We Are Sooo Spoiled (Blessed)...

Communicating with these good people is our greatest challenge. We often have someone around who speaks "some" English but then they either don't really understand or they go on and translate what they thought we said and we have no idea what they said because we don't speak their language.

We had the 4 missionaries and a branch member over for dinner last night.  Three of the four missionaries are Mongolian and we wanted to give them an American experience.  We went out and bought as many authentic American pizza ingredients as we could find. We have found mozzarella cheese in the past but we couldn't find it this time. Deni sent me out looking for mozzarella cheese and fresh mushrooms.  There are small stores everywhere and almost all of them have EXACTLY the same thing but occasionally one will have something that the others don’t have.  I went into a small vegetable shop in the basement of a small department store about ½ mile from home where I knew they had a fridge.  I knew that they had Gouda and Edam cheese (like all the other stores that have cheese) but I thought they might have others. I asked for cheese for pizza and they pointed at the Edam and I said “no, I need mozzarella”. They lifted a few things off the bottom of the fridge and pulled out a wax sealed block of cheese. I futilely tried to find any words that I might know on the label and asked if it was for pizza and he kind of shrugged his shoulders. I decided to take a gamble and I had him cut off a small piece. I drew a line in the wax to cut off and he cut off about an extra inch which I had to pay for.  I tasted a small piece and it wasn't mozzarella (maybe swiss) but I hoped Deni wouldn't be so picky.  They didn't have fresh mushrooms but they did have dried mushrooms so I bought the cheese and the dried mushrooms and walked home to the boss.

Deni tasted the cheese and said “that isn’t mozzarella”.  I tried to look surprised but she had me go back out and look again and if I didn't find any I was to walk to the large grocery store and buy some Gouda because most of the stores were closed by then. I went looking but didn't find any so I walked about a mile to the store and bought Gouda cheese.

We had met some really nice people last week from Holland who spoke English. They are vacationing all around Mongolia. We had them over for dinner and enjoyed visiting and learning about their country and their lives. When they left for UB and a tour to the Gobi Desert they stopped by our place and dropped off a large bag of wonderful fruit. Things that we see at the stores here but never buy because they are very expensive: watermelon, grapes, plums, large apples, etc.

After church on Sunday Deni went home and made the pizza dough, cut the watermelon in half, cut up the fruit, added a few things that we had like canned peaches, pineapple and bananas and put it all back in the half watermelon bowl.

 When the Mongolian’s saw the fruit bowl their eyes got big and one of them said “this is culture stock”.  They were so excited and so cute.  They loved the fruit and the bowl and they were so appreciative. When most of the fruit was gone I poured the juice out of the watermelon into a glass.  One of them tasted it and said that it was like from heaven. She let her companion taste it and then it was like two cats fighting over some milk. They loved it and said it was the best cultural experience they had had.


We then had them make their own pizza. We had cut up red, yellow and green peppers, reconstituted mushrooms (which were OK), pineapple, onions, ham, etc. and of course, lots of cheese. They heaped on the goodies and we baked it. 
The pizza was another great hit and then we made waffles, something they had never seen. We served it with powdered sugar (from the US, very expensive), syrup and some of the fruit. They said that they were stuffed but they couldn't stop eating. We thought that we would have some pizza or fruit left over for today but it didn't happen. They ate every bite and licked out the watermelon bowl.   

We really love being here and learning to love the people and their culture. We are the ones having a Cultural Experience. They treat us with such love and respect and we are the ones who really respect them. They are like pioneers, working hard to change the way things have been and make them better.