Made For Mongolia

Hi all!


I'm finally in Mongolia, and it's more surreal than ever! We headed out of the MTC on Thursday, 4/20/24, and we arrived in Mongolia on 4/22/24. So we completely skipped over Sunday, kinda wild. After more than 24 hours of travel, we got onto a party bus that had a karaoke machine inside. We sang some songs on the two-hour bus ride to the mission home. We had a full day of activities before a really needed shower and good rest.


On Tuesday, we all got paired up with our trainers. For those of you who don't know, a trainer is another missionary who has been on their mission long enough to know the language and is able to train new missionaries. My trainer's name is Sister Katchner, and she is amazing! Her Mongolian is really good (even though she says different) and she knows the city really well. We have so much in common; we're both military brats, we like most of the same foods, and we would rather choose a night in putting a puzzle together than going out to a party. It's actually pretty weird. I think we were paired up for a reason; I don't know that reason yet, but I'll let you know when I find out. I have a lot to learn from her, so stay tuned.


Sister Katchner actually caught a cold on Wednesday, so she has been taking things slow. I wish I could do more to help, but right now, learning Mongolian is all I can do...


Now for Mongolia, I am assigned in the Selbe, Ulaanbaatar area. So I am smack dab in the center of the city. I don't even have any гэр's in my district, which is crazy because there is a HUGE гэр district. The best way to describe the city is dirty. It definitely reminds me of Nigeria. There is a lot of construction, either current construction or construction projects that lost funding and stopped building.


The markets here are very Nigeria-like as well; they are either outside traditional markets with clothing or they are in very old buildings with a bunch of little stalls packed to the brim with random stuff. Every stall has a different theme; like one stall will be packed with shampoo, conditioner, and body soap. But another stall will have yogurt, cream cheese, milk, and milk candies.


On the English teaching front, our area teaches English classes through our church, but I am probably not going to teach English this transfer because the classes were shut down. Apparently, a schizophrenic lady was going to English classes but would have episodes where she would hit the other students and start screaming. So yeah. That just means I have more hours in the day to focus on Mongolian learning and learning how to be a better Mongolian missionary.


Anyways, sorry for the long email, I'm just excited to finally be here.


Love, вэстэл эгч
Here are some photos as a prize.





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