Spiritual Experiences Abound, Zaya, Miga and Sugar-Juy 12, 2009

Aha, you wrote in a hurry.  Clearly I'm not important to you!  And thus I will 
use this sentiment to blackmail you for a package. Muahaha.  Haha, jk.  If you 
were on a mission I don't know if I'd still be writing you!  So how is 
everything?  The work is going great here.  I was reading in the missionary 
handbook today and how it says that we should share spiritual experiences with 
you guys when we write you each week.  I realize that even if my days are filled 
with those things, they usually don't make it onto the e-mail page!  So i'm 
sorry!  I'll try better to make sure you get the very best of our missionary 
experiences here in Mongolia.  This week is a good one to start with because it 
was awesome!

Anyways...lets see where should I start...Zaya and her family!  So Zaya is that 
one girl that we started meeting with way back when and couldn't get baptized by 
herself.  We've been meeting with her family lately and one day we decided to 
commit her mom to pray.  SO we teach a great lesson and at the end ask her to 
pray for us, and she declined.  We were all egging her on and encouraging her 
but in the end she's like...nah, I can't.  So, without pushing it too much we 
closed the lesson with Zaya giving a prayer and set up a time to come again.  Up 
until the next time Zaya and her mom practiced together on how to pray and so 
the next time we came by and taught about Joseph Smith.  To close the lesson, 
Zaya's mom, Chuluntsetseg (Rockflower) gave the closing prayer.  Afterwards, she 
told us how wonderful it felt and how like as she closed her eyes to start to 
pray, the words just came to her and it wasn't a big deal.  Then she told us how 
Zaya's faith had helped them steer away from a divorce and how meeting with us 
has really changed their family in so many ways.  I'm so excited for this 
family!  We're going to meet with them again today.  Hopefully we can work with 
the father's work schedule and get him to church more often.  Then the next step 
is baptism!  Then the temple!

Then on Tuesday, we were striking out pretty bad on lessons.  No one was home, 
and we were getting kind of disappointed.  As we were walking down the road we 
saw a lady pushing her water cart and we were just like, "let's help her!".  SO 
we go offer to help and start talking as we push her cart.  It turns out she had 
gone to church earlier with her dad and they were somewhat religious.  As we 
push the cart, we catch up to the father who is like a 60 year old man.  Turns 
out this man had like...7 kids!  Ridiculous eh?  So most of them are grown up 
and moved out but two still live at home and so we were invited in and were able 
to teach a way powerful lesson.  For the most part they were all paying rapt 
attention.  Unfortunately, over Naadam they were selling khushuur at the Horse 
Races so we couldn't meet with them, but we're excited to meet with them this 
week and keep them moving along.

THen there's Khatanbold and Miga. We met them on Wednesday and it was awesome.  
Khatanbold apparently went to our church and met with the missionaries at 
another small town and so when we went to meet with him, he already knew the 
Joseph Smith story and how to pray.  He's way awesome, about 19 years old, 
defintately missionary material!

Then, I think my favorite new investigator is Sugar and his family.  Ok, ok, so 
if you just translate the letters it spells Sugar, but it's more like Sogar.  
Anyways, this man's story is quite sad.  He used to live in the countryside 
where he was a herder and a taxi driver.  Then a couple years ago he came with 
him family to the city and got work here.  Just over half a year ago, he got 
into a serious accident and as a result he had internal bleeding in the head.  
Now he's speech is retarded and he has trouble remembering and doing stuff.  Now 
he's got no opportunity to find work and his wife is now shouldering the 
responsibilities.  The first time we met with them, we were trying to contact 
another referral we had.  They turned out having gone to the countryside so we 
just met with this father and his three kids.  It was really powerful as we 
taught about the PLan of Salvation. The kids are pretty smart and got involved 
in the lesson very well.  Then last night we stopped by again and the mom was 
there.  She is just as wonderful as the rest of the family!  They are excited to 
keep meeting with us but her work is really rough.  She works from 6 in the 
morning to like 10 at night as a bus fare collector.

Anyways, so the work is going good.  We got a lot of new investigators this week 
to pump up our work.  It's usually not heard to get Mongolians in on the first 
lesson, but it is harder to keep that excitement going as they encounter 
obstacles and temptation.  But, as I studied today in Jacob 5, if we take out 
all the bad in someone's like immediately, the tree cannot grow!  So it's 
important that we grow with opposition.

Well, I love you all.  I hope everything is going good for you.  Haadam was 
really cool.  We got to go watch the opening ceremony and some horse racing on 
Saturday.  Everywhere except the stadium were like a ghosttown!  Oh, yea, and 
about the boil...well I was only joking last week but this week I'm not.  I kind 
of was scratching an itch there and I...well, I spread it.  Now i've got like 3 
new boils growing...SORRY!  It's all good though.  It'll be fine in no time I'm 
sure.

~Elder Cappuccio
P.S.  Hey, I need a few things from America...My journal is finished, and while 
it's not like a dire need, I kind of would like to use the same journal!  So, 
the journal is the kind you get from Deseret Books they're like the side of a 
normal page, with different colored covers and the word "Journal" written on the 
front.  They're pretty plain and the inside doesn't have anything special 
either.  Just A title page and pages for entries.  It's the same journal I've 
been using since like 9th grade so...that's why I want to keep using it.  
Please, if it's available, get the white cover journal!  Also, if you could just 
send some regular Bic pens, the ones with the black caps and white bodies, that 
would be greatly appreciated  The clear body ones are also good, especially in 
the winter, so you could send those ones but they're more expensive.  Then I 
also need just some regular post-it-notes to use each day.  And then well, since 
that wouldn't fill a box by itself, feel free to add butterfingers, poptarts, 
skittles, beek jerky, gushers, and Nutty bars!  If you could send that out 
within a week (doesn't have to be rush delivery, that's expensive!) that would 
be greatly appreciated.

Also, I've found out that you can get DVDs and Music for very cheap here.  The 
movies are all from China but they're good quality.  They're usually about 2.50 
a movie and then the music CDs are usually pretty cheap.  So along that line, I 
figured if there were some movies you wanted me to buy and bring home for the 
family, just let me know and I could probably get them for ya!  

~Elder Cappuccio

-----Original Message-----
From: marathomom@aol.com
To: james.cappuccio@myldsmail.net
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:42:07 -0400
Subject: Re: Good Morning!

Dear James,



that was a nice letter last week, except for the part about the fake leg and the 
pus splatter on your suit.  Hope you don't have to have too big of scar, but 
then it would match our football scar anyway. I am writing this at the last 
minute so I want to send it before you write, so this is really short.  Hope you 
had a good week with your new companion and I look forward to hearing \some 
great new stories.

Keep the fire burning!

love always,

mom