Monday, August 22, 2016

My Life is in Shambles... not really, but it is. - Week 34

Dear Family and Friends,

Literally everything in my apartment is starting to fall apart on me this week. So, just like back in May, I have been without hot water for the past 3 weeks and had to resort back to the good ol' boiling water in a kettle method; twice in one summer, I am one lucky girl. I think they said that the hot water should be back next week, but we'll just have to wait and see, all of the pipes are completely exposed in the ground outside and it looks like it will be longer, but I miss hot water. My hair misses the hot water more and have gotten to the point where I am ready to just use the freezing water just for convenience sake. Also, the electricity in our kitchen is going crazy and the normal plug/extension decided to die. Then our fridge felt lonely without the plug/extension cord (I guess they were friends) and decided that it didn't want to keep cold anymore--so we have had to throw away most of our perishables rather than take the chance of them becoming bad. The toilet started to constantly run water, and the shower head broke, so we have basically been using a hose for the cold shower.

I. Love. My. Life.
No, but really, I love my life. Even without all of these wonderful (amazing and great) conveniences, I love being out here. I love hearing Mongolian on the bus, I like knowing that I can ease-drop if I try hard enough, and I love how much better of a person I am becoming. There are still days where I really just want to eat at McDonald's and watch a movie or go on a run with Lucy, but I know that I am less than a year away from all of that. Right now, I have a great opportunity and need to make the most of it. Most of all, I have a great companion that makes up a huge difference. Even when we get burned, we end up walking back to the bus stop laughing the whole time and staying as stress-free as possible. Hahahah, or when crazy things happen, you just roll with the punches.

Such as on Saturday, we got locked IN our apartment. So our apartment has two sets of doors and at night, one of my roommates used to push the inside one (just a wood slab) closed as the security is from a heavy metal exterior door. The other night, it was really cold and I think that the wood door must have shrunk, wedged deep into the door frame, expanded, and then trapped us in. There was no getting out and we couldn't pull it out, we couldn't try to jam something in the door to make the little metal thing go in (you know, that thing on the side), and we couldn't remove the hinges. We were literally trapped in. We thought about climbing out the window, but as we are on the 4th floor, that was a bad idea. Lol, we are also on the opposite side of the city from the mission home, so we had to think creative. We ended up calling our district elders, (they live 5 minutes away), had to throw our keys out the window to them, they unlocked te exterior door, then all of us had to pull from the inside as they pushed the door from the outside. Hahah, as soon as the door finally wedged open, they turned around and booked it out of there. But we were free! Now we learned, don't shut the interior door.

Oh, but I taught the District Meeting on Saturday. It was like 40-60 ration for Mongolian to English--but speaking is becoming easier (I can finally say peace, joy, and thankful in Mongolian). Then, I guess that our ward really has a lot of faith in us as missionaries, because they had us give talks... again. This is the 3rd time within 9 weeks and I never have time to actually prepare anything (this is a critical step for me still) because they only tell us 5 minutes before we are to speak, but I have officially gotten over my fear of speaking Mongolian from the pulpit. Also, I have become the ward piano player, but more accurately I am the ward piano-music-player-button-pusher because the piano has the music already recorded and I just need to hit play at the beginning of each verse. My companion has become the music conductor for Sacrament and Sunday School, then I conduct in Relief Society. I wanted to be needed by my ward and I guess they were ready to oblige. It has been a huge learning curve this transfer, but it has been great.

I love being here. I love you all!
Sister Jessica Olsen


This is a picture of my district and, when there was a weird stomach bug that took my comp out of commission and one of my other roommates, I went on an unofficial STL split with Sister Wilkins. I was feeling very My Fair Lady this day


Hahahah, I got my package family and LOVED it!



Here are some random pictures of things that I see while walking around. The last one is a bus stop right in front of the church building and right now, there are all of these little pine nuts that everyone had been eating. The pigeons are everywhere.





So, I was able to make arepas that tasted like heaven on earth!!! I didn't take too many pics this week, so that is all that I have got.
Love you all!





This is a video of a random Mongolian singing and she was amazing! I love how she is dressed. :)















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