Chill Week...

This week was good, it honestly just flew by. We have been pretty busy meeting with people and school. Not really that much else happened, pretty average week around here. I heard that I won't be teaching the rest of the semester, which is only like 2 weeks. Transfers are this week, I am staying with Yorke, but because we have an odd number of teachers I won't teach. My apartment is the farthest away so they won't have me teach. I'm kinda bummed, teaching is pretty fun. But yeah, everything else is going good. Summer is coming, so people are starting to pack up to move to the countryside. It's weird to see things start to repeat again. Last P day we went out to this place super far away. We walked through this tiny little ger village to get to a river to lay by, and we saw some old women and said hi to them. They were super blown away to see a white person, and then see us speak Mongolian. It was fun to see their reactions. The little countryside villages are my favorite though, they really show the true Mongolia that I've been looking for.

Enkhjin is going to be baptized on Saturday. She is a really solid investigator, and just a really nice person. This week she gave Yorke and I some Mongolian Script paintings, I'll send the pictures. But they look pretty sweet. When we were meeting with her it went really well. She was super willing to accept all our commitments and follow all the commandments. She is really excited to be baptized this week. She is really looking forward to it. She shared a super cool story about prayer. She said she was walking home one night and it was super dark. She got kinda nervous because there were no lights and some drunk people were around. So she said a prayer and right after she finished all the lights turned on. It was pretty cool, she said she could really feel God watching out for her.

We also met with Baljinyam and his wife. These lessons are always super fun for us, they know we don't speak like super super good, so whenever they ask a deep question and we are trying to answer it they help us really try to say it. It's pretty fun though. We finished all the missionary lessons with him and he said he is going to keep trying to read and pray. He is moving along, we are hoping he gets his answer soon. He is a super sincere guy and him and his wife are very spiritual, I think he will be baptized soon. 

We were also able to meet with the family we are working with. They are related to Enkhjin, so she helps us teach which is super nice. Teaching was kinda hard for us, we were just struggling to speak Mongolian that day, and explain things. Near the end of the lesson though they really needed to hear about how to gain a testimony, and it was the first time where I felt that my companion and I taught with power behind our words. The spirit was definitely there, and they felt it. After this, they said that they will start reading the Book of Mormon immediately and pray to ask if it is true. It was pretty cool to see their desire to know. It was a super good meeting. 

Teaching went well, sad to hear it might be my last time for the semester. Our students are super stressed for their exams, so we ended class 30 minutes early and let them study for their test. They were super grateful for that, I always appreciated my teachers when they did this, so we are trying to help them out. Teaching is cool, it's kinda fun being an unpaid teacher.

Mutual is still going on. Every week new people show up which is great. We meet a lot of new people and their friends. We are hoping that we can get some new investigators out of this, but we are happy to see some people making friends in the church. That's honestly just as helpful. Some of the kids are actually sending in their mission papers right now which is exciting. Kinda cool to see this. 

But yeah, that's about it. This week was busy but their isn't too much to write about, sorry. We are just really stoked for the baptism on Saturday, it should be awesome. Happy birthday dad and Sami.  Love you guys. 

-Austin

Pictures from our P-day hike. In the small village of Gordok out in the middle of nowhere Mongolia. 

 The entire village. 

 Nomadic living at its finest. 

Hay truck.  I thought Grandpa Brent would get a kick out of this. 

 This is the only road in the village.  The cows just wander around. 

 I took this exact picture in this exact spot last year.  So wild.  My comp said it was a Throwback Thursday. 

 York catching up on some sleep. 

 I listened to you mom and dad.  I took a short nap and it felt amazing. 

  

 Wild Mongolian horses. They are so cool.  

The nomadic people use manure to help insulate their houses.  

This is the Mongolian script that Enkhijin gave me.  The larger bolder font says Mongolia.  The smaller words underneath the red dot is my name.  The words on the bottom say Don't Let It Pass. It's pretty cool. 

My companion York used to work at Chick-Fil-A. We tried our best to duplicate their chicken sandwich.  It wasn't half bad. 

Taxi drive out to the river area.