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How are you all this week? This week has been so so so busy but soooo amazing! First off, on top of running mutual, FHE for the YSAs, playing piano for church, and having English classes 5 times a week, we also just started piano lessons on Saturdays! I am helping one of the Senior missionaries teach a kids class and an adult class. It's so awesome! We also started taking Mongolian sign language classes because one of our investigators is deaf and we found out we have a huge deaf community in this area. It's so much fun and learning sign language has helped me learn Mongolian a lot better too since I am a very visual learner haha. Plus, it's fun to flex on the other missionaries in our district calls since only some of us are learning.
This week was also a wakeup call for me in terms of preparedness and organization as a missionary. We had a big group planning session this week with the Elders and I didn't realize how much info I was missing and needed to catch up on. But on the plus side, I was able to understand most of the planning in Mongolian and I can officially keep track of all of our investigators and their personal information a lot better now. We have 7 investigators in total and they're all super awesome. We still have yet to contact two of them since they aren't answering any calls but we'll find a way through connections in the ward.
I had an awesome Gift of Tongues moment this week too! Yesterday, I set up and led a teaching appointment all by myself. Even better was the fact that she was a really difficult person to teach yet I could follow her questions super well. We were leading a discussion about Alma and she asked me "Why did God call Alma to be a prophet if he was such a bad person?" She asked a lot of really profound questions that challenged my Mongolian skills a lot, yet I was able to follow along a lot easier than I was used to. My companion wanted to make sure I led the entire discussion so she didn't participate at all. It was super difficult but overall, it was amazing seeing the progress I've made in my language learning so far.
Also, Darkhan has by far the best Mongolian food I've ever had in the two months I've been here haha. All the sweet grandmas cook the most amazing food and, even though they feed us too much, I love every second of it. They are all so sweet and they always ask my companion if I understand Mongolian. Thankfully, I can now understand everyone so much better because my hearing has improved a lot. I also love all the children here. They are always so sweet and love to talk my ears off. Along with awesome food and awesome people, Darkhan is SO COLD. Yesterday it got to a low of -45 and with all my thermals and winter gear I felt like I was going to die. Thankfully our eyelashes don't freeze as much out here (I think it might be because it is way too cold haha). Also, as we were walking to an investigators house the other day, I saw a crow the size of a dog picking at a dog shaped skull on the ground. So that was fun...
Overall, I've learned a lot this week about how to put forth your best efforts to learn and help those around you. I know that if you are scared to try something difficult, just depend on the Lord for strength and try it and it will end up being a lot less difficult than you imagined it would. That has happened to me a lot this week and I know that it is sooo true! Sometimes I felt overwhelmed at the start of the day because we had so many things going on, but when I looked back on the day that night, I realized that Heavenly Father was pushing me along the whole day and it would turn out way less stressful than I expected. I know that if you pray for help and strength, He will answer and He will help you. Heavenly Father is so amazing and loving!
Mutual and FHE have been super fun. I've been learning a lot of fun Mongolian games and teaching a lot of Uno haha. We played one game at Mutual called 'Husbands and Wives' and it was super crazy. Basically, all the "wives" sit in a circle in chairs and their "husbands" stand behind them with their eyes closed. One husband doesn't have a wife, so he has to wink at one of the "taken wives". If the wife gets winked at, she has to sneak away from her husband and join the other husband without her husband tagging her. It got pretty intense because the guys were making it a sport to take us out haha. I've gotten really good at listening to game instructions in Mongolian now and I think Mutual and FHE have been good activities for a lot of our investigators to meet and become friends with the ward members. We had a mission wide call earlier this week which emphasized the importance of including members in missionary work. I think the Church is really trying to push the need for member involvement and so they added new Key Indicators to the mission program. We now have to track how many new members come to sacrament and how many members participate in our investigator lessons. This is going to help us improve our member involvement and also help newly baptized members stay involved and active after baptism. So this week, our goal is to try to connect the youth and YSAs more to create a more unified community in our ward. Unity is the key to a successful ward, in my opinion. So, for my fellow Stormlight Archive lovers: "I will unite instead of divide. I will bring people together" :)
Other fun stuff that happened this week: I found out that our apartment has a balcony haha. I've been here for 2 weeks and haven't noticed until today. We also don't have any pans for our oven but I was really craving muffins this week, so I made muffins by putting a muffin mix in a singular glass cup and cooking each muffin one at a time. Took a while but it worked out okay haha. I ate horse meat again and this time, I was only sick for a few hours the next day. I think my body is adjusting well to it. Also, we finally got mattresses! Before, we were just sleeping on planks of wood (basically) and our beds are rock solid. I don't mind it so much though. We still don't have pillows but that's more of a "i'm too lazy to go buy a pillow on pday" issue. For pday today, my comp and I and the other elders went to this awesome Japanese style restaurant and played this fun Mongolian game and I really can't explain what it is or how to play it because I still don't understand myself. But the Japanese food was sooo good. Also, we taught our new deaf investigators how to play Uno using sign language so I think that was a pretty awesome Gift of Tongues moment as well.
I also wanted to give some details about traditional Mongolian food since some of you were asking about it (skip to the next paragraph if you don't care haha) - So the three main drinks they drink in the winter time are tsai (tea), hirim, and arig. Tsai is just hot water, milk and green tea mixed together. Hirim is milk and boiling water mixed together. Sometimes they add oil and salt to make it taste a little more. I prefer it without salt and oil. Arig is a drink that is essentially boiling hot boiled yogurt. The only way I can describe it is yellow with a cottage cheese mush texture and it kind of tastes like really really old liquid cheese. Not my favorite thing ever but I've heard some American missionaries can't even drink it without gagging so I'd consider myself pretty tolerant to the taste. Then they have buuz which are similar to Chinese dumplings but they can have anything in them (horse meat, beef, intestines, stomach, veggies, fat, garlic...). So you never know what you're gonna get until you bite into it. It's a fun surprise sometimes. Then there's tsuivan which is a noodle stir fry of sorts with really really thick noodles and any kind of meats and vegetables. I tried a tsuivan with artichokes this week which was an interesting but tasty meal. They make a LOT of soups here in the winter time since it's so cold and every Mongolian soup consists of potatoes, carrots, meat of any kind, fat, onions, and water and that's it. They just boil it all together and serve it while it's still boiling hot. You kind of learn to just burn your tastebuds off every time you eat because they want you to start eating as soon as they give you the food. Oh, they also have arig in solid form too. It just looks like soap and it's so hard that you have to soak it in boiling water in order to bite into it. They also have hurshur and it's just a fryed, flat form of buuz (I still have yet to try it). Those are the main foods they make here and honestly, Darkhan members have good recipes! The countryside food is so amazing!
This week, I was finishing up 3 Nephi and came across verse 21 in chapter 27:
21 Verily, verily, I say unto you, this is my gospel; and ye know the things that ye must do in my church; for the works which ye have seen me do that shall ye also do; for that which ye have seen me do even that shall ye do
I love this verse because it sums up our gospel so simply and eloquently: Follow Jesus Christ and you will be blessed. Christ is our perfect example and He is our friend. Everything He did, He did for us. If we simply do the things that He did and follow His teachings, we will be happy. I know that Christ is our Savior and our Redeemer. He is the light and the way that we can find peace and joy in this life. I promise you that if you learn about Him and try to become like Him, you will see a remarkable change in your life. You will see more joy, find more fulfillment, and become a better person. Christ has blessed my life and continues to bless my life every single day. I am so lucky to be here in Mongolian sharing this wonderful message. I want everyone to feel the joy that I feel because of my Savior. I hope you all have a wonderful week and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!
Love,
Sister Potter
Context:
Pic 2 is the wives and husband's game and Pic 8 is the photo Nomingerel from Unur sent of her baptism (she added me to the Pic- isn't that cute haha)
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