Our director for English Connect sent this article to me. It was so touching that I would like to share it with others. It will also make sure that I don't lose track of it if I publish this blog in a book at the end of our mission: A Mongolian miracle This wonderful story was shared by Teri Adams, who lives in Montana “Our stake conference was held this past weekend. During the Sunday session, President Kris J. Mecham spoke to us. He is serving as the president of the Billings Montana Mission. At one point, toward the end of his remarks, he paused for a moment, then said, ‘I feel prompted to share with you a story’. This is the story he shared Prior to being called to serve as a mission president, President Mecham and his wife served a mission to Mongolia, and he shared the story of another couple currently serving in Mongolia. They are personal friends of President Mecham and he shared their story with us. It is incredible. The couple wa...
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It has once again been way too long between posts. It seems that the closer we are getting to finishing our mission, the more busy we become. We only have 50 days left until our mission is over! Time has gone by so fast, it almost seems impossible that we have been here over 16 months. Shortly after we arrived, we had 16 missionaries working with us. When we leave, there will only be four. They will have a very heavy load on them. Our replacements have not yet been selected because the demand for full time senior missionaries is so great. We are not yet sure how long it will be before another full time senior missionary couple will be able to take over as managers. For now, one of our local Senior Service Missionaries will take over as the interim manager until the Full Time missionaries arrive. Sister Vasquez has been working as an employment service missionary for two years and is very familiar with all that we do. She and Sister Elmer will come in three days a week, so the days...
This has been quite an eventful week. Last Monday I was having some severe chest pain and shortness of breath so we went to the emergency room. After waiting for 4 hours, I was finally put into a temporary holding cell, I mean observation room. The temporary room turned out to be my permanent room until after my cardiac catheterization on Wednesday morning. I had two previous stents that were blocked so the doctor did an angioplasty to expand the stent further out, and then used a cutting balloon to remove some of the buildup in the stents. I had very severe chest pain afterwards and my blood pressure dropped to 90/40, so they gave me a bolus of IV fluids, morphine, and nitroglycerin. It finally improved in about 30 minutes. I was released on Thursday afternoon, and am recovering at home now. This is the fifth time that I have had this type of heart procedure done with 10 previous stents. However, this one was much more painful that all the others. I should be in good shape ...
We have two Sister Missionaries that give the Spiritual Thought for us at the end of our English Class. There are missionary transfers every 6 six weeks, so one of the companions is transferred while the other one stays and receives a new companion. Sister Wiser was transferred in February so we got a picture with her and sister Harris. They are great missionaries and were such a pleasure to have in our class. Now we have Sister Harris and Sister Booth helping us. We only have two weeks left in this series of lessons and our numbers of students have dwindled down to 3 at 5pm and around 7 at the 7pm class. Most of them are afraid to come out anymore. Even with a work permit and social security number, they are no longer safe from deportation. We will be starting over for the third time the first week in April. There are 24 lessons so it takes 6 months to complete the course. Hopefully, we will have a group of new students come in to our class then. Most of the ones that we have now...
We can't believe that we only have 5 months left on our mission! It has exceeded our greatest expectations of how rewarding we thought it would be, and how much joy it has brought us. Being able to help Heavenly Father's children each day, and see the hope that they have when looking for a job that will provide for their families, deeply touches our hearts. Our English Connect classes are also very rewarding. It is great to see how earnestly these people are trying to learn English, and how excited they are when they can answer a question in class. We have grown to love these people, and look forward to each class. No matter how tired I am, or how much I am physically hurting, it all goes away while I am teaching. Before class, I often think, how am I going to be able to teach this class with the enthusiasm that I need and in a way where they can learn and remember the things they are taught. But as soon as I get started, all my concerns and discomforts are washed away and the...
So much has happened since my last post that it is hard to know where to start. I guess I will start with the bad news first. On Monday December 2nd, Velyn and I went to Walmart after work to get some groceries. While we were in the store, someone broke out the rear seat window and stole both of our laptops and computer bags. My bag also had our passports in it, along with all of my adaptors and slide changer for power point presentations. Velyn's prescription glasses were in her computer bag. We submitted all our losses to Farmer's Insurance, and fortunately, they reimbursed us for the replacement costs. The glass deductible was $100, and the personal property deductible was $1,000. That was hard to swallow but we were fortunate that they paid us the replacement cost. They got everything taken care of in a short time and were excellent to deal with. It is not often that you can say that about an insurance company. We have had the same agent for 25 years and she has been exc...
It has been too long since my last post. It seems like almost every minute of our time is needed to keep up with our responsibilities as managers of the employment center, and preparing our lessons for English Connect. However, we would not want it any other way. We have had so many rewarding experiences in both areas. We didn't think that we would be able to love the new people in our current English class like we did the ones in our previous class, but we definitely do. It is so great to look into the eyes of these people and see how earnestly they want to be able to speak English, and to have everyone's attention all the time. We now have 4 of our students that are attending Sacrament Meeting with us at the Spanish speaking ward. We are still teaching Abelardo English for two hours after Sacrament Meeting is over. He is a great young man and is studying in between classes to do the best he can to learn English. We had 25 people show up the last two classes in our 7 pm cla...