Full Circle = SWEET

Actually, because of the cake video I sent you I think caking got banned in the mission. Well, for my birthday I got transferred. I’m back in Baganuur for my last month. Yeah, I get giggly just writing that. Color, life, and the ability to sleep have slowly been returning to me. And the never ending black bags faded out this week. I'm with Elder Bodhaine. He's from Elder Shiozawa’s group.

It was kinda funny when I got here. Everyone got news that Elder Byrd was back, and when we were waiting on the van to go to the city people were fluttering around looking for me, but all they saw was this new skinny elder with Elder Bodhaine. About 15 minutes later someone finally came up to me and read my name tag and said "Elder... B...Y.....R.....!!! BYRD! How are y. . . You're really REALLY skinny now! Whoa! This conversation was repeated many MANY times. Only the people I've been sending pictures and stuff to recognize me anymore.

It's sweet being back. Going to rock it out here my last month. We’ve already had some way sweet lessons. There's been three lessons where people went from saying "I don't believe and am not interested" to asking how to pray and how to find out what we feel and know. It's sweet, we have one family we're working with now that’s doing way good. Taught like an hour long lesson on faith and at the end the mom said "Bi neeree itegchikhmeer baina" which is kinda like "I seriously want to believe in this". Had another lesson with a guy about the nature of god, it was one of those things where my ability to speak went through the roof and I started expounding scriptures in such a way that I was teaching myself as well.

It's sweet to be back here.

It was sad leaving Darkhan, I had finally gotten 100% in love with the place. One interesting thing of note is this. Remember when I told you about what happened before the baptism of that young deaf girl? We'll part 2 happened the day I left. We got a call as we were having our goodbye lunch; she said she wanted to meet us at the church. She had been having a lot of family problems lately, one of her sisters had hit her and she had moved over to her oldest sister’s house. And on top of all that one of her other deaf friends that could speak a little had been coming over and trashing the church. And then on top off all that all of her deaf friends had been pulling the isolation then "we'll receive you with open arms if you deny your faith thing". She was pretty shaken up.

My companion's first response was to in turn bash the other pastor and get into a "who's right" match, but after that followed the usual course of not working, he looked at me to see if I had anything to say. I then bore a testimony of the savior, the atonement, and what it means to inherit the celestial kingdom that I don't even know if I could share in English. It was one of those very few times where someone’s attention was totally focused on the things I was being led to say. At the end of about 15 minutes she had decided to keep trying, and for my own part I added that I really didn’t know how many more times I would meet her in this life, but if I woke up on that last day and didn't see her there it would be a heart breaking thing. It was one of those picturesque moments, right at that time a lot of our other deaf members and investigators and other people had shown up for an activity. The sun was setting over the church and the dusk light glinted off the little moths fluttering over the freshly bloomed flowers, and for the first time in a long time she smiled. I'm happy that's the moment I left on. If all I was needed for in Darkhan was just those two moments in her life it was all worth it.

Anyways, a 7 hour train ride later I was in the city. It also just happened that I got into the main building the same time as my trainer did. I miss that fool. Ruiz is back for a month to go see all his peeps. We went out to dinner and just caught up on old junk, he's going to come out here next P-day and the whole branch is going to go out fishing.

Then . . . I got to see the first Stake in Mongolia organized. Score. It was nuts seeing everyone I know. I remember the first conference I went to, the only person I knew was my comp and a few branch missionaries, and at my last one there was a flood of so many people I couldn’t think. There was one point I actually had to tell someone about something happening to her sister in Choibalsan but person after person kept coming up that after having 15 people trying to say hi in the space of a minute I had to grab the person I was talking to and duck outside with my companion. I forgot how many people I love in here. I have already met up with my second family, Dolgor and her daughter. The husband I baptized is out in the country again but meeting up with them is always uramtai.

Anyways, we are going to go be super focused and work our butts off this week, this is gonna be sweet.