13 April 2008 - The Presidential Museum in Kazakhstan

A few weeks ago, we were invited to go to the Presidential Cultural Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan with some university students that we are meeting with each week in our Englislh club. It is a beautiful building that houses the museum, the library, an art gallery and a concert hall.

The museum reflects the history of Kazakhstan since ancient times to the present day.

The Kazakh people were nomads who lived in yurts. A yurt is a round tent-like structure made out of camel or sheep felt. This is a regular size yurt for the family of average wealth. Someone who was rich would have a much larger yurt.

This is one of the beds inside the yurt. They have such beautiful tapestry and Kazakh rugs everywhere.

As you can see in this picture, they have beautiful chests decorated in silver and jewels in which they placed all of their goods. Notice the colorful rugs!

The beauty and the quality of their materials is astounding for such nomadic people. We were so impressed with their workmanship.

We had to take a picture of this horse because of the beautiful leather work and the silver and stone mountings on the saddle and the bridle! It was very impressive!

This is one of the many women's head-dresses that they wore. They were adorned with silver and jewels. The more important and wealthy you were the taller the head-dress was. The girls told us that the head-dresses had weights of silver down the back to help keep the head up straight. (If you ever bent over, I'm sure you couldn't get your head back up!!!) The women wore lots of silver jewelry that was beautifully made!

This is the statue of the "Golden Warrior". You see representations of him everywhere. He represents the ancestors of the Kazakh people. Two of these warrior statues were found near Almaty in some archeological excavations. They date back to the 7th century BC.

These are the girls that invited us to be with them at the museum. They told us so much about the history and culture of their Kazak people. They told us how their ancestors tried to keep the Kazakh tradition and language alive even when they were being oppressed by the Soviet Union. The Kazakh people have a great heritage and are trying to reestablish it.

The girls are Zhanara, Gaukhar, Bilimzhan, Anne, Zarina, and Manshuk.

Zarina is our substitute translator while Mira is in America. She is on the left. Bilimzhan was going to be, but she already has a part time job.

We have gotten close to all of the girls and would love to be able to bring them all home to live with us. They are wonderful and so sweet and kind! They all have studied English for 4 years at the university and want to further their education in the United States! They are all studying to be translators.

After going to the museum we have an even greater love for the Kazakh people. They have such a rich heritage!

This week we received word that our NRT equipment from Salt Lake has reached Almaty. Now we must get it through customs and safely here to Astana before we can go to our Humanitarian Conference in Bulgaria on the 22nd. Pray for us that all will be well! Clearing customs here in Kazakhstan can be a horrific nightmare!

Thanks again for all of the emails, love and support for us and our family. We feel those prayers every week! May the Lord bless all of you!

Love,

Elder and Sister Welling