April 13, 2007 - Tumentsetseg

Hello! How is everybody today?

That is how I start every single one of my English classes and no one can ever seem to make the transition from “How are you?” to “How is everybody?” I’ve explained it a million times but every time I say it they all just stare at me blankly. It’s okay, though, because I give one of those blank stares at least once or twice a day.


This was a really great week. We have a whole bunch of investigators preparing for baptism in the next couple of weeks which is really exciting. One of those investigators is Tumentsetseg (the really little one in the picture). Tumentsetseg leads a rough life. Her husband works year round in the khuduu [countryside], her 5-year old daughter lives with relatives in the khuduu, and she lives all by herself in a shack and sells coal for a living. When we first started meeting with her she was not very happy. She smiles a lot more now. She loves to sing hymns, and her favorite is “Adislal Buree Tol” (“Count Your Many Blessings”).

Are you ready for a guilt trip? Here it comes:

What are you doing to help the missionary effort? And I don’t mean supporting full-time missionaries, I mean what are you doing on your own to bring people to the gospel? Let me tell you what the Mongolians are doing about missionary work.

Last Monday night a member family invited us to family home evening. They told us to bring investigators. We brought a mother and her three daughters that we have been teaching and who will be baptized in two weeks. We got there and the family had also invited a friend of theirs who they thought might be interested in the gospel. We sang a hymn, had an opening prayer, and then the three member children shared some things they had recently learned from the Book of Mormon. Then we had food. Then we played “Zagas Bari” (“Go Fish”). It was simple, it only lasted an hour and a half, and the lady they had invited said she’d like to come to church next Sunday. Our investigators had a great time and the next time we met with them the mother showed us the notes she had taken on how to have a family home evening of their own.

I know all the excuses for not knowing anyone who would want to know about the gospel. I’ve used many of them in my day. I’m not going to go through any of them right now because there’s no need to. I’m just going to tell you what you already know somewhere deep down inside: they’re not valid excuses, you’ve been commanded to share the gospel, now go and do it.

Here’s another option: go accompany the missionaries as they teach lessons to their investigators. We almost never teach without a member present because we have an army of branch missionaries and branch members who are always ready and willing to go with us. And they don’t just go to one lesson, they accompany us the whole day.

Do you notice when someone new comes to church? Do you look for the person who seems lost or do you immediately gravitate to your old friends? Do me a favor and reread Moroni 7:45, the classic charity scripture, and look at the phrase that we usually don’t pay attention to: “charity seeketh not her own.” What does that mean to you? It has become the theme for my mission so far. To me it means “get out of your comfort zone!” Talk to the person you don’t know. Invite the friend to church that you’ve always been afraid to invite. If you don’t, you’re not being Christ like.

Well, that’s all the time I have for guilt-tripping this week. To quote Elder Dallin H. Oaks, I hope I’ve “comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.”


This is one of the classrooms I teach in. There’s almost never anyone in it besides Sister Nergui, though. The students are…kinda lazy.

I really enjoyed Conference this past week. I watched it in a classroom at our church building with the ten other American elders in my zone. The dvd they sent us was pretty shoddy and we watched about 50% of conference with skips in it every ten seconds, but our brilliant zone leaders had printed the entirety of the conference talks off the internet beforehand so they just read along and called out the words the dvd skipped over.

Well, gotta run. P-day is calling. I love you. Tell Bonny that I got the package just in time for Easter and I shared the Peeps with the elders. They were ecstatic. I can get all the things she listed.

Later, Sister Johnson