Stories: Choibalsan Branch Update
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| This update posted courtesy of Elder and Sister Leslie.
A Brief Historical Report and Summary of Activities of the Choibalsan Branch
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the Month of April 2005.
In reporting on the missionary activities here in Choibalsan, much of the focus at the present time is getting ready for the Open House of the new building that begins May 16 with a day for VIPs and continuing May 17 and 18 for the general public. There has been an enormous amount of interest shown in the building and we are anticipating between 5,000 and 10,000 people attending over the three days.
The number of attendees may be a bit ambitious, but 6,000 printed invitations have been prepared that will be distributed to the general public and 300 specially prepared invitations for the VIPs. We have been involved in getting these invitations ready along with the other senior couple now in Choibalsan, Elder and Sister Cannon.
Committees are working on various aspects of the Open House and Taivan, who is second counselor in the branch presidency, is the general chairman. Committees, and the chairperson of each, are as follows:
VIP Invitations: who, when and how - Khatanbaatar (She is a branch family history consultant.)
General Public: handouts, media (packet, cd of building), banner - President Batsukh
Displays: Auxiliaries, Priesthood - Munkhtsetseg (Munkhtsegseg recently returned from serving a mission in the Baltic States and is the Cannon’s translator.)
Tours: who conducts, flow of tour—background music, end of tour, handouts - Ganbat (Ganbat is first counselor in the branch presidency.)
Tour Guide Training: - Azbayar (Azbayar is President Batsukh’s wife and, by the way, is pregnant and expecting a baby in June.)
Building Preparation: grounds cleanup, building cleaning, transition from Sunday meetings, garbage disposal, flowers - Baasankhuu (She is second counselor in the branch relief society presidency.)
The building is mostly ready to be turned over to the Church and we will have our first meetings on May 15. We have previously mentioned that the building was to be dedicated on the 15th, but this is not now the case. A date for dedication and who will dedicate the building has not been set. The branch members are very excited about the new building as well and we hope there will be a sense of reverence and care shown in its use. Most of those involved in the construction of Church meetinghouses are now saying that this building has the highest quality of construction and workmanship in all of Mongolia. Certainly there is nothing remotely like it in our town of Choibalsan. Even the Mongolian engineers and inspectors who recently gave their approval to the building had never seen some of its features.
The senior couple listened to all the sessions of general conference that were available over the internet. The reception was poor at times but the spirit of the meetings was certainly felt. The time difference is 16 hours between Mongolia and Salt Lake City, so it meant getting up quite early a couple of mornings.
Disciplinary councils continue to be planned and held. These councils are for those who have come out of a very secular society and continue to struggle with their past habits and ways of living. President Batsukh is working with Elder Cannon in scheduling regular interviews for these people.
We are hosting new member discussions each week in our apartment. The teaching is done by branch missionaries, mostly young men and young women in their late teens and early twenties. They do a marvelous work here in our branch.
All of our branch activities and socials now have a spiritual element as well as a fun and games part to them. This has been at the insistence of President Batsukh and it has resulted in a different atmosphere among the members. We still have dancing, games and singing, but there are always one or more talks given from the scriptures and singing the hymns of the Restoration before the activity portion begins. An example of this was the adult social held on April 16 and the Seminary graduation social held April 26.
The branch recently received the Mongolian translation of April General Conference. This past week, on Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday evenings, and Saturday during the day, the branch members watched the sessions of conference, including the Priesthood Meeting for the men and the Young Women broadcast for the sisters of the branch. There were as many as 75 in attendance to watch these taped sessions.
Training sessions for the elders quorum presidency continues. They are getting closer to having presidency meetings on a weekly basis and are slowly catching on to the idea of an agenda for items that they need to consider in their responsibilities. Home teaching is being done in the branch but more work needs to be done to organize, assign, and encourage priesthood holders to visit the families they are responsible for.
The Relief Society president, Tserenkhand, returned home after being gone for more than two months and presidency and visiting teaching training has started up again. The two counselors in the presidency, Chimgee and Baasankhuu, are to be given a lot of credit for their efforts in continuing meetings and activities while the president was gone.
The branch choir continues to meet and practice each Sunday afternoon. They are preparing to sing a special number on the first Sunday that the branch members meet in the new building.
The senior couple continue to teach their weekly English classes at the hospital, the telephone company, and at the power plant. These English classes will end about the first week of May.
The missionary service project for the last week of April was a visit to a school that is 11 kilometers from Choibalsan. This school was originally for Russian students and at one time had more than 600 attending. There are about 160 students attending there now. The nine missionaries in Choibalsan visited with a group of 10 students who are orphans and live at this school. We played games with them, including a name game and Bingo, taught them a song in English, and the elders blew up balloons and twisted and shaped them into animals and other forms. These children, ranging in age from seven to 16, seemed to enjoy the time we spent with them. Altansovd, the Bog director, and a member of the Church, arranged for our visit and went with us to the school.
Four persons were baptized on April 23 and one person was baptized on April 30.
We want to mention that Mongolia was dedicated for the preaching of the gospel on April 15, 1993 by Elder Neal A. Maxwell. That’s only twelve years ago and remarkable things have happened since then. There are now more than 6,000 members of the Church in Mongolia. One statistic about things here in Choibalsan is the last quarterly report showed that 60 persons were baptized during the past twelve months and 58 are active members of the branch. When one considers that the Book of Mormon was not received by these people in their own language until November 2001, that they do not have an LDS edition of the Bible, and that the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price will not be out in Mongolian until late this year, it all seems a miracle to us!
Submitted by Elder and Sister Leslie
2 May 2005 |
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