June 15, 2007 - My Heart Will Go On

Hey hey everybody,

What’s up? It’s 11:27 on a Friday morning here in UB, 10:27 Thursday night in New York, and 3:27 AM in London, according to the fancy clocks here in the new internet center I’m sitting in. Tomorrow makes one week that I’ve been in Enkhtaivan Branch, and the work is going pretty well. Sister Otgontuya and I are both new to the branch, which makes things difficult, but I went through this same thing in my first area, Khailaast, where Sister Hunt and I were “white-washed” in, as the term goes. This time, however, it’s June and warm and not December and freezing.

I have to apologize for lying last week, but I did it in ignorance. I said that Enkhtaivan was all apartment buildings and no gers but in the course of this past week I found out that if you go past the really tall buildings there are several ginormous mountains that are covered in gers that span an area about as wide as my last two areas combined. Last Saturday after district meeting we spent 5 hours walking from one end of our area to the other, up one mountain and down the other, trying to find some of our new investigators. We found one of them and got to teach a lesson. Every day since then has been more teaching and less walking, so the work is picking up.

Mostly Sister Otgontuya and I are having a blast together. She is pretty much the coolest Mongolian ever, and she graduated with a degree in English teaching before her mission, which makes communicating a whole lot easier. Plus I get to teach her all kinds of useful things she didn’t learn in school like, “Let’s make like Tom and cruise.”

I had a special this-could-never-happen-in-America experience this past week. I mean, a lot of things I do here you can’t do in America (go into gers, eat buuz, etc.), but this surpassed them all. While we were walking down the street, Sister Otgontuya and I sang “My Heart Will Go On” in its entirety without an ounce of insincerity. Titanic and all things pertaining to it have permanently become a joke in America, but here, over ten years later, it’s still everyone’s favorite movie.

Sooo, what amazingly cool thing is Sister Johnson doing on preparation day today? We’re going to the tsirk! I mean, the circus! For free! I don’t really no what going to a Mongolian circus entails, but I imagine it’s the typical Asian deal: tumblers, contortionists, etc. Maybe today I’ll see a camel. Here’s hopin’… Later!

PS Please send my congratulations to Steve and Lisa! Those two crazy kids! Engagements are so much more exciting when you know both of the people involved.