The Cold Is Back...

Things are going good. This week was one of the best ones yet. We had transfers and my new companion is pretty cool. His name is Quackenbush and he's been on his mission for 10 months so far. They moved him to my area to be a zone leader with me, he's a good guy so he should do a great job. This week has been pretty crazy though. I'm guessing you heard about the fires in Siberia. All the smoke has settled in the valley here and it's pretty bad. Then it started to pour all the sudden and get pretty cold. It feels like I'm in the Pacific North West right now. Low sitting clouds in the mountains, cold air, and green hills. It's nice at night to sit out and watch the lightning storms, it's pretty peaceful. I dunno just something I've always liked about them. It's super pretty though, the regular summer heat was getting pretty mundane, so having this moody weather is pretty fun. Our hot water did go out which isn't nearly as fun, I feel pretty cold all morning now. The water coming out of the shower is easily colder than Lake Tahoe somehow. It gives me a headache when I try to wash my hair. It's impressive they can make water that cold. But yeah, I was hoping to avoid the no hot water seeing how last summer I went 12 or 13 weeks without it, but it found me again. Really though things are going great. This week we didn't meet with that many people but we did have some cool things happen.

A few days ago we had really nothing to do one day, so we went to this monastery that is really close to our house. It's called Gandan and it's the biggest one in the country. When the Russians came here they destroyed most of the monasteries, but they left this one and the ones they couldn't find that were in the countryside. We walked in and went to check it out, inside the main building is a huge statue. It's pretty impressive how big it is. They also have some other smaller statues around the building. When we were there tons of people came in to pray and worship. It was really interesting to see how they were doing it. Buddhism is completely different than Christianity, it's interesting to me to think about it. I couldn't imagine myself worshiping like that. It's comforting to know that I know the God I worship, and it's not represented by a statue. It was really cool to see the people here though. It almost felt kinda unreal because of how different it was from what I'm used to.

I had MLC this last Friday. It went really well, it was pretty productive. We spent about of the time talking about the mission budget and how much allotment people need, but the focus was really on how to focus our lives in Christ better. It was a cool thing to talk about. They referenced the Boyd K Packer quote that says the gospel will change behaviors faster than a study of behaviors. It was cool to talk about. The meeting went really long though, we were pushing 6 hours and I was cashed in by the end of it. 

There was a day where Quackenbush and I really had nothing much to do, so we decided to run a few errands and pick some stuff up. We were going through some stores and I had a conversation with this lady who was blown away that some Russian looking guy could speak Mongolian. We talked for quite a while and she asked about our English class and said her son is interested in taking English lessons from American people. So we gave her our information and hoped that the boy will show up to the church English class. It was a cool coincidence though, we didn't do much that day, but things still found a way of working out so we could have at least one interaction with someone. Later we ended up going to a baptism Scrimsher and Cox had, and there was a returned missionary there who served in Vegas, she actually knew a ton of people I did which blew me away. It was really fun to see how much things have changed down there. 

We had our departing devotional this week too. The sisters we entered into the MTC with are now home which is nuts, it went really quick. It was weird to see them go, but even weirder to think how little time we all have left out here. Things are going super fast, in less than a month school starts up again, and that's going to make the time fly by. 

So we actually did do some work this week. There is a member in Bayangol who my companions and I have been helping for a while. She is applying to a school in Canada and needs some help filing out her visa and letters of recommendation. So we helped her write some stuff and she got accepted which was cool to hear. So she had us over for dinner to thank us. It was super nice of her, we are excited to see how it goes in Canada. 

But yeah, that's basically it haha. It seems like a slow week, but things are going really well. We planned a lot of stuff for this week, so we are excited to see how it all turns out. Love you guys

Austin

At the monetary

 Moody Mongolian Weather

 The textile markets

A friend of mine sent me this.  It was hanging in the house of a family they met with.  They take molds of hands, feet, and other body parts of each of their kids and display them. We were dying.  So Mongolian. 

There are always spinning objects around the Buddhist temples.  They use them in their worship of certain Gods.