Forgiveness is its own reward‏

Dear everybody,

I hope you are all staying safe and healthy, especially those of you in Utah! Several people told me about the ice and the air quality. It sounds terrible. I think I will officially pronounce myself a baby for occasionally complaining about the weather in Taiwan. It gets cold, but nothing like Utah cold.  I think it just seems like a bigger deal sometimes because it's a very deep, humid type of cold, and because as missionaries we are often outside. But not too often. And we never have to deal with things like ice or snow. Don't feel bad for me!

Sometimes it is difficult to know what to say in these emails because there is just so much to say. I really feel like I understand in the scriptures when the writer says they couldn't write a hundredth part of the things that occurred. My first weeks in the MTC and my first weeks in Taiwan, I was so bursting with things I wanted to tell you all that were new and exciting and interesting to me. But after a while all the missionary dialogue about seeing "miracles", all the square apartment buildings with bird-cage windows, the flavor of Taiwanese Soy Milk and the experience of praying in public places melt into a backdrop of normalcy. They become "just life" stuff. Sometimes it freaks me out, how different life is than how it used to be, what gaps there are between me and you, and how seldom I am aware of them. I know I am different than before and sometimes I feel a pounding urge to define and grasp that difference in order to control my identity. I want to know exactly who I am, what I am doing, and whether what I am doing is right. But it's impossible. First, there isn't time to think about these things because there are people in front of me to be talked to and taken care of. Second, because I have no solid place on which to found my comparison. I can measure myself according to the standards and goals I had before coming on my mission, but I was so much more selfish and silly, back then. I was full of words and not a lot of experience. Words are such deceptive, floaty things! They claim to describe reality as if it is fixed and can be no other way, but they are mere meaningful noises made by beings trying desperately to pretend such a reality exists. 

The only thing that really brings peace is my relationship with Heavenly Father. I don't have words or even mental clarity, at times, to perfectly make sense of everything that fills my life right now. But when I turn to him in honesty and humility, there is this holy joy that comes, that tastes so much sweeter and purer and better than a sense of control. I find a peace more powerful than answers in just trying to grow in his love, and let it guide all my actions every day. And somehow, this just seems like the key to living. There is such a diversity of perspectives and opinions in the world; we can talk forever and use all our words and find new words but never get anywhere. But love, and God--that is real, and that can get you somewhere. Our words and theories about life are most real if they are used not to feed our mind's fruitless craving for stability but to respond compassionately and sensitively to the needs of the people around us. 

Which is why lately it has been hitting me that while articulating life is such a difficult, flawed task, it is something I have a moral obligation to do. I am really thankful, for instance, for centuries of prophets who out of their hearts' wet flesh carved some characters onto stone so that we now can have the scriptures, glowing ideas about how life fit together for them, how they came to know, love, and serve God. Their words certainly weren't perfect enough to seamlessly describe their experiences, but they tried--and have blessed the lives of millions of people as a result. Coming to Christ--to this being of endless, perfect, healing love--is the good of life that all of us should be seeking and seeking to give to others around us. The light of Christ within us is the only thing that can really let us know if all our imperfect attempts at solving life's problems every day are motivated out of love, headed in the right direction. And it's real! That's about all I think I can say about life, at this point in my mission. That the light of Christ is real. 

This probably doesn't make any sense. And in case it isn't clear enough, I am not super great at all this stuff, by any means. But I do believe in it. And to make a long story short, I want to be better at describing my experiences, and so I've decided to share pieces of my journal with you all each week that will hopefully give more concrete pictures of what my days are like. Here is an entry from this past Saturday. 

"MiJiang, our investigator who is scheduled to be baptized in may when she turns 20, came to do a chapel tour with us this afternoon at Jin Hua Jie. Afterwards, she stayed all day at the chapel, sitting on a couch doing homework. She went to dinner with us, and stayed even until we left a bit behind schedule at 8:30, to head back to ShuangHe. As we were stepping off the subway, she said, 'I have something serious to tell you.' It took a while, but eventually we were able to coax it out of her. Yesterday she relapsed, and smoked a cigarette. She turned her face quickly away as soon as she said it, biting her lip, trying not to cry. Sister Duggar and I, thankfully, knew instinctively what the right thing to do was. We put our arms around her and told her we didn't care, it was okay, we still loved her and so does Heavenly Father. She did let a tear reluctantly slip, as she muttered how guilty she felt. We said to her, 'This is why we have the atonement of Jesus Christ'. We didn't discuss it any more than that, but I hope the brief mention of his name combined with our reassurances spoke to her all the things she needed to know,"

Okay, I am going to get going now. I really love you all! How is everyone doing? How are all the Brown family pets doing? Rachel, good luck this week if this is the week! I having been thinking of you a lot this week and will continue to do so! Jeffrey, I hope your birthday went great! 

Could someone get me Abby's MTC address as soon as they know it? 

Glad to hear about Michelle Obama's bangs. Sorry to hear about Mrs. Shwartz's death. 

Have a great week, everyone! 

Diana

The last drop of water on earth will be your tears

There are pictures at the end of this post so make sure you look at them!

Hello everybody!

Happy Birthday to Bill this week and happy birthday last week to Akane! I can't believe it's already been a year since she was born. Yay!

This week was hard and good like every week. I learned a lot. I needed to be humbled a lot. 

This week, I want to tell you a little bit about Taiwan. As you probably know, it is a very small island, and extremely populated. The environmental issues they are facing now are ones America may face in the future, or maybe not. But mainly, there are tons of people, and so little space. Entire families live in apartments that are smaller, more cluttered, and much more inconvenient than any of the ones I ever lived in at BYU. But that's just how it is here--there just isn't a lot of personal space, and that's just how things are. 

One thing Taiwan has been required to do to respond to their particular situation is recycling. I used to think the blue recycling bins in Ogden were already pretty complicated, but even that is so much simpler than in Taiwan. Taking out the garbage is a very complicated process! First of all, you have to buy special pink plastic bags. Second, the garbage truck comes through every day at noon and at 8 pm, and you have to run out to the street to chase it. You know it's coming because it blares through the streets with a horn that plays, "Fur Elise". (I'm not kidding. It's glorious.) And then once you get into the crowd trying to throw their trash into the garbage truck, you have to make sure your trash-trash, your recycling-trash, and your food-trash are all separate. None of those are allowed to mix, or they get mad!

I always wondered what they did with the recycling trash, and now I know a little bit more. Every week, our district goes to this Buddhist temple--a large, gray stone building that is mainly a museum with pictures of a certain organization doing community service. In the back, though, they have this large warehouse type area where dozens of volunteers come to recycle. Usually we sit on little stools, put on gloves, and spend about an hour separating plastic wrappers and foam netting used to sell guava in from the leftover leaves and bits of guava stuck in them. That means that someone went through all the recycling trash and made a special pile especially for guava wrappers, and our part was the next part of the process. Sometimes the specks we have to pick out are like little slivers. It is such a piece-by-piece, detailed process! It gives me such an appreciation for all the hard work that our earth and other people go through to provide for our needs.

This past Friday when we went to do Buddhist recycling service, I was especially happy. They had a group of high school kids coming to volunteer, and had an assembly planned in their auditorium to teach them how to recycle and the importance of it. They let us attend, and gave us a big warm applaud in welcome. "Tamen shi Moermenjiao chaunjiaoshi!". There was a lot I tingbudonged (didn't catch) because it was in Chinese, but basically it was a lot of stuff about global warming, starvation, natural disasters, etc. I loved it! It made me miss school so bad! I was taking notes on it, and came out wanting to have a lot more integrity and simplicity in how I eat, spend money, and how I use the resources I have. My vegetarian sense was tingling! I know after Rachel and I unworthily partook of the veggie burgers in Bear Lake that one summer, you don't really believe me, but I really do believe in eating less meat! 

Anyway, that was a really fun afternoon. Here is a picture of Sister Duggar and I in front of the pile of guava wrappers! 

As far as how things were for me personally this week, there were so many ups and downs. It's interesting how my down periods always start with a thought. Which I choose to dwell on, so it soon becomes a pattern of thought. This week the thought that took me down was blaming my companion for things. I have felt so much love for her, more than I have thought I was capable of, but if I let little things get to me too much, my heart inverts and I start seeing her as a burden rather than a friend, or a person whom I can serve. It's interesting how in the middle of the week, this way of thinking seemed so entrenched in me, it seemed the only to be interpreting my situation. But I knew that wasn't true because just a week ago, I felt totally different--her tears were cause for mercy, not judgment. And in fact, technically speaking she was even much stronger and more chipper this week than she has been in previous weeks. But a heart bent on resentment can turn anything ugly. I didn't like myself, for much of this week. There were some moments I felt more overcome with my weaknesses and fears than I have since before my mission. I forgot there were other ways I could be. It made me appreciate how much my mission has opened up my heart and allowed me to love so much, so that these times when my heart is dark and not wanting to love are the exception rather than the norm. 

What things freed me? Prayer. There were times when I prayed for what to do and I really felt God tell me, "Laugh about something. Be happy." (Basically, not to take my self to seriously, and to be thankful." Another thing that helped was exchanges. For one day, I was companions with a Sister Muhlestein, who is a smart, thoughtful, and extremely chill missionary from California. She is a triplet, and can solve a rubix cube in under a minute! The biggest thing I learned from her when we were companions was that she, a good, experienced, successful missionary, is also at peace with things being imperfect. We were late to appointments. And it was okay. People didn't show up to lessons, who had told us they would come. it was okay. She ate way too much for dinner. And that was okay. She listened to me talk about all my challenges (which seemed so big at the time!)  and didn't judge me. She just talked me through them and gave me advice for how I could respond to these things in the future. 

I was writing in my journal about her on Saturday night and was filled with so much appreciation. And it hit me like a rock, "It has been about a week since you have been able to just sit still and appreciate. Feel gratitude. Feel love." I thought of how that same day an investigator from XinZhuang, Lin Yu Ci, had traveled all the way to YongHe to give me a Christmas card she made for me. (That is the other picture.) 

While I was thinking of all these things, Sister Duggar and I were listening to "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" on my iPod. I felt like I should read my scriptures and the first thing I opened up to was Moroni 7 about charity being the pure love of Christ. (I think my scriptures will always fall open to that spot, I've visited it so many times.) And I started crying and crying in this moment of release I didn't have words for. I realized all these things I needed to let go of, and I let them go. We can be in bad moods some days, that totally disrupt our plans, and it's okay. People can disappoint you and we can disappoint them, and that's okay. I can be confused and scared and unsure, and that's okay. Life is still good. Life is still so full of mercy and grace and cards from friends and laughing fits and pretty words and melodies. And the more important thing will always be what I do now, rather than what happened. 

I love you all so much! Have a great week!

Diana

 

 

Joseph Smith and stuff‏

Dear Family and friends,

 

Another week full of rain. The sun came out for a little bit on Friday, and it felt like  a miracle on the back of my arms and neck. But it has disappeared once more under the insurpassable gray sky. That's okay, though! It really doesn't make a difference, at the end of the day, if it was rainy or not. I have a good day when I try to love God and the people around me.

 

This week I have really had to come back to the roots of my faith, and let those carry me through in everything I do. It has been a week in which I've seen just a lot of suffering, between our investigators. We are teaching a woman who had a stroke last year and can only move one half of her body, and is in terrible debt, almost to the point of being put in jail. We are teaching a Vietnamese woman with an abusive, controlling husband who forbids her to make friends and would probably be very angry if he knew she was meeting with us. We are teaching a girl who is a very open lesbian. We are teaching another girl who isn't quite as open about being attracted to women, but whom we are fairly sure has crushes on us. It breaks my heart how lonely she is, how eager to please. It breaks my heart that now we are in a complicated situation not knowing  how to love her and encourage her progression in the gospel without encouraging her attachment to us. Things are complicated.

 

Mom, you asked about if I had any thoughts about Joseph Smith, since you are preparing a lesson on him.There are a couple of things about him that help me better understand the importance of the restoration and my own personal experiences with God. Mainly it's that whatever you can say about what he "really" did or didn't experience, or about what the worth of his impact on the world has been, it seems apparent that he really believed all that he experienced to be real and true. And that seems like such a basic point... But it's so crucially important! What was missing from religion then and what is missing in religion now, in my opinion, is personal experience with God. He brought to the world an organization called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to faciliate people's own experiences with a God that he had experienced to be real, true, and good. Being on a mission has helped me to better understand why there is so much emphasis in the church on having our own personal experiences with finding truth and spirituality. Sometimes I have felt tempted to think religion is simply about learning to be a good person, and to treat others well. Of course that is an inseparable part of religion, but the more underlying reason is that there is a real God who exists and who is good. Knowing him to whatever degree we know him is what inspires and enables us to be good, to turn outwards towards the world in service and love.

 

For me, at least, I feel my problem with spirituality tends to be that I talk too much about it and do too little of it. Philosophy, science, and poetry are incredible tools for helping us think about and potentially open our hearts towards God, but onless we do that part--opening our hearts--we're never going to find him. And unless we find him, we will never be able to experience that endless source of love that colors all the interactions and details of our lives with meaning, with responsibilities, with more love.

 

Anyway, I like Joseph Smith for the simple example he set of this pattern: seeking God, experiencing him, and obeying him. It took his life in a direction I am pretty sure he never, ever anticipated, when he went to the sacred grove, or even when he came back with the Gold plates, and probably even after every subsequent revelation he received.  But what a miracle and beautiful thing, that that suggests! That there is something new, real, compelling, and important to be experienced. Something we don't know now, but that we can know if we open ourselves up to a God who will tell us.

 

Sometimes it is easy to look at missionary work as such a feeble thing. We are these young people going out all over the world trying to talk about God. Wouldn't the quicker path to converting millions of people just be taking over a country or something? The church has money for that, don't they? (Just kidding.) But I've come to see this slow, one-on-one effort of missionaries as the most beautiful thing. I don't think Heavenly Father wants more people with baptismal records. He wants more people who pray to him, more people seek to understand him through the scriptures, more people who maybe aren't sure but are willing to try and be open to the possibility that he exists and that he has something to offer them. Sometimes it is frustrating that the church reminds us over and over again of Alma's promise of experimenting with the word of God, and Moroni's promise of praying about the Book of Mormon--sometimes we hear these so often that they are dead words to us. But they are words intended to lead us to the source of life.

 

The way I personally try to do this--not that I'm super good at it, but I try--is to obey what I feel life calling me, compelling me to do, that is right. I had a professor who gave us a challenge once to pick one day to pay close attention in every moment  to what we felt was right to do, and to do it, no matter what. It totally woke me up to all these things I daily feel compelled to do--be more loving with a sibling, have more integrity with my homework, do something kind for someone--that I frequently choose to ignore because of inconvenience. This is despite my declarations that I am trying to do my best to be good. This experiment really woke me up to the fact that so often I don't even ASK myself, let alone God, what is good to do. I just live. 

But I have found that if I really do try to pay attention, I do feel compelled to do certain things. And if I grow in that, continue trying to discern and obey (it is undoubtedly such a murky path, sometimes!) I find breakthroughs of clarity and find the wisdom and ability to keep going. This process, coupled with prayer, is what I feel has really given me experiences with Heavenly Father. Sometimes when I pray I am not sure if some idea I came up with is really from God or just an idea, but I think--hey, is this a good thing to do? Then I am going to do it! And as Elder Bednar says sometimes it really is just taking one step after another through the fog, following a light you see but admittedly it is dim. But you keep going and things make more and more sense and the light is more and more tangible. And gosh, it's so hard. I hope it's not self-righteous, me writing about all of this, because I know I personally suck at it very often. But it really is true! It has turned me into a person I didn't think I could be. I've been able to love people and situations I didn't think I could love. And to try to solve problems I have just wanted to run from. And sometimes at the end of the day, the fact that you are different from how you thought you could be is just about the best thing to be able to say. haha.

 

Hmm. This isn't really what I was planning on writing about today. Oh well. Hope it was interesting and not just preachy. Next week I promise I will talk more about Taiwan.

I love you all! Don't worry about me, I am doing great!

Diana

Hope is the thing with feathers

Dear Family,

 

This week certainly contained some of my most thoroughly miserable moments, on my mission so far. It also contained some of the sweetest moments. I'm excited to get to write about it!

 

First of all, a lot of you asked about New Years here in Taiwan. People definitely celebrated--much the way they do in America, with fireworks and going out with friends--but everyone says that was only a shadow of the celebration that will come during Chinese New Year, which lasts an entire week in Februrary. I am sure I will write more about that when the time comes.

 

This week we had more finding time than we had in the weeks previous. Finding time is when we don't have any scheduled appointments, so we will go to a park or a busy street and contact people. Or we will QiaoMen, which means to knock doors--(but in Taiwan, that means ringing apartment buzzers.) Street contacting is so interesting! You get some people who see your nametag and start taking a long path around to avoid you, or will quickly say, "Wo gan shijian" (I don't have time) before you open your mouth. You have people who want to talk to us because we are American and think we are cute. You get people who aren't interested in hearing what we have to say but think we are interesting and admirable for doing something hard, so far away from our families. And you get people who really do want to learn more about our church. 

 

Finding is often really awkward and discouraging. It especially was for me at the beginning of my mission because my Chinese was so pitiful, I felt more like a lump with a few preachy-sounding things to say than a real person, when talking to people. I also was still working hard to overcome my personal fears and insecurities about striking up conversations with strangers. I am still working on my insecurities and my Chinese, obviously, but things have been getting so much hetter! I am coming to genuinely enjoy finding time. People are just interesting; I love hearing their perspectives and stories, even if it doesn't always lead to a lesson or someone new to teach. We are encouraged to always love people and get to know them, and I feel so close to God when I use that perspective to talk to people. I find that when I feel love towards them, talking about the gospel can be really natural and sincere--not awkward or pushy. And I am okay with it if they don't want to talk to us more about the gospel. I hope that even if it is nothing more than carrying a smile because I have a source of hope in my life, that I can be a positive influence on them.

 

Sister Duggar is so good at street contacting. She is upbeat, natural, and very loving towards people. She has taught me so much, already. Unfortunately, though. She doesn't believe it. She also gets extremely self-conscious and insecure when people don't want to talk to us. On some of these long finding days, she would get in moods that were pretty heavy, and she would tell me all about her self-doubt and how she doesn't know how to be a missionary and she wishes she were as successful as Elder so-and-so, etc. It is a lonely and delicate thing to try to navigate sensitively my conversations and interactions with her so I can build her up, and make sure she never has cause to be offended or hurt over anything. Sometimes, I have to be honest, it is just plain miserable--to be working all day in the cold, drizzling rain, with someone in such a stony, sullen mood, in which nothing I try to say or do seems to make any difference. Those moments have definitely been some of the hardest parts of my mission, so far. If I let them get to me, they make me doubt myself, too--I start to feel effect-less as a missionary, as a companion, as a citizen of the earth.

 

The sweetest moments, though, have been when I have turned to God to try to deal with it. The first day that I was companions with Sister Duggar, she started telling me about her depression and I felt this strong sense saying to me, "Your most important purpose this transfer is going to be loving and serving your companion, not the other missionary work." At the time I had no idea what that would mean. I am coming to learn. And I am unfortunately having to learn it over and over again, as I try to balance wanting to go out and talk to people but not wanting to make my companion miserable, wanting to be more bold but not wanting to make my companion feel pressured, wanting to have success as a missionary but not wanting my companion (or me) to feel as if our success is what makes us valuable. I am learning a lot about my own weaknesses, and not being judgmental. (I have suffered a lot this week over realizing just how far my judgmentalness has extended towards people in the past, and how many times I have hurt people I should have loved.) Over and over again when I turn to my Heavenly Father and ask what to do, I am told, "Love her." I am also told, "Be happy. Don't feel so sorry for yourself." I am also told, "Be humble. The sacrifices you make for her are only a shadow of the kind your savior has made for you."

 

One of the most despairing, but also coolest moments for me this past week was when we spent almost a whole rainy day finding, and things seemed so bleak, and I felt so confused and alone--and the night ended in us watching "17 miracles" with the ward and one of our investigators at the chapel. We had spent much of the day inviting people on the street to come watch the movie with us, since it was a ward activity, and not a single person we invited to came, even the ones we had good conversations with. In retrospect, it's probably a good thing because 17 Miracles is definitely not a warm, fuzzy movie. But anyway, it was kind of a hard day. And even while watching the movie, and being sucked in by its interesting plot, all the ethical questions it raises, I was doubting myself--maybe we should have still been out in the rain, contacting people, or making calls to referrals, doing something more productive than watching the movie. I felt so weak and unsure of my place in the world. I still don't know what the right thing to do was.

 

But the message of that movie, combined with my own personal circumstances while watching it, have brought me a lot of comfort and peace this week. One of the coolest things about that movie, I think, is that none of the ethical questions are ever really solved. You never really know, for instance, whether all these miracles truly happened or are the fantasies of starved, hallucinating minds. You never know if Levi Savage was right to submit to his leader or if this was an example of corrupt leadership. You never know if it is truly right to suffer so much, even to death, for the sake of your religion, or if this truly is a crazy thing to do. Those questions are all still gapingly open and raw, at the end of the movie. But what you are left with is with the contrast of the Willie Martin Handcart company with the Donnor Party. While the Donnor Party resorted to cannibalism, people of the Willie Martin Handcart Company were willing to carry each other across icy rivers, give their last meager portions of food to their loved ones, etc. That, to me, is the only question that really was answered--that when human suffering reaches its maximum, we as human beings truly are still capable of love. I am trying to understand what that means in my life.

 

Hope is the thing with feathers!

 

Have a great week! I love you all!

 

Diana

No matter how beautifully you shave your legs today, you still have to do it again tomorrow.

Dear family and friends,

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope this was a great week for everyone! You all got to spend time away from work and with family, hopefully. That is good. I loved getting to talk to you all on the phone the other day! It was so good to hear all of your voices, and even some of your new voices, (*coughpuberty-aged brothercoughcough*). Sorry if I bored you when I was babbling on so long about Taiwan culture. I don't think I realized how much I wanted to talk about it until I started going!

 

So this week had a lot of ups and downs. It is interesting how different this transfer is from my last transfer!

 

First, my companion is totally different. Sister Duggar is so awesome. I don't know what it is about her, but she just makes me feel so safe and comfortable. We are really goofy together, sometimes. For the past couple of English classes we have had, we end up doing really funny things for everyone else's entertainment. We taught them the Hokey Pokey one week, and danced it in front of the whole class. Last week we taught them the adverb game where you pick a scenario and have to act it out using a particular adverb. The students could not stop laughing while I "romantically" bought Zhuabing from Sister Duggar, who was "romantically" selling this street food.

 

We also connect a lot in how we like to do missionary work. We have only half the routine and organization to our lessons than what I had when I was in training, but twice as much heart. I don't know if it is my recent progression with Chinese or Sister Duggar's influence, but I feel like I am finally coming to be able to express what I want to in lessons--to really communicate to investigators what Christ means to me, and what I hope I can offer them from teaching them his gospel. And Sister Duggar is a person who really feels, really loves. Street contacting is great with her because she loves people so immediately--she genuinely wants to know who they are, what is important to them, and how she can help them. She doesn't talk to them and ask these questions just because she is supposed to. We feed off of each other's love and sincerity. I have had such powerful teaching moments with her when we are both so full of fire and love for the people we are talking to, and it is so wonderful. This is the missionary I wanted to be!

 

The thing that keeps me going really is Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. My relationship with them. It's far from perfect, far from a smooth channel of communication, but I really do believe they are there when I am humble myself and seek them. The promises of the scriptures have proven true to me. I have been given so much strength and love and the power to do hard things when I have desired to have it. The trick, to me, is to have this desire. When things get hard, usually it is because I am at a state emotionally of wanting to give up--of not wanting to face my situation or the challenges it brings. But as soon as I do decide to face it, to embrace it, I find I am able to do things, love things, and be patient with things I never thought I could do, love, or be patient with. I have been given wisdom and insight for how to solve problems when I seek the wisdom and insight to solve them--rather than wanting to run from them.

 

To use a little example: the first day I started riding a bike in Taiwan, I had no idea how to do it. The basket on the front end took me all out of balance, my shoes kept wanting to come off the pedals, the traffic was terrifying, and it was so hard to even get on my bike modestly, because I was wearing a skirt! I kept asking Sister Kang if she had advice, what tricks she used to do it, but she just said, 'You'll figure it out. You get used to it." And really, that's what happened. I had to accept that there wasn't going to be some point where all of a sudden I knew how to ride a bike in a skirt in Taiwan. I just had to do it. And gradually the two wheels and the handlebars and the seat that used to make me sore became more or less an extension of my body--I came to understand how they moved and worked. As I kept going--not because I knew how but out of necessity--I found other challenges to riding a bike. Like on days when it is really windy, and I have to use one hand to keep my skirt from blowing up. Or when it is raining, and the rain keeps getting in my face, making it hard to see. Or when I find myself biking between two large busses that are in a hurry to get moving. Or when I have my violin strapped to my back and it makes me feel so unsteady. Sometimes I feel like laughing at the bizarre mixture of these circumstances that I still somehow find myself able to push through. Sister Kang's "You'll figure it out" seems to have a lot of wisdom to it.

 

That's kind of how it's been for me on a mission, with trying to learn how to teach in Chinese, work with companions, etc. Sometimes it hits me that I seriously have no idea what I'm doing, or if what I am attempting to do is even possible. But there is so much sweetness and wisdom and love I have gained from trying. And I feel like God has helped me step by step to learn the things that are necessary for me to get through each day, or to give me the love I need to have for my companion and the people I am with. I don't know a whole lot but I really believe he is there! And that he can change our hearts and guide us when we turn to him.

 

A little bummed right now because I really wanted to send you guys pictures with the SDcard/USB thing I got for Christmas, but it doesn't appear to be working. And the error message it gives me are all in Chinese characters--and I pretty much don't know any computer vocabulary. Haha. Oh well, hopefully I can figure it out another time.

 

Love you all! Thanks for all your support! Let me know if there is anything I can do for any of you.

 

Diana