February 9, 2007

This past week has been pretty exciting. Last Friday night we had invited a bunch of our potential and new investigators to a baptism, and almost all of them came. When we first got there we were looking to see if anyone had come, and one of our investigators ran by with a bucket full of water. The font faucet was broken and they were filling it one bucket at a time, and he started helping before we even got there. He gets a gold star on his forehead.

Last Saturday we had a branch activity. We drove 40 minutes outside of UB for a tsaasnii bayar (snow holiday). We went to this outdoor park type thing where they had big hills for sledding on, horses to ride, and all sorts of other cool stuff that missionaries can't do. It was okay though. Sister Hunt and I brought a kite to fly, which only lasted about 10 minutes because it was too windy, and one of the crossbars broke off and got lost in the snow. Then we played tug-of-war with the branch members. This also only lasted ten minutes because the guys took the rope, laid it in a circle on the ground, and started wrestling. We just watched them go at it for the rest of the time we were there, and then the missionaries had to peace out to have district meeting.

Sister Hunt and I ride meekers pretty much everywhere we go. Some of the meeker callers have started to recognize us, but we have run into this one particular caller more than any others. The first time we rode in his meeker he spent the whole time flirting at us. He told us that his sister sat with (married) an American, implying that he was planning on sitting with an American too, I guess. We just ignored him and tried to steer the conversation towards church stuff. We call him Green Eyes because he has green eyes (he's Kazak). Not very creative, I know, but it works. We run into him at least once a week, which is weird because we don't always leave or come home at the exact same time and there are tons of meekers whose route takes us out to our area. One time he tried to refuse our money but Sister Hunt passed it up with another passenger's fare, and we tricked him.

Anyway, we decided to have district meeting in the meeker on our way back from the tsaasnii bayar. We were way outside of the city, and we all had appointments to get to, so we wanted to kill two birds with one stone. As we walked over to try and find a meeker going back to the city, guess who should be leaning up against the only meeker going to UB but Senor Green Eyes himself. Sister Hunt and I groaned. Would we be able to dodge his advances the whole 40-minute drive back? We hurriedly ordered our elders to sit next to us and tried to get to the back, but Green Eyes managed to get in between Elder Hull and Elder Caldwell and sat on the back row with us. He asked what we were doing all the way out here, and we asked him the same question. He said he'd never been out that way before. "Luckily," enough people were riding back on our meeker that the driver ordered him to move to make a seat for a customer. At this point Sister Hunt and I have decided that we run into him too much for it to be a coincidence any more. We now carry around a For the Strength of the Youth pamphlet with Green Eyes' name on it for the next time we run into him.

This past Tuesday Sister Hunt and I went to the church to meet up with a branch missionary. As usual we stopped in to the security office to chat with "Luke Skywalker." We had been meaning to talk to him more about teaching the lessons to him and his wife but we hadn't had the time. Luke greeted us with a bigger smile than usual and handed us a piece of paper. He said that some guy had stopped in and filled out a referral card. We read over the information: a guy named Bat-Erdene who lived at Jargalant 69-1099. We couldn't quite make out what the guy had written in the comments section, so we asked Luke for help. He didn't even look at the paper and just laughed and said, "I don't know!" Whatev. We talked to him a little bit longer and eventually Sister Hunt got around to asking if we could come teach his family. He said of course we could, so Sister Hunt asked for his address. He said, "I live in Khailaast..."
"Duh!" says Sister Hunt, "Where in Khailaast?"
"Jargalant..."
"Jargalant what?!!"
"69th street..."
"HEY!"

Then it dawned on us. He was the guy on the referral card! The little sneak... We knew his real name was Bat-Erdene, but there are only about 50 Mongolian names total and practically everyone has the same name so we didn't think anything of it. He was just trying to be sneaky, but we caught him in his little game. We tried to meet with him last night, but we spent the whole time waiting with his little sister for him and then his wife to get home from work. Then they said they were going to make food for us so we had to sit there until that was done and then it was 9:10 and we were in serious trouble. We didn't get to teach a lesson and we had to down a whole bowlful of buuz in 5 minutes. Luke knew we had to be back by 9:00, and if not 9:00 then definitely by 9:30, so he ran with us back to the road and flagged down a taxi for us. I was really excited to teach Luke. He is such a good guy and he's the only investigator we have that we were already friends with before we started teaching them. He was all nervous for us to meet his wife, and as we walked back from his house he asked us what we thought of her. We told him she was really great, and he just beamed the rest of the way.

Ah! I'm out of time. I'm always out of time. The Church is true. Later Vader