A Long Wonderful Week

Greeting from Mongolia!!!!

Boy do I have a lot to tell you guys. It’s been a long week here. Tuesday morning all the new missionaries, Mongolian and English, went up to Zaison Hill to read the dedicatory prayer that was given when Mongolia first became a mission in 1993. Man, it’s so beautiful up there and so peaceful. I didn’t want to leave. The spirit there is so strong and I felt it so strongly when President Benson explained to us why Mongolia is so special. I know what we are doing here is special. All 12 tribes of Israel have been found here in Mongolia! This is a very spiritual place. God has a plan for Mongolia and we are helping fulfill his plan. 

Zaisan Hill

On top of the world!

My trainer Elder Lu is from San Jose California. His first name is Kevin. He’s a convert to the church. I’m his first trainee. He has been awesome giving me pointers and advice and really stretching me. When we taught lessons, he didn’t just talk the whole time, he had me talk a lot. He gave me a section to talk on. He would ask me to share a personal experience and my testimony. In the MTC I was always timid to open my mouth but elder Lu has given me the confidence to speak. He works with me during companionship study, going thru the topics and he has me summarize a topic in English and then he helps me translate it so I can use it in the lesson. Then as we walk, we go thru the phrases until I have it down. He’s awesome.

Elder Lu and me

We both love to cook. This week we only have gone out once which was to Coca Cola Kobab which is amazing by the way. For only $2.50 you can get this huge sandwich that will fill u up for days.

Soyveen for lunch

Omelets for breakfast!

Our home in Bainzurich is awesome. It is close to everything. We have the mission home just down the street, have a nice place to email, and we have the Zax which is the best shopping place there is. It’s this nice store just filled with vendors. There is like 100 different tiny stores.

We just had taught a lesson and we got home at 9pm and we were about to make dinner when the phone rang and we got an emergency call from the AP saying all missionaries have to come to the mission home immediately. So we booked it down the street. When we got to the mission home all the missionaries were gathered and President Benson was at the front of the room. The meeting was about immigration. We had to fill out paperwork and stuff like that and all the older missionaries who had previously filled it out had received their alien card.

Pics from 1st Apt. Our bedroom

Entryway

Kitchen

Living room. (I wont show u the bathroom, just know that it doesn't have a light so it make it very difficult hahaha)

So on Friday we had our studies from 8 to 12 and then made this massive lunch. You will see the lunch in the pics I send. You will be impressed. 

Here is the making of our huge last lunch!!!!

We also made some chicken breasts

Man it was such a good sandwich......

Then we started to pack. I will miss my first apartment. It was the worst apartment in the mission but I loved it. It was hard to leave. But at 3 when we were about to leave I got a call saying that we still had English training that day. It was weird. I thought we weren’t going to have English training that day because President Benson said to stay away from the mission home. The call said we were meeting at the senior couple’s house to train and then head over to the mission home to teach. So Elder Lu dropped me off at the senior couple’s house and then went on splits. He took it upon himself and others that would help him, to move all of our stuff to the new apartment.

I am now in Inktaven. Inktaven is more city like. There’s one huge street where there is lots of stores and malls and stuff like that. It’s a little nicer part of the city. We couldn’t move until 3 in the afternoon on Friday because the sisters in the apartment that we were moving into had English from 8 to 1 and they needed time to pack. 

Our new apartment is about a 30 minute bus ride from our old home. And they had to stuff all our bags and 4 people plus the driver in a small Prius hahahah. His explanation of how they did it was hilarious (and illegal).

Our new apartment

New kitchen (after being cleaned)

We have bunkbeds!!

My desk

Our Pantry

Our apartment has Legos!!!

 I don’t think I told you about English training yet. For us new elders (so the 4 of us) have English training from 3 to 8 on Wednesdays and Fridays. We train from 3 to around 445 and then we can go and get dinner and prepare for the lesson we are to give at 6. Our lessons are already prepared on PowerPoint slides so Elder Cowles and I just go thru each slide and get an idea of what we are going to do on that slide. Fridays lesson was the best lesson ever!! Elder Cowles and I rocked it!!!!! It was so much fun to give and the students loved it!! We taught around 25 people. They learned a lot and afterwards people asked us if we could get a picture with them and also asked us for our Facebook page (which we can’t give out but the thought was nice). They even asked us when we taught next. It was awesome. I finally know for a fact that that Heavenly Father can make me a good teacher. I have been praying for a lot of help and strength to teach well and he has answered me. It was amazing! Afterwards, Elder Lu picked me up and we went to our new apartment. The apartment is considerably nicer than our last one. We unpacked and then planned. 

Outside our apartment

Basically a Mongolian Disneyland LOL

We couldn’t really plan at all because Elder Lu and I both have no idea or no knowledge about this area at all. So Saturday we did our studies and then cleaned the house up because it was a horrible mess. Then we had lunch which was good and then we did a big plan. We familiarized ourselves with the area book, wrote some names down that we could visit. We had a couple maps of the area so we marked on the map addresses of good member’s and investigators to visit. The big plan took forever we were making phone calls and going thru names until 5 pm. We couldn’t get anyone to meet with us that night, which was painful. We couldn’t do anything. So we went out and walked around town getting to know the good places to shop for groceries, get haircuts and we walked to member houses to just get to know our way around town. I felt horrible doing it but that’s the only thing we could do. We were dropped in this new area with no information or anything. That night we planned to meet and greet as many members as we could just to get our name out there. That night a member from the ward, who I guess is the choir coordinator, called us and asked us to come to choir. We accepted. Church is at 10 and choir is at 9. Choir was great. There were 10 of us there. One of them is this famous guy in Mongolia. You know how we have those EFY songs and they have the videos to go along with them, Mongolia does that to. They take the same songs and sing them in Mongolian. This guy is in like every video, he’s like 23 years old and a really talented singer. The song we were practicing was called Gethsemane. That song is so good, and we sang it in English which was cool. We practiced until sacrament started and then during sacrament we actually sang it. We sounded surprisingly good. I know that God blessed me to sing well because we all sounded angelic. The famous guy though I forget his name but you could probably look up the EFY song videos on YouTube. I actually think that they are better than the American versions.

Home of all the knockoffs( there's also a Nike town right down the street.)

More knock offs

During church we tried to get to know as many members as possible. We talked to this guy named Arionbothd. He’s 19 like me and just got baptized. He was willing to meet with us for a lesson after church. After church, since he said we couldn’t meet at his house, we met at a member’s home. The member has a cute young family. He has 3 really young girls. They fed us mutton soup which was great. Since Arionbothd was just recently baptized we had to start the lessons over again, so we taught the Restoration. I started the lesson and it went well. I said a big chunk and then shared a scripture. I basically said God is our Heavenly Father and that we are all His children and that He loves you. When we suffer, he weeps with us and when we do what is right he rejoices with us. I explained to him that as we are obedient to the commandments we draw closer to God and likewise if we are disobedient we distance ourselves from God. Then I said that as we make mistakes in life we will feel guilt but through Christ and his atonement we can be forgiven and feel happiness and joy as we repent. As we use the atonement and humble ourselves, God will lift our burdens. I then shared Mosiah 24:14 which says,

“And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions”.

We have a super nice KFC right down the street

Inside of KFC

I testified that this was true then Elder Lu took it from there. He talked on prophets and Jesus Christ and then he asked me to testify of Christ. So I bore a simple testimony. It was just 3 lines. Afterwards the member sat with amazement. Arionbothd told the member something and he agreed. They were talking about my Mongolian. The member asked how long I have been here and I answered one week. He said my Mongolian was muhdug. Which is amazing. He said that he understands me perfectly and that I’m doing great. They said my accent is awesome. He said its better than Elder Lu’s (he has a very American accent). That really boosted my confidence in speaking. I really want to get better and improve. That lesson overall was amazing.

Don't you wish our KFC's looked like this?

Together for the week we taught 4 lessons, which is a lot with my English training twice a week and getting transferred. I talked with the other new elders and they said they haven’t been getting any lessons and when they do they don’t have opportunities to speak. So I’m grateful for Elder Lu giving me many opportunities to speak. I love Mongolia and I will send a lot of pics here soon. The people here are amazing. I already don’t want to go home. I love u guys!!!

Elder Heacock