"It seems like..."

Dear Family and Friends, 

We went to Zaisan for Sister Royal's English lesson and the nanny brought us a mysterious looking food. (This was unusual because she always gives us great food)! Sister Royal and I both stared at it for a brief moment deciding whether or not we wanted to try whatever it was. Well, it must have been more than a moment because little Enkh-Uchral left the room and went running down the hall yelling, "It seems like they're not going to eat this!" He and the nanny came back into the room and they saw us eating the bread and mysterious meat substance and Enkh-Uchral said, "Oh, just kidding. It seems like they're eating it." It might only be funny because we translated it from Mongolian to English, but either way Sister Royal and I laughed about it for a long time. 

We had a great week! It was filled with unique experiences and seemed very long but it was filled with quality spiritual moments and simply hilarious. Last Tuesday night I was in the shower when Sister Royal came running into the bathroom and said, "Sister Magleby there's a police man knocking on the door!" Uh-oh. I hurried out as fast as I could and he was still knocking when I got to the door. I opened the door just a little bit with the intent of simply asking why he was knocking on our door. All of the sudden he and a woman come barging into our home taking pictures and demanding to see our passports. Weird. They left after a painstaking 5-10 minutes. Sister Royal burst into tears and was convinced she was going to be sent out of the country. Within minutes we had talked to the zone leaders, APs, and President Benson who all seemed a little concerned but assured us there was nothing to worry about. The next morning we called and told the story to Tvwshin who investigated the situation. It turns out they were harmless people just trying to do their job. The stress has long since left and now it's just a hilarious memory. 

Yesterday someone bore their testimony about the Word of Wisdom. It started out great and then he started talking about eating meat... According to him all of the Mongolians are breaking the Word of Wisdom because they eat a lot of meat and they need to stop. It seems like most people just tuned him out, but I was listening intently with fascination. The look on the 1st counselor's face was hilarious as he tried to hid his smile and laugh. 

This week we taught a miracle lesson to Tsogbaatar. He and his family are my absolute favorites. I love them so much!  This week he gave us the greatest compliment in the world when he said he loves having us come over because he feels the Spirit so strongly. We can't take much credit for that but we love them, plan well, and apparently the Spirit is doing it's job well. He has been taught about the Word of Wisdom before, but he hasn't been living it. We reviewed the commandment, and tied his situation into his Book of Mormon reading. (Nephi is such a great example!) Then we helped him come up with a plan. We suggested he could stop smoking little by little, and he looked at us like we were dumb. "You can't do that. You just have to stop..." Well, if you can just stop, please do. He promised to try stopping this week and he also promised to come to church (he's been promising that for the past three weeks). To close the lesson he said the most sincere and most powerful prayer asking God to help him follow the Word of Wisdom and telling God he promised to go to church the next day. When he finished his wife had tears in her eyes, Sister Royal and I were about to start crying, and Sister Royal swears that he was crying too. It was such a good lesson. To make it even better he came to church yesterday. I had the biggest smile on my face when he walked in the door. 

Missionary work is so amazing!  We are all instruments in God's hands trying to help the people he places in our path. Sometimes I'm amazed at all Heavenly Father trusts us to do, but I know that he helps us do it successfully. 

Love, Sister Magleby