10/26/07

I got a Facebook message today from my dear little friend Namuunaa reminding me that she was baptized four years ago today. She was fifteen when we first started teaching her. She's the youngest in her family of five. A few months after she was baptized her oldest brother joined the church, then her sister, then her mother, and finally her dad. She's pretty much amazing. I got to spend a lot of time with her and her family this summer during my visit to Mongolia. She and her sister are both budding artists and Namuunaa and I went on a few sketchbook adventures together, which has to be in my top 3 memories from that trip. Here are a few items in homage to this awesome little Mongol ohin:

Yep, she plays the geetar too. A girl of many talents.

Statue of some baatar or another that I sketched on one of our adventures. Namuunaa did a sketch of me sketching this.

We also spent some time sketching in this cute little park just down the street from her apartment building in the 11th microdistrict. I lived two buildings away from here on my mission and never saw this park.

While we were sketching at the park these two eerily cute girls came up and started pestering us. Not one to be out-pestered I started filming the younger one and asking her questions and telling her to smile.

Here she is summer of 2009 on my first visit back. No surprise that her nickname is "Big Smiles."

Here she is making lunch this past summer.

Түүний хийсэн lunch.

Namuunaa's older sister, Tsatsral, is studying thangka painting in school. This is an exercise she did where she painted flowers and other plants from life and then stylized them the way they would appear in a thangka painting. 

One of my companions, Khorloo, and I with Namuunaa this summer after a fireside at the main church building.

And just for kicks, here's a video of Tsatral and Namuunaa playing with shagai. I guess technically I was playing too, at least for the first five minutes until they schooled me and I respectfully bowed out and let the two life-long players duke it out.