May 4, 2007 - Warming Up; Youth Group

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELIZABETH! GIVE ME YOUR NOT-AT-BYU-ANYMORE ADDRESS THANKS!

This was a big week here in UB. Within one week I went from wearing my spring jacket to wearing just sweaters and now to just wearing a single shirt. It’s warm! It’s practically hot! Hallelujah!

Isn’t my branch awesome? These are all the young singles in our branch. They walked from our building to the Bayanzurkh building together to attend a fireside last Sunday night. The guy on the back row, third from the left, Demchig is one of our investigators. He was already an old investigator when I came to this branch in the middle of February and tomorrow he finally goes in for his baptismal interview. It’s been a long and hard road with Dejika (nickname), but I think he’s ready. The girl in the plaid jacket on the back row is a return missionary. She served in Japan and every once in a while we try to speak Japanese to each other but the both of us have pretty much forgotten everything. We were looking at her mission photo albums one night when, lo and behold, I see that one of the elders she served with was Dan Inoue, a guy who was in my Japanese class three years ago at the BYU. I just can’t seem to escape that dern BYU connection.

One of the best experiences of my mission so far happened this past week. We had just been stood up for our last appointment of the night and decided to just walk back to the 17th station before heading home for the night. As we started walking back along the road we ran into one of our stellar branch missionaries who was on her way home after Institute. I love running into members when we’re out walking on the street. I’ve stopped believing in coincidences since coming on my mission since these chance meetings always occur just when I need a little pick-me-up. We chatted for a minute and then said goodnight.

Fifteen seconds later, Demchig, our investigator appears. He hadn’t shown up at our last appointment and we had been worrying about him. We were able to talk for a few minutes and then said goodnight. We jokingly said to each other, “Alright, who’s next?”

Twenty seconds later we ran into one of the young men in our branch. He had just been playing ping pong at the church. A minute after that we saw a wall of branch missionaries walking our way, also just coming from Institute. The five minute walk to the bus station took 20 minutes as we greeted almost 30 church members, two or three at a time, walking home from the church. We don’t like to feel alone, we missionaries, as we’re out on the road. It's so important to feel the support and friendship of the ward/branch, and we were just beaming the whole rest of the way home.

I don’t usually get emotional when we’re teaching lessons, which is a real blessing because I know I had rather weak tear ducts "back in the U.S.S.A." This past week we were teaching one of our investigators, a 20 year-old girl named Unuruu, about the Word of Wisdom. Up until now there hasn’t been any sign of harder drugs like cocaine or heroine in Mongolia. Mongolians have heard of these drugs, but we usually just say “don’t use ‘em” and leave it at that. This time, however, when Sister Nergui started to say, “We don’t have these drugs in Mongolia…” Unuruu interrupted her and said that she knew for a fact that they were starting to come in to the country. She had never used them, but she said she had heard of people who had and that the drugs were supposed to be really crazy. Out of nowhere I just started crying and telling her and Sister Nergui about drugs in America and all the people whose lives have been utterly wasted because of them. I told her if I could speak to all of manai mongolchuud (our Mongolians) at once I would plead with them to leave Mongolia the way it is, untouched by these drugs and all the evil that comes along with it, and that I wished I could have done the same thing for America. It was a truly unique opportunity to testify of something that I don’t usually testify of.

We’ve had the blessing of being busy to the point of having to run to a lot of our appointments this week. That sounds kind of strange, but there’s a certain satisfaction that comes from knowing that you’re putting every single second of your mission to good use.