Missionary Dan Email #11 from Choibalsan, Mongolia

This week was by far one of the bigger adventures. Sometimes I think I’ve seen it all then something else happens. Not bad for an old man like you Dad to have your own cell phone.

This week’s adventures start out on Sunday night as my companion and I diligently worked to plan out our week’s work. We had a goal to contact all uncontacted referrals. So we called them all and a lot of them said we could meet with them later this week.

We had received a referral from a member that said he had met with her early on the street and said she hadn’t met with the missionaries yet. Of course the missionaries hadn’t met with her yet because we kind of forgot about receiving the referral :). So I told the member we’d make an effort to contact her soon. My companion talked to her, she is probably 15 years old, and asked if we could meet with her. The girl said maybe but her family doesn’t really investigate other religions. We passed her information to the Sister missionaries and thought nothing more about it.

We went to bed and had our regular Preparation Day like usual. We went home Monday night and started planning for the next day. We wanted to make up for last week’s work not being so good so we spent about an hour planning. After we finished we got a phone call from a referral that we contacted yesterday. This time it was the 15 year old’s father demanding how we had got their phone number and why we had called. We calmly told him from a member and his name. He demanded that we give him his phone number so he could talk to him. The member doesn’t have a phone so we couldn’t. The man asked his daughter if she recognized the name of the member, but of course she denied because he was so angry. My companion said about his anger, “Out of all Mongolians I have never seen one so angry like that.” The phone calls continued off and on with the man not clearly understanding what we really were intending and what really happened. He time and time again threatened to kill us, talk to high authorities to shut the church down, and went on and on about how he could accomplish it.

After about an hour my companion had calmed him down somewhat to the point where he said he’d meet us at the church tomorrow. He said he was going to kill us etc etc. So by this time it was 10:30 pm. My companion and I had no idea what to do so we called the district leader and told him we were coming over to talk to him about something. We then called President and the church’s lawyer to find out what to do. They told us that tomorrow all missionaries were not to leave the apartment the next day and that all church activities had to be closed for that day as a precaution. So the district leader had to call all seminary students telling them the church is closed tomorrow. Someone asked why and sometimes he said because someone wants to kill the missionaries. It was quite a serious thing, but few people believed him.

So Tuesday came around and we stayed home all day…. Which was too bad because we had spent an hour planning the day. Our plan was really good that day, but what can you do? Nothing happened on Tuesday, everything was fine. It was a very boring day, but we got to do some things that we normally don’t do. Like take a nap. We don’t even know where the man is or who he is. He hasn’t tried to call us or contact us. We figured he was bluffing. So Wednesday, President said we could go to work, but to be careful.

Wednesday was awesome! It was a complete miracle. We taught 5 lessons and found 4 new investigators. We usually struggle to find 4 investigators in one week, but we managed it in one day. The rest of the week was similar with finding investigators and by the end of the week we found a total of 8. A record for me personally on my mission. Truly a blessing. Our work this week was still good despite the little event on Tuesday.

On Sunday all new members came again. I got a call in the morning saying I was giving a talk. So I gave a talk, my first one since first transfer. I talked for like 8 minutes or so about tithing. I think I did alright. It is almost easier to give a talk in Mongolian than English. The language is at a point where I can say what I want and people understand me, just sometimes I don’t understand so much other people. I really need to work a lot harder to get better. It is hard to see progression at this point.

Well that sums up that crazy week. This week should be a really good week getting to know our new investigators better.

My grandpa! What big teeth you have (like little red riding hood). If that one is taken: You look good for how old you are grandpa.

Love Elder Willoughby.

Presented have been portions of an email from Elder Daniel Willoughby serving in the Mongolia Ulaanbaatar Mission. If anyone wishes to send Daniel a message, write it in the comments and I will make sure he receives it.