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.
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