Hello!

This week was so full! I never know where to start with these.

 

This week I have been thinking a lot about conversations I have had with Rachel and Jon about shame. There are so, so many times throughout each day when I feel clumsy and embarrassed. I'm at a stoplight and can't get my foot on my bike pedal fast or smoothly enough so people behind me have to wait, and watch me flail. I totally butcher the order words should go in and have to watch the person's blank face, wondering what on earth I was trying to say. Or I try to say what I feel about God and the person I'm talking to gets that holding-back-a-laugh, knowing smirk on their face. These are just snapshots of my broad experience of being thrown into a culture and language where I don't know how to get around--how to walk or how to talk. It's like being a helpless baby!

 

But you just keep going! It is really freeing to just stop caring about how imperfect and incompetent I am, and plow through to do what needs to be done. I feel grateful to be able to cast off a lot of the burden of shame, although it's a work still in the process. And I really feel grateful for the closeness with which I get to work with God, right now. I have never felt so personaly, and intimately tutored by him as I have on my mission. You know what I said last week about sincerity? How interesting it is that in the same week I also learn that despite all my good, noble intentions, there is so much of me that still needs refining. It's the process of a life time, to develop a true single-minded sincerity and love. I feel like I came out on a mission with good intentions, for sure, but everyday I am smacked with experiences that question that. "Yes, you wanted to serve people, but did you want to do it in this way?" "Yes, you believe in me, but do you even believe when this hapens?" It seems so silly to me right now that sometimes we classify people as having good or bad intentions, and sorting their actions accoridngly, as if this were a clean, doable process. The human soul is such a complicated mess! I believe in this gospel, I really do--but God is teaching me every day what that means, and I am constantly refining and growing in this.

 

Chinese is going a bit better than I want to admit to myself, at times. This past week was full of a lot of breakthrough moments. I still can't understand everything people say, but I can get by in lessons and street contacts without Sister Kang, if I have to. (Although she definitely makes things more smooth, less clumsy and awkward.) Last night, I participated in a whole conversation between me, my temporary companion Sister Finch (I am on exchanges), and an investigator about menstruation! Here, women talk about their periods by saying "Wo de hao pengyou lai le" (My good friend came). We talked about which days are the worst for us, how long it lasts, etc. haha. It was so great! I also told them that since coming to Taiwan my body seems to be doing what Mom's did to hers on her mission. I don't mind at all, except that it means Natalie's major coupon-coo at Walgreens a couple nights before I left has lost a bit of it's meaning. Sorry if this is TMI! But the conversation made me so happy! Haha.

 

I am trying to learn characters. Everyone in the MTC told us they weren't important to focus on, that we should just learn to speak. That is true--speaking is definitely more important than being able to read and write--but do you know how frustrating it is to not be able to read anything on a menu, or any of the street signs around you? Also, knowing characters definitely helps you understand the spoken language better. Mandarin Chinese connects and expresses ideas so differently than English! It is really beautiful. Someone struggling with choosing a major should consider Linguistics. Add that to the list of things I wish I could major in. So yeah. I can probably read a couple hundred characters at this point (which is nothing--you apprently have to know 3,000 to read a newspaper), mainly the easy ones and the ones they use frequently in the Book of Mormon or in hymns. But it is a start! Writing characters is a whole different story. So, so hard. But I am learning. Characters are not at all like an alphabet, they really are more like pictures that you have to memorize for every word. Sometimes there are clues within the picture that hint at the words' meaning, but I am just scratching the surface at being able to understand that.  

 

Ths week was full of food adventures! I had kimchi pizza, duck, and tons of squishy textured things that may have been tofu or fish sausage, I don't know.You just eat whatever is in your soup, and don't think to hard about it. But my tastes have definitely opened up to this culture! Last night for dinner I had a cold soup made of soy, soggy peanuts, green beans, black tapioca balls. And I really liked it! (t probably had a lot of sugar.)

 

Have to get going. I get to go to the temple today and I am so excited! I really love the temple.

 

Love you al! Hope all is going wel!

 

Diana