Full Time Employee...

January 14, 2019

Full Time Employee...

This week was really good. Kinda crazy at some points. English this week was absolutely nuts. I'll tell you about that later, but it was pretty wild. I also ate the grossest thing to literally exist. We went to a members house and she gave us this drink called aarts. It's the drink of winter for Mongolians. Usually they boil it and give to us hot so we don't freeze outside. But this time they gave it to us cold. So you remember that stuff I sent you? The mongolian candy? It's like that. They take milk curd that is spoiled and sour, and boil it up and make it a liquid again, then drink it. So it's like this huge cesspool of baby throw up looking stuff. Then they give it to us. So it's freaking me out, and it smells like death. I sent you a video of me drinking it, it was so terrible. I've actually never eaten or drank anything worse. So that was an experience. Also, we got our transfers, and I'm actually staying in Sukhbaatar haha. This next transfer is only 4 weeks long because of trying to match up all the different schedules of the MTCs and ELC. So I will be here for one more month which I'm pretty excited about. That will put me in Sukhbaatar for 7 months. Kinda crazy. I won't be in the trio anymore, Teasdale is moving up to AP. So it will just be Ponton and I. They also made me the new zone leader which is kinda intimidating. There's a lot of responsibility and weight put on the ZLs, so I'm kinda nervous. But it should be pretty fun. The other ZL is Elder Salazar and he is in another ward in the Zone. It should be pretty sweet with him.

This week I had pretty sweet experience too. So we were at our favorite restaurant, Chicken Burger. It is owned by this less active member who served a mission in Vegas. I think I told you about this before. But we were there, and I remember praying earlier in the day to help us find more work and more people to teach. When we were eating the chef (the LA) came out and said "hey this guy (his employee) wants to go to church and hear your message." So that was pretty sweet. We invited him to church and gave him our phone number and everything. He didn't come on Sunday, but now we have a pretty cool potential investigator.

We also got a random call from Bolorzaya this week. She is the 17 year old girl we are teaching. She is in the Gobi right now with her family celebrating the holidays. We were pretty worried she was flaking out on us and not wanting to take the lessons anymore. So when she called us we were pretty shocked. She called to tell us that she has been reading the Book of Mormon, but can't understand it, but she really wants to understand what it is teaching. She also said that she has been talking to her family about the church, and the Book of Mormon, and the 2 lessons we taught her. Now they are pretty interested in the Gospel. Pretty wild huh? That was such an awesome phone call to get. She said she comes back to the city in exactly 9 days from today and she wants to meet with us to talk about the Book of Mormon. I've never had an investigator schedule meetings for us with them haha. Pretty dope. It's such a cool thing to see how much the Gospel changes people's lives. It's awesome to see someone get so devoted to things they really don't fully understand. We are all pretty stoked about this.

Also this week Teasdale and I went on a split with Pickering. So the three of us were in a trio. It was an awesome day. We had 4 meetings, so we were super packed. Pretty crazy to have such a crazy day again. It was nice. At a members house we were fed what she called "Chinggis Khan" food. She had a literal silver platter, and she put like 10 pounds of meat on it. Gave us some knives and told us to go to town. It was awesome. She pretty much roasted this beef, so it tasted freaking awesome. Then when Pickering and I finished eating it she told us we were real Mongolians haha. Pretty funny. Then that same day we went to another members house with the sisters. This lady wanted to meet with all the missionaries in the ward and feed us, so we got permission for that to happen. It was a fun meeting. This family works in a bakery, so they made eclairs and holy smokes I almost died. It was incredible. My taste buds couldn't handle that amount of flavor all at once.

At church this week the bishop asked me about transfers, and when I told him I would be in Sukhbaatar another month, he said "well it's time to put you on the member list. You are now a full time member of our ward." Pretty funny haha. All the members are shocked I'm still here, but they are kinda excited to still have a familiar face in the ward.

Okay so yesterday was nuts. We taught English, but we taught for 7 hours. From 9 to 4. I am now a full time teacher. It felt like a career. It was fun teaching all the classes though. But by the end of the day we were wasted. This is a new semester so it's all brand new students who I've never seen before. It was fun getting to know all of them. And it's fun seeing my old students around campus. I'm super glad I get to work at a school while on my mission. It's pretty dang sweet.

Yeah and thats about it. This week wasn't too complicated, but it was really awesome to see everything starting to come together. The call from Bolorzaya was probably the highlight of the week. It was awesome to hear from her again. This week I also read from Alma 12 which was really interesting. I'm sure Dad knows about it. But there was one verse that got me thinking a lot. It said that in order to access the mercy of Christ we can't harden our hearts against Him or anything. Just a really cool concept. I still don't really understand it all, but it's pretty cool.

Love you guys,

Austin

Just walking our beautiful streets.

This is Horoolsuren. She makes the best huushur in the world. This is her new grandson. He is called Tengis, which means sea.

This is Buyandelger. She is a member in our ward. Super nice lady. She likes to keep her house clean. They usually have outside shoes and inside shoes. To take away the hassle, a lot of people use shoe booties.

This little girls mom is a super good member and she loves it when we come over to visit. They fed us the massive plate of meat. Isn't she the cutest?