Hey hey hey‏

Supfreshdudes, 

Things are always so up and down, so imperfect, and yet so good. 

The past few weeks, in and out of all our efforts and struggles, there has been this lingering, unspeakable joy. It's like a golden snitch, that quivers in the air between you and the investigators you love, work, and pray for so much. It quivers in fresh, bright afternoon air after a good laugh with your companion. It quivers in the spaces between words and the gaps bridged by faith. There are moments you see it so clearly, and all you feel is admiration and gratitude that such a beautiful thing can exist. But as soon as you reach out to grab it, it darts away--teaching us that joy isn't something to be possessed by us, or for us. It's never something we earn or deserve. It comes from a foreign world as a gift, and whether or not it stays with us depends on whether or not we remember that.

Really, things are so, so good. 

This past weekend I got permission to go up to XinZhuang (my old area) to attend an investigators baptism that Sister Kang and I started teaching. This is Lin Yu Ci, the girl who a couple of months ago traveled and found me in my new area to give me a Christmas card. She is so sweet, and down to earth. She had to wait until she turned 20 to get baptized, because her parents were really against it. (In Taiwan, f you are under 20, you have to get your parents' signature to get baptized, and they wouldn't sign the papers.) I never want to forget about her, or my experiences teaching her. Here is a cute story about her: one time she told us she and her boyfriend's weekend plans were to study the gospel principles book, because the topic in Sunday school had been the second coming and they didn't feel they understood it very well. (Who reads gospel principles books for fun? It was so nerdy and cute.) I love her so much. 

Thought for the week from my study journal: 

I was on exchanges with Sister Muhlestein last week. We went to a vegetarian place for dinner. As we were eating our bowls of purple rice with oily green vegetables that I don't know the names of, a tall, blue-eyed, blonde Polish girl came and sat by us, apparently very excited to talk to people who spoke English. (And who were also tall, blue-eyed and slightly blonde-haired). Her boyfriend is Taiwanese, so she moved out here to be with him and is studying Chinese. She was so friendly, and a bit ditzy. Our conversation inevitably led to what we were doing here in Taiwan, so we told her. (P.S. Do you know how WEIRD it is to talk about the gospel in English, instead of Chinese? Everything feels so backward coming out of my mouth.) Anyway, this girl, named "Kate", was very quick to tell us, like many people often do, that what we are doing is such a great thing;' they really admire that we care so much about something that we're willing to leave our families and countries and try to share it with others. 

But as soon as we started talking about what we actually believe in, giving her an opportunity to learn more, she shut down and said it was not for her. She said she believes spirituality is an individual thing and she doesn't discriminate between any different religions. She started talking about how great it is that there is Buddha and Jesus and music and tons of diverse ways to find God. I told her I loved that idea, because I do. I totally believe in Moroni 7:13, that all good things come of God, and that everyone's life is full of witnesses of God whether we realize it or not--in the sacrifices we make for our families, in the hope we feel when a friend comforts us, in the beauty we see in art, music, and literature. All speak to the idea that there is meaning in this broken world, that love, hope, and redemption can linger in the gaps of life, that change is possible. These are truths that have a million ways of being expressed. I also agree with her that spirituality is something we are all, individually, responsible for, need to work for, etc. 

But I've been thinking a lot lately about what a dangerous deception it is to think spirituality is MERELY an individual thing. It operates on the assumption that each of us is merely an individual, rotating silently in our own solitary universes. Not only is this not true--for we are made, shaped, and made responsible for others by our interactions with them--but viewing the world this way prevents us from fulfilling our moral responsibilities to each other. (Think of how many times we avoid the discomfort of being responsible for others by saying to ourselves,"What my brother does has nothing to do with me." 

A church, organized religion, whatever you want to call it, stems naturally from our moral responsibilities to each other. There is the beginnings of a church in every conversation we have with our friends, (and also in the silence where conversations should be). In each case, meaning is being communicated about how to live,how to respond to problems, about what the good of life is that we are all searching for, and how to find it. In a church we find tools and ideas that help us as individuals find God, (such as prayer, scriptures study, and ordinances like the sacrament). But an indispensable, crucial tool to finding God as individuals is found within the social interaction that the church requires--within what we learn through trying to care for others. Church requires us to teach others, to serve them and visit with them, to compromise, resolve disputes and differences, to sacrifice. All these experiences are ways of responding to the moral responsibilities we have towards others, just as God responds to his moral responsibility to care for us. We NEED these experiences to really know God, for how we understand a God if we don't understand his most fundamental attribute--which is that he loves us? And how can we ever comprehend what love means unless we learn how to love those around us? It is in all these experiences that we learn how to be like God and what it means to be like God, (what it means to really love and suffer and sacrifice for other people.)

As a side note plug for the restoration, we can see here the crucial importance of having a church that is continually led by a living God, so the system of the church can adapt and change to respond to the needs of people in the best, most-fitting way. A church, although inevitably needing to employ some rules/procedures/systematic things that may seem fixed, should always be open to change as it should always be open to doing what is truly going to help us know and understand God. Just as in our conversations with friends, we will need to sometimes change the the words we say and the actions we take in order to respond to their needs. We won't say the same words in response to every problem they present us with. A true, living church is not one that has the most accurate description of God; the true, living church is the one that loves God, the one that has a true, living relation with him. The one that is true to its purpose of showing us how to be God-like. We need his continual guidance and support to know how to do this, and thus the importance of a restoration that would give us a prophet, knowledge and instruction on receiving personal revelation, and a more effectual system for stewardship within the church. Just some thoughts.  

Anyway, I don't want to pretend as if what I am doing is a perfect work. I know it's not, because none of us are God-like and so really, we don't really understand what we're doing half the time. But I guess all of this is just to say that we are not saved alone. It is in our relations with others that we learn to be God-like, to love and to respond to the needs of others. And a church provides tools, opportunities, and wisdom to do so. 

Okay sorry if that was really preachy and long. I really hope I didn't offend anyone, I promise that wasn't my intent. I just like to share what I think about. Hopefully it was interesting. Love you all!

Sister Brown

Valentine's Day... uh... Kuaile! (That's probably how you say Happy V-Day in Mandarin...)‏

Hello Everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you all had a good week with your lovers! 

This is a picture of Sister Duggar and I last night. She's about as close to a spouse as I get these days, (although because we ate so much this week due to Chinese New Year we opted not to celebrate Valentine's day this week, and on some other day will venture to a mall across the city to treat ourselves to Cold Stone ice cream to honor our companionship.) Anyway, last night we went to our ward mission leader's house for dinner and next door to his house was this really fancy, sparkly show car. It had jewels studded all over it. If the budget the mission gives us were just a little bigger, we would be considering upgrading from our rickety, rusty bikes. (Mine is the yellow one.) The car is just a bit more family friendly, we are thinking. 

This week was fairly different from most weeks, here. We. ate. so. much. food. The members fed us really well. I ate a lot of fish sausage, strange vegetables with salty flavors you never taste in America, delicious shrimp, rice, spicy curry, pork, fried mochi-type stuff, and pizza. Pizza hut and Domino's are actually very popular here, and I really love the special Asian flavors they have--Japanese seafood, sweet and sour fish ball, Korean kimchi, seafood, etc. I think I am accustomed to Taiwanese food, for the most part. Remember when I wrote to you all, being really impressed with myself when I ate squid? That is so weird I thought that was email-worthy info. Picking up the little chewy tentacles with my chopsticks seems like such a natural thing now. Haha. 

Other fun things of the week: At Buddhist service this week, we had a new chore. Instead of pulling leaves out of guava wrappers, we were given a stack of discarded school textbooks and were supposed to tear out every single page for recycling, sorting the pages according to whether they were colored or black and white. It was so strange, getting glances at headings like, "Statistical Analysis" and "Business stategies" and feeling that old world of school calling back to me. I miss burying myself in the quiet dark corners of the BYU library and thinking about life, quite a bit. 

But you know what? Getting to experience life so fully and vividly that you barely have time to think about it is pretty cool, too. This week we had a lot of empty time to Qiaomen, (lit: knock doors, but in reality it means ring apartment buzzers). You meet so many new, interesting people every day. Sometimes when someone lets us up into their apartment it feels like we are climbing the stairs into a still, quiet part of the universe that perhaps no one is aware of except us, and God. This week, for example, we rang a buzzer and an accented voice came down on the intercom, asking who we were. We said our normal thing, we're church missionaries, blah blah blah. She said she ting-bu-donged (didn't understand), but then the door clicked--she had let us up. When we made our way up to her floor, we found the door open and two pairs of house slippers set up for us. We weren't sure if they were really for us or not, but apparently they were. A young  Indonesian girl (about in her 20's) came around the corner and invited us in, and to sit down. It was the most spotless house I have ever seen in Taiwan. Usually Taiwanese people's houses are so cluttered, life crammed into small spaces.

(Quick Background/Cultural info: it is really common for women from the Philippines and Indonesia to come to Taiwan to work for a few years taking care of old people, because jobs are so hard to get in their countries. Young girls, but also sometimes mothers and grandmothers, will leave their countries for a few years to work in Taiwan. 99% of the time their jobs are really hard on them, requiring them to be 24-hour caretakers of old people with barely any mind left. We meet these people a lot, and it is always so heart-breaking to think how lonely they must be, in this country with a language they don't speak, away from their families (sometimes away from their young kids), being a constant companion to someone who often can't be a real companion to them. This house was probable so clean because that girl is probably bored out of her mind and has nothing to do every day but clean.)

Anyway, this quiet but bright-faced Indonesian girl invited us to sit on these fancy hard wood chairs, then disappeared around the corner for several minutes. We had no clue what was going on, and I was starting to get frustrated because I wanted to be out doing something more productive, not trying to communicate ourselves out of this weird situation. Sister Duggar seemed relieved to have a few minutes not to be finding someone. It was one of those tense moments when you feel like according to your plans and goals for the day you should really be doing something else, but out of wanting to keep the peace decide to stay silent. And, as a side note, this is such a daily struggle--trying to figure out what I am supposed to be doing. Trying to figure out if that means talking to people about the gospel or just talking to them about their lives. If it means keep trying to find people to teach or giving my companion a break. I wish I could let you all catch a glimpse of all the conflicting pressures I feel on my heart all the time! 

But we waited. (It was so silent, and clean!) and sure enough after a while the Indonesian girl came out with a very old man clinging to her. They sat down in front of us and started talking, and were so sweet. The old man seemed delighted that two white girls had shown up at his house and offered us tea a million times. The girl was so cute and kept bowing and saying "xie xie" (thank you) to everything we said. Communication was very broken, but there was such a welcoming, embracing spirit there. We decided to say a prayer with them, and that was a really cool experience. As soon as we started talking to them about prayer, it just clicked in my mind what my purpose was right then. No, these weren't going to be future investigators--we weren't teaching them prayer so they could keep doing it themselves, like we usually do. We were saying a prayer because they were children of God, and even though they may feel alone in this quiet little apartment in YongHe, Taiwan, they were not forgotten by God. I believe that with all my heart. We blessed them in the prayer that they would be able to feel his love for them and that they and their families would be healthy, strong, have things to smile about every day, Things like that. Things that were absolutely, 100% true. Do you know how good it feels to be able to do something true? 

Sometimes I think I might be rotten, inside. But sometimes I can be good. Something I hear or see clicks a lock in my soul and a door swings open-- and I just get it. 

Here is a Mormon message that we have been sharing with a lot of people, lately, (investigators, members, everyone needs it.) We have a DVD full of Mormon messages with Chinese subtitles that have been able to touch people and clarify spiritual truths in such a powerful way. 

http://www.mormonchannel.org/mormon-messages-for-youth?v=910947676001

When I get confused about what I am supposed to be doing, I love to remember the message of this video. It is so healing! There is something about opening myself up to the idea that I am already loved completely that just washes away all my fears and resentments. It makes all my petty companion issues seem so silly, all my concerns over whether I am being a good missionary seem silly.  I wonder how many of our problems in the world wold melt away if we all could really believe this message is true--that all of us, no matter who we are or what we have done--are loved completely, are full of potential and worth. I don't know what the areas are in your life that make it hard for you to believe what Uchtdorf says, but I know you probably have them. I hope you can think about what would change, in your life, if you knew that what he says is true, with your whole heart. Let yourself feel that and let it change you. 

Have a great week! Oh by the way Mom, thank you so much for the Birthday package! I LOVED IT! The card was so sweet, it made me cry. And I have no idea how I am going to eat so much granola, but I will enjoy it! 

Sister Brown

XinNian Kuaile! (Happy New Year!)‏

Dear everyone,

Here a some pictures of this week! Two of them are from the zoo last P-Day. Sister Briggs was so sweet to plan that for me! It was so fun, to get to talk to other sister missionaries, and eat ice cream, and see animals! One of my favorite parts was that for lunch, Sister Briggs brought a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and bananas, so we all could have peanut-butter and banana sandwiches. That was always my favorite thing to eat together when we were in the MTC. 

Another picture is from last Tuesday, at our zone conference. Zone conferences are these three hour meetings you have with a bunch of missionaries who live in your area, and you discuss lots of good stuff about God and how we can be better missionaries and stuff like that. They also can be a bit boring, at times. (We all know it's true!) But we currently have the two most hilarious zone leaders ever right now. I had a feeling last Zone meeting was going to be a bit more lively than usual, and it was! Elder Baker started by passing out cards and just asking everyone to write an appreciation card to an investigator. I got really excited about the idea and got four cards to write to four investigators, haha. Then we started discussing Lehi's vision of the tree of life, and what the fruit of the tree of life means to us, why we want to share it with others, etc. Then he announced that we were going to ACT OUT the vision of the tree of life. He assigned some people to be Lehi's family, others to be members of the great and spacious building (who for some reason were standing on chairs?) and others to be part of masses of lost people, something like that. I was in this last group, and was quite thankful when he told me I was going to be blindfolded because it gave me an excuse to have no idea what was going on. (This was looking like quite a mess.) After I was blindfolded, a sister was instructed to guide me around the building while other missionaries started making lots of loud, distracting noises. I was trying to think of what on earth was going on when all of a sudden I was back in the main room, and I could hear that everyone else was there, too. Elder Baker said, "Hold out your hand, and taste this." He gave me a piece of chocolate covered in frosting and asked if it tasted sweet, and if I wanted to share it with others. I made some joke about how it tasted like the love of God. Then they took off the blindfold and it was a birthday cake! And there were balloons all over the place, and they started singing happy birthday! And apparently while we were "writing cards to our investigators", everyone had been writing birthday cards to me, which they taped to a green flower poster. It was so cute, and made me feel so loved!

Yeah, so it was a good birthday week. One of my favorite investigators, Wu May, brought me a cake on Thursday, and that meant a lot to me, too. People are so good to me! Mom, I haven't had a chance to go to the mission office lately so I don't know if your birthday package has come, but I will let you know when I get it. 

Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!

This weekend has been really fun. Chinese New Year has started! This is their biggest holiday here, and it lasts nine days. Almost everyone is off of work, so the streets are much more quiet than normal, many businesses being closed, and a lot of people having gone to Southern Taiwan for the Holiday. It has been a chilly weekend, but there is such a fun spirit in the air--this is like their Christmas. And we have been fed HUGE meals both lunch and dinner the past two days, (members have been inviting us to their houses to eat). I really have never experienced being so consistently, sickeningly full in my whole life. (Taiwanese people love to go all out when feeding you. They kind of pressure you too keep eating and eating and eating, all their vegetable dishes, their meat with bones and fat still attached, their little fruit cakes they give you, and rice, rice rice.) It could be frightening if I were concerned about calories, but I'm looking at it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not care. We have meal appointments scheduled daily for the next week. I will probably write to you next week at least five pounds heavier. 

This week is also special for missionary work. We have hardly any appointments at all this week because this is everyone's holiday! Either everyone is out of town or they don't want to meet because they are out playing with family and friends. That means a lot of empty time to fill with finding, and being creative, and trying to figure out what missionary work is. It's a much more complicated answer than you might ever imagine, unless you have been here. Sometimes I think it means earnestly talking to everyone I see who isn't a member. Other times it means taking time to talk to my companion, because she's feeling insecure. Sometimes it means bearing my testimony. Sometimes it means sharing my doubts. Sometimes it means setting high goals for finding new investigators and using all the good desires of our heart to meet them. Other times it means forgetting any goals you, your district leader, or your mission president have set and following the nudge in your heart that you should be doing something else. 

I think this is more typical of real life outside the mission than not. There's never any solid answer to what we're supposed to be doing. We are supposed to be growing in the light of Christ to figure it out every day. It is a painful but joyful journey. Sometimes I have no idea if anything I am doing is right, and that is really tough.  But yesterday during personal study I had an epiphany: the fact that I have the rightness of my actions as a continually open, raw question is probably a better indicator that I am trying to do what is right than a bunch of fancy words insisting that I am. Which I realize is hypocritical for me to say because I am often one with a lot of words. Even these words right now are just words, and in a very real sense deaden all the daily, delicate inner-heart struggles of trying to know how to be good. I want to live for those moments, for illumination they bring, for the way they beautify my world in ways that escape description. I don't want to live for the essays I can write about these moments afterwards, unless of course they help us others to seek that goodness, too.

John Mark and Natalie! An elder in my zone is from Morgantown, West Virginia! He totally knows you guys! His name is Elder Wong. He is really funny. It's so weird to randomly have the connection of knowing you two. 

Love you all! 

Diana

Zhu ni shengri kuaile!‏

Dear Family, 

Right now, you are probably all crowded around in Rachel's house. Mom and Mary and Rachel, Doug, Emily, Aya, and Abby crowded around cute Sparrow (who I really want to see a picture of!), talking about the birth or some interesting religious/political issue. Chris, Bill, and Scott are probably watching the superbowl. Dad could be in either group, not sure which. Stephen and Garrett keneng bu zai, they probably have work. Probably the house smells absolutely delicious! With Miami Beach Cake, and maybe... Cafe Rio style food?? Wo bu zhidao, eh. Just my guesses. Meanwhile, Sister Duggar and I are sitting on a cushioned bench in an internet cafe. It is 6 in the morning but this place is full of 20-something year old men who have been hear all night playing World of Warcraft. There is a man snoring very loudly in the cubby of computers next to us, and some Taiwanese pop song is playing on the radio, with a violin-interlude that has those slurry-jump intervals typical of traditional Chinese music. Life is good! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY TWIN SISTER!!! Oh my gosh... We are turning 22... I can't really think about it, too much, it's too weird. t's almost been a year since I got my mission call, and all the time after that was spent preparing for my mission, then being on my mission. I feel almost like the past year didn't happen yet, it's been so totally different from the rest of my life! And the next year will be, too. How odd. 

It has already been a great birthday! Last night we had a fireside in Taipei for new converts and investigators, and somehow a bunch of my old friends (new members/investigators) in XinZhuang remembered it was my birthday this week. They gave me cards, a necklace, and a piece of cake. But mostly it was just so wonderful to see them, and so heart-warming that they were happy to see me and greeted me with hugs and "Women hen xiang ni!" (We miss you so much!) 

It's especially precious because much of my time in XinZhuang I felt like a useless lump who followed Sister Kang around. I can communicate better with all of them now than I ever could then, and yet somehow they still cared about me. Those weeks were so tender, wanting so badly to go and do and be something real to the people around me, but feeling like I couldn't because of my Chinese. I had to (painfully) learn not to use my lack of language ability as an excuse not to engage with and love people. (Jeffrey, this is my advice to you!) I tried to load as much sincerity as I could in whatever I could say, in lessons. I also tried to communicate more with body language, giving hugs and smiling and just trying to be there. You can have a lot of words but not really be there, and you can be there but not really have any words at all. I am coming, with repulsion, to find I sometimes have the opposite problem in ShuangHe that I did in XinZhuang. My Chinese ability is hai bugou (still not enough), but I can get around on my own. I also, for various reasons, have had to be much bolder this transfer in contacting people and inviting them to meet with us, in taking the lead in lessons and navigating our way around the city. I feel like I have learned to be what one the surface looks like a successful missionary. I can do all the things that are "expected" of me. It's really cool to see how far I've come, especially remembering all the leaps of faith and heartfelt effort moments that it took to get here. It's amazing what you can do when you say, "I'm going to try, even though I have no idea what to say/how to get there/how they will respond". 

The dark side is that everything gets easier--and bearing your testimony, striking up conversations with strangers, and even praying can come to be things of routine rather than heart. I am haunted day and night by the question of my own sincerity. I never, ever wanted to be the robot missionary, but I'm finding it is a constant struggle to really be there, in every single moment.  

It was so silly of me to ever think, in my early days on island, that I wasn't a real missionary. My insecurities, my weaknesses, my lack of ability certainly limited what I was able to do in significant ways, but they also served to keep me in a position of continual sincerity and humility, which are the only things that make missionary work real.

How funny and sad it is that I, we, everyone, are always looking forward to that one bright moment in the future when we are just going to "get it"--we'll finally be good at this, or able to emotionally handle that, or have that problem taken care of. We see our weaknesses and the weaknesses in others as things holding us back from this perfect moment, when in reality its all these gaps, deficiencies, and the pain of unanswered questions that are enabling us to "get it", all along the way. Christ said, "If men humble themselves before me I will make weak things become strong unto them." And it is so true. I am learning that this bright moment I am looking forward to isn't as much about actually obtaining perfect wisdom, ability, looks, etc. as about obtaining that state of realizing my weakness before and reliance on God, and having his goodness inspire in me the love-fire necessary to keep going. 

Today, for P-Day/birthday party, we are going to the Taipei zoo with a bunch of other missionaries and the singles in my current ward and some other XinZhuang friends. It should be fun, even though everyone keeps telling me, "Too bad it's a Monday, we won't get to see the Pandas!" And I feel pressure to act like I'm so heartbroken but secretly I don't really care that much... I just like spending time with other people. Sister Briggs planned this day. She was my MTC companion, we are still, somehow, mercifully, best friends. Every time we are at the mission office we put notes of encouragement and inside jokes in each others mailboxes, and we always catch up delightedly whenever we see each other. She even tells me about the really hard things. (Being a missionary, as with being a Mom or Dad or anything else, I imagine, is simultaneously really joyful and painful.)

If anyone wants to send me a birthday present/something I would really appreciate at any time of the year, I would love to be sent a copy of your favorite talk with your personal notes/thoughts on it. Why it touches you, how you make sense of it, what it prompted you to do, anything you don't like about it--dou keyi (anything goes). 

I love you all, so much. Please send me pictures of Sparrow and Rachel and everybody, in fact! Thank you so much for all your love and support! Do not worry about me. Things are hard at times, but I believe in God and that goodness is real.

Sister Brown