And Then…Home

 This week was full of more lasts and goodbyes.

We had our last service at the House of Mercy. We have thoroughly enjoyed serving alongside our friends of other faiths and will really miss that weekly assignment. They shared such kind words and thoughtful gifts with us as we said goodbye. 

We also had our final dinner with all the American senior couples serving in Mongolia. What great friends we have made as we have served alongside other couples throughout our mission. We are so grateful for the friendships we have made and wish them all the best as they continue to serve!

Next was a virtual goodbye gathering with our communications teams from Japan and Korea. Once again, we have been blessed to work with such wonderful people and feel fortunate to call them friends. After kind words were shared and more goodbyes were said, we went to lunch with Naska, our Mongolia Communication Director.

That same day, we welcomed 25 new missionaries to the mission! This took quite a bit of organizing and planning to make sure they completed all their first-day mission tasks, but their enthusiasm and excitement to begin their service was contagious. The day went smoothly, and before long they were all off with their new companions and ready to get to work.  That night was the fireside for the departing missionaries. We shared our testimonies, shed a few more tears, and said—you guessed it—more goodbyes!

Yesterday, we had the privilege of joining Naska and his family for a day at Khustai National Park, one of Mongolia’s most beautiful, protected areas and home to the famous Przewalski’s horses—the last truly wild horse species in the world. These horses were once extinct in the wild, but they have been successfully reintroduced to Mongolia, and today hundreds roam the open steppes of Khustai.  

We were lucky enough to spot several of the wild horses, along with lots of marmots and even some deer. 

After driving through the park, we headed out onto the open Mongolian steppe. Suddenly, we turned off the main road and started bouncing our way across the grasslands. Soon we stopped at a small sand dune, where we unloaded everything we needed for a very special Mongolian meal: khorkhog.

Khorkhog is a traditional Mongolian dish where chunks of mutton and vegetables are cooked together with extremely hot stones inside a sealed metal container. A hole was dug in the sand, a fire was built, and stones were placed in the fire to heat. 

Meanwhile, carrots, potatoes, onions, and meat were prepared and carefully placed into the pot. Once the stones were blazing hot, they were transferred from the fire into the pot, where they helped cook the meal from the inside.

While we waited for our dinner to cook, the kids had a great time playing in the incredibly soft sand, and I learned to play shagai, a traditional Mongolian game played with anklebones. It was such a fun and unexpected way to spend one of our final days in Mongolia—great food, good company, wide-open steppe, a teamwork push out of the sand, and one more collection of memories to tuck away in our hearts.

And now, somehow, we are down to the very last few days.  On Thursday, we will say our final goodbye to Mongolia and crawl onto a plane to begin our 26-hour journey home. There is definitely a little sadness mixed in with the excitement. After a year and a half of calling Mongolia and the Micronesian Islands home, leaving the people we have grown to love—and places that have become such an important part of our story—won’t be easy. There will be people and places we will miss more than we can say.  

But there is also so much to look forward to. We are ready to hug our family, see our parents, kids and grandkids, sleep in our own bed, and begin this next chapter of our lives. We came on our mission hoping to serve, and we are leaving with far more than we could have imagined—friendships, experiences, memories, and a whole new love for remarkable countries and people.

So, as we count down these final days, we are trying to soak it all in. One last walk. One last Mongolian meal. One last look at the endless blue sky. One last goodbye.

And then…home.

It’s a little bittersweet, but mostly we are just grateful. Grateful we got to be here. Grateful for the people who made this place home. And grateful that, after all the goodbyes, there is finally a hello waiting for us on the other side of the world.