A Frustrating Day

Erica and I had many frustrating days on our mission.  Tuesday
reminded us of those days.  All of our best-laid plans went awry.  We
wanted to go to Nalaikh, but my RM friend went to the huduu (countryside) so he
couldn't drive us there.  We met a couple of friends at church
headquarters, but we had to wait a long time for them to be ready to
go.  We did get some potato hushuur from the restaurant across the
street, just like old times (and we ran into several districts of
missionaries coming to eat after their district meetings). Then, while
waiting for Pukii, we went with Sainaa to look for one of my favorite
families, which is also the most inactive of the people that I taught.
 Their living circumstances have really gone downhill (not their
fault--they were swindled by an extended family member), and they are
proving basically impossible to locate.  The car wash they used to
work at is defunct, and none of their supposed neighbors admitted to
knowing who they were.  I might try one more time to get directions
from a relative on Thursday, then we might go Friday morning in one
last-ditch effort to see them...

Anyway, we finally got to Nalaikh at 5pm, we went to see two families
whose kids I'd taught.  I was really heartened to see how active
Sainaa's little sister has become (she was less-active for a long
time). So even in this rough day there was a silver lining in the
cloud.  But then, on the way home, we met with a little opposition.
In a later post, Erica will tell you what happened (I learned my
lesson, to not let her out of my sight or touch!)  :)


*****

Here is the later post from Erica:
Yesterday was a really long day! I was getting really hot and bored of following Joshua and his friend Sainaa around searching for the lost family. And they kept talking in Mongolian and I had to pay really close attention to know if they were going left or right or crossing the street or what! After we gave up we took a really long bus ride to Nalaihk where I got a snickers while Joshua charged his phone. :) The lady at the store was nice and let me sit in the chair. We visited a few families who were very cute and excited to see us. And they gave us a lot of food. Soup, kimchee (they where excited that they had that to serve us), and some eggs and fried sausage. And candy, I ate a lot of that! Anyway, after visiting those nice families, who kept saying how cute I was (I liked that part) we went to catch the bus home. Joshua and Sainaa saw that the bus was pulling away and started to chase after it. We were all running, but I was a little ways behind them. As I was running past a group of teenagers, one of them stuck out his foot and tripped me! Punks. They went a away quickly, and I was glad I made some kind of yelp as I went hurling straight face-down to the dirt. The boys heard me and turned around. Luckily I had caught myself with my wrists so I didn't get too beat up. Except my wrists hurt a lot. But they are ok now. Good times for good stories. And Joshua felt bad so now he is going to make sure to be right next to me the rest of the trip! ;)

The end.