March 30, 2007 - 3rd Companion

Apologies and sorryness! My irresponsible interneting habits lost yet another email this past week, and I have been duly chastised by the Mom. I am now typing my email in Word, so no worries.

Happy Birthday Grandpa Johnson! You’re 80 years young and still going strong!

Congratumalations to Thomas Sheffield! [Cheryl’s cousin who just received his mission call to the New Zealand Auckland Mission and will be speaking Mandarin] There’s an elder in my zone from New Zealand and when I told him about your call he said, “True?!!” That’s New Zealand-ish for “No way!!” He talks really funny. We communicate better in Mongolian than in English. Luckily you’ll be speaking Chinese.

So, a little bit about my new companion. Sister Nergui is really great. She is from Choibolson, which is where my last companion was just sent. She has been out for 11 months now. She is deathly afraid of dogs, which just doesn’t bode well for working in a ger district. If she even hears a dog barking behind a fence she screams and jumps behind me. She’s even afraid of the moppy three-legged dogs that wheeze their way through the piles of trash. I hope we don’t run into any seriously dangerous dogs because I have a feeling she wouldn’t have any qualms with tossing me in the way and heading for the hills.

She makes this hilarious tongue-clicking noise whenever things aren’t as they should be. She clicks her tongue when the toilet in our apartment runs, when she sees drunk guys stumbling down the street, when our desk gets messy, when kids misbehave in sacrament meeting, when I first showed her the tiny crack between our apartment building and the next one that we squeeze through to go to work. Its sort of an all-purpose, “This isn’t right” noise.

A few weekends ago we went out to Khandgait, a winter sports park, with all the branch missionaries. It was really fun. We played soccer and Frisbee (on ice: don’t knock it till you try it) and then we climbed this rather steep mountain to take in the view. There is this one really strong family in our branch, two members of which were our star branch missionaries. Khorloo and her brother, Enkhbayar, were always ready and willing to accompany us to lessons and we taught a lot of investigators in their home. I became close with their whole family and therefore was devastated when she dropped the bomb on us one day that they would be moving to another branch the next day. That’s the problem with serving a nomadic people. They just don’t stay put. Eighty percent of the dropped investigators in our area book were dropped simply because they just up and left, usually without even telling the missionaries. It’s happened to me a few times in the few months that I’ve been here. I just have to trust that they will find the church wherever their new home is.

Believe it or not it’s actually starting to warm up around here and everything is changing. I only have to wear my thinnest pair of long underwear now, and I bought a sweet, new NorthFace spring jacket (35$ at the UB Mart!) to replace my tank of a winter coat.

It’s really exciting to see the weather change. Everyone seems happier. Everyone, that is, except for the people who sell raw meat by the roadside. No more free refrigeration! Unfortunately I don’t think that’s going to stop them…ugh.

Hee! The other day we were riding in a taxi and the driver asked my companion if she was from Inner Mongolia (the part of China just outside of Mongolia) and she was really offended. She shoved the fare into his face and stormed out of the taxi muttering, “Khyatd? Bi khyatd uu?” (“Chinese? Am I Chinese?”) under her breath. It was really funny.

Well, other than that all is well in Outer Mongolia.