Every Day is Hotter Than the Last...

This week was good. So the plans changed here, so I wasn't in the trio this week. I was with Elder Morales, and I will be until Thursday until the new people all get here. They are still at the MTC waiting. He's a pretty cool guy, he is from Boston, he's a real East Coast guy, it’s pretty fun with him. So we have been really busy, we were put over 2 wards, the one he is serving in and the one I am serving in. So we had a pretty crazy full week which was nice. Things in Mongolia are good though, it’s warming up finally. We can get away with some long sleeve shirts we roll up a bit. It’s starting to feel like summer again which is really making everyone excited. Summer in Mongolia is awesome so we are pretty stoked to see the weather getting there again, and the sun setting at 7 pm vs 4 pm.

So last Sunday we had this new person come to church. His wife is a member who was baptized a few years ago, but went less active really quick. They showed up to church together (with their little daughter) and we talked to them and set up an appointment. We went to their house this Saturday and taught them a lesson. It went really really well. We taught them just about God and the restoration and the guy (Baljinyam) asked really in depth questions about how churches would become incorrect after Jesus was gone, and why in Christianity there is a need for another thing like the Book of Mormon. It was pretty wild not gonna lie. That was the first time anyone has asked me questions about that. So answering was pretty hard, but I got through it and the lesson did go really well. At the end I asked if they understood me or if they need me to clarify anything and the wife said "You know, when the sisters were here, when they taught me, I didn’t understand a single thing. I couldnt really read the Book of Mormon because it was so hard to read and I didn’t understand any of it. So I didnt like going to church because they would only talk about the Book of Mormon. But now, everything makes sense. It all just clicked." Hearing that kinda blew me away, because I really am not that good at Mongolian,  and I didn’t feel like I was explaining everything perfectly, but somehow she got what I was trying to say and she understood it despite my Mongolian. I guess when things need to be said, and people need to hear it, it gets said. It was a pretty cool experience for me. 

This week we also went with Ponton and Cox to Battsetseg's house. When we went in, her little daughter saw me and said "FRIEND!" and ran up to me and shook my hand. She's the cutest. Battstetseg was asking us some pretty in depth questions about how American school's teach ethics and morals. I guess in Mongolia a lot of schools skip over that, so the kids don’t really know anything about human rights issues. So she is trying to stop that, and in turn stop government corruption. So she has a team who go to 30+ schools in the city and teach a class called Justice. She asked us questions on what we think should be taught, and she tried to make is more like an American class. We spent the majority of the time there discussing this, and talking about her current anti-corruption stuff. It was awesome. As we were leaving her mom came up to me to shake me hand and then said "oh our son, off serving in another ward." Haha, it was funny, I guess she liked me talking about politics with her daughter. They are an awesome family. Sidenote: In mongolia, pretty much every woman, when they hit about 40 years old, just starts calling everyone her son. Just what they do. You have no idea how many old ladies from church are trying to claim me as their own.

Last week we met with this other lady in the ward, who has a new member living right above her. So we met with her, and the new member came down for dinner. This member used to live in Sukhbaatar (my old area), and she asked me all about the ward and about the people. It was funny just seeing her go off and tell all these funny stories about the people there. The new member is a really cool guy. He teaches English at a Russian school.

On Sunday we walk into church and saw this girl that I never saw before. I start talking to her and she said she just walked in and wants to come to church, she is 17. She is really interested and sincere about it all, so we invited her to mutual and we are gonna teach her after. Her parents live in Chicago funny enough. But yeah, she's pretty great, things are looking good for the work. 

We also met with Munguljin and the 3 others (Huslen, Hulan, and Enkhjin). It was rough meeting. Munguljin was just talking the whole time and really being rude and distracting. So really we only taught Enkhjin. She was the only one paying attention. She said she doesn't really feel ready to be baptized, which I get. It's a pretty scary, different thing. So I just talked to her more about what baptism really is, us promising to follow Christ. And asked her to read some scriptures. Hopefully it clears her mind and worries of it all. She is an awesome person, hopefully we can help her out more. But we did take the other 3 off of their baptismal date. Things are getting tough teaching them. It's hard to help people when they don't really want it, and when they don't take things seriously that need to be taken seriously. I dunno, it's a tough situation. 

I taught English yesterday too. My new teaching schedule is on Friday and Monday which is awesome. Teaching is still really fun. I teach with Scrimsher now which is probably a little too fun for us. But we had this class come in and the teacher told me they were tour guide majors, or at least I thought he did. It really sounded like that's what he tried to say. So I spent an hour giving them good vocabulary and practice sentences for these tour guide words, only to find out they are engineering students. Scrimsher was dying when he heard them say that they are not tour guides. He had to step out of class. Ikh Zasag (the University) is not the greatest at telling us stuff, and this was already a long day of dealing with stuff they messed up, so this just killed us. It was hilarious. 

Finally yesterday we taught a lesson to an investigator in Morales's ward. He really struggled with understanding the plan of salvation, so I got up during the lesson and drew it all out and just explained to him piece by piece the meaning and the centralness of the Atonement in it all. Before I noticed it literally an hour went by, and I just spoke in Mongolian the whole time. It was pretty crazy. God has really been helping me out with Mongolian lately. It's been awesome to see. Really grateful for His help. 

But yeah this week was super busy, maybe the most busy of my whole mission. I love it. Elder Morales and I are putting in some serious work right now. Things are going great. 

-Austin

Not a lot of pictures this week.  We were super busy haha

Battsetseg's daughter.  My little friend.  She is the cutest. 

 Sami and Ava, I found you some new bracelets. 

This is the tie that all of the old Mongolian women were complimenting me on.