Busy and Time Flies

Saimbaim oo!

This week flew by. Everyone says The days are long but the weeks are short and its very true.  It was great to hear from so many of you this week.  John, Lauren, Anna and Mrs. Kramer, your letters were all amazing.  I figure most of you will be heading out to college sometime soon and won't be getting mail at your home addresses, so I'll wait till you send me a note or letter on dearelder.com after you get to school so that I'll have your new addresses before I write you back.

 

Today's Pday and was our first opportunity to go through the temple as last week we had ESL certification class. (more on that later).  It was so neat to go through he temple with so many missionaries, including the ones from my district whom I have grown so much closer to this week.  The rest of Pday includes personal study, meals, laundry and service hours.  Our service assignment is to set up for the devotionals and firesides.  Its one of the better service assignments and beats cleaning toilets.  After that we go to choir (yes Mom, I'm in the choir, you're welcome :)  )  and then we sit and wait for the devotional.

We are now certified to teach English by BYU.  We all got certificates at the end of last week when we finished the 20 hour course.  The last three days we have taught foreign missionaries who are here to learn English.  Needless to say I learned almost as much about English as they did.  English is super hard, almost as hard as Mongolian which is coming along nicely this week.  My companion and I are memorizing 5 additional new vocabulary words a day and that's going really well.  Its difficult because the sentence structure is subject-object-verb.  So even if you have the vocabulary,s piecing sentences together is not that easy.  Our teacher are extremely helpful, although they hardly ever speak in English any more.  We've taught 6 lessons in only Mongolian and they are going much better.  At the end of the last one I was able to bear my testimony in Mongolian without looking at the page.

John, Kevin, Kyle, Brian, and Keaster will be happy to know that I'm working on my soccer skills during gym time.  Elder Quinton and I look forward to the hour we get to run around everyday.  I've also been perfecting my Jimmer range threes, still a work in progress...

Yes dad the two elders that are here are the ones that were supposed to arrive in Mongolia this week.  They were supposed to leave 10 days before we arrived, but since their visas aren't here yet they have been delayed yet again.  They are hoping to leave Friday but it's still unsure.

 

The devotionals here are nothing less than what you would expect.  This week we heard from Brother Heaton who is on the administrative staff at the MTC.  He spoke on measuring missionary success.  It can be measured quantitatively on the number of people we bring unto Christ or also in the way that it is pleasing unto God.  He taught us that we need to do all we can without expectations.  We need to work hard so that perhaps we might be able to bring people to Christ, but baptisms are gifts from God.  There were several references to the word "perhaps" in passages in the scriptures including alma 29:9.  I encourage you to look for the rest.  Also I don't have them listed here with me.  It was an amazing message and I'm not sure my brief overview did it any justice.

During District meeting this week we all stood and shared five minutes about a scripture or event that touched us this week.  I spoke on the scripture from my mission plaque D&C 64:33-34 (33 Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great. 34 Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind; and the willing and obedient shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days).  Then I urged everyone to stay determined to master the language.  I also shared Dad's words: "No one remembers easy campouts."  Its the difficult times that make memories! We sang "Armies of Helaman" in the devotional, but the words were changed to the present tense for a lot of the lyrics so it was really cool. in

Times up so Ill leave you with this.  "You can count the seeds in an apple, but you cant count the apples in a seed"

Plant Seeds!

Press On!

Elder Neuberger