I Want to Drop Kick Someone

Things I don't want to think about but I have to ym shig.

The mission president said he could write a letter to get me into BYU Idaho. Apparently the Mission President and the President of BYUI were College buds at Harvard Business School. He said he didn’t want me to lose what I had gained on my mission so he wanted me to think and pray about going there.

FREAK I don't even know what to look at. I've drawn like 3 times my whole mission. chaavaas.
I'm actually looking at the BYU I homepage right now (I have permission) this is really uncomfortable.

And freak, these rules..... I'm used to missionary standards and these are annoying.

UKBUKBDKULHBKSHDIOADIOHAUDBKABKBDDDDDQQQWQWLM

Yeah.

Anyways. I want to drop kick someone.

So. We had a baptism and stuff. My companion did the first baptism in Mongolian sign language in the history of the world. That was pretty nifty.





The Elder’s quorum president is now in running for "sweetest homie" on the face of the earth not only is he learning a ton of American slang to go along with his English, he goes with us as a gerch and has been helping us get the families of some of our younger investigators to church. He's a stud; I love the man to death. Plus he has a car and drives us places, and drives our investigators around. He even took one guy from one end of town and all the way back to pick up his son from preschool.

Tegeed . . . yup.

It's odd, but I just realized that I just had my last interview with President Andersen until my release interview.

Bah.

District conference was this weekend. Translated 6 hours of material into sign language, only had a little help for a 30 minute gap. The Second councilor in the district presidency mentioned me in his talk (fortunately without name). Well not really a mention, it was kinda the theme of the whole talk. IT was about how the missionaries came over and asked them if they were having family home evening even though they were members going on 12 years or so. At first they scoffed it off, but realized they hadn't been doing it for 2 years, and then realized how they had been missing that time together. So they did one the next week and fun was had by all. Brother Bayarjav aslo got the family of one of our investigators to the Sunday session as well, woo.

We had Zone conference yesterday. Also translated most of it, but got a 2 hours break, so it wasn’t as bad. Got called on to share what I had learned. It was basically "you're not here long enough to do very much of anything anyways, so don't even waste a couple seconds moping around and just go do something, even if you don't know what you're doing.

The theme of Zone conference was the atonement. It was sweet. The mission president shared the training he got as a 70 from the presidency of the 70. There was a big section on the difference between being clean and being sanctified. There was another on the combination of giving and receiving forgiveness. He also brought down the hammer on a lot of shenanigans in the mission: if you do not stop, you will go no home, no exceptions. Fortunately I'm not doing any of those.

Oh, and then they invited up a return missionary to talk about her mission, and she started going off on how there was this one elder she used to see 2 years ago that was massive angry elder that she didn't like, not that she knew him, but she had heard a lot of stuff and the few times she saw him, she figured he was a bad person, then said it was cool that there were sign language elders and that there was translation now, and came and said thanks later. The funny part is she didn't realize the person she spoke on and the person she spoke to were one and the same person. Mai Chi.

Tegeed. We blessed a really sick baby at the hospital, and now he's all better. Woo.

Yeah life’s cool.

Tell blue son daddy loves him.

Apologies from Mom

Elder Byrd is fine ... the jury is still out on his parents.

Mom plans to update the blog soon ... or she will just let Elder Byrd take care of it when he is back in Alabama in July!

Tag Team Translation

Anywho. Sister Garrett and I translated General Conference into sign language (took turns each session). Doing all of Priesthood session non-stop was a brain killer. It was pretty sweet. Sat in on part of the Mongolian session, understood everything. I remember a week into the MTC listening to conference on the internet and I couldn’t even pick up the names of the apostles, much less the simple words that I knew at the time. Woop.

Tegeed. We have a baptism this Friday. He's a pretty sweet kid. Well, by kid he's like 20 or so. We went around this week to meet with a lot of families. The Mission President laid down the law that it is no longer allowed to teach lessons at the church, so it finally dislodged the excuse that "it's too hard" and we go out into people’s homes now.

We found out that some of the other pastors had been coming over and saying all sorts of crazy stuff about the church. (1) You'll get weak and even die if you don’t drink tea; (2) we teach the youth to jump off buildings because the Lord will save them; (3) we beat people that don't agree with us.

I answered in order (1) I'm 6 foot 2, 215 pounds, walk a minimum of 10 km a day, you've seen me one arm dead lift your son off the ground, and I don’t even know what tea tastes like. Think about it. (2) If we teach all the youth to jump off buildings, how would it even be possible for me to be here meeting with you seeing that I am one of those youth? (3) I'm sitting here laughing and talking with you and as stated in item (1) it is not due to lack of ability to do otherwise. By the end there was a general consensus that what they had been told before really didn't make sense and it was probably good for them to go to church.

I really want to dig a hole or do some kind of service, but everyone here is rich. Random thought.

If there was anything else to say I think my brain is to blown to remember it.

Hey, we just round out from the Area presidency that Elder Ganbold can do the baptism Friday. SWEET

Still Chillin Out Here

I had another experience with the gift of tongues, which is now in the unwavering testimony category . . . then I went and played soccer.

Other stuff. Transfer, nothing changed, still chillin out here.

Tegeed. The young girl we teach sign language to, is growing at an awe inspiring pace. In the last 2 months she’s gone from nothing and always sitting on her own, to interacting with everyone, participating in choir, telling stories about the funny stuff that happened in her day, expressing a wide array of emotions and thoughts about things. It's really amazing.

Works good, got another kid prepping for baptism this week. Lots of people, such as the pastors from the other church are going out on double duty to lie about us. He’s even saying that he came up to me and thrashed me so good that I couldn't respond from the scriptures and such, which is a lie, and in fact it was the other way around.

Anyways, freak, I’m dead, Elder Jones is dead in 5 weeks, Now not Elder just Alex Harding goes home with his parents in 3 days, and then me. Dang. I just got letters from a lot of people in my old areas, all ending on "wow, I can’t believe you go home in 3 months, actually exactly from today its 3.

Anyways, my brains all burned out from the last couple days worth of stuff. Love you and stuff.

Oor Chin Yu Bilee

Conference, sweet, waiting on the translations to get here, I can't believe the way time passes, 6 months ago I watched it in Choibalsan, and a year ago I was sitting in Enkhtaivan marveling at how fast time was going because last time a year ago I was watching it in America, and now the next I watch will be in America again. Weird.

We had the first Baptism in the Darhan sign language work. Woo. Adversary went all out on our new member. The pastors, well many of them, have been stalking the people who meet with us, yelling at them, threatening etc. Everybody and their mother was coming down and getting on her case about being baptized, her sister started beating her, and boon yum bolson. It was pretty nuts and on top of all that Thursday before the baptism, she goes to invite her best friend (who's less active) and instead of the expected congratulations she got chewed out for an hour. If you tried to convey trying to talk while crying in a text message, it would probably resemble what showed up on our cell phone. She asked us to come over so we went with another deaf sister who is doing a mini mission. The inactive lady was going nuts. At first it was about all the "proof" that her pastor had that his church was true (take your pick from Noah’s ark in Turkey, signs of times, etc) but then she started making personal attacks such as our investigator was too stupid to understand anything at her church and lots of other jabs at her worth at a person. Now this got on two of my nerves negen bol . . . (1) I've researched Christian history better than most people, and for the most part, it is like sand. Everybody likes beach side property but makes for a horrible foundation, and (2) I'll it quietly and let people do whatever they want until they make people I know cry.

My companion describe it as, I had just been sitting and watching for about 20 minutes of the lesson, letting the 3 of them go back and forth on stuff till the inactive lady went after our investigator. My companion was blocking my line of sight to talk to the lady, so I reached out and pushed him back a foot (I don’t remember that part) and went on to teach the principle of faith in a way that after 15 minutes she was sitting dumbfounded. I've have never done that in English or in Mongolian, and my sign language is decent, but it's not that good. I think this is the first time i can truly claim a more visible manifestation of the gift of tongues. She said it was the first time she's seen something drive the other lady to silence, much less dislodge her from her stated position. By the end the friend said she wouldn’t come to see the baptism, but wouldn’t make herself an active persecution. So she got baptized, and it was really sweet, our branch is trying really hard to learn sign language, so after the baptismal service (which started an hour late because no one had a key to the closet, and the water was 33 degrees or so, I mean I lost the feeling in my legs just standing in it.) everyone introduced and talked and stuff.



And speaking of random, the Akhlagch and Uilchlegch from the other church have been going around harrassing our investigators. A couple of the youth came running into the church building all sweaty and said that one of them had been waiting outside their school to chew them out but they blitzed off to the only place where they were pretty sure he wouldn't follow them. Another time they went to the kids home and started yelling at him, but the kid responded with such a testimony about prayer that it left the pastor with only the weak response that "God doesn't listen to prayers until you're 30,and until then you aren't able to decide". It's pretty silly. They came up to us, too. We were walking down the street when a guy comes up out of nowhere and asks "You're Ganbold the deaf Mormon missionary right" (at the time we hadn't been speaking in sign language and I was talking to people doing ITLs). So they tried to get us to argue, asked me a whole bunch of doctrinal questions, but after answering most of it right out of the 2nd lesson, they all quit from that and tried to make attacks on my companion about trying to steal everybody to get rich, but after pointing out that we don’t get paid and most of the people had first asked us to meet with them, and from all them it was everybody’s choice to do what they want in life and we don't force anyone into doing anything, they quit from talking about church stuff and we got their phone number. lol.

We had 8 deaf people at church, there would be more but it's a pretty far drive. A sister bore a really powerful testimony to one of our ALAs who hadn't been to church in almost 5 years or more, and after sacrament they were all hugging and crying and stuff . . . women . . .

oor chin yu bilee.......did 30 ITLs with one of the new missionaries, got 18 referrals in a part of town where I've gotten 3 in the last 2 months and more on top of that for other places

Jay is now on the "you're silly" list. Dad and all that crowed still on said list.

. . . not everyone ends up wearing their birthday cake!