Ulaanbaatar

On the entire trip thus far I have not eaten so cheaply. On the entire trip thus far I have also not eaten so MUCH. Guess I didn't realize how much I missed Mongolian food. Maybe the German girl at the hostel was right and Mongolian food really IS good. I was served some sketchy meat the other day in Erdenet, but paying $1 for it made me not feel bad about not eating it. We had a joke on my mission that the reason that there are no authentic Mongolian restaurants is that they'd go straight out of business. Sadly, I saw that happen in Provo one year.

In Ulaanbaatar, I served in 3 branches. The longest of which was in the middle of my mission when I served in a branch for about 6 mo. with Elder Cottle (who was an awesome missionary) called Sukhbaatar. We had no one to teach coming in. We worked super hard. At the end of six months we were both transferred before a number of the people we taught ended up being baptized. One of them was a family with a mom and three sons. One of the old branch missionaries, Goyoo, now married in the temple with 2 kids was good enough to take me to see a couple of old friends. We saw some old ward members, an old companion of mine, and this family that I taught.

It was really fun to see them. As my experience has gone, it is one thing to see old friends but an entirely different experience to see people that are still active in the church. The power had gone out when we arrived, but kicked back in by the time we left so the mom was able to cook some dumplings for us. She also served some 'hyarum' basically water and milk, but heated up. Mongolians usually drink a good amount of tea and hyarum. However, church members are quite peculiar in Mongolia because a loooot of tea is consumed there. When she handed my my cup of steaming hyarum, instead of the usual thing you say when you serve a hot drink in Mongolia, "Please drink your tea," she said, "Here, drink your Mormon tea." I laughed really hard. I looked through the photo album of her middle son who was there. He just finished his mission in Mongolia.

He served as a branch president for about a year in a branch outside of Ulaanbaatar. It was fun to see his mission pictures. I found out his little brother was coming back from the Philipines MTC that night to start serving his mission in Mongolia. There was a baptism at the Stake Center the next day, and I ran into him there. I started talking to him about his family and he totally didn't recognize me. Kind of funny because when I last saw him he was about 12. Now he's 19 and about 6'3''. I think he just thought I had served in his branch and that he didn't recognize me because he had been at the MTC. He started to walk away and I grabbed him, "Elder Tuvshin it's me, Skinner." "Yooooi!" That's what you say in Mongolia when you're surprised, or when you are embarrassed. He grabbed me and hugged me before he had to run an errand with his companion.