Shamanized...

This week was pretty decent. There were some hard and frustrating parts, but I'm not gonna talk about those, just gonna tell all the cool experiences I had instead. This week was pretty cool, I had some crazy things happen that I'm stoked to tell you about. The weather flipped completely around though because now it's almost 80 here. Shout out to global warming. So the nice fall weather is gone, and now it's summer again, but I'm not complaining at all.

We had zone conference and the highlight was when the stake president spoke to us. He gave us tips on how to deal with Mongolians. His first point was prefaced with him explaining how Mongolians are used to Soviet occupation, and being told what to do. Because of this, they now like being told what to do and having aggressive people take charge. I was laughing so hard when he said that, I still think it's pretty funny. Maybe Russia did actually help this place out. I still don't know, but other than that zone conference was pretty average. Later in the evening we met with someone who we had come to piano lessons. We met with them last week, but it was a pretty fast meeting. It was great, but this one was really long. It's a wild story. So we go in and I see all the shaman stuff up on the walls and it was normal. So the mom and I start talking and she asks about my vision. I told her about my sight and glasses and then she told me to hold on and she went to grab something. She came back with a book and opened it up to a page and told me to give her my hand. I was confused but I figured it was some weird shaman thing, and I was down to see some ghosts so I put my hand on the book. She then pulled out a super ornate little pendant, it was about the shape of a plumb bob, but super ornate and made of polished rock. She started whispering to it and thanking it for being able to help us and show us truth. I was getting pretty excited and I started thinking "alright now we  get are getting somewhere." I was pretty hyped up, and she started to spin it in a circle and whispered some incantation and then let the plumb bob fall and stop spinning in circles and go in a line (just physics with weights on a rope, it happens naturally). And it fell on an area that indicated my sight was 30% bad. So she gave me some real wierd excersizes to help my vision improve. I asked her about the book and how she got it. She was super secretive and would only say she got it in Russia in the forest, and she had to make a covenant with God to only use it for good. And that's how she got it. I looked through it and a lot was in Sanskrit and had some super wierd symbols and shapes that are used in shamanism. So I asked about that and she said she isn't a full shaman, but she does spiritual/aura healing like the shamans. She told me though that she can meditate and see the past, and she can see auras and the parts of them that need repairing. So she has spells to help repair them. It was pretty wild, it turned the meeting into a 2 hour thing, but I learned a lot about shamanism which was fun. Didn't see any ghosts though. We did teach a good lesson to her daughters after and she was very involved. It was a fun meeting for me. Pretty wild stuff though.

After school the other day, Scrimsher and I went to get some food and tried out a new restaurant. It was a sandwich shop that turned out to pretty much be subway. We met the owners and they are two guys who lived in Texas for a while and loved sandwiches, so they started a shop here. We've already eaten there a ton and it's been life changing. I didn't know how much I really missed good food. 

We also got our plane tickets for Khovd, so that was pretty exciting. We are going to fly out in 2 weeks, I'm really stoked. Khovd is 1000 km away from the city, and according to the Mongolians it's the last real Mongolian city. There's a lot of nomads still out there, and it's almost in Kazakhstan so there's also a lot of Kazakh influence. It should be really cool, I'm very excited for this. 

On Saturday we had an elders quorum activity and we brought our investigator along. That was the best thing we could have done, now he has a ton of friends at church. But the activity was awesome, we left early in the morning and went way out to the mountains by a river and built a fire and made some traditional food called Khorhog. It's sheep meat but they cook it with hot stones and it basically becomes a barbecued meat. It was really good. We set up some badminton and bocce ball and soccer and just hung out all day out there. We saw some kids herding sheep on their horses and the dad was on a motorcycle. They were a couple of nomads, it still blows my mind that people still live that lifestyle. All the mongolian men are obsessed with strength competitions, so we wrestled too and had an arm wrestling competition. I beat a few people, but this old dude had mechanic grip strength and just destroyed my hand. It was fun still. Looking back it was one of the most fun days of my mission. We played some soccer out on the steppe while the sun set and had some barbeque. It was really cool. 

Yesterday we taught piano again. It's still going very well, the people who come are really dedicated and are progressing a lot still. It's really impressive. One lady who came is a friend of an investigator the sisters had, but they left so they passed her to us. We haven't been able to get in contact with her though, but this friend of hers said that our investigator wants us to go visit her for a snack after piano. It was already a really long day because of English and I felt like I was running around the whole time. But we went over after piano finished and this old lady is the nicest person I've met. She's pretty old, and uses really different words than I'm used to. But it was really fun. She got mad at us for not eating all her food, so we shoveled it all down. We wanted to teach a lesson but the time wasn't there. So I shared a scripture with her about life after this life. I heard she had some of her kids pass away, so I felt like this would be a good one to share. She didn't have reading glasses so I just read some scriptures out loud to her and when I finished she had a huge smile on her face and said "thank you my son, this book is very amazing, mark this and I will read it tomorrow when I get my glasses." She kept saying the whole night how grateful she was for this book and how incredible it was. I've never seen someone so happy to get a Book of Mormon before, she changed after I read those verses to her. She seemed happier and more energetic. It was a super cool experience for me. And after, she invited us to come over again for some more snacks and scripture reading. Pretty neat. I'm really glad I sucked it up and went to that meeting when it would have been very easy to schedule it for another day. 

That's really it. Love you guys. 

Austin 

Pics from the Elders Quorum party

Everyone who was at the Elders Quorum party. 

Playing bocce ball.  The Mongolias loved it. 

 Prepping the meat

 They layer the meat with hot rocks and then place a lid on top to keep everything pressed tightly together. 

 The end product after the meat was cooked.  Pork salads with a Korean dressing.  So good. 

 Feats of Strength Mongolian Style

 Sunset on the steppes

 In the home of our investigator that had us over for dinner.  Don't you love the big Chinggis hanging?

 This little old lady was the best.  So sweet and kind to feed us. 

 MLC and Zone Conference with Elder Choi

 The market that is just down from our apartment.

 Sandwich from the new place we found.  I can't tell you how good it tasted.