening. One of them attended the BYU symposium on religion and law last year he other will go this year. Both are quite impressed with the Church and what we are doing here.
I continue to find more of our missing missionaries and will present my search and re-activation plan to all of the branch presidencies in their monthly meeting with the district presidency on Thursday. Then I will go to each branch and meet with their branch council and speak in their sacrament meeting. We will appoint a returned missionary representative in each branch who will report to me weekly on the progress in each branch. I will drive north to the Darkhan District on October 11th to do the same for their district and branches.
Linda, Joshua, Kimberly, and I had dinner with an old friend and his family at noon in their home. His name is Peruserven, and some of you know him. I first trained him in Utah in 1996 for our Consortium of Universities here, then saw him off and on when I visited Mongolia. He and his family all joined the Church. He has been a branch president and CES director. His son is at BYU-Hawaii following a mission in Idaho; his daughter just returned from BYU-Hawaii with a degree in communications. She has a boy friend from Colorado and it seems serious. Peruserven is on our public affairs advisory board; he also slept on the couch in the house on the Big Island when so many of our family was there.
We spent a couple of hours with our artist friend Tsegmed yesterday; and, now, we have two of his very fine paintings hanging on our wall. He is painting two more for us, one of Monument Valley the other of edge of the Gobi Desert.
We appreciate so very much the e-mails we receive. Please, all of you, write as you can.
Also, please visit mother. I talked to her again this morning. She appreciates nothing more than visits from family.
We love you.
Mother and Dad
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Another good week
Our Dear Family:
We have had another very good week. I spent a lot of time with outside government and public affairs contacts; Linda has been ill with flu part of the week but has enjoyed her continued organization of family history and working with her assistants. We taught only two English classes this week. The class scheduled with the group of judges was canceled due to anticipated demonstrations at their court house. They are trying cases connected with the demonstrations during the elections in July.
The World Peace Conference was held here during the past week, and I was invited to some of the sessions. The opening session was in the Parliament Building and Matthew Salmon was one of the keynote speakers. Matt was a Taiwan missionary from Arizona and represented Arizona in congress for six years. He now has a PR firm in Washington. He and his speech were very well received here.
A Brother Rauna, Maori from New Zealand, was also at the Conference and invited me to several of the luncheons at the Chinggis Khan Hotel. He also brought many of the delegates to our Church building to meet me and learn more about the Church. I spent time with people from many countries, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines. Tonga, Tahiti, Australia, Russia, Korea, and many of the Central Asian countries. It was pleasant and interesting.
I have made contact with many of the educators I trained in Utah and our reunions have been very pleasant. BYU-Hawaii has had an exchange program going on with a university here that had not been very successful. President Andersen asked for my recommendation as to what should be done. I suggested the university I did most with from 1995 to 2000. He has agreed that we talk with them. I will meet with the President on Monday. I also trained him in Utah.
On Friday I had lunch with Narangerel Orgil and his wife (Linda was ill and could not go with us). I brought both of them to UVSC and they got their first degrees there. He went on to a director's and actor's school in Hollywood and is now very famous here.He has made several movies and documentaries and acts in movies in Monglia, Russia,and Korea. He played the role of Chinggis Khan in the the British version of Chinggis' life. His wife is an attorney.
My re-contacting government officials is going well. We will have dinner with three advisors from the Mongolian President's office this week. We have invited all of them to attend a conference at BYU this fall, an annual event.
The weather is still moderate here. It has not frozen in Ulaanbaatar yet; but there has been snow in the high mountains in the country and rains here a few times each week. We anticipate much colder weather before the end of the month.
Linda is feeling better this morning; I am in excellent health. We walk a lot, so we are keeping in good shape.
We love all of you very much.
Grandpa Jackson
We have had another very good week. I spent a lot of time with outside government and public affairs contacts; Linda has been ill with flu part of the week but has enjoyed her continued organization of family history and working with her assistants. We taught only two English classes this week. The class scheduled with the group of judges was canceled due to anticipated demonstrations at their court house. They are trying cases connected with the demonstrations during the elections in July.
The World Peace Conference was held here during the past week, and I was invited to some of the sessions. The opening session was in the Parliament Building and Matthew Salmon was one of the keynote speakers. Matt was a Taiwan missionary from Arizona and represented Arizona in congress for six years. He now has a PR firm in Washington. He and his speech were very well received here.
A Brother Rauna, Maori from New Zealand, was also at the Conference and invited me to several of the luncheons at the Chinggis Khan Hotel. He also brought many of the delegates to our Church building to meet me and learn more about the Church. I spent time with people from many countries, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines. Tonga, Tahiti, Australia, Russia, Korea, and many of the Central Asian countries. It was pleasant and interesting.
I have made contact with many of the educators I trained in Utah and our reunions have been very pleasant. BYU-Hawaii has had an exchange program going on with a university here that had not been very successful. President Andersen asked for my recommendation as to what should be done. I suggested the university I did most with from 1995 to 2000. He has agreed that we talk with them. I will meet with the President on Monday. I also trained him in Utah.
On Friday I had lunch with Narangerel Orgil and his wife (Linda was ill and could not go with us). I brought both of them to UVSC and they got their first degrees there. He went on to a director's and actor's school in Hollywood and is now very famous here.He has made several movies and documentaries and acts in movies in Monglia, Russia,and Korea. He played the role of Chinggis Khan in the the British version of Chinggis' life. His wife is an attorney.
My re-contacting government officials is going well. We will have dinner with three advisors from the Mongolian President's office this week. We have invited all of them to attend a conference at BYU this fall, an annual event.
The weather is still moderate here. It has not frozen in Ulaanbaatar yet; but there has been snow in the high mountains in the country and rains here a few times each week. We anticipate much colder weather before the end of the month.
Linda is feeling better this morning; I am in excellent health. We walk a lot, so we are keeping in good shape.
We love all of you very much.
Grandpa Jackson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
