Keeping the Streets Safe One Drunk at a Time- Aug 25th

Dear Mother,

Well, lets answer your questions!  First, with Mongolian, it was never meant to 
be written in English or Russian letters.  The Mongolian script seems to be 
taken from Arabic and adapted.  I've started studying the Mongolian script 
lately and there are tons of differences between the way we speak and write now 
in Cyrillic and how they used to speak and write.  The words in Mongolian Script 
are usually spelled differently and so there aren't double vowels.  But then 
when you speak it, you cut out a lot of middle consonants.  It's just a really 
different language!  Russian has a lot of ties to Greek.  Mongolian has a lot of 
ties to...well, nothing really.  The grammar structure is tied to Turkish, 
Korean, and Japanese, but the words, roots and accent, aren't really tied to 
anything else.  Anyways, I'm talking like I'm a linguist.  But I'm not, so I'll 
stop now :)

Yes we teach English.  So far we're just teaching 2 hours at the church so it's 
quite a difference.  We were teaching 10 hours each week in the city.  Pretty 
soon school will start up (next week) and then we'll teach more.

The bike riding is alright!  My thighs are getting a real good workout!  My butt 
is feeling better.  It's been raining a lot and so there a lot of puddles and we 
get muddy quite a lot.  The other day I got stuck in this huge mud puddle and 
Itried to get out but the mud sucked my shoe off!  It was pretty funny and then 
I was muddy from the ankle down for the rest of the day.  Also ,the bikes have 
gone pretty bad and so almost everyday we've made our way to the shop to get it 
fixed up. 

Anyways, want a cool story?  Here you go.  It happened last Monday :)

So, we're walking home from a Family Home Evening with some of the ward youth 
and the sun's already set. As we're walking down one street, two drunks approach 
my companion and I and say, "STOP! Then, "Give us those bikes, what are you guys 
doing, etc." So there's a tall drunk and a smaller drunk. It was like perfectly 
paired with our companionship. Anways, in the background the youth are freaking 
out and screaming (the girls). I told them to grab our bikes and run off the 
other way. At first they just stood there in shock, and I was like, "Go!" and so 
they starting going. Meanwhile the two drunks were grabbing us by the collar 
trying to get stuff out of us. We told them to let go but they persisted and so 
I just grabbed the one on me and threw him to the ground. Then the other one was 
messing with my companion, (apparently he headbutted him and bruised my 
companion's nose) so I grabbed him and threw him to the ground as well. As soon 
as we were free of them, we took off back down the road we came and out of the 
corner of my eye, I saw the bigger drunk pick up a big rock and throw it at us. 
Luckily, he missed (I mean, he was drunk). The smaller one got up and starting 
chasing us again so I stopped, threw him to the ground again, and we ran off. 
Finally they stopped chasing us and we returned to the main road to try and find 
the youth. The youth were safe and the police were called. In about 10 minutes, 
the police showed up and took care of the two drunks. It was funny because as 
soon as we were in the light and the police were there and stuff, the drunks 
were trying to say we did stuff to them and were messing with them. So yea, I 
didn't really expect an encounter like that, but, this is Zuun Kharaa and it's a 
whole new world. Anyways, my companion and the youth were pretty shaken up, but 
no one was seriously hurt so the Lord was really looking out for us.

P.S. one part that was really funny was that the tall one grabbed me and was 
getting in my face. He was threating us and all that. I stopped him and said, 
"wait, what's your name?" He paused, thought a little bit and said, "my name's 
Sukhbaatar" For like 10 seconds he was out of his angry, drunk mode. He was a 
little sober there. I said, "My names Elder Cappuccio" After that little shock, 
he turned back into the angry drunk and started messing with us so I threw him 
down.

Other than that, the work is going good.  I love the people here because they 
are humble and plain.  They're great! I'm sure we'll have more stories to share 
and more spiritual experiences to tell.  Have a great week!  I love you all!

~Elder Cappuccio

-----Original Message-----
From: marathomom@aol.com
To: james.cappuccio@myldsmail.net
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:19:52 -0400
Subject: from a Galaxy far far away

Dear James,



Your new town, Zuun Kharaa, sounds like something out of Star Wars, but then 
again so does Ulaanbaatar and Darkhan! Maybe you are on a galaxy far, far 
away.....You might have mentioned this before, but why do they have repeating 
vowels in every word? Russian seems to have minimal vowels and Mongolia has 
mostly vowels. If they had to play wheel of fortune in Mongolian, there 
wouldn't be enough consonants to make enough money, especially if you had to buy 
the vowels. Anyway, I hope you like your new area. Do you teach English there 
too? How's the bike riding going? I didn't get to ride too much this week, so 
I'll probably get saddle sore all over again.




Jack's brother, John, came to visit this week from Illinois, so we went on an 
evening Harley ride out to Canyon Lake this week. Did I tell you Jack had a 
Harley before? Anyway, he's not a real Harley guy, meaning no tattoo's or stuff 
like that. He just likes the sound of the engine and the fun he has when he 
rides it. I like riding on the back too. 




Crystal might be closing on her house in Mesa. ?Her mortgage payment is only 
going to be $450/month. Pretty good.....she's pretty excited about it. Amy is 
still trying to get a job at BYU, so maybe pray that she'll get a good part time 
job. My brother still needs a decent job, my parents are still supporting him, 
so I hope he can find one too. It's a hard time to find a job, so I am really 
grateful for the good job that I have and hope i can continue to do well at it. So far I have been greatly blessed.




We love you and wish you the best aways and pray for yoiu.




Keep the fire burning!




Love always,




mom