White Christmas

It is seriously getting cold here!!! I don’t know how I will survive the winter... yikes!!!

Monday the zone came to Erdenet for zone training, so we had 8 sisters staying in our apt, which was awesome! (6 Mongolian sisters, me, and another American) Monday we got some sad news... Sister Royal, (the other American sister in the countryside) would be leaving her mission a month early because a new Elder needs her visa. She, like me, is lucky enough to have a church visa, and this other elder is having visa trouble, and needs to take hers :( So she will leave tomorrow :( It's sad to see her go, but it's good that our mission has the ability to get the other elder this visa. So, on Monday we ate goat head together, talked about mission favs and cool experiences, and made a music video to Glorious, haha- that was awesome!!!

Tuesday was the zone conference, and we learned all about love and charity and how to better love our comps and investigators. It was a really great training and we all set goals to better love and serve those we are serving with.

So, I was seriously missing Christmas this week... so i opened my Christmas package... sorry- I couldn't wait!! Thanks to everyone who wrote me letters! It was so incredibly great to hear from all of you guys! And then.. I found Christmas in Erdenet- there was a tree of sorts outside a chain store here!!! woohooo! 

Also, on Saturday, we did service for a family in the ward. They had tons of wood and needed it all cut, stacked, and stored for the winter ahead. So the elders did the chopping and my comp and I did all the stacking -- an entire shed!!! It was freezing, we were exhausted, but we did it--- and while wearing skirts (we didn’t plan for it, it just happened)!! The family kept asking me if I had done this before, to which I said yes! Thank you to papa for teaching me how at the lake!! Then my comp was reallly cute and said:

Comp: "I'm grateful you are my comp"

Me: "why?"

Comp: " Because you are Mongolian and can do everything a Mongolian can do"

It was so sincere and adorable! Sometimes, I think it's hard for the Mongolian missionaries to be with us because we struggle with the food and language and whatnot. But, in that moment, she was so grateful because I CAN STACK WOOD!! haha It was a great moment!

Also a funny language moment from this week: A new investigator asked me what I thought meant: "How well do you understand everything we say?" so I replied, "I understand everything fairly well."

He repeats his question, "Where are you from?" .... Wooops.... Guess I don't understand everything fairly well, and then we all laughed for a while :) So, I'm not perfect at this language, and I still have lots of moments like that, haha.

That's about all for this week! I love you all! I miss ya! I love this work and it is really progressing here in Erdenet! This place is so special and I truly see miracles in people's lives each day!

Making mantuu