I'm Out of Ideas for Subjects...

This week was pretty good, it went really quick. Transfers happen on Thursday and I'm staying in the ward I am in. I'm gonna train again which should be pretty fun. Last P day we went on a pretty sweet hike. It started snowing like crazy, and we were way back in the forest. It felt really cool. It was one of those moments where it really hit me that I am in Mongolia. I took a lot of pictures I'll send you. Easton would have loved it, it felt like we were in the middle of no where. We were deep back into the forest and ran into some wild horses. We tried to get up to pet them but they were pretty scared of us. I was hoping to hop on top one and take it to the top of the mountain. The mountain we hiked is the most sacred mountain in the city. I don't know if I told you before, but in Mongolian Shamanism (Tengerism) the mountains all have spirits and are places to go to get closer to the sky (what the shamans believe to be God). Which I think is pretty interesting, in the scriptures prophets went to mountains to pray and talk to God. It's a cool connection between the 2 religions. The people actually worship this mountain and offer it sacrifices of food every year. I find this sorta interesting. Really different from anything in America. Yeah so we were just bumming around on this mountain. It was pretty dope. Didn't see any shamans or ghosts though.

Really other than that nothing else much happened. It was pretty slow this week. We did have our mutual which went really well. We had more people come this week than the other weeks. Usually we never really had enough people there to really teach anything, so we just played ping pong and chatted for a bit. This week there was like 10 people there, so we decided to teach something. I just brought some For Strength of Youth pamphlets and we read a section then I just asked some questions about it to them. It turned out pretty good, we talked about friends and having friends that don't go to our church. It was interesting, I could really relate to these kids and see where they are coming from and what they think and do. So we talked about that for a good 30 minutes. It turned out way better than I expected. After mutual this boy came up and said that he wants to teach the next week's lesson too. So that is going well. It really has changed my perspective on what mutual is in place for. 

On Friday I taught again. At our school our classes switch off every other week, and because of all the breaks and holidays it's the first time we saw these classes. We taught our lesson and had some fun, and then at the end of class the students asked me if I can speak Mongolian. They always do this every time. And I told them yes, so they put on some Mongolian music, coincidentally the Mongolian songs that I know and wanted me to sing haha. So Ogden and I sang in Mongolian. Our students thought it was the funniest thing ever that two white guys are out here singing in Mongolian, in an English class. 

On Sunday we had our 4 investigators come to church. One of them is really interesting, she is 15 and is literally demanding to be baptized super fast. So we are trying to get her baptized soon, but it's just a bit weird because of how quick she wants to be baptized and everything. So we gave her a Book of Mormon and some pamphlets over the last little while. She is reading them, but we don't know if she is feeling the whole thing. If that makes sense. So we are trying to push her baptism back a bit so she hopefully can figure it out. It's just weird. She's really intense. So hopefully it all goes well. She will definitely be baptized, I just hope she is doing this for the right reasons, and actually feels this. We also taught our other 3 investigators after church. They are Huslen (19 year old boy), Hulan (17 year old girl, huslen's sister), and Enkhjin (18 year old girl, Hulan's friend). They are honestly the best investigators. We gave them Book of Mormons today and they were all super excited to have them. We usually just ask them to read one chapter from it. But Huslen said "if I read more is that okay?" During the lesson Enkhjin asked me how I feel the spirit and how to recognize the spirit. It took me a while to describe it. It's pretty personal, but I think that if we are feeling truly peaceful and comfortable about we are thinking or praying about, and as long as we aren't lying to ourselves about our feelings, then we are feeling the spirit. It's hard to explain. That's just my thoughts. It was just really cool to me to see someone so sincere about the gospel talk about it and ask these questions. It's very interesting to see someone so adamantly looking to find God.

And yesterday we met with Pujee. She tries to have us over once a week to practice her online BYU English stuff. This weeks topic was about family relationships. It was interesting talking to her about them, and seeing how the Mongolian culture alone, is really close to what our church believes and tries to encourage families. She made us some awesome food too and we just chatted for a while last night.

So one of the boys we baptized a while ago lost his baptism paper we have to turn in, so on Sunday we were asking him about it. He said that he gave it to his cousin and his cousin said he never got it, so the one boy pulls his cousin out into the hall and says "we just don't want to be too loud in the classroom." So they go outside and the boy who's paper is lost just wrestles his cousin to the ground and was yelling at him asking why he lost it. I was dying, it was hilarious. Reminds me of me and Easton a little bit. 

We were told this week that we are not to wear our mission tags anymore.  At all, not even in the church. Immigration is getting a little tough. 

Also, we found a new grocery store that just opened up.  We walked in there and we were shocked.  They had Kirkland paper towels and Ziploc bags.  We haven't seen Ziploc bags since we left America. And they don't even have paper towels here.  You better believe we bought some of both.  We also bought some air fresher, all they have here is incense, and scrubbing bubbles toilet cleaner.  Mom, my toilets have never been cleaner.  You would be proud.  Also, Dad, they had SHASTA CREAM SODA.  It was unreal.  It was $.75 a can and so worth it. 

I also got a sweet Mongolian tie this last week. Old ladies on the bus compliment me on it. I guess I found my friend group.

Love you,

Austin

 Pics from our P-day hike

 It wasn't supposed to snow, so Sweetwood just had his tennis shoes on.  He was tying pine bows to his shoes to get more traction.  It actually worked pretty good!

 Grandpa Brent would have loved this. 

We went to this lady's house to pick up something.  She lived in a nice brick house right in the middle of the geriatrics's district.  This is a ger that was behind her house.