May 28, 2009

Hello Family!!!
Thanks for the letters! mom thanks for the e-mails, dad thanks for always writing, linds it is so fun to hear from you, you sound crazy busy!! Good luck with the v-ball day and movie, I am excited to eventually see it ;) and good luck with girl’s camp! let me know how that all goes. Thanks for the package family! I got the first one, and my companion, district, and roommates and I have loved the food ;) I hope you are all doing well, tori good luck with packing help and sarah and jake, congrats on being done with school!!! enjoy the summer! woah it just hit me that you all are really moving, this is going to be an adventurous summer ;) mom and dad, are you making a trip to utah? Good luck with it all. And I am so glad you got to go to the lake!!! way to go on the wake board, I didn't know our jet skiis could pull one of those, that’s awesome! and sarah, you can waterski!!! yeah!! :D
Things are good here, we are over half way done with the MTC! We are only going a little crazy ;) (my teacher said we hit the crazy point that most districts don't hit until their 10th week) but we are still working hard and having fun. The new teaching system is soooo much better, we are learning a lot, and I am getting more used to the mongolian pronunciation, I spit and say my L's funny even in english now, our goal as a district is to be so good at mongolian that we become really bad at english ;) The weeks are pretty similar, lots of studying, great devotionals, etc, I am trying to think of what happened that was different.
The mongolian lesson went well last week! We taught about the plan of salvation, and I don't like how our lessons are one way (we talk and our "investigators" listen, smile, and nod,) so I asked if she (a really cute lady from mongolia) had any questions, and she went off in mongolian, it was funny, it took me about 10 minutes of asking poorly pieced together questions to figure out what she was asking, and when I finally did I poorly pieced together an answer but at least it was an attempt, I’d rather get used to this process here, because it is definitely going to happen in mongolia. (and it makes our lesson longer, haha :)
We practiced buying things before our lesson and in mongolia a lot of the markets don't have set prices so you barter for the price, and we practiced that before the lesson. we had just learned the money system but I thought I had it, so I was discussing prices with a lady and she kept laughing at what I was saying, saying I was "very good", etc, and it turns out that while I thought I had been changing the price by Dollars, I was really only changing the price by cents. So I seemed like such a stickler, it was way funny! ("I won't buy it for 20 dollars but I will buy it for 19 dollars and 95 cents, etc ;) I need to practice the money stuff.
My district invented a new sport this week, so you know how I said we are going a bit crazy? well we study a lot, any spare time, but we had 30 minutes of personal time before a meeting this week, and we played some intense badminton. Complete with a little featherything as a birdy, mongolian dictionaries as rackets, and headphone cords across chairs as a net. we played some intense 2 on 2! I swear we really are focused, but we all agreed that was the funnest 30 minutes yet (and I am still a recreational therapist at heart, play is important ;) we are limiting our games to once a week.
This gospel really is so amazing and I love getting to study it so much, I have believed in this church my whole life but it keeps hitting me more and more powerfully how real, and how important our message is. I talked to a man in the referral center for 45 minutes yesterday who has a sad story, divorced, his kids stole his credit cards and put him 30 thousand dollars in credit card dept, now he lives in a shack and works three jobs to play off bills he didn't create, etc, very lonely, and sees no way out. We just called to see if he got his DVD, and he said he never answers when he sees unknown numbers call but something told him to pick up the phone. He listened to our message and is meeting with the missionaries, and I am going to keep in touch with him, and I was so humbled at the realization of the power that our message has to improve and change lives. I was able to promise him that God knows him, loves him, and knows what he is going through. His situation seems so impossible to get out of, but it was powerful to realize that I know 100% that if he has faith and trusts God, then somehow, I don't know how but somehow, God will take care of him, and bring hope and happiness back into his life. How comforting it is to know that we are in the hands of the Lord! Who better to take care of us than the God and Creator of all things? Miracles are at His command, and His greatest desire is for us to be happy. This life is hard sometimes and things happen that we don't understand, but Christ is waiting to 'encircle us in the arms of His love', and will take care of us. I don't mean to go on about this, I am just gaining a greater desire to help all people know what Christ has done for them, and what more he is waiting and ready to do. My goal was to say "God lives and he Loves" in mongolian and I can do that :) I think that is the most important thing we can learn in this life.
I love you all so much! hope you have a great week, good luck with everything, and you all are in my prayers!!
love ya, ashley (sis mansfield)

cate- HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! um pa pa um pa pa happy birthday happy birthday, lalalalala. (I wish I had an accordian ;)

alyssa- it is great to hear you, good luck with everything, it sounds hard but i am so proud of the work you are doing! what an amazing and hard experience. good luck with the language and the children! love ya!!

kat- every time I play sand v-ball at gym I think of you! hope your internship is going great ;)