Work Horses...

This week was super good. Sorenson and I have been really busy which has made everything fly by. This week just blew by. The weather changed like crazy though. It was really warm last week but this week was cold and rainy. We are hoping the monsoons come soon, they were really fun last year, plus the lightning was fun to watch. This week I feel like Sorenson and I have just put in tons of work. It was a really good feeling to finish the week up and feel like that. Things are going really good for us. We have a baptism for both our investigators planned on Saturday. They are both super good guys, we are hoping both work out. Fingers crossed. 

Alright so you probably saw my pictures on facebook so I'll explain that first. It was amazing, it felt like I was actually in Mongolia, not just a big city. Most the time it feels just like regular life but this time it felt like I was in the middle of the Asian Steppes. So we didn't have anything going for us one day, we were skunked for work. So we hopped on a bus and went to the end of its line and found a super cool area that looked like all the pictures you see of Mongolia. We ended up in this little village of nomads actually. It's a place where they stay to sell some stuff in the city before taking back off further into the countryside. We got off the bus and found some cows and kids no joke like 10 years old riding their horses in deels (traditional clothes) and their dad herding sheep on a motorcycle. Just like you see in all the pictures and videos. We started walking through town and talked to some people who said we are the first white people they've seen in person. Absolutely wild. We kept going and at the end of the village we found these 2 gers with some cows around them. The women who lived here were walking around outside and we asked to take a picture of their ger and they immediately invited us inside for some milk tea (it's huge here) and some aruul (the milk curd they eat here). We said we are okay (we didn't want to have to deny them their milk tea, it would have been disrespectful) so we stayed outside and chatted and then one of the ladies went inside her ger and grabbed some aruul and put it in a little bowl and brought it to us to eat. She asked us about 4 times before this to come inside and eventually she just brought the food to us. The culture here is amazing. So we ate the curd with her, it was pretty good I'm not gonna lie. She homemade it from her own cows milk and it tasted really buttery. Still sour milk but it tasted pretty good. It grows on me the more I'm out here. Then her and her friend threw on their deels to take a picture with us. They said they wanted to look good for the American people we would show the pictures to. We took some pictures and chatted some more. They were just the coolest most kind people ever. They embodied the true Mongolian culture in everything they did, it was really cool to see. I really loved it, Mongolia is just so cool. This was definitely the highlight of the week and something I won't ever forget.

The other day we met with Myagmarsuren. So he is our investigator who was taught by a Mongolian sister in America. His wife is a member so she helps out in lessons. He is an awesome guy. We reviewed all the lessons with him and set up to baptism him on Saturday. He is living in the city some days but goes to the countryside to help his family out with their herding. His parents are both nomads. They have yaks, I did ask. And he said that the milk is buttery and oily but definitely not pink at all. I was pretty disappointed to say the least.

President Hansen got here this week. Him and Sister Hansen are super nice people. I am really excited to see what happens with them. They are just really good people. I haven't been able to interact with them that much, but when I saw them they were genuinely trying to get to know me. Super nice people. We are going to see them more one on one during MLC this week. We are pretty excited for that, Sorenson and I have to teach on Charity and Love so if you have any good ideas send them my way. 

I went on a split with some elders out on the edge of the city this week. They pretty much serve in the countryside though. It's like a whole different place over there. They said they needed some help with service on Saturday, so Sorenson and I went there Saturday morning and met them and another set of elders. The guy who we were going to be helping picked us up in his Prius (6 of us and it's a 4 person car, it was pretty interesting). We drove literally 30 minutes more into the countryside and picked some stuff up from his old house and then drove an hour more to his new home. It's basically the countryside. We get to his lot and there is nothing there except a ger pad and a hole in the ground they will use for a bathroom later on. We roll up to the hole and take our stuff out from his car and he just says "dig here." So we got the shovels and pick axes and started, then he just left. All we had were some buckets, rope, and a piece of wood used to level out the dirt we put on the ger pad. So we were alone out in this countryside place for a while. The hole was about 5 feet deep already and we dug for a long time until it was 7 feet and over all of our heads by a long ways. This was like 4 hours in already so we decided to take a little break and walk around for a few minutes. We walked up to the top of the closest mountain/hill and took some pictures then came back. We called him when we got back and told him how deep it was and then he told us it needed to be at least 3 meters deep (which was pretty crazy because we are essentially just breaking up big rocks and shoveling those out). A little bit later his wife came, and she was super grateful for our help, and we packed up and left. But now we have us a weekly project. This guy wants us to come back every week and help him get his lot fixed up. It should be pretty fun. The whole thing was so third world though. We would shovel the rocks and dirt into the buckets and pull it up with a rope, dump it on the ger pad and then level it out with a piece of fence post. It was still really fun to help out though, we all had a really good time. 

We were walking to the church one day and we see a drunk guy calling out to us. He seemed pretty harmless. So we gave him a friendly wave and as soon as we did he literally just took off and started sprinted towards us. We flipped out and I just yelled "RUN!" And it became every man for himself. This guy chased us all the way to the church. It was so funny. So be careful out there. 

That's pretty much it this week. It was really great, this summer is way busier than last summer was. It feels good to be busy, even if we are just work horses out here haha. The people say they love to put the Americans to work. Love ya guys. 

-Austin 

Our new Mongolian mom friends.  They were so sweet and kind. 

 The sweet lady's cow

 Sorenson and I 

 Me, Sorenson, McComber, and Scrimsher

 Just a Mongolian boy and his horse out sheep herding. Coolest thing. 

 The skies out here are amazing.  So blue and clear in the summer. 

 Our transportation to the job site. 

Digging the bathroom at the new ger site.  

 Leveling the new ger pad.

 The new homesite that we were helping at.  Every Mongolian citizen is given a plot of land from the government. 

 Crofts, who is outside the hole, reminds me so much of Easton. He is a working machine. 

Sorenson and I found a restaurant with crescent rolls.  We were in heaven. The waitress was so nice and gave us a few extra.  

Monastery outside the restaurant. 

Street side markets