чи энийг уншах чадагүй

би чи эиэ захиас сахин олоосой гэж хүсч байнй,

First off, the rumors are true...The mail room is closed from last Friday till this Thursday so if you've sent a letter via Dear Elder, I probably haven’t read it.  However, this will make for an epic mail run on Thursday.  Guesses from the district range in the mid fifties to sixties for the number of Dear Elders that will arrive for us on that day. Should be exciting!

Answering a few questions/comments

Last to receive their call in the District was Elder Naef in May or June.

The next district of Elders going to Mongolia doesn’t come until next spring, April or May

We won’t hear about visas (bad or good) until a week and a half before our scheduled departure

Nana, I got you package and everything was still delicious.  Thank you thank you.

When we go to Mongolia they will phonetically spell our last names on our tags so mine will show up as нюубэргэр or нүбэргэр.  That’s pretty cool!

Who gets the most mail...Elder Lloyd got mail straight for the first 4 weeks.  And has since then started another streak that is active.  One missed day.  It’s a bit excessive, especially because they are mostly handwritten.

Sounds like everyone’s pretty much settled into the new school year.  Glad to hear John, Kevin and Brian are keeping their golf games polished.  The good people of Old Miss seem to be slowly recovering from the (as I heard it) BYU comeback.  All your letters are fantastic!

This week we've started to really crack down on speaking our language as much as possible.  It’s fun to try and say things in the language but it is extremely hard to express yourself.  And one liners...forget it. Friday marked our halfway point in the MTC making us older than almost everyone here as things start to turn over.  We’ve gotten closer to the other Elders in our zone this week, which is basically everyone on the floor that our classroom is on.  Across the hall are three districts of French Elders.  Next door we have Malagasies (Madagascar) and Malaysians. The last two entered three weeks after us so they will leave on the same day as us and we'll probably all fly out on the same flight to LAX.  We played the French in soccer this week and tied at three a piece which is pretty respectable considering Mongolia is one star to the French four or four and a half (this joke is for FIFA fans).

Fun Mongolia Facts:

Everyone is a taxi.  In Mongolia there is a set rate that everyone follows for "taxi rides'  When you want a taxi you just flag down any person on the street and pay the fee.

Mongolians are afraid of water (who didn’t see this coming).  No one can swim and there is maybe one pool in the country. Probably doubles as an ice rink 11 months out of the year.

The names in Mongolia are awesome!  They translate to things like golden warrior, perfect steel, eternal hero.  Our investigators are real people portrayed by our teachers whose names are rising fire, double joy and eternal son.

We taught for 40 minutes in the TRC to returned missionaries.  That was a lot of Mongolian.  It turns out that the investigator’s wife’s dad had died the day before and we had planned to teach on the plan of salvation.  It was amazing to teach to someone’s needs as we talked about eternal families and the perfect plan set in place to return to Heavenly Father.

Sister Gampurav (from Mongolia) came into our class on Thursday night to find a dictionary and our teacher had her bear her testimony.  I KNEW WORDS!  It was tough to tell what she was really saying because she was speaking way faster than I could listen, pick out words, rearrange the entire sentence into English grammar, and keep going.  It was fun to see how excited she was for us to serve in Mongolia and get a taste of authentic Mongolia. 

Seriously, nothing really new happens here.  It’s a lot of the same so if my letters seem really boring, I’m sorry.  Give me a month and then you can read about how I lost a toe to frostbite and fended off some wild dogs.  That is if there is a computer.  Take a second to look at some of the cities in Mongolia on google maps,  you can see all the gers (yurts) on the satellite images and you can see how small some of the cities are.  If you go through lds.org/tools/maps  it will show you where all the meetinghouses are which gives a pretty good idea of the possible areas I could be serving in.

Elder Stimpson arrived at the MTC this week.  He’s headed to Chezk Republic and will be here 9 weeks.

Let’s see....

The devotional on Sunday was a tribute to 9/11.  We watched a few videos including the Music and the Spoken Word presentation.  If you didn’t see it, Tom Brokaw and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with interviews and video segments.  It was extremely well done.

I also found an awesome scripture in Ecclesiastes this week. Chapter 4:9-10. It relates so well to missionary work and the need for companionships.  When there are two, one has the ability to reach down and pull up the other physically or spiritually. I also watched President Uchtdorf's conference talk, “Waiting on the road to Damascus" in preparation for Sunday’s talk topic of faith.  What an amazing talk.  If you have 17 minutes watch it (http://lds.org/general-conference/2011/04/waiting-on-the-road-to-damascus?lang=eng&media=video).  Or you can read it (http://lds.org/general-conference/2011/04/waiting-on-the-road-to-damascus?lang=eng).  Great stuff!

Other than that, hop on dearelder.com, write me a letter and ask me anything you want to know and I'll write about it. 

You’re Great!

Elder Neuberger