Sain baina uu

Za hey family! I'm glad you ran into the Mellors, cool eh? It's funny, every couple of months I run into people from Utah, wondering around Mongolia. They were super nice to pass those ties along- a great couple with a really interesting mission. Today, as always is crazy and so I hope to get enough time to write a couple of emails to the youngins after this email. If I don't guys, thanks for all the great emails I get from you each week! I included a couple of pictures in this weeks email from my last week in Khailaast... I got them from Elder and Sister Richardson and I thought I'd pass them along. Two are pictures with Ijil od and Ixer od (Which means twin star and pair star), our Khailaast new members. The other is me and the monstrous noith hole (noith means zero... or bathroom).

Elder Jolley with Ijil od, Ixer od, Elder Mellors and Elder Richardson

Elder Verdusco, Elder Jolley and the Mellors working on the monstrous noith hole

Elder Jolley and Elder Verdusco... last week in Khailaast

Mongolia's school calender starts from September the first and it will be nice to have people not running off to the countryside on us as fall begins, it should help our work out a lot. I sat in Sansar ward for the first time since coming here (no trips to other branches this week or next I think), and it felt like sitting in my home ward again! It was really cool for me to be greeted be so many familiar people, and the work here is good and going to be getting better! There's a couple people that Elder Zolbayar and I began meeting with back in the day and are ready for baptism, but the Assistants have been really busy so they will hopefully be baptized here real soon. Plus- we got new missionaries! We sent 14 Mongolian missionaries to the Philippines MTC and 2 missionaries and one senior missionary couple came from the United States. A crazy week shuu dee! Elder Wilson and Elder Huff have become trainers to Elder Titensor and Elder Woodward. I didn't get any pictures of us on Zaisan, but I'll have plenty of cool pictures to be showing you in the next couple of weeks. Just to let you guys know (I may have said this before...), Elder Gong (newly called to the Asia Area Presidency) and Elder Ochoa of the YM General Presidency are coming to Mongolia in the first week of September for a mission tour. It's going to be an amazing week! Now that I wrote that I'm getting deja vu... I think I've already written this before. But it's worth saying twice. We will be doing 3 zone conferences that week; 2 in the city and one out in Darkhan.

This week was a lot of office work with all these new missionaries coming in and out, but Saturday President Clark left for Darkhan and all the missionaries were back in their areas and so Elder Tuvshinbayar and I had 2 days of just missionary work. Being an assistant has really made me treasure every teaching appointment! And if we focus on them, the investigators needs become clear through the Holy Ghost. Sometimes we want to dig in and get deep with the solutions, but time and time again as we step back, and focus on listening (to the person and the Spirit), the way is revealed to us! I'm constantly grateful for that blessing from our Heavenly Father, no specific experiences but just a general appreciation for the Lord for that blessing!

Love, Elder Ryan Jolley