I am going to try to post Ryan email every week. I have figured out how to do it and now will try to keep it current. Kindra Hughes Ryan's MOM

Week 1

Hey everyone!I finally figured out the way to log into the missionary email thing here at the MTC and I hope you all get it there at home. And that you figure out how to post it to my blog so everyone who wants to can read it if anyone does!That being said, life here has been amazing! Different then anything I have experienced before, but in the best way possible! My companion is Elder Sessions and the other elders in my district are Elder Kunzler, Elder Draper, and Elder Liu. They are all from Utah and have a deep love of the cold and snow - something I have yet to appreciate. I will get there soon though, I kind of have to. So far for most of the time, we have been focusing on the language and teaching the first lesson from Preach My Gospel. The language is quite challenging and uses a part of my brain that I don't think I have ever got to use before - a completely new alphabet, new sounds your mouth has to make, new meaning to everything. But I am progressing just great and I know the Lord will bless me as I continue to work hard at it. Learning from Preach My Gospel has been a very enlightening experience. I have to rethink everything I have ever read or taught from it before because the Mongolian people have only barely heard of Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, or scriptures. Everything is brand new to them and so everything must be taught from the beginning as simply as possible. However, the LDS chuch is currently the largest Christian church in Mongolia and is growing at an exponential rate so more and more people are learning. Also, 10% of all those baptized in Mongolia have served missions or are currently serving missions, how cool is that? My teachers here are amazing and have such a deep love and understanding of the gospel and the Mongolian language and culture that learning from them is a treat. They care about each one of us individually and loved us from the first day, even though they didn't know us at all. I hope that as I serve my mission I will be able to gain such a great trait to be able to love everyone. They also take the time to explain everything simply and in detail so that we aren't too confused at the language, just a little bit. Although that little bit can often seem really huge because there is just so much to learn! The food here is same old, same old. Hasn't changed much since I worked here a few months ago. Best nights are still Friday night (pizza night!) or Sunday because we have an ice cream bar. It doesn't compare to home cooking like Mom does or what we have a Grandma's house, but it isn't bad. I only get to mail and write letters on my P-day which is Thursday. That being said, thanks for all the mail I have already received! I am trying to write all you guys back and make each letter personal and get to know how you are all doing, but if I don't get it all done today, I will write you back next Thursday. I love letters by the way and love that you all have sent them! They totally make my day and let me know of the love and support I have at home, which is a great blessing. I am right now in the process of reading from Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage which is an amazing book. It doesn't necessarily teach or say anything new about the Savior that I haven't heard before, but it puts it all together and makes it simple and easy to understand. The Savior's life was truly incredible and I am extremely and eternally grateful for the sacrifice that He made for each one of us so that we may be able to live with our families forever and return to live with Him and our Heavenly Father again. What a blessing beyond what we can really comprehend! I also am just finishing up the Book of Mormon and that is always marvelous. To read the testimony of the great men of the Brother of Jared and Mormon and Moroni and how much they truly loved the people even though they were wicked is such a great example to us. Also, their stories of faith and perservance as being the last of the believers and holding to the iron rod through it all, never letting go of their testimonies. I hope that I can be like that for all my life. I just mailed a letter home with a bunch more info and questions for everyone! Lora - I need to write you a letter back still, I hope to get to it today, but if not I did put a section in the family letter for you. I love you all so much and miss you all tons! But I know that this is what I am supposed to be doing right now and I feel deep down that this is where I belong and that I am doing the right thing. The Spirit here is so strong and peaceful all the time, I wish you could all feel it. It feels just like the temple, where you get to leave the world behind and only focus on the gospel and the things the Lord wants us to do. General Conference especially was very powerful here. I am kind of sad that I never was as spiritually prepared to hear the messages before as I was now because I would have been greatly taught my whole life every Conference instead of only this past one. I know that what they told us is what the Lord wants us to hear right now and that each and every one of them is called of God to their position. I know that President Monson is a prophet and that he loves the church and us deeply and wants what is best for us just like Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ do. I know this church is true and am so thankful that I am a member and grew up in a family that encouraged me to grow up the way I did and to focus on the things of the Lord instead of the things of the world. I know the Book of Mormon is true and the spiritual power that it holds is truly incredible. I can't wait to go to the temple today, I am so excited for it! I love the temple! Please send my MTC cafeteria hat if you could - our service hours are spent in the cafeteria and I would much rather wear that than the hairnets we have to wear instead. I love you all tons and pray that you all are happy and healthy every night! The fall colors up here are really cool and the temperatures are really nice although a bit nippy. I hope the weather in Mesa is beautiful and that it finally cooled off. Can you send me Elder Will Casper's mailing address? It should be on an envelope in my bedroom or if you go on my Facebook look up the group - BYU friends on missions or something like that. I have run into Elder Sterling Tracy, Elder Tanner Hatch, Elder Robert Skousen, Elder Jared Carter, and others that I know up here and it is great to see each one and hear where they are going and how they are doing. Each is so excitd to be doing the work of the Lord just like I am and you can see it in their faces. That is another thing that I like about being up here - everyone is happy and their faces just shine with the Spirit and with love and peace. It is fantastic! Well, my time is almost up so I will now finish. Please keep telling people about Dear Elder and send me mail through that instead of email - beause I only get to 30 minutes to read and write and so I need the time to just write!Love,Elder Ryan Leroy Hughes

Week 2

Hey everyone!Time here at the MTC seems to fly by, it just goes and goes and goes! It is hard to believe that it is already P-day again. Tomorrow I have to teach the first lesson in Mongolian so pray for me to be able to do it! It should be a very interesting experience and I am sure the Spirit will help me know what to say and how to say it. That is my hope and prayer anyway. So I think I might just do what I did in college and give an update on what I learned or did everyday this week and let the letter flow from there. I hope everyone get the letter that I sent to them today - I sent one to family, Grandma Hughes, Aunt Karen, and then Elder Taylor and Elder Hord. It was a crazy busy morning full of writing and now just started the wash and have time to email.So last Thursday we went to the temple and it was amazing, it always is and always will be to me. Just the Spirit that you feel at the temple is incredible and always is a highlight to my week, whether here at the MTC or when I was at BYU or at home. It just always lifts me up and lets me feel of my Heavenly Father's love for me. Friday we taught the first lesson in English to people who had served there missions in Mongolia previously. They asked all kind of interesting questions that I had never thought about and that I took for granted. Like having a Heavenly Father, how the Atonement works (as simply as possible) and other questions. You truly have to start from the ground up in order to teach them the gospel and it is an incredible experience. It helps me to remember how simple the gospel really should be and how that how powerful the Spirit can be when we just focus on the simple things and bear testimony to them. Word to the wise - it is an extreme offense to set a book down on the ground or slide a book across the table to a Mongolian. They have such a love and respect for learning. You can only hand books to them using your right hand and it has to be open palm - otherwise you aren't showing enough respect to learning and knowledge that books contain. It just shows me how much we take for granted here especially books and learning when they truly are a blessing and should be given the proper respect and cared for. Saturday we started to translate the first lesson into Mongolian and let me tell you that English and Mongolian are about as far apart as you can get - different alphabet, different sentence structure, different grammar rules, different conjugations, just everything. But I was able to get it done (with a lot of help from my district, my teachers, and the Lord I can assure you). It took me three or four days though to get my entire lesson outline translated and now I know it is still not simple enough so I need to go back and simplify it some more before I try to teach it tomorrow. Sunday is one of the best days of the week because all we have is meetings and no class. And the meetings are all blessed with an abundance of the Spirit if you take the time to feel it and to reflect on all the words that are being said and taught. Sunday is also movie night and this week I got to watch the Testaments! What a great movie that is! I could watch it 100 times over and still have an amazing spiritual experience and have my testimony of Jesus Christ and His Atonement and the truth of the Book of Mormon strengthened by watching it again! We also had a fireside Sunday night where we got to learn from one of the missionary department people of the church and he told us to keep the gospel simple and to teach like Preach My Gospel teaches us to teach.Monday was back to a full day of class and translating and trying to get Mongolian down enough to speak it. It is amazing how far I have come in just two weeks and I know the Lord is helping me as I study it and try me best and hardest to understand it. I still have an awfully long way to go though. Brother Marghetts, one of my teachers, taught us a game on Monday night that was really fun. We tossed around a ball and said a word. Then the person who caught the ball had to relate that word to the gospel or the first lesson and teach us a truth or bear testimony or something. Man, does it make you think fast! When I got the word "kangaroo" the only thing I could come up with was that kangaroos have a pouch to keep their young in and to care for them and protect them. Much the same that our Heavenly Father tries to keep and protect us from the world in the gospel pouch. But it is our choice whether to stay in the pouch or to leave it. That was the best that I could come up with, but it was a fun game nonetheless. A good break from Mongolian!Tuesday is a great day because we get to go to the Referral Center and there is a devotional on Tuesday night. I made two successful calls in the Referral Center about people receiving their free movies or Book of Mormons or whatever. It felt great. The devotional was about the need to do missionary work using the Book of Mormon because it is the book God has given us to testify of the truth of the Restoration. And what a powerful book it is. We learned that missionaries need to stop "hopskotching" around and need to start teaching from the beginning of the Book of Mormon. And not to be afraid to have investigators read a lot of pages as an assignment so that they can truly feel the Spirit before we come back to visit them again.Wednesday was a great day as well learning the language and getting along! My companion and I also got two new Elders in our room who are going to St. Louis, Missiouri and will be with us for three weeks because they are only speaking English. They seem to be really cool and I look forward to getting to know them each night and morning when we see them! Sad thing that they come and leave really fast compared to us though, we seem to be here forever! I love being on a mission and the decision I made to come! It has been one of the best decisions I have ever made so far and the Lord has blessed me in so many ways that I don't feel I really deserve. I just need to keep working hard and I am sure the language will come! I am so happy to be here and having the time of my life. Who knew being a missionary could be so much fun?!?Mom - there were a lot of questions you had that I answered in my letter home to you. My BYU password though is rh and then the 6 digit number that I always use. Don't worry too much about me, I am doing great and loving being here! It is amazing!I hope everyone is doing amazing and loving life just like I am! I pray for all you guys and know the Lord will bless you as we follow His commandments! All letters and dear Elders are greatly appreciated and I will respond to what I get every Thursday! Please send pictures too of what is going on!I love you all!Elder Ryan Leroy Hughes
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Ryan 's Third Week

Hey everyone!So those pictures you tried to send didn't come through - the MTC restricts them for some reason, you can't send pictures in emails. So if you could print them out and send them to me, that would be fantastic! As for me getting you pictures - there are no card reader slots - you have to hook the camera right to the computer with a UBS cable so mine doesn't connect. I am going to try to send home one of my cards full of pictures today and see if it makes it to you. Hopefully it does. Other than that, everything has been going great, even better fantastic! Life is good! :) The only thing I really miss besides people is Mexican food - there is none here to be had, I am planning on picking up a Taco Bell or something at the airport when we leave for Mongolia just because that will be the last I get. Other than that, I love it here!Last Friday, we taught a lesson in Mongolian and we actually made it through the entire thing. I even was able to feel the Spirit when I bore my testimony. The Lord truly does speak all languages and He will let the Holy Ghost verify what we teach no matter what language we happen to be speaking. It was a great event, one of the best of my mission so far. This week we thankfully get to teach the 2nd lesson in English and then the week after we get to do it in Mongolian. The translating keeps getting better and better - I am now able to do semi-complex sentences instead of just simple ones and I am able to read and sound out words a ton better. My writing has got a lot better too - it is a very neat, clean alphabet. My penmanship is probably better in Mongolian than in English but oh well. Saturday is service day and we serve in the cafeteria! Which is so weird sometimes being back in the place I used to work last year - it is a whole lot more fun to prepare food then to wash dishes. We had to marinate about 2000 chicken breasts last week and it was crazy! There was like a 10 gallon bowl filled of olive oil, salt, 3 cups of garlic, lots of thyme, rosemary, and some other spices and we had to dunk all the chicken in and then put them into pans. It was quite a mess and be the end of it everyone smelled of garlic and olive oil. We could also slide all the way across the floor on the layer of olive oil that had come to cover everything. It was fun. After that we have to head back to class and study up. It is always good to get a break and do some service - especially when it is as fun as our is. Sunday is one of my favorite days of the week because we get time to relax and reflect and to meet all the other elders and sisters here at the MTC. The sacrament and priesthood meeting are always mega-spiritual and make the whole day magnificent. We get tons of study time to read from the scriptures and discuss what we learn from them. Plus we also get to do a temple walk for an hour and talk to all the other missionaries and take pictures and that sort of thing. Then the evening ends with a fireside and movie. Way sweet. The movie this week was the Restoration movie that plays in the visitor center of the Mesa Temple every now and then. It is such a powerful movie! I feel so ready to do missionary work by the end of it because if all the old Saints could suffer so much to get the gospel restored here on earth, surely, I can go out and teach that gospel to others! I have to live up to that legacy that they left behind and the one way I know I can do that is by serving a mission! Monday was a great day - it just goes kind of slow because all of it is spent in class trying to learn Mongolian and translating lessons. It is fun work, it just takes a lot of brain power and a lot of help from the Lord. Our teachers are great too and always there to help us and to lift us up. They are all really spiritual and have the love for the gospel and the people of Mongolia. They have such strong testimonies that I hope to be able to have one to go out and preach by the time I get there. They also just love people, even if they just barely got to know them. I think that is an amazing trait and one I strive for and am working towards getting. Tuesday was great because we have the RC (refferal center) and I actually got a call where the lady wanted to talk about the gospel and loved hearing the message! She has already had the missionaries over and liked what they had to teach. She is just going through a rough time right now with the passing of her father and so doesn't have time to meet with them this week. But she is planning on it next week or the week after at the lastest! I was able to testify her of the truth and to let her know that God cares about her and her struggles and loves her. She seemed so happy to get the call and to talk about the church. It was probably the most fun I have had here at the MTC yet and it made me the happiest I have ever been to help her receive the gospel. I walked out of there just loving her and praying that she will continue to accept the gospel and all the missionaries have to teach her. It was an incredible experience and has made me so excited to be able to eventually go out and teach people the gospel! And I am now looking forward to the RC next week! It is way cool!Wednesday was yesterday and that was great! We went through some of Preach My Gospel and escpecially what the Atonement means in our lives and to us. It was a really great day and the Spirit was there extremely powerfully. I got most of my second lesson translated and was able to teach some of it to my companion and to study all the vocabulary that goes along with it. There is a lot, but it is coming along great! It has only been three weeks and I have already learned so much, more than I think I would have learned in two years in a high school class at any rate. I know in large part that is the Spirit helping me learn and the gift of tounges that I have been promised and I am so grateful for that. It is truly amazing. It blows my mind just to think about the amount of information I have learned in such a short amount of time. Today has been good so far! I got a bunch of letters written and still have to finish up a few. Writing letters is a blast and it is good to be able to write everyone! I got some b-day cards for some people too. So hopefully those make it home. I can't find the addresses for people, I thought I had a sheet of them but I seem to have lost it. So I am just going to send it to you Mom and you can give it to the people the cards are meant for. Their names are on the envelope. Wow, this half hour goes by so fast, I only have 5 minutes left. Thanks everyone for your letters and Dear Elders - they are so much fun to read and to hear from all of you and what is going on! Thank you Grandma Hughes and Lora for that package - I really needed the shoes and hat and the candy was great! Andes are the best - they help to keep me awake right after we eat and have to go sit back in class for three hours. Thanks for the pictures Emma - they are beautiful and will hang up by my desk! I love and pray for you all and hope that everyone is having a great fall and will have a wonderful Halloween - although I guess I get to write again before then. Please send me pictures in snail mail because I can't access them in email. I haven't been using money really Mom - so you don't have to worry about that. I still have tons of cash left so far. I also traded some Mongolian sisters for their money and will be sending that home so you guys can see it. They needed it because they are going to Colorado and don't have any American money yet - so we went down to the travel office and got the exchange rate and everything. Being here is great and I love it! Thanks for all your prayers, they really do help and sustain me all throughout the day!Love you all so much and I love being on a misson!Elder Ryan Leroy Hughes
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