Conquering early morning Seminary classes and battling the ravages of high school, Flora Enkhbold, a senior from Mongolia majoring in business management, said her Church friends helped her keep her testimony strong, despite her challenges.
She said she grew up in Mongolia with Yoko Yondonjamts and Bayarmagnai Enkhbayar, who are both freshmen majoring in business management. Enkhbold said they were all in the same Primary class of the Jargalant Ward in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Yondonjamts said Enkhbayar and Enkhbold are really good friends and their friendship started when he and Enkhbayar were 10. “Enkhbold Flora joined the Church a little bit later than us,” he explained.
In the Spring 2021 Semester, Enkhbold said the three of them were reunited at BYU–Hawaii. “It's a great blessing to study here with my best friends. … I hoped it would be, and it's happening now.”
Something solid
According to the Church website, there are 12,261 Church members in Mongolia. In the typical Mongolian high school, there is only one Church member, Yondonjamts said. Enkhbold said this made Church friends incredibly valuable to her.
During high school she said she, along with Yondonjamts and Enkhbayar, established a strong group of about 11 friends from their ward. She said their group often got together to sing karaoke and eat Ramen noodles.
“In my personal experience,” she said, “that group of friends served as something solid. It helped us stay in the gospel. For me, it helped me to know I was not alone because I had this church-based friendship.”
She said when she was tempted to do wrong or felt lonely in high school, she would get a message from her church friends and they would hang out. “It gave me strength to choose the right instead of getting pushed to do whatever my classmates were doing.”
Whenever Enkhbold felt left out by the non-member teens in school, she said she would feel happy because she had friends who shared her standards. She said she knew she was never alone.
Early morning Seminary
Enkhbayar said the most enjoyable part of the trio’s friendship was early morning Seminary because they were the only three in the class. “I was not really active [in the Church] when I was a teenager, but I always went to Seminary. ... I don't know why. Seminary was the key.” It was Enkhbold and Yondonjamts who encouraged him to start going to church again, he said.
He explained he would drive to Seminary with Yondonjamts and Enkhbold at 6 a.m. on cold winter mornings. “Sometimes we needed to push the car because it didn’t turn on, or we would walk to the church,” he recounted.
Enkhbayar said after Seminary, he and his friends would play ping-pong. He expressed great fondness for those fun times playing after class. In addition, he said he thinks Enkhbold is a great example to him and Yondonjamts because she was very diligent in school by taking BYUH English classes online while Yondonjamts and himself halfheartedly sought to learn, he shared.
“Before my mission, my priesthood leader and stake president met with me and suggested, no – he commanded – me to go on a mission and also to BYUH. So I decided to come here."
Enkhbold said this is a path many Mongolian young women and men are encouraged to follow. He explained having friends to help them along the way made it possible for the three of them to follow this path.
Enkhbayar said when he decided to serve a mission and study at BYUH, Enkhbold was already good at speaking English because of the online classes they were taking. He said she helped him through the application process to be accepted to the university.
When he and Yondonjamts said goodbye to her at the airport as Enkhbold left Mongolia for Hawaii, Enkhbayar said she told them to come meet with her at BYUH, to which he said he responded, “Yeah, I’ll be there.”
Consistency is key
Enkhbold said Yondonjamts is really good husband material. “He cleans really well, cooks really well, does all these things really well.” She said on one of his birthdays, Yondonjamts made all his friend’s dinner. “It was terrible of us,” she said with a laugh.
Enkhbold said when she and Yondonjamts were teenagers, there were a lot of young women who came to church, but “a lot of times there were not a lot of young men.” She said she admired Yondonjamts' consistency and his faith in attending church no matter the circumstances.
In fact, she said often Yondonjamts was the only young man to go to church in the whole ward. "He was there, every single Sunday as a priesthood holder to pass the sacrament. … I used to admire him because he would be there no matter what.”
Enkhbold said she knows she can count on her friend because even if there is drama, she knows their friendship will still be the same. “Once [Yoko] counts [someone] as a friend, [they’re] a friend."
Yondonjamts was featured in a Liahona article from October 2007. “Because the weather in Mongolia is very cold in the winter, a mission in Hawaii appeals to him,” the article reads. Now a student at BYUH, he said he and his friends are here on a new mission: to enter to learn and go forth to serve.