I've Never Been to Oovoo Javer....

So this week was actually crazy crazy busy. Pretty weird feeling actually. We have 5 investigators right now, literally found them all this week, or rather they found us. And we have 3 more people we are going to meet with this week who are all solid, so that puts us at 8 investigators. Pretty crazy stuff. We are hoping they will put another set of missionaries in our ward because of it. We met with the first counselor (the bishop just died of cancer) and he told us that he wants us to meet with members but we literally have no time, it's kinda weird to say. So fingers crossed we get more missionaries soon. But this week was good. Highlight of the week was trying to find this person who lives way in the mountains at some weird named bus stop. I'll explain more in the email.

Monday: Quick recap, so we went on a hike for P Day and it was so freaking fun. We got way in the mountains and made a fire, and someone brought Dr Pepper. It was a super fun time. 

Tuesday: Jesperson and Sweetwood needed us for a lesson, so we went there and it was pretty fun. Taught a little, then we helped them out at an English appointment too. Afterwards we met with the little girls Anuder and Bujinglam (the two little girls we meet with just about every week). It was super fun, they always make fun of my name and so they named me something new. Because my name ends with "Field" they named me uudam. Which means something sort of like a plain, or meadow, or field. It describes the Mongolian countryside. So that's pretty neat. And that was really the whole day. 

Wednesday: Super super busy today. We went and I met with Odsuren one last time. It was an awesome lesson. We taught about repentance and he said "this is such an awesome gift" and then he said “I feel your words through my soul." So then we heard that and I look at Lambert and ask if I heard that right. It was pretty cool. He is a great investigator. Then we had a member appointment after that. We met with this lady who is really old, I don't even know how old. But she made some super good huushur. She talked a lot about the people who baptized her back when the mission first opened in 1998. It was cool to get a picture of what it was like back then. But she was super fun to meet with. Then we hustled over to our english lesson. It also went really well. 

Thursday: We had district meeting which was really good. It went a long time just because we were going over how to teach better. It was a super helpful lesson. We were going to meet with our investigators this night, but they got busy so we moved them to Friday morning.

Friday: Taught our investigators, the brother and sister. They are super awesome. They are super engaged and want to learn and are always really happy. Then I had my meeting with President Harper. It went well, just talked a lot about teaching and how to help the people out here. Then that night we went to the Chuka (the grandma) and the little girl. They are the really poor ones in case it was confusing. She is starting to open up to us. She is just a really shy person naturally so I can feel for her. It would be nerve raking to have some foreign people try and talk to you about church things. But she answered one of our questions, so that is a good sign. And I gave her a frisbee at the end of the lesson. Rand and I showed her how to play with it. Then after the prayer she got a huge grin on her face when I gave it to her and she ran inside to show her brothers. So I think it's going well with her. She is honestly my favorite little kid ever. Also I hit my 7 months this day. Pretty strange. Felt really fast and very slow at the same time. 

Saturday: So today we had this lesson with a person we got a referral for. She is 9 and her mom is a less active member. But her cousin is getting baptized and she wants to be baptized with her cousin, so we are meeting with her to get her ready. So we called the mom and asked where she lives. Sidenote: It's impossible to understand Mongolians over the phone, natives can barely understand each other. So we called her and we swear she told us one place. So we asked around and no one knew where it was. But some girl said "take this bus and it will get you there." Then on that bus we had this lady call the mom herself and ask where to go. We asked the lady which bus stop to go to and she said "take this bus." So we asked again which bus stop and she always just said "take this bus." So we took that bus. Going back the direction we just came from lol. On that bus we asked around and no one knew where this bus stop was. And there was about 20 people on this bus, so we asked around and eventually had the whole bus asking each other where this stop was. Then some guy said "let me talk to the woman." So he called her and got the actual name of the place (it was super similar to what we thought she said). So again the whole bus was trying to figure out where this bus stop was. Finally this old guy says "I will take the Jesus people, I know the stop." We get way into the mountains and finally he says "get off here and wait here, she will come to you (he called her too)." Finally we found her and taught the lesson which went really well. Then we met up with Jesperson and Sweetwood and went shopping for food for Sunday dinner. Then we had to run back to the church for our elders quorum activity. It was pretty fun, just us and 5 other guys. They brought some food and we had a good time, just chatted. Then the Elders Quorum President told us his nephew and his nephews wife want to meet with us. So we went over there and talked to them and then the husband (Orgil) says "so if we get married in the temple does that mean we will be together forever?" and we tell him yes and he looks at his wife and raises his eyebrows and says "that sounds pretty dang sweet to me." Haha so that was funny. But we taught them and it went really well. 

Sunday: We had all 5 of our investigators come to church too which was freaking awesome. And we had this girl (non member, we are meeting with her this week) come too. So 6 non members at church. That's like a quarter of the congregation lol. It was great. Rand just looked at me and said "bro we killed it this week." It felt nice to see the results of our efforts. Then I gave a talk in church and it went well. Not too good not too bad. We also got 2 more people we are meeting with this week, making 8 investigators. Pretty darn nuts. After church we made Cafe Rio salads with sweet pork. I also made a cilantro lime ranch except they don't have ranch packets so I made my own ranch spices. Pretty much Gordon Ramsey. Really good day

Love you all!

Austin

 At the bus stop that we had such a hard time finding.  It was so freaking cold, but so gorgeous. 

 On our P-day hike. Elders Lambert, Salazar, Rand, Ogden, Cox, Tuckett (in the way back), me, and Pickering in the front with the camera. 

 Legit American Dr Pepper.  

 Walking back to UB after our hike.  The rows of gers are hotel gers.  They are made out of concrete. The air in the city is already pretty gross. 

 The older lady from the ward that we met with.  This is her entire apartment. 

 Cafe Rio dinner.  It was so freaking good. 

The hottest Ramen in the world. 

I was seriously getting light headed.  It was so hot!

At the elusive bus stop.