Herding the Flocks and Drawing Water from the Spring

Dorjhand and his wife Oyundalai were some of my favorite investigators.  They were baptized after I left, but they are a little less-active (still come to church when they have time, which may not be terribly often, but they drink tea alot).  The missionaries visit them a lot, which is good, and they still like the Church (both testimony-wise and friends-wise).  They bought 8 cows and half-yaks a couple of years ago, so they come out in the summer to check on them and make sure the hired-hand family is doing their job.  The ger that we slept the night in with them was pretty crowded.  They gave us so many of their blankets and dels to keep us warm that we were worried they'd get cold.  We were very warm but it wasn't very comfortable on the floor with a meager pad.  Oh and to explain the video, they also are having their hired hands take care of someone else's sheep + goat herd.

In this video, the sheep were wandering too far away and everyone else was busy lassoing half-yaks (the guys) to give them vaccinations or milking cows (the girls).  In soon-to-be-posted footage, Erica and I attempt to milk the cows without much success.  Herding is much easier.  (We didn't even try to lasso--but I did hold the medicine for them).  And I helped carry the sheep that we later put in the trunk to take home with us to Murun.  Dorjhand and Oyundalai will slaughter it later.

We have an even better visual memory of herding than this video, which unfortunately was not recorded on camera, of Erica, Dorjhand, Oyundalai and I herding the sheep AND the goats up to the hill where there is water for them to drink.  I'll just have to settle for describing it...each of us walked a few meters apart behind the animals.  It's really about as easy as it looks in the video.  We walked for about 20 minutes till we got to the hill.   The hill had a pretty neat forest--Oyundalai kept teasing Dorjhand about it, because he has a phobia of forests and was pretty uneasy while we were up there.  There wasn't that much water, and it had a thin layer of ice, but I guess they still got enough to drink. Also Erica won't let me get away without saying that I ran back to get the camera after we were almost at the hill, but I got lost and they watched me from the hill running back and forth, almost finding the house which was past the next dip in the rolling steppe, but never quite getting there.  It was the most strenuous jog that I've done in a while, but I surprised myself with how refreshed I was by it (and not too tired).

The next day Erica and I went with Dorjhand to get drinking water.  We have a couple of good videos of that, which we will send to you as soon as we can.