Sister Magleby in Mongolia: An Adventure Filled Holiday Week

Dear Family and Friends,

This week we celebrated Nadaam. Everyone that we met with on Tuesday told us that the opening ceremony was on Wednesday. We went to the Nadaam stadium on Wednesday at 10 o'clock and no one was there. It may appear to be a translation problem, but it wasn't. They were simply confused. The real opening ceremony was the following day. We went back on Thursday and enjoyed some Mongolian songs, dancing, wrestling, and huushuur. We love Mongolian holidays.

Last Sunday our Branch President asked us if we would sing a song the following week in Sacrament Meeting. From our limited selection of music we chose, "This is the Christ." Sister Eskelsen is good at singing, and I am not. I've been walking around with the recorded alto part on my camera all week, and I still couldn't sing it that well. Everyone said that they liked it though, so I guess it's okay that I pretty much made up the notes.

Yesterday in Relief Society we talked about home teaching. The teacher started out with the question, "Who are home teachers?" No one knew! Well, the teacher knew. She gave all of them the assignment to go ask the branch president for home teachers. At the end of the lesson she asked Sister Eskelsen and I to share an experience about home teaching. I realized that I don't really remember anything I ever learned from my home teachers, but I remember that they always came. I'm learning a lot about the gospel and our responsibilities on my mission. The simple things are so important.

We found the promised land. There's a little street where practically all of our investigators live. We find one person, they lead us to another person. It's magical. Last week we were walking down this particular road looking for the home of a new investigator. While we were talking to people and looking for her address we found a cute old woman with the most beautiful yard/garden I've ever seen in Mongolia. We talked to her for a few minutes and asked if we could come back and help her one day. We planned to go this week, but we ran out of time. We went back to that street last night and we talked to her again. This time she invited us in and gave us some delicious juice and pastry. She ended up asking about the church so we talked about it. We're going back on Wednesday to work in the garden and teach her a lesson. I'm praying it goes as well as we hope.

This week we visited Hishigjargal and Erdenzorigt. They are progressing well, but were out of town this weekend for the holiday so they didn't come to church. We always take a taxi to their house and all of the taxi drivers think we're crazy when we tell them where we're going. They live behind some sort of cement factory. I don't really know. We showed up this week and Erdenzorigt was outside with some other people working on his car. The other people asked who we were and he replied, "Those are my missionaries." That made us happy because sometimes he seems a little less interested than his wife. We taught a great lesson, and then it was time to leave. They usually give us a ride back, but since they were working on the car we were stuck. We ended up having to walk back because their are no people out there. It wasn't a bad walk, just very hot. We took a little detour/shortcut and climbed a mountain. It was fun!

Mongolian funnies. Our taxi stopped behind another car at a red light, and I saw one of the funniest things I've ever seen. The driver of the car stuck his upper body out the window and I thought he was just looking at the ground. Then the man behind him sticks his upper body out the back window, and... starts peeling a hard boiled egg. I looked a little closer and the driver was also peeling a hard boiled egg. They were creative, because seriously who wants those little white shells all over the inside of their car? We laughed so hard. Also, yesterday we were waiting for a taxi to pick us up and we heard some music playing. The music kept getting closer and closer and I thought a car was going to come around the corner at any moment. But it wasn't a car. No, it was a bike. A teenage boy rode around the corner (so slowly it was practically in slow motion) and he had a CD player, battery, and speakers attached to his bike. He looked at us briefly and then kept riding down the road. Once again, we laughed so hard.

Love, Sister Magleby