Saturday, May 3, 2014

It's May!

The big news for this week is that our translator Muugii got MARRIED! She has only been engaged for a couple of weeks but has been dating Munkbaatar for a couple of years, on and off.

She came in on Tuesday and asked if she could have Wednesday off, sure we said. Then she quietly said that she was getting married.
Getting MARRIED? Yes.

Her family knew, but she did not tell any of her friends or invite anyone. She is a very private person and when we asked how they get married here she said basically they have to do a lot of paper work, take medical tests (including proving that you are not mentally disabled) etc. And then you can get married.  The church priesthood has no authority to marry, so they just had a local government official marry them.  
She seems very happy. 
They both have being sealed in the temple as their goal.  It costs approximately $2600 US dollars to make a trip to the Hong Kong Temple.  So it is a significant cost for Mongolians to make the journey. (Muugii gets paid about $4/hr (US dollars) and her salary is right in line or a little above what other Mongolian workers get paid.  We know they will make it there and we hope it will be while we are still here in Mongolia.

Also the weather has been beautiful until the snow came again.  Hey, what can you say except that it is springtime in Mongolia.
The Larch tree is getting green pine needles Yea!
I always thought it was quite depressing to see  Pine trees without needles during the winter






Saturday we had a Relief Society meeting to learn how to make American Cake.
Mongolian's really like cake.  They have cake for every special occasion such as New Year's, women's day and children's day. 
 But the problem is they don't know how to bake cakes.
They usually buy their cakes and pay a lot of money for it.
They wanted me to teach them how to bake a cake.
I used two different recipes, one for chocolate and one for yellow cake and both were the easy one bowl recipe, using ingredients that they could obtain.  I think it turned out okay,
The one ingredient they did not understand was baking powder.  
I had brought a couple of envelopes of a German brand that is readily available and hopefully they will be able to make their own cakes.
I didn't get pictures of the cakes, but here is one picture of some of the participants.
President Munkhjargel is the man in the middle and our Branch president.
He also is a chef by profession.  He probably should have been teaching the class.

While we were waiting for the cakes to bake and cool, the members were doing their cleaning assignments.  There were a lot of people there, and they were taking great pride in their work and taking great care of the building.  The children were more fun to take pictures of however, so that is what I took pictures of.






 This is such an adorable baby!  The chubby cheeks and the HAIR!

Have another great week!

Scripture for the week: 3 Nephi 9:14 Yea, verily I say unto you, if ye will come unto me ye shall have eternal life. Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever will come, him will I receive; and blessed are those who come unto me

No comments:

Post a Comment