This story started 20 years ago when Lane served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Mongolia. Once we learned we would be moving to China we knew one of our first trips would be to Mongolia specifically in July, as that is the time of their big national celebration.
Photo below shows the missionaries at an orphanage. Can you spot Lane? He looks like one of the kids himself.
Find him yet? He is on the right, ⬆ there.
Now for the rest of the story, which can't continue without introducing a very special lady.
This is Pujee (pronounced Pooh Jay). She is a wonderful, charitable, fun lady. Our trip wouldn't have been so fabulous or successful without her! She planned our itinerary, purchased tickets in advance, found us the cheapest apartment (across the street from hers), booked our ger, drove us around each day, was our tour guide, cooked a few meals, picked us up and dropped us off at the train station, airport, respectfully, and played grandma to the boys, (I think they ate every piece of candy and gum she owned).
20 ish years ago this lady lived in an apartment building that also housed missionaries. Everyday she noticed them crossing the street to another building (the Mission Home, the administrative headquarters for the mission). One day she saw two Elders trying to get a taxi. Now in those days anyone with a car was a "taxi", there weren't taxi companies and there weren't many who owned a car. So she eagerly picked them up being curious as to who they were and what they were doing. A few days later the Elders showed up on her door (after she had given them her contact information of course).
Lane helped teach her about the Gospel for months. She was baptized and then began spreading the word. Pujee has brought multitudes to the Gospel. Even while we were visiting her she was busy reaching out to others one way or another. She has the honor of being the first senior missionary and temple serving missionary from Mongolia. When she joined the church there were just a few branches, now there are two stakes. Which basically means there are enough members in Mongolia now to have numerous congregations. You would be hard pressed to name a Mongolian member she does not know!
Enough back story! On to the trip!
Oh wait, one more tidbit of back story. We had started planning this trip but with Duncan becoming ill we thought we were going to have to cancel. Basically one week before we left we decided to go. Which meant that flights had gone up and were hard to find, so we opted to take a 27 hour train ride.
Train station in Beijing
We're off!!!!!
Looking back at the end of our train.
Nap time!
Boys jumped out to "cheese it" while stopped at a station.
Around 9 pm we reached the boarder where our train was dismantled car by car, taken to a warehouse lifted up and the wheels changed to a new width. To keep armies from invading, Russians and Mongolians built different sized railroad tracks. They finished the process around 2 am and we were on our way.
