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
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