Investigators! - Week 21

Dear Family and Friends,

Can I just tell you, blessings happen when you do everything that you can in order to win the trust and friendship of the ward that you are serving in, they open up their homes and introduce you to people who are interested in learning about the Gospel and/or have become inactive over time. Without the help of the members, I would literally have nothing to do because I cannot proselyte. This is such a blessing though, because everyone that I meet is already prepared to hear what I have to say to some degree or other. I love my ward that I am serving in and the people that I am meeting. 

Also, I have discovered what a blessing it is to be teaching in Mongolian and not English--as much as I thought that I would never say this! My companion and I were invited to an investigator's house this week and she is an English teacher at the Medical University, so we could teach in both English and Mongolian, something that is not very common. She had a really good comprehension and was more than willing to ask questions, it was a cool experience. However, when I teach in Mongolian, there are only a limited amount of words that I can say and sentences that make sense, so when I say something, I have to make it count, not only that, but they really have to listen to understand what I am saying. In this particular lesson with the mix of Mongolian and English, I realized that I do not know how to teach simply in English, as odd as that sounds. In English, I phrase things too complicated and I am not satisfied with the simpler way that I would have phrased things in Mongolian--in other words, I wanted to become the teacher and leave no room for the Holy Spirit. This is not good and caused me to stumble over my own pride that seemed to grow with every English word that I spoke. At the end of the lesson, I knew that it was a blessing from Heavenly Father that I have been put in Mongolia; I love it here and it helps me remember how to be humble. This wonderful investigator is amazing and will be great at learning, but I am thankful that I have the opportunity to try in my native language, but as it turned out, she lived outside of our boundaries, so she was passed to another set of missionaries. 

Otherwise, this week has been really good! School gets out next week and then I won't have any English classes to teach until September. However, do you want to hear some really cool news?! I was selected to be part of a small group of missionaries who are going to re-vamp the current curriculum that we are using in order to make it a better learning experience for the students and easier for the missionaries to teach from. This is going to be SO STINKIN' COOL!! I am stoked about this, it is going to take 12 hours from the week for the rest of the summer, so it is going to be the equivalent of what I am already teaching, but this is going to be a rich learning experience. We are going to go over about 4 different curriculum schedules, each having about 35 lessons, and each lesson has about 30-40 parts to it, where we will take the current information and evaluate the usefulness of the information, layouts, and associated activities. (This is getting me back into the mindset that I want to get my MBA in Project Management so that I can professionally complete projects like this, that would be really neat to do.). What I love even more about this assignment is that not only am I going to basically learn the curriculum inside out, it is also a good opportunity to learn how to make the curriculum so that I will be able to make one when I go home. I haven't forgotten about my budding commitment for the English class.

This week has been busy and we have new investigators, so it has been good. I love this work.

I love you all!