We had a little party down in the basement to celebrate Miigaa's birthday.  I baked a couple of cakes and we invited the other couples and the young ladies Miigaa works with and some of the young men that work in the building.  It was nice.

It is time for elections here later this month so you see election banners everywhere.  For two days this week this bus with banners for candidates has parked outside our apartment building with a table set up with campaign workers beside our stairs to the doorway.  We do not get involved with the elections here but it is a good reminder that it soon will be time for us to mail-in our ballots for the elections back home.
I am having problems with doing the blog on my laptop.  Every time I try to publish my post, it just disappears!!    So I will now do it in the office on Monday morning instead of Sunday evening as I have been. 

This entry is for those back home in the Carlsbad, CA stake.  The youth leaders here heard about youth in the states going on pioneer treks.  Elder Shrope shared with them the pictures of the trek he and our youngest son, Chris, went on with the Carlsbad stake.  They were so impressed with it that they have decided to do a trek here this summer.  They even used pics from Elder Shrope's file to make their posters.  Now we get to see Sister Stoiloff and her girls pulling their handcart every day as we go to the office! This is Sister Hunt and some of the young ladies showing the aprons and bonnets they made for the trek.  And the first of the handcarts they are making.  They are very excited and we are sure they will have a blast!

 We also administered the Michigan this week to 17 BYU hopefuls.  We hope they did well, especially those who have attended the preparation classes we held and have studied.  These tests are not easy even for English speaking people.  But they do not give up and keep taking the test until they either pass or become too old to go to school!!  These young Mongolians are serious about getting an education and are very determined.  We love them.

We have had rain this week.  In fact yesterday the couples dinner out was cancelled because we were to walk to the restaurant and it rained pretty steady all afternoon and evening.  The streets and sidewalks were flooded.  But everything is getting green!!  We gave the pre-Michigan tests to 6 people who wanted to practice before taking the real one next week.  Four did pretty good.  In fact one of those was an elderly gentleman that comes and takes the test all the time just to see how he is doing for his own personal goal and not to try to get into BYU-Hawaii.
On Friday we had a baptism at Nalaikh.  This young man is the cousin of the branch president and will be a great addition to the priest's quorum.  It was a great baptism and was nicely attended even though it was a holiday.  It was Child and Mother's Day here, there was no work in most places, and the traffic was heavy from people coming back from the countryside in the evening.

Can't believe that we entered the missionary training center 17 months ago today and that we only have 6 more months til we go home!!  How time flies!!!

Monday we celebrated everyone's birthday at Nalaikh.  It was actually Elder Davaadorj's birthday on Monday which is why we decided to celebrate.  I baked 28 cupcakes and a large bundt cake and brought three large bottles of soda.  They ate it all.

Then we played Twister.  They really had fun trying to figure out their left and right hands and feet.  They start out being nice and then get competitive.  We may leave this game with the branch when we go home!

There are statues everywhere around the city.  We took a walk to Sukhbaatar Square and took pictures of these statues that we saw.

This is a statue of Marco Polo.  He has a bird on his shoulder and I am not certain why.

This is a statue of Lenin.  There are alot of statues of Russian leaders and people all over the city.  It is from the days when Mongolia was under the Soviet's rule.

And then these guys are out in front of several buildings around the city.  Maybe they are some kind of guard animal.  It was just a beautiful sunny day and great for taking a walk. 

We then went to lunch at Millie's with all the other couples.  We were saying good-bye to Elder and Sister Gledhill as their visas were cancelled and they have to go to Hong Kong until it is settled and they get to come back; or they are reassigned.  Four Elders have also had their visas cancelled and two more couples are waiting to see if theirs will be too.  It is one of those sticky situations we all dread facing.  But we are thinking positive and that it will all turn out okay.  Our visas do not expire before we go home.

For all of you back home that hate having to remember which day and what time the streetsweeper comes so you do not get a ticket, we thought you would like to see our streetsweepers here in Mongolia....

Of course we do not have to worry about moving our car because they just sweep around it.  They do not really sweep private streets though.  These here are on Peace Avenue which is one of the main streets in Ulaanbaatar! 

This week has been some crazy weather.  Most of the week was beautiful.  It was warm enough that we went to the office in our shirt sleeves without the need for even a light jacket or sweater!!  So Elder Shrope transplanted the rest of our little garden into large pots and put them out on our balcony.  He had taped up some plastic to help guard them against the wind that bent them over last year.  But then on Thursday the temperatures dropped a little and so he brought them into the livingroom.  And we have had snow for the last three days!!  It doesn't stay for long, but it is cold outside, today I had to wear my heavy coat.  And the winds are over 20 km an hour!!  So this is a scene from our livingroom...

This has been a week of good and not so good.  Bolorsaikhan and Tsolmon were refused their visas at the US Embassy.  They had wanted to go and be sealed in the Washington DC Temple.  That was a real bummer!  Then Enkhmuren, a 17 year old young lady at Nalaikh, called us from the hospital Wednesday night.  The doctor said her heart was very bad and needed repairs.  Then on Thursday he said her heart beat was good and she could go home.  We saw her on Saturday and she cannot even stand without labored breathing.  So we have fasted and prayed for her.
On a better note, we have a new English student on Monday and Tuesday afternoons.  Her name is Oko and she is Altan's daughter-in-law.  She graduates with her masters in financial analysis this month but needs to speak better English.  We will help her all we can.

On Monday we had a little fire for FHE outside the chapel in Nalaikh with the youth.  We roasted marmellows.  Some had never roasted them on an open campfire before.

A few had never even eaten a marshmellow at all before!

This is Enkhmuren putting more wood on the fire.  She was having no heart problems then.

Even the Sister missionaries were enjoying the fire.  Then the youth played games as they do at the end of most FHEs.

On Saturday they had a joint youth activity in Nalaikh.  They had about 30 youth from other branches in the district join the 15-18 youth from Nalaikh.  It was a good turnout.

Elder Davaadorj planned and conducted the activity.  He mixed all the youth up into groups so that there were youth from every branch in each group.  We had to leave early and they were late getting started but they were all having fun.  We had cooked all the hamburger patties and cleaned the kitchen for them.

This is our new love.  We had plain aloe vera drink before and it is good, but then we discovered it in flavors!  We have tried the grape and strawberry and they are good, but our favorites are the mango and pomegranate.  So now we drink these with our meals at home and only have soda when we go to a restaurant.