Erdenet

When I showed up in church the next day the first thing I notices was the lady playing the piano, Oyuna. She had been the building cleaner years earlier, when we held our meetings in the Selink Hotel's Restaurant. I played the piano in Erdenet when I was there, and actually gave this lady a few piano lessons when we had no one to play. She obviously stuck with it and was doing pretty well. There were a few other familiar faces that came and spoke with me, including a sister I had served with, and the branch president that had just finished his mission in Russia when I served.

One of the highlights was seeing a girl we taught named Oyunsahun. She was a referral from her friend, a convert taught by my cousin Ryan in Austrailia. I said hi and shook her hand before the senior sister missionary there asked me to translate the meeting. She had no idea who I was, and after the meeting came up to me and asked if she could schedule another time for an English lesson. I realized she still didn't recognize me and stopped and said, "Who were the Elders that taught you?" "There was one guy named Skinner..." "That's me." "Paaaah." Priceless.

Later was when I was sitting in the foyer talking to the sister that I had served with. There was an elder standing a little bit off interested in seeing if he could gather from our conversation who I was. I looked over at him and then at his name tag. "Bat-Sengel." I said out loud. "I used to know a guy in the town of Choibalsan named...." In the middle of my sentence I suddenly recognized him. He was taught by the other set of missionaries while I was in Choibalsan. There were about 5 young men at that time in that town that were all good friends and close with the missionaries. I came to call them the 'Lost Boys' because of their penchant for scheming great plans and big ideas. Two of the Lost Boys were brothers and ran their family's shoe repair shop. Their father was an alcoholic so at times it mainly fell upon them to feed the family. On one occassion some of the Lost Boys came to the missionaries' apartments late at night asking if they could borrow our bikes. The shoe reapair shop was about to go under and they needed to buy some materials to get it going again. Their plan was to borrow the bikes so that they could ride out to an old landfil, fill their backpacks with whatever useful thing they could find, save the shoe repair shop, and save the family. They were all very active in the church, bringing the sacrament bread, helping with tithing, membership clerking, organizing branch family home evening and what have you. Bat-Sengel was one of the Lost Boys. I was stunned as I realized who he was and I started to get up out of my seat, and he jumped forward embrace me, as I did him. It was a moment I will never forget.

I later borrowed the branch missionaries to help me find some old friends. We got in a taxi and after about 30 seconds realized our driver was totally hammered. He was swerving everywhere. Had it not been a Sunday afternoon, or a town with more than two stoplights (installed very recently) I might have been a bit more worried. We visited the branch pianist Oyuna, as I mentioned, a long time member. She recently went to the temple, and is now taking care of her grandson. I was really happy for her dedication, but even more amazed at her grandson. Earlier, in Czech I made reference to a guide that sounded like a news anchor, the movie 'Better Off Dead,' etc. Well I met a sort of Mongolian equivalent to that. Oyuna's, eight year-old grandson has learned English by watching Japanese anime cartoons for about 10 hours a day since he was three. He was pretty good. When I spoke to him the conversation always eventually shifted towards fighting or martial arts in some way, but he was pretty darn good.