Busy week planned

We will be leaving after church tomorrow traveling north to Erdenet where we will look at a possible project with Habitat for Humanity. We will go on to Darkhan on Tuesday, and then to Selenge and Zuhn Khaara on Wednesday and come back on Thursday. Selenge is within sight of the Russian Border. These areas have a lot of wild horses, camels, yaks and goats and sheep. There is a lot of farming going on in these areas. We saw the fields right after they had been plowed and prepared for planting. Now we get to see what they planted and how the crops are growing. We will be visiting the Vocational School in Selenge and an orphanage in Darkhan. We also will do some Perpetual Education Fund training with the District President and all the Branch Presidents of those areas. We will be with the Hitchmoughs, the missionary couple who are in charge of the English Project. They are getting new contracts signed for all the American missionaries who will be teaching English in their areas. We most likely will take our computer, but we won't have much coverage in these areas. We'll write if we can. Love to you all

Graduation day for our English Class

We have taught English to the Customs Department at the Main Post Office for the last 4 months. We will begin again in September. We loved it. They gave us traditional Mongolian Hats and Dolls. They are a great group of students. Two were not here, they have already gone to the countryside for the summer.

Trip to Chilbasan

We just returned from a trip to Choilbasan Mongolia, 615 km east of Ulaanbaatar. We went to visit the Orphanage where we are having work done to renovate the floor and ceilings in places, also the electrical wiring and windows. Most of the children were out in the country at the farm that they also have planting vegetables. We also are sending pictures of our visit to one of the members homes. She is a hard working single mother. She has twin daughters both serving missions in Mongolia. We had met her daughters last month. As you can see they have trees here and they are beautiful. They also have a river behind the church and we walked down there with the Branch President and his wife who are missionaries from Washington state. We also met a young family with a little daughter who reminded us so much of Callie. We were able to feed all the missionaries lunch two days. It was so great to see them eat till they were full! One young American missionary was serving there with 5 native Mongolians. He's only been in the country for 5 weeks, but he's doing great and learning the language very well. We enjoyed our visit and did somethings that we couldn't have done long distance, but it was so good to get back to our familiar surroundings and smells. We are working hard and still loving it. We love you all with all our hearts and pray for you constantly. Hope that all is well with you and your families.

June 5

We've been very busy this week. Our posters were printed for theEnterovirus Public Awareness Campaign. We picked up 7,800 posters and parcelled them out in packages for each of the 64 sets of missionaries that we have serving all over Mongolia and prepared them for travel. Some are sent by truck, some by train, some by plane and some hand carried. We will be taking the ones to Choibalsan tomorrow when we fly out with the Hitchmoughs. We will be gone for 3 days and away from the Computer, so if we don't answer right away, it's because we can't. If we have access to email, we will check it. These picture sthat we are sending are mainly of the Enterovirus Campaign. One is of us at our favorite little hoonsnee delthgoor (grocery store) two doors down from the Service Center. We go here to get snacks and noodles for lunch. Dad buys ice cream for us in the office and buys enough to give the girls who work at the store too. One is of Dad with the Secretary of one of the Directors at the Ministry of Health. One is of me, Dad and Arika with Dr. Bujin who is the head of Communicable Disease Division in the Ministry of Health. And one of me and Dad in the office. We visited an Ophthalmology Clinic this week. It was very interesting. Wish Suzi could have seen it. It was ancient, but very clean. Their instruments are like back in the 50's. Their beds are like army cots. They keep patients overnight after surgery because of the great distances they have to travel and the lack of rapid transportation. They have no private rooms. They were operating on someone the day we were there, and when we got to that area in our tour by the Director, they opened the doors and we saw into the operating room. It was very interesting, but I sure wouldn't want to be the person who was on the table! The Dr who is the head of this clinic is also the opthalmology director with the Ministry of Health and over that department at the University of Mongolia. Her name is Dr. Baasankhuu.