Lovely Messes

Hello everyone!

 

Thank you so much to those of you who wrote to me! It is so great to hear about your lives and the challenges/opportunities that fill them. Jeffrey, that is so awesome you are finishing up your mission papers! Still not-so-secretly hoping you will come join me in Taiwan. It is going to be so exciting seeing what changes happen because of the missionary ages. All of us are now aware of several 18-year-old boys and 19-year-old sisters who are coming next Spring to our mission. We are all pretty much guaranteed to be trainers because the numbers of incoming sisters are going to increase so much. I'm a bit worried about that experience... I think I definitely make a more mature missionary now than I would have at 19... But everything will work out, we'll deal with things as they come up.

 

This week I experienced my first break up as a missionary. A break up occurs when you have been meeting with an investigator for some time, and then they decide it is not working out. They don't want what you are trying to offer them. So they contact you some way--sometimes on the phone, sometimes in a letter, and sometimes in person--to tell you that they need a break, the timing isn't right, it isn't going where they thought it was going, etc. And we snifffle andrespond with the hurt but understanding, "we respect your decision" and "is there anything we can do to change your mind?" We leave the door open if they ever want to come back. "Moroni's promise is still true, you know..." 

 

It was Joanna that broke up with us. She hadn't seen us in about a month. It was really sad. She started crying and telling us about how things had been so hard in her family--her brother had died and her parents divorced in the past year. She said that usually her life with school and work kept her really busy but during lessons with us she felt she had to slow down and "tcouh things she didn't want to touch". And she felt like the answers she had received from prayer, that maybe she gave those to herself and they weren't really from God after all.

 

I felt super awkward dealing with the whole thing but I tried to do my best. I still feel a bit sad about it. Sad for her; she really is having a hard time with life. At the same time, I am pretty optimistic about God's ability to make really sad things be okay. Also, the whole experience does have a tinge of humor for me because of really how similar it was to a relationship break up.

 

I ate goose liver this week. It was terrible. TERRIBLE. The texture of liver is dense and slimy, and goose has this very strong flavor that I haven't gotten used to yet. The aftertaste was the worst part, though. It came in a sudden wave after I had swallowed--this rancid flavor swelling in my mouth. But, I don't regret trying it.

 

What else happened this week? Just the usual. Biking across town, up hills and down hills to lessons or meetings. Having my mind blown open by studying the scriptures. Trying to figure out how to navigate the inexpressible gaps in communication between me and God, me and my companion, me and investigators. Laughing with Sister Kang. I love her so much. I feel like our friendship has really started growing into something more tangible, lately. Which is sad, because transfers are in two weeks and it is very likely that I will be moving, since I will be technically done with my trainining period (the first 12 weeks of your mission.)

 

Lately I have been thinking about how much I want to treasure every moment in Taiwan as if it is my last day to live. Sometimes I have moments that blow me away with their utter uniqueness and value--like sitting in a rusty blue drink shack off the side of a highway, trying to share Book of Mormon of Mormon scriptures with a family who was slightly drunk. They gave us cans of coca cola because it was the only W.O.W. approved substance they sold, but we just continued clutching them in our cold fingers continue clutching in our laps because we were fasting that day.

 

Or another time, meeting with a very old, curly-haired lady in her video game shop that didn't sell anything newer than a bright yellow gameboy color. She had shelves and shelves of old, dusty nintendo games, action figures, and game systems that were probably cool before I was born. Her shop is in the middle of a very quiet street where it seems only old people hobble around. It's hard to imagine her ever having a single customer. We met with her because an elder in our district insisted she was "golden"--(long story)--but we met with her to find she only knew a little bit of Mandarin. Many old people here only speak Taiwanese, a language more native to this island. She got that we were Christian, though, so she gave us glasses of unsweetened barley tea to sip while she turned on a track of a really dramatic preacher reading from the bible in Taiwanese.

 

I really never want to forget these experiences. There is something so precious about the idea of us young, naive American girls coming in contact with these people in the smallest corners of Taiwan, and trying to communicate. They are precious for so many reasons. In part because a year ago I never, ever had had such experiences and now they fill my days. In part because these people are just so good and valuable--just as valuable as I am. In part because they are metaphors for the struggles of learning, problem-solving, and communication that affect all of us every day. We find ourselvs confronted with things we have never seen before, tasks we don't know how to accomplish. Every day is a foreign country, if we're really keeping our eyes open. But we plow through these challenges anyway because it is the only thing to be done. Our efforts are inevitably imperfect, tainted with our own weaknesses and short-sighted understanding, but when we decide to just dive in and deal with it we find things get done anyway. Or if they don't get done, at least we tried!

 

One of the coolest things I've learned from being on a mission is that if you try, things will get done, even if you don't think you are capable of trying. There have been so many moments  when I've been pushed to have to talk to people, to teach lessons, to express ideas that at the outset I literally feel I have no ability to do. Sister Kang will hand me the phone to handle a certain call, or I will be put in a room alone with an investigator because my companion has to teach someone else. And while inside I'm screaming, "No, you don't get it, I REALLY don't know how to say that in Chinese!" or "Don't you remember I've only been in Taiwan for a few weeks?" I also realize that the seconds are mounting up, and I have to open my mouth. So I do it. There's no time to think too hard or to plan. And whatever happens, happens, and you just deal with that as it comes up.

 

But it's really cool. I have found I have been able to do things I literally thought I was incapable of doing. I have learned that there really isn't any time to wait and plan what a perfect missionary would do and then do it. There is no such thing as a perfect missionary, or perfect missionary work. Every word and movement is colored with our imperfections and our current state of being. But rather than those indicating some grave deficiency, even those--strangely and beautifully--have a place in the task of getting things done. For example, sometimes I think people say yes, they will meet with us, because they get that my Chinese isn't strong enough to understand any excuse they try to give me.

 

I don't know. It's all just really cool. And I like thinking about how God knows all this--he is so much more aware of how little we know what we are doing than we ourselves are. But he is obviously okay with that fact. He is obviously okay with people even younger than us doing this same work. He knows we are going to make messes but he is okay with that. It seems like maybe we learn more from just dealing with the messes the best we know how in the moment than sitting back, talking about the messes and hating them so bad that we make ourselves miserable.

 

Okay, got to go. Love you all!

 

Diana