Screenshot 2025-08-12 095317.png — President Odgerel Ochirjav, who served as first counselor in the Mongolia Ulaanbaatar Mission at the time, trains teachers how to teach using the Book of Mormon on December 9, 2023, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Screenshot from Odgerel Ochirjav's public Facebook account, accessed by Church News.

In a small institute classroom in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Odgerel Ochirjav stands before a group of young Latter-day Saints, teaching from the scriptures with deep conviction.

From a Marxist to Mongolia’s first stake president, Odgerel’s story is one marked by resistance, reason, and ultimately a whole lot of faith, reported the Church’s Mongolia Newsroom.

Born in Soviet-era Leningrad (the city’s name since returned to Saint Petersburg, Russia) and educated in that country as a forestry scientist, Odgerel returned to Mongolia with a strong identity as a communist.

“While seeking and learning spiritual truth was prohibited, seeking secular knowledge and education was the key in a communist society to prove that mankind doesn’t need God to be successful,” he said, adding: “Whenever I came across religious content, I was always expected to perceive it negatively.”

But when the Soviet communist government collapsed across the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Mongolia began to open to new ideas—including faith.

Read the rest of the article on the Church News.

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