Zao Shang de Pao Bu (Morning Run)

Hello everybody! 

 

I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful sunny day! I have been, so far. Our district went to do initiatories at the temple this morning, then ate breakfast at the temple cafeteria, then walked back together, talking. I've noticed the last couple times we've been at the temple how bad the air is--we can barely see Utah lake. Have there been a lot of fires in the area? What is going on in the world? 

 

Chinese is going better than I want to admit, I think. This week we got letters from our mission president that said that when we go to Taiwan he expects us to be able to teach the first lesson in our own words. We were all like, "What? We've already taught all four lessons, multiple times." So that was cool.

My elders met Donny Osmond at the temple this morning. He patted one of them on the back and said, "The Church is true."

 

This week was really powerful for me. I don't know where I've been my whole life but I feel like every day I am learning a little more about what it means to really be here--not just on a mission, but to be here, right now, as someone who can take in and accept the situation around me and use the spirit to solve problems. I wonder how much of my life I spend living in a world that doesn't exist.

 

I can't believe I almost didn't come on a mission. I have been humbled so much in really deep, necessary ways. Not everyone needs to come on a mission to have that experience, and maybe I didn't either. I still don't feel like God "commanded" me to go--I feel like I decided it would be a good idea for me and felt his approval. But maybe we are more guided in those leap-of-faith decisions than we think we are. I just know that I already feel like such a better person than I was before I came.

 

I have a lot of pride. I think I'm smart and that I understand things a lot better than other people do. My default is to assume that my ideas and interpretations and plans are more correct than other people's. Having a companion has really smashed a lot of that out of me, although it's still something I relearn every day. Last week Sister Briggs got really excited to tell some story during our TRC visit that she had heard from a mysterious source--it was about a religion professor, a football player, and donuts, and was supposed to be a metaphor for the atonement. When she told me the story, I thought it was really cheesy and sounded like it was from a chain letter, probably with a postscript about how you had to send it on to 20 people or your crush would never return your affections. I was nice about it, and tried to tell her we should only tell it if we had time or if it seemed appropriate for where the lesson was going, but that really hurt her feelings. I was in that classic situation of wanting to do what I felt was right, but having to hurt someone else in the process.

 

But we prayed before going in to teach, and I realized how cruel that was what I was doing. Obviously there was something our investigator could learn from her story, because it really connected with Sister Briggs. So we went in and the story was the first thing that we shared. To be honest, I think the lady we met with was maybe a bit confused because the translation into Chinese was awkward. But Sister Briggs lit up when she told the story. I felt so bad that I had almost denied her and even shamed that opportunity for her to express her understanding of the atonement in her own way, even if it was different from how I would have done it. The next day in Sunday School, we taught about the atonement again and decided to share the story. This time the message was communicated so well, and as I listened I gained some insights that I hadn't thought of before, that I incorporated into my part of the lesson. The elders made several references to it when they taught. It was a very effective story.

 

That was a really humbling lesson for me to learn. I feel like I used to be a tower, and I thought I knew a lot and that I could do things on my own, and I looked down on the way other people do things. But every day at the MTC a floor of my tower is torn down, and I'm starting to experience the quiet honesty of having nowhere to look but up. I don't even care about admitting this to all of you and anyone who reads my blog because it is just so true. And I'm so thankful for the atonement which allows me to feel such abasing humility and overflowing joy simultaneously.  

 

Last Tuesday night I had a really cool experience that I want to share with you. We have various general authorities come speak to the whole MTC on Tuesday nights, and afterwards we meet up with our districts to discuss what we learned from the devotional. We usually go around in a circle and share our favorite parts of what the speaker said. Last Tuesday, the circle started on the other side of the room. By the time it was my turn to talk, most of the topics that really impressed me had already been covered. I decided I would just agree and recap what everyone else had said in my own words. But I stood up and started talking, and all of a sudden it was like there was electricity running through my whole body, and I started talking really passionately about something I hadn't planned to say at all. The speaker had talked about prayer--and I started testifying of how much power there is when we pray and have our desires in the right place. That we may not feel that what we are being asked to do is possible or that there is any way God can literally answer our prayer, but that when our hearts are oriented towards him, when we have a sincere desire to fulfill what life is requiring of us, that he will sanctify that to us and find a way for our prayer to be answered. I thought I knew what teaching by the spirit was like, before that experience. But this really was something different. There was a literal power in me, that faded once I was done speaking and I thought, "Was that real, did that really happen?" But I know it did. I wrote about it in my journal because I don't ever want to forget what that was like. And I prayed to ask if I should write in my next email what happened and felt a little happy leap of an answer "Yes, you should."

 

I don't know why I had that experience, or if it will happen again. I don't think I am special or more worthy because it happened to me. I think it happened because I, or people in my district, or maybe some of you, really needed to hear those words, or hear about this experience. I just feel grateful that I was there when God needed me to be there, open and willing to help those around me the way he needed me to. That's where I want to be my whole life.

 

I love you all so much. I have been praying for all of you individually and really want to know what I can do to help.  Stephen, I hope you're adjusting to life in Utah again, Bill, I hope you are excited to move down to Provo this week, and everyone who starts school next week, good luck! Don't forget to have great grandview days.

 

Love,

 

Diana

 

P.S. Does anyone know what to do about a perpetually bothersome IT Band?