Zao an! (Good morning!)

Good morning!

This week was full of lots of missionary success and lots of painful companionship things.

My new companion is a bumbly, painfully-insecure girl from Washington who has been on Island for three months. She is always chattering out loud the thoughts in her head. When she is in a good mood, her words hop around us like butterflies. Unfortunately, more often than not, it seems she prefers to spit out bats. Negativity is a huge problem. She also has an incredible ability to transform the butterflies I try to speak into bats, taking offense really easily. I think she should go to Hogwarts. Another problem was that after having such an awesome, happy time with Sun Jiemei all the time, I have been  bit resentful of this experience and not as ready to jump in and solve problems as I should have been.  It has honestly been a really hard week, in this regard. But it is extremely humbling and helps me gain a lot of emotional/spiritual wisdom. And every time I have challenges like this, I always think, "This is an opportunity to prove to myself again that God is real, that the atonement is real." And I get to work trying to love and work slowly through the challenges as they come up each day. If I really believe any of this is true, then I need to believe that loving her is possible, that she is worth all the struggle every day.

Just about the truest thing in the world is that if a person has a hard time loving you, it is because somewhere deep down they don't love themselves enough.

I want to tell you quickly about a miracle that happened last night, between us.
I had been kind of depressed all day, because of lots of things that there isn't time to repeat. It was tough; my mind felt so clouded with my own hurts that I couldn't be the loving, enthusiastic, sensitive person I wanted to be towards others. At the end of the night, I decided I needed to talk about it with my companion. So we started to talk about it. I told her how I felt, and she got super defensive. We talked and talked, and got nowhere. I was kneeling on the floor and she was sitting on her bed scowling at me and I was seriously about to give up, just get ready for bed and keep despairing that our problems were unresolvable. Then I thought in God's direction, and I felt him tell me, "You need to love her, not reason with her."

So all of a sudden my approach changed. I smiled, genuinely, for maybe the first time all day. And even though it kind of felt like pulling teeth, I started to compliment her, and thank her, for the things she had done to accomodate me that week. I told her the way she had responded to those  situations could be a pattern for how we could solve problems together in the future, and that I was really very grateful to her. Her anger melted SO FAST, it was incredible! Within a few minutes, we were laughing together and things felt more free than I ever could have imagined they would be, just an hour earlier.

I should probably be writing about investigators and baptisms and lessons and the things we do each day. But honestly, these experiences in my heart are the crux of the gospel for me. I really do believe in God's ability to change my heart. I went to bed with a heart so full of thanks. Love is real, and it's there for us when we decide that we want it.


Love you all!

Sister Brown

swallow stuff and don't worry about where it goes‏

Dear Family and friends, 

Thanks so much for your kind letters and support! I really am sorry for being so whiney last week. I know you all have a lot on your plate, too. 

This week I was moved out of my beloved city of YongHe into TuCheng, another suburb of TaiPei. I was sort of wistfully thinking of moving to the countryside where you see wildlife and the green jungle, but it seems like I am destined to be a city girl. My new apartment is probably the nicest place I have ever lived. It is an eleventh-floor apartment with lots of windows, overlooking the city. The window next to my bed is level with my pillow, and every morning the first thing I do is lift the shade and watch the sun rise over the quiet towers and still-sleepy streets. At night I lift it and look out at the million blinking, moving lights of cars and scooters and apartment windows. Next week I will send pictures. 

I am loving it here and I feel a freshness and energy that seemed to be waning under the weight of responsibility, in my old area. At the same time, I miss my old area and my old companion so much in hurts. I didn't ever know, before my mission, what it meant when you switched areas. It is kind of like breaking up with someone you really cared about. Or having someone you love move far away from you. And you remember all the good and the bad times you had together-- all those mornings of lifting my heavy head from my pillow or lifting my heavy heart to God, and swallowing the hurts and letting them just be swallowed forever, resolving not to puke them up. All of the hard times are coated in a blissful haze of nostalgia, because I gave my whole heart to that place. I think moving to a new area helped me see what it will be like to move from Taiwan altogether, in about seven months. The experiences that fill every day are so so precious to me. 

I had a small riff with another missionary last week, which made me reflect a lot on who I was in YongHe and whether I did a good job. His thoughts on how I handled things didn't completely jive with my own, and I felt so burdened with regrets and wondering if he was right--maybe the story I had been telling myself about my life was wrong, and his story was right. I was praying so hard and despairingly over this one night, to know whether I had been a good missionary or a bad one, whether I should carry these regrets or let them go. And all of a sudden I reached this point where my pride collapsed, and I said, "Okay God, I can't do this anymore. I can't stay in control. Just take me where you want me to be and I will do it the way you want me to do it. I will give everything." The spirit washed over me and something clicked in my soul about how the past and all our silly dialogues for it really don't matter. The point of the atonement is that all of that can be washed away if we will it; all we need to do is grasp the moment we have and decide to bear it with love. Let all our resentments and fears go, and determine to let the love of God and our love for him guide our days.

Sometimes we talk about progression in the gospel as if we really are supposed to progress from one basket of charity to ten baskets, one bottle of patience to three bottles. Up ladders, up elevators, climbing our way to heaven. But I think real progression is just towards that inward state of realizing that we are way too crippled to climb that ladder. Our experiences are of course to try to teach us how to better handle problems and how to be a better, more pure person, but beneath all the stuff that really happens, the most important thing is just to realize that we need the savior's mercy. 

I love you all a lot! Seriously. And life is so good. Look at all the beautiful places and people around you. I think when we leave this life it will be a lot like me leaving YongHe, and we will just see it all with nostalgia. We will be so proud of all we gave. 

Have a great week!

Sister Brown

Turning my head‏

Hey, 

 Rachel and Chai, happy birthday! Where is everyone? So many of you who I haven't heard from in so long. Jeffrey, your letter was so interesting, about Chile's history with the church! I think things have definitely, thankfully improved. That's also really cool that you get to be companions with Ron Weasley! Thanks for sending the picture. 

This week Sun Jiemei and I saw a lot of joy and a lot of suffering. 

On Wednesday we sat in a member's house and just held her hand and rubbed her back while she cried and cried. Her Dog recently died, her daughter and her have a very strained relationship, and her husband works in mainland China. She is about 60 years old, joined the church in her 20's, and I think is experiencing an incredible loneliness and confusion about why lifelong membership in the church does not necessarily the care-free life we are all longing for. 

I thought a lot about that question this week. Why should we have faith when there is still so much suffering ahead of us? 

I think, because faith is a reward in itself. The reward we are really looking for. It makes us able to live a freer, truer existence, and after we realize that it does, ever so slowly, bring progress into our lives. 

I had a lot of happy moments this week. But there was one night this week when I was so sad. We had just met at a member's house for dinner. The woman had gone all-out. Her house was immaculately clean and decorated. She had champagne glasses laid out to sip out lemon water, and several different courses, the healthiness and required preparation of which she kept wanting to discuss. She was so simultaneously brimming with delight that her little party had arrived and also insecurity. I could tell she really wanted to be some sort of magazine house wife, and it made me really depressed. It also made me uncomfortable--I felt like I couldn't talk as easily and be myself around her like I wanted to. 

We were biking to a lesson, after this visit, and I thought about this and other things and just felt so, so sad. As I pedaled on I just felt like crying. And while at first my sadness was directed towards this poor, insecure ward member, it turned into a selfish sort of sadness. A more hopeless one. I wanted to cave into myself, and close my mouth--not talk to anyone. At stoplights there were people on their scooters who I am usually eager and excited to talk to, but I just didn't want to. 

One of the interesting things about being on a mission is that the choice between a dead and a living existence is so clear. In my heart I uttered a prayer I have given countless times on my mission. Something like, "Heavenly father, this really hurts. What do I do?" And I felt this gentle, warm, but all the same hard-to-accept answer of, "Love. It is your choice." I knew that to really hang my head at the stop lights instead of turn it cheerfully towards the person on my side was to choose a sort of death. It was to say, "Okay world, you win. I don't want to be a part of you anymore." To let the pain roll off of me, however, and to turn my head in spite of my grief, was to say, "World, it hurts, but you are still worth it." Turning my head was so hard to do, but I knew it was the better choice. I would keep on existing anyway, whether I chose to live in the cave of my disappointments and confusion, or whether I chose to live in the world with others I am trying to love. I want to always choose the better type of existence, and the existence that involves others. 

Faith and love give us the ability to swallow pain that would otherwise swallow us. Christ's atonement is the source I go to for inspiration and strength, when I realize my own amount of faith or love is insufficient. 

But faith is not just a way of avoiding pain. I really believe that faith betters and beautifies, as well. It produces results that are real in the world. For example, after I decided to turn my head at the stoplights and start talking to people, some wonderful things happened. One of the first people I talked to was a man who had absolutely no interest in the gospel, but so clearly had compassion on me. He kept saying, "You need to be careful biking out here on the streets. Good luck!"  (How true it is that sometimes when we finally just decide to LIVE, we receive some tender mercies and it becomes easier than we thought it would be.) And when we finally got to our lesson, I was able to laugh and smile and give genuine affection for the people we were meeting with. That impact on them was real, and it wouldn't have existed without the choice to love, to have faith and hope in the world around me. 

There is a lot people could criticize about missionary work, and yet the moments of really being able to help a person are innumerable and so precious. This week we were eating dinner with one of our recent converts, who is lesbian. She seemed like something was on her mind. As we chatted, our conversation grew deeper, and she came out to us that sometimes she has a problem with looking at pornography. I was filled with so much compassion for her, as I saw her frowning, self-disappointed face. I asked how she felt about it. At first she was a little self-defensive and started saying, "I only look occasionally, and it's mainly just because I'm curious."  We didn't really say much, but let her keep talking. After a while she admitted, "I do feel... uncomfortable about it. It seems like after my baptism I shouldn't be doing that." We talked to her about how sometimes those feelings that something is wrong are hard to trust but will lead us to make better choices. She confessed that she really does want to stop. We built her up, told her we were confident she could do it. We talked about the tactics she used to quit smoking, which she has done successfully, and that really boosted her confidence in her ability to quit looking at pornography. After dinner, she seemed so much more happy, and light. She kept saying, "Thank you, thank you so much for talking to me about this. I feel like a huge burden has been lifted." She left but twenty minutes later came back with drinks she had bought for us, in gratitude. 

These experiences wouldn't happen without those inner-heart decisions to love and to have faith. Living a life of faith is not a guarantee that everything will be good and beautiful, or that the outward circumstances of our lives will be magazine-worthy. But really, every time I make that terrifically difficult decision to swallow my pain and to keep going, little things are made better. No one can take away my testimony of that--I have seen it far too many times on my mission! 

And I think an example of that is just that... In general, I am really, really happy out here. Sometimes it is lonely, I will be honest, in regards to you all. I really miss all of you. I'm sorry my emails are so long and boring and poorly-written. I think Chinese really has taken a toll on my writing skills. Do any of you even read these or would my time be better spent writing personal emails? The experiences I have out here are so big. I totally get what Bill said, about how he can't write to you a fraction of what really happens. It is lonely to want to communicate with you all but not know if I adequately can or if you even want to communicate with me. It is something that sometimes makes me want to cave in on myself. 

But the thing is.. As soon as I leave our little internet cafe, Sun Jiemei and I hop on our bikes and pedal in the hot morning air back to our little apartment, and I don't forget--but I let go. I focus on her. She is one of the best friends I have ever had in my entire life. I focus on God. He is THE best friend I have ever had. The most faithful, the most willing to forgive. I focus on this limited time I have here in Taiwan. And there are hard things, but there are also so, so many happy beautiful things! I feel lucky to say I feel lucky to be here. 

I love you all so much! 

Diana