May 30, 2016

Hi Everyone,

This week was really good. Like I told you last week, we went on a hike up in Jargalant and wow can I just say it was the most beautiful hike in the world! You will understand when I send you all the pictures I took! IT was awesome! You all would love that hike! I think the best part of it though was when we saw the shepherd with his sheep. We started talking to him and he was impressed with our Mongolian especially after we told him that we had only been here for about 7 months. He was a really nice man and he brought one of his goats over so that we could take a picture with it. He was super cool :) It was really nice just being outside and finally able to do some fun hiking and sight-seeing cause we weren't able to do too much of that during the winter so I am really looking forward to summer now :) I can already tell that it is going to be great! Some days we still have moments where it is really cold but for the most part it is warming up and we don't even need to wear tights anymore :) Let's see then the next big thing that happened this week that I can think of was I taught our District Meeting! That was really fun and I enjoyed doing that! I talked about Accountability and how important that is when relating to missionary work and how we need to be not only accountable to ourselves but also to the Lord and how we need to go to him every night with what we did throughout the day and look for areas that we did well and also for areas where we need to improve and then ask for his help on it.

Then on Saturday we were down in the Niseh area and we did some service for one of our less actives grandma. We went and got some water at the watering house that they have in the ger districts because they don't have plumbing there of course and so after we grabbed a huge bucket and filled it up and we brought it back to her house and watered all of her trees for her. She really appreciated it and it was fun being able to do some kind of service. That was my first time wearing my service clothes so that was fun :) Afterwards we went in and taught Unurjargal, our less active, about family history and it was really cool cause the family was there and they were helping her fill out the pamphlet we gave her with names and everything so it was really cool seeing them work together to fill it out. Even the grandma who isn't a member was helping and participating a little. It was just a testimony builder to me with how much family history really can connect with people and it is a strong tool that can be used in missionary work and can help people become interested in the gospel so it was just really neat being able to see that. We will meet with them again this coming week and hopefully the grandma will be there for the next lesson and who knows what will come from that :) And then this is where my week kind of went down hill because I got food poisoning again! The grandma made us this thing called mailmag which is "Mongolian oatmeal" and it is literally just oil, water, flour, salt. and water mixed together and then it sits in a bowl of oil. So you take it and spread it on some bread and then you take a sugar cube which you dip in water and then take a bite of and then take a bite of the spread and eat that. This wasn't very good but I think what really killed me was the milk I drank. Because I am pretty sure it was sour and really old but I drank it because I didn't want to offend them... Yea I won't do that again, lesson learned. I was out the rest of the night and the next day....

On the bright side though we had stake conference where we now officially have 2 stakes in Mongolia. Two members from the Seventy came to Mongolia to do this and so that was really cool! We say Elder Toronto and Elder Gong. They both gave great talks and it was really cool being able to hear from them and to have them create that new stake! SO yea its official!

Anyways that is it for this week! I love you all! Have a good week!

Sister Kerby