Mongolia...

It feels very surreal to be writing this last email right now. When I first started my mission I was a bit stressed about how long I would be gone and how much I would miss out on, but at the end of it all it's almost crazy to me to feel like I didn't really miss out on that much, and I wasn't gone that long. But the last two years have been the fastest time of my life. Looking back I feel like I was always doing something even if we really were just killing time and walking around. I have a lot of emotions running through my head about what I just did. It still feels like I'm gonna be here another 6 months or something, America sorta doesn't seem real. It's a weird feeling going home, I'm extremely excited beyond my ability to describe, but I'm starting to lament a lot of the things I know I will miss, specifically the people and culture here. I really lucked out with my mission, being able to serve in such an ancient culture, deep in customs and beliefs, with a people who are the most accepting and caring in the world. I could go on for days about how much I'm going to miss Mongolia, so I will leave it at that, and tell you how I spent my last full week in the country. 

On Thursday we had our zone conference. It went really well, and was a good help to me to push me to work 100% up until the end. I gave my final departing testimony, which they let us do in English. I shared a quote from Walden that I've always liked. It goes "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.. to see if I could not learn what life had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." I've always thought this was super good life advice, and I found it specifically applicable to missions. In life we never know when we are going to die, but during a mission we have the date we go home given to us day one. So we know the finish date of all of this, and because of that, it almost makes it easier to self motivate yourself, because you can see the date where you will "die" and won't be able to "live" as Thoreau says. I look back on my mission and I feel as though some days I didn't do my best, but I've come to the conclusion that's life. If it were possible for us to be 100% all the time, we wouldn't need this life because we would be perfect. I then looked back again and saw all the good I've done, and when I focus on that, I can begin to see the big picture. We all need to take advantage of the days given to us, because there will come a day where we can't "suck the marrow out of life" and we have to accept with what we have done, and live with that for eternity. These are just some thoughts I had on this, maybe I got too philosophical but a lot of people afterwards came up to me and asked me for the name of the book that quote came from, so I got a couple philosophical minds out there. 

I also got super sick the other day, and I'm still recovering from it. I woke up and my throat was killing me, and I couldn't really breathe normally, and the cold air outside, mixed with the smoke, really killed my throat and made it painful. Honestly I was pretty angry I got sick, and I wanted to stay home and rest and try to heal. A member called me though and asked if we were free to help her, she said she had no water left for her family, and needed someone to help her get some from the well. I sucked it up, and my companion and I went out to the bus stop to head up to her house, which is almost as far as you can go north and still be in the city. I knew I would be outside for a long time, and I was not wanting to make myself more sick, or put myself in pain, so when we were walking to the bus stop I said in my head "Alright Heavenly Father, I'm gonna do this, but I need some help." After I said that, I took a swallow to get some spit out of my mouth and I realized my throat felt 100% normal. It was crazy, it didn't hurt at all. We got up there and I was able to do all the water basically all by myself, and move 50 gallons down a ger district road. When I got home though, my throat started killing me again, but not any worse than before. So God is real people. 

On Sunday the church put on their annual Christmas Concert which I really liked. Christmas basically doesn't exist in this country, so they flood us with Christmas messages during this concert. They rented out a huge hall, and invited anyone to come. I felt Iike everyone in city went, member and non member. It was a good reminder to me though, of the purpose of what I have just done. I'm really lucky that I get to finish my mission on the week of Christmas, because the reason for Christmas is the same reason why I served a mission. I was thinking about this, and I read a scripture that I really liked that touched me. It was Alma 29:2. Ammon says that the purpose of spreading this gospel is to create an earth without sorrow. I thought that was really cool. Sometimes as missionaries we get so focused on the minor things of missions, and we lose focus on the reason behind our missionary purpose, and it's the same thing that Ammon taught. With the gospel, we will still live through hard and very sad times, but we won't really be truly morose. It's a cool thought. The concert was awesome though, and I was able to see a lot of people that I either taught, or met with to retain them after baptism. That was really sweet to me because I always felt like I had never done enough, or that I never had helped enough people, but seeing everyone there who I had helped, and realizing it was a really good amount brought a really cool feeling to me. Seeing all the Christmas stuff was awesome, it really helped bring back the feeling of the season, that's something we don't get here often.

That really was it for this week, we met with some members, and we gave a blessing. These last few days are going to be awesome, I'm really stoked to see all my friends again one last time before I leave. I really am going to miss it here, so I'm going to live it up while I can. Part of me will always live here in Mongolia though. See you soon.

Austin

Last P-day we went sledding at the local ski resort.  It was awesome. 

 Ice sculptures are all over the city in the winter. 

 Hauling water for probably the last time. 

This girl that we taught is an amazing artist.  She gave me a going home gift.  She saw some of my pictures on Facebook and drew these up on her computer.  She then made them into vinyl stickers. They are so cool. 

Friends that I saw at the Christmas concert 

 This guy is awesome.  He is a long time member.  He is always at the church helping out and doing things, so I saw him multiple times a week during my whole mission. 

 This is one of our students from the University.  She is not a member.  We invited her to our mutual nights and now she has quite a few LDS friends.  It was pretty cool to see her at the Christmas concert. 

Older Pictures that I forgot to send home.