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)