My Time in Mongolia: *cough cough* I've Got the Black Lung

Dear family and friends,

Can you believe it, I am sick again. If you are keeping track, that is the 3rd time in the last 6 weeks, so every other week I am coming down with something now, I don't even know why. I am eating vitamins, my companion makes a green smoothie (full of spinach, kiwi, apples, and seabuck thorn) every morning, I have discovered the secret to sleeping (oh my heck, music! I just turn on my iPod on low and it just plays for about 3 hours and I am usually out within 20 minutes of laying down now), and I am really happy in my companionship, but my body is breaking. Why yom be?? It has been a very slow and kind of funny decline, though.

So on Tuesday, it was a slightly windy day and I spent the morning with my companion and MTC district taking some really awesome Mongolian Traditional and nontraditional pictures pictures in deels, then we went out into the beautiful world of Mongolia and took pictures by all of the random statues that we walked by with Sis. Bottorff. It was so much fun! In the Mongolian clothes, I felt like Queen Amadala and Star Wars really made a great choice by choosing these outfits to use. Then, it is just fun to walk around and just enjoy life with those that you love. I don't think that I have walked as much as I do now with my current companion than any other time in my mission. It is great!

However, the next day, I was walking around outside again with my companion and it was another lovely Spring morning, but I couldn't seem to control my body temperature at all, I would break out into a little bit of a sweat when we were in the sun, then in the shade, my hands would become so cold that they felt like they went numb. At the time, I thought that I was just being over-dramatic because my companion was completely fine and wasn't having any problems with the weather. With all of the crazy changes, I felt like something not good was starting to grown in my body, so I started to occasionally take some medicine. Like a Dayquil to start off my morning.

Friday was okay.

Saturday, that night things started to go more downhill. However, I had so much fun because we did an early Easter celebration with Sis. Mason and Sarangya--oh man, she was in the last ward that I served in as a ward missionary and I just love the girl. She ate peeps for the first time, we made a Paazookie (a big cookie that you put ice cream on right out of the oven), and some delicious chick tsoibin. It was a lot of fun and totally worth waiting until the very end of the night to have dinner, but I think that I might have talked just a little too much that night. My throat was sore, but I just kept chatting away without a care in the world.

Then bright Sunday Easter morning, I woke up without a voice. It was completely gone and life is hard as a missionary when you cannot talk on a Sunday in church. It was really funny because I would be able to quietly whisper and every time I did, the person that I spoke to just naturally started to whisper back to me. It was like a day of secrets. We had to cancel our appointments and then my companion and I spent the after noon doing a very quite study, she made a DELICIOUS Easter dinner of chicken nuggets, and then after I tried to sleep off the sickness, she killed me in Canasta. Like without mercy. I think that I am getting better at the game, though, and by the time this mission is over, I will be an expert with her help.

Last night, though, was the hard night of not sleeping, only coughing. Over and over again. Coughing. Coughing. Coughing. I am doing good, and so long as I don't talk too much, I don't cough. Also, I am full of so much medicine right not, I am feeling great about life. I am pretty sure that it could have been worse, but it is okay, because I know that I am doing everything I can to stay healthy and eventually my body will catch up. On a good side, my English class went really well yesterday and I think it is because the kids felt bad about me having to try to talk to them in a wobbly voice.

See, there is always a blessing to be found. I love those silver linings.

Have a great and healthy week!

Sister Jessica Olsen

Here are some of the last pics in our clothes. Aren't they just so precious?

Oh the shinanignas that you can get into while taking pictures outside

I love my companion!!

By the way, Happy Easter!! Here was our early Easter Dinner and then the very-end-of-the-night Easter picture. Hahaha, just in case you are curious, no, I couldn't really talk in the last one. I sounded like a 90 year old man who had just finished running a race and was completely out of breath,

So this is the end of P day last week. At the very end of the night, we went out and heart attacked one of the sisters, and they figured out it was us. We came home the next night and had been 'attacked' as well.

I don't understand, we were being so sneaky, too!