October 31, 2006 (MTC)

Happy Halloween!
Don’t’ you just love the holidays? They almost don’t mean anything in the MTC, but today is P-day so I get to dress up as a normal person. It’s also really exciting because of my roommate, Sister Mwatieta. She is from Kiribati and will be serving in Fiji. She has never been to the United States before and everything is new and exciting to her. She has been looking forward to Halloween for almost 3 weeks now and has asked us to tell her about it practically every day since then. When I figured out that Halloween was on our P-day and told her we might be able dress up, she started laughing and screaming and hugging me, drawing the attention of many.
She has also been waiting for it to snow with eager anticipation. It snowed on the mountains the other day and we woke up to Sister Mwatieta dancing, looking out the window, and singing this little song she came up with on the spot: I see the snow! The snow sees me! I see the snow! The snow sees me!
I was able to see the Gribbins a number of times while they were here. It was so refreshing to see someone from home. Mom, did they send you that picture of that picture? There is this huge photograph hanging in the MTC cafeteria of two sister missionaries, and I swear one of them is you! I need to know so I can put my soul at ease.
We started English language training this past week. As with the gospel, I’m learning that there’s a big difference between knowing something and knowing how to teach it. At first I wasn’t sure how teaching English fit in with my mission. As far as the Mongolian government knows teaching English is the main reason why LDS missionaries come to Mongolia. We asked one of our teachers, Sister Infanger, how much we would be concentrating on teaching English and how important it was compared to teaching the gospel. She told us that in addition to bringing people to the church, our goal is also to bless the people of Mongolia. They are so poor and any amount of English they can learn will mean higher paying and steadier jobs. We are being sent to help the people of Mongolia, not just those who are ready to accept the gospel.
And apparently we’re not going to be teaching grade school as I had imagined. The church wants us teaching at universities and government agencies so as to be noticed by higher-ups and improve their view of our church. Um, have you ever heard of yikes! Learning Mongolian seems a little bit easier by comparison. With Mongolian, the only person I have to worry about making a fool of is me, which I’m pretty much guaranteed to do anyway. I’ve accepted this fact and moved on. It will be a whole other story when I’m teaching English and trying to represent the church in a way that will encourage better relations with the government.
A couple of Sundays ago, Elder Ballard came to give a special address to the MTC teachers, and his message has since been passed on to us by the MTC president. Now I am passing it on to you. Elder Ballard said it has come to their attention that a lot of missionaries were begin told they were going to “low-baptizing missions.” People have been saying, regarding some missions in the church, that missionaries will plant a lot of seeds but they won’t actually baptize. Whether this is based on past statistics or cultural perceptions, Elder Ballard stressed that these comments are destructive, faithless, and completely against the teachings of the church. Who are we to put limits on what the Lord can do? Just because a missionary is going to Russia or some other country with a history of low baptism numbers, it doesn’t mean you can predict the influence of one of the Lord’s missionaries. You may think you are protecting them and preparing them emotionally for a rough mission, but an apostle of the Lord has told you to STOP. The MTC president was telling us this in a meeting with all the missionaries present. He asked all the missionaries who had been told something along these lines to stand, and almost a third of the missionaries arose. How sad! What if those missionaries took those words to heart and went into their missions with the idea that they weren’t going to baptize? I haven’t been a missionary very long, but I can tell you that you will not get anything done without full purpose of heart and a perfect brightness of hope. Please, don’t presume to put limitations on what God can do.
Lucky for you I took so long in writing this letter that I had to go to Tuesday night devotional before I sent it. Guess who spoke? This nice little German man named Dieter F. Uchtdorf! Oh my stars! That’s 3 apostles for me in one month. They say the apostles usually come more often towards the end of the year, but this is still just amazing to me.
I will leave you with a little life lesson I learned while singing with the choir today: Choose wisely the people that you associate with. The sweet, sweet sister I happened to sit next to in the *ahem* alto section, seemed to think she was sitting in the “soprano on the hard parts, alto on the easy parts, and second soprano whenever I feel like it” section. Even though I’m sure that she had the best of intentions, in real life, you just shouldn’t associate with people who have such fluctuating standards. Especially when you don’t have such a firm grip on your own… I mean do have a firm grip on your standards. I just wasn’t so sure on the alto part, and it was hard. She also did this little loopy rise up to each note, and the sister on the other side of me was a second soprano and a good one at that which also didn’t help me. And I had to sit in the front row, and … And I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I do know that Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and restored the true gospel to this earth, and that makes me happy.
Here, let me leave you with this instead. I received this quote in a letter from my dear, inspired Grandma Muir:
“You may have faith to move mountains. Just don’t be surprised when God hands you a shovel.”
That’s more like it. I hope all is well.
Хайргай (with love)
ЖОНСОН ЭГЧ