Qinai de jiating han pengyou,

I cried this week. But I also had nights kneeling by the blue comforter on my bed, looking out the window at the starry city before me, and as I opened my heart to God I felt so overwhelmed with gratitude, I could have screamed with joy. I didn't know what it was, but there was something inside me that I wanted to give-- that I wanted to give to the streets and towers and people outside the window. Maybe a smile, or a listening ear, or a comforting scripture. There was just a feeling of wanting to give everything I could to the universe, and just as importantly--as such grand thoughts often direct me--to the person sitting on her bed next to mine, writing in her journal.

My new Companion is Du Jiemei. She reminds me a bit of Dory from Finding Nemo--a tad forgetful at times, but bubbly, optimistic, and spontaneous. She has really cute sneezes that at first I thought were overreactions--her whole body folds in half, and she slowly lifts her torso in recovery as if coming up from a stretch. Then she goes on with her life as if nothing happened. Whenever she remembers something of slight to serious importance, she will jump and shout, "Ooohhh" so i think maybe she saw a cockroach, but no--it was just that she just realized we left the AC on in our study room.

She is relaxed about everything. Sometimes I can't decide if life is a big deal or not, but I tend to think it is. She balances me by reminding me that sometimes when you call a million referrals and no one has interest or you end up wasting half an hour finding lost keys or when you worry that none of your investigators are progressing--that life really isn't THAT big of a deal. When I'm tempted to be discouraged, she builds me up and makes me laugh. I feel kind of like I am companions with Mary. She is just such a supportive, loving, happy influence in my life. I think God sent her to save me because last transfer was super hard on me.

Here is something I wrote in my study journal this week, that I feel captures some of the things I think about on a daily basis:

"Often, I am confused at how I am to have any credibility to speak. If I haven't experienced all there is to experience in the world--old age, cancer, rejection from parents, drug or pornography addiction, the death of a loved one poverty, adversity of any kind--how do I have any credibility to speak to others who do have these experiences? To tell them they need the gospel of Christ sometimes seems to ignorantly pin a description and accusation on them, to totalize their experiences. As politically-correct modern society right claims, to pretend we can grasp and totally understand another person's experience is an immoral thing to do.

I feel like the atoment has something to do with this, and answer this quesion in some way. In the scriptures we learn that Christ literally, physically experienced all forms of suffering--not in a distant, abstract, imaginative way, but in the flesh. He bled, sweated, and cried. He "descended below all things, that he might comprehend all things, and be in and through all the things" (D&C 88:6. To me, this suggest the virtue of always seeking to understand, to comprehend the lived experience of those who suffer, to not make ignorant claims about their situations.

And yet I can't help but think that the human soul is such a precious, particular thing that even CHrist cannot control it. He cannot grasp it, make it do what he wants it to do. Instead, what he seemed to do was lower himself to our level of suffering so he coule be in partnership with us, on our way out of it. He descended to our lvel so he could provide a credible invitation to leave and overcome our suffering, the way he did with his. He did this by choosing to love, choosing to succor us instead of complain. Having suffering more than any single individual, he invites us to do the same, to be calle dout of our own sufferin gin order to feel sympaythy fo rhim. This is love. His suffering gives us something outside ourselves to seek to understand and lovingly respond to."

I have to go. Sorry for the typos.

Love you all!

Pic

Dear Everyone,

On Saturday we had three incredible friends of mine get baptized. Here is a picture. From left to right: Sister Yao, me, Sister Weng, Sister Zhou, Sister Lin, Sister Du, Elder Forbes.
They really are my friends. I don't like just calling them investigators because when I look at their faces I don't think about how many lessons I've had with them and how much scripture reading they've done this past week; I think about the time we went to visit Weng Jiemei at her house and laughed at her grandpa who had fallen asleep in the middle of the hallway, or about teaching Lin Jiemei English, and of Zhou Jiemei and all of us laughing so hard and getting excited about how cute her self-chosen baptismal clothes are. (She is the one in the middle.) I really love these girls and won't ever forget about them. They really are my friends. That being said, I feel we are friends because it started out as a missionary-investigator relationship. We teach the missionary lessons when we teach, of course, but teaching is also basically just an excuse to have really good, deep conversations with people. I have cried with all of these girls, and shared my troubles and my own process of faith with them, and they have shared theirs with me. I have gone out to eat with all of them, met a lot of their friends and family, talked about their interests and plans for their futures, made sure they had my facebook information so I can add them when I get back, etc.

One of the coolest epiphanies all missionaries hopefully wake up to at some point is the one about how they can be themselves and get the job done. They don't need to be an indifferent, formal, picture-perfect missionary. And our weaknesses totally find their way into helping people, as well. I have told people so many times about my companion who had depression. It prevented her from doing some aspects of the work (like finding) super well, but she had INCREDIBLE abilities to sympathize with and comfort people, in lessons. All weaknesses maybe shouldn't be called weaknesses and perhaps just should be called characteristics that have the potential to inspire or collapse the light of life within all of us, depending on how we use them.

I also have a new companion, Du Jiemei! We are Sister Training Leaders. (It's kind of like being a zone leader, a new position they made because now there are a million sisters in every mission.) She is really great. I will write more about her next week. She is also Taiwanese. (YES! CHINESE  IMMERSION!)

I am doing great! Sorry not a lot of time to write this week, I have to get going.
Love you all!

SIster Brown

Taifeng! (Typhoon)

Dear everyone,

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS for the fine production of Jesse Mark Atkinson!!!  I loved seeing pictures and hearing the story about him. He looks so adorable. I can't wait to meet him and Sparrow, and re-meet Chai and Akane. Babies. Such great things.

We had a typhoon this week! Taipei is not right on the coast, so we weren't too badly affected, but we had to stay inside part of Friday and Saturday. Our landlord also insisted that we tape large X's over the many windows in our apartment. We live on the 11th floor of our apartment, so she was worried we'd have windows break from the wind. But as you can see in this picture, we started running out of tape after a while and had to do rather small X's. haha.

Friday night, I had a spectacular view (as I always do out that window!) of the wind and rain attacking everything outside. Trees and shop signs fell down, the streets had small waves of water on them, and wind screeched at our windows all night long, so it was hard to sleep. But it cleared up the next morning, and something about the lighting made the world absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I took a million pictures--the colors of the rooftops and shop signs and the distant clouds and mountains were so vivid. But I already sent you guys a scenery picture last week. This is a picture of me enjoying the scenery while practicing violin before church yesterday morning (I played a musical number in sacrament meeting.) I think that window might be one of the best things about life, these days. I sleep with the curtains open, now, not caring that the light wakes me up pretty early.

The other picture is of my bike being freaking stylish. Isn't it beautiful? It is my most sturdy friend who these days really needs new breaks and air in its tires.

Challenges of the week:
1. Feeling like my Chinese is terrible
2. A bunch of investigators suddenly being too busy to meet or not answering their phones
3. Needing new music (Does anyone want to send me CDs? Hmm, yeah maybe?)
4. Not getting to go running in the morning anymore because my companion sleeps in every day
5. Trying not to get mad that my companion sleeps in every day and doesn't have a super high work ethic

Blessings of the week:
1. We have three investigators getting baptized on Saturday! (The two sceduled last week moved to this week because of the typhoon)
2. My companion and I always having so many reasons to laugh. No matter what is going on with the work, we are usually having a good time together
3. Fruit. I don't know how to tell you this, but you all may think you have tasted a mango, grape, or orange, but you really haven't. And you probably haven't tasted durian, dragonfruit, guava, lychee, among other delicious natural things that fill our fridge. I eat exclusively fruit for breakfast, these days. Taiwan's fruit is seriously so, so incredible. People serve it for dessert, after meals.
4. Feeling close to God. He is so mercifully there.

Thought for the week:
A mission is like a mini life-span that helps me see a lot of patterns in how we as human beings are born, grow up, deal with challenges, and die. Lately I have been thinking a lot about ideals; it is so easy when we are young and spry to live life with sharp, articulate ideals about the right way to do things. Like when I came on my mission I had a million ideas about how I was going to love all my companions and investigators perfectly, and I was never going to let my own needs or laziness get in the way of that. I had moments of success that sung to me the truth of what I believed, and my ideals really did carry me gracefully, mercifully through some very hard moments. I was able to see so clearly how I should change, whenever I tasted that toxic blade of bitterness on my tongue.

But as life goes on, it tends to beat on us a little bit. We have more and more moments of weakness, of not holding our tongues, and of getting so tired of trying. Our ideals were once a shiny marching band in our heads, tooting our philosophy at every corner,  but in time they become more like an ancient beating hope in our chests. I still believe in love, and in fact I understand so much more deeply than I ever did a year ago about why it is important, why it is the only way, and that it really IS possible. But I also have a much deeper understanding of the difficulty of it; my ideals now are softened by compassion for those who struggle to live up to them and humility because I struggle, as well. Life experience makes us stronger, and in many ways we could write the stories of our lives to prove the truth of our ideals. Yet we hear the other side of the story, too, the stories of our weak moments. So as life goes on we perhaps become more and more silent in the face of it.

So here is the question to think about: who is the stronger one, the young one with the crystal clear ideals, or the older one who can't explain it as well but has lived it more? I think they are both good, just in different points of a life cycle, and both have something to learn from each other. But one thing it helps me to see is that we always need to have compassion for the unspoken lives of people, the things they have seen and been through that have made them strong but will never get mentioned.  All of this I am writing, by the way, is recognizing that while in the mission life I am turning old I am also very young in real life and and in other cycles I am involved in. I don't know, what do you think of this idea?

If any of you want to mail me, it would be really cool... I don't need mail in order to be happy but it is really, really nice.

Love you all!

Sister Brown

xiexie nimen de zhaogu

Zao an!

My heart breaks with how much I love people, sometimes. You guys, and the people with me here, now. I wish I could just swallow all the pain I sense.
Being in tune with other people's suffering (which I am not always, but sometimes am) is obviously uncomfortable but also really freeing. It calls us out of our own caves of grief, into the foresty-jungle of trying to help others. It is an adventure with an unknown ending and sometimes you don't know if anything you're doing does any good, but there are large streams of light that hit you sometimes, between the trees.

Like seriously. I spend so much effort sometimes trying to make sure I am going to be successful at this and this and that, and then sometimes I do win--like for instance, I'll get a week with super high numbers, or I'll get praised by my mission president, or complimented in the way I wanted to be. And then afterwards I'm like, "Well, is that it?" And then there's other times when I want to eat the mango in the fridge but decide to cut it up instead for my companion to eat after she gets out of the shower. Or when I could count a new investigator for myself but decide to give it to the elders. Or when my old companion Sun Jiemei is so discouraged about her family; I don't know what to say sometimes, so I just sit by her side, rub her back, and reassure her that it's okay to be sad.

Really BEING there with her--even if I don't know what to do--brings a certain kind of hope in itself. It seems like most of the problems in the world come because we are living in our caves, always conniving how to secure our happiness, how to lock ourselves even further inside the mountain. But while that seems like a reasonable thing to do, when we get hurt in the jungle outside, it eventually leads to suffocation. If we at least try to venture beyond ourselves a little bit, risking vulnerability, we are at least allowing for the possibility of real happiness with others. I think all our small efforts to come out of our caves and really BE with someone do a lot more good than we think they do.

I have a new companion, again! It is Sister Huang. This is a picture of the two of us walking back from a meeting, yesterday. She is Taiwanese (YES!!! I love Taiwanese companions), but unlike Sun Jiemei she comes from a very supportive Mormon family and has a very outgoing, loud personality. We are always laughing. Sometimes it is really hard to focus during our planning or study times because she is such a talker. I love it. She eats a ton--literally twice as much as I do at any meal time. She will eat a huge plate of noodles for breakfast. And she has this really funny habit of stripping down to her garments every time we are in our apartment. She always does her studies just in her garments, and gets dressed right before we leave. It's really fun, how open she is. Most Taiwanese people, by the way, are totally not like that! They tend to be much more shy.

And the other picture is this morning, the sunrise, taken from a window in our apartment! So lovely.

So this week we have two investigators getting baptized. One of them is Weng Jiemei, who I want to tell you about. She is not one of the people who before my mission, I would have imagined myself baptizing. She is 29 years old, has no job and lives with her family. She is a very slow person, in her social skills, mannerisms, and ability to grasp things. It's hard to explain--if she were in the states she'd probably be diagnosed with a mild mental illness. Because of this, her family is really cruel to her. We have gone to visit her Mom a couple of times, and it's really crushing to see her Mom yell at her constantly. She will say that she's a failure because she's so slow, so stupid, and takes too long in the shower. (I told Weng Jiemei later that my brother Jeffrey understood well at least the last complaint, haha.)

Because of that, we have always felt so impressed while teaching her that we need to emphasize God's love for her while teaching. We have had such beautiful experiences in her lessons when she really, really feels it. Her eyes will start blinking really fast, like she is going to cry, and she will say in a firm voice that she doesn't use often, "I need this. I really need this hope in my life. I don't know, but I hope that God loves me. I really feel like you all love me, and it helps me to believe that he loves me, too." She was so incredibly nervous for her baptismal interview. But she was elated when she passed. I have never seen her so happy in my life.

There are other people I have taught and helped get baptized who are much more similar to me, who have much more of a gospel knowledge, who understand scriptures better, etc. But Weng Jiemei has such a special place in my heart.

I love you all so much! Hope you have a great week! Thanks so much for all your support.

Sister Brown

Dear Everyone,

I could tell you a million stories about what has happened in the past couple of weeks, with my companion and my area my soul. It has been some crazy stuff, too.  Probably all these stories would contradict each other, too. And I probably will never tell you most of these stories.

But I just want you to know, that I think God is found in that time you got so stressed and worked  up about this or that or that other thing, and then you think about them for a minute, and then you realize that actually--because God exists and I exist, too--that none of those things matter. The gift he wants to give us is that we can have a free, clean, loving heart any time we decide we want it enough. I think Christ wants to teach us that all things can be new, any time we want. Including ourselves.

I think I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. But probably not in the way you think. I feel perfectly capable of being cheerful in January. But I think I still have SAD because in June and July, when the sun comes out, I am SO, SO HAPPY! I can't contain it. Lately it has been insanely hot, and humid. We walk out of air conditioned buildings and it literally feels like walking into a sauna. The air pulls on your breath the same way. I love to throw out my arms and smile an say, "Oh, hen shufu!!" (So comfortable!) And then when we go inside an air-conditioned building, the sensation on my skin is literally like jumping into a cold pool. I am getting used to pretty much always being wet, with a thin layer of sweat.

Another really great think about life is all the biking I get to do in my new area. TuCheng is a big area that requires a lot of traveling on bike. It also has lots of bridges with beautiful views. Maybe next week I will send you a picture of the bridges we get to bike over. When I am up there, looking across at the city and the river area that runs between them, I feel almost guilty with how good my life is here. I also want to take a sentence to brag about how freaking buff my legs are right now. Okay, sentence over.

The other best thing about life right now is realizing how simple and pure I am allowed to be, right now. Sometimes I come at home at night and think back on my day and start doubting myself a little bit. Should I have done that differently, or that, or that? Am I bad person or an okay one? etc. And then I say a prayer, and I affirm that I really did just try to serve people that day, and recommit to do it again the next. And then that's it. Sometimes I pray really hard to do more meaningful service, and will sit there on my knees until I have a specific plan for something I can do for someone in the ward, or an investigator. Other times before bed I turn on Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings (thanks Brian!) and lie on the couch and close my eyes and think about nothing. I've never felt so capable, some nights, of emptying out all the toxic  fears and insecurities that usually stew inside me, and just appreciating the moment.It is really great.

That being said, the past couple weeks really have been crazy and I have had other nights where I feel spiritually numb and my desire to let go of hurt isn't big enough to jump to that state. Why is it that our hurts feel so holy to us, sometimes? I believe in the freedom God wants for us, but I also believe it is hard to get there. Just keep trying!

I love you all very much! Natalie, I am so excited for your baby! Thanks for all your support!

Diana

some nerdy stuff‏

Nihao!

So, this email I totally meant to send last week but it never sent! Here you go!

One of the pictures is from a few weeks ago, Sister Sun and I drinking papaya milk bought from a tiny drink shop next to a Miao. A Miao is a Buddhist temple like the one in the background, where people come and burn incense and say prayers to their ancestors. They also lay out fruit for their ancestors. Miaos are all over the place! Sometimes they are small, sometimes they are huge, but they are always beautiful and ornate, like this one.

The picture with the pillow is where I sleep. I am pretty much the luckiest person in the world, to get to wake up to that every day.

Today, in place of spilling my emotional vomit all over the place, I want to write a bit more about what I have learned from Taiwanese culture, particularly in terms of religion. I think you will find it very interesting, because things are so different from how they are in the states.

One of the most common things we here on a daily basis, when we start talking to people about religion, is "Dou yiyang!" (they are all the same!) If people's response to Mormonism in the states is that it isn't for them because it isn't real, (I.E. Joseph Smith was a fraud, the Book of Mormon is fiction, etc.), in Taiwan people's response is that it isn't for them because it is no different from anything else. People love harmony here, not distinctions and dichotomies like they do in Western parts of the world. They especially don't care as much about distinctions between truth and fiction, what is real and what is not. I have heard many times a saying about whatever we believe to be real IS reality to us. So the most common way we are rejected is by people just not understanding that we have something really good and new to give them; they see all religions as the same, because they teach people to do good and give people peace.

Another thing that is different is the basic concept of God. Most people we ask will say that they believe in God. One question I could probably follow up with, often is, "How many?" In America, the idea tends to be that there is one truth, one reality, one correct dialogue for the way things are (whether that is science or God or something else). But here, people often say things like, "Jesus is America's God; I have a different God from you." And they really mean it. They are intellectually content with totally different dialogues for reality co-existing.

Also, God is not necessarily viewed as the personal, loving, intimate God that I believe in. I have learned a lot of interesting things from the atheists we (surprisingly seldomly) run into. They are usually not like atheists in the states, who reason the existence of God to be improbably in some temporal, scientific way. The Wushenlunzhes (atheists) here explain it more that they are atheist because they don't NEED a God. They say things like, "Wo de shijian hai mei dao" (My time hasn't come yet)--meaning they don't feel a special need to connect with God at this time. Gods are typically viewed as beings possessing power in certain areas that you call upon when you have a need. Sometimes when we teach people prayer for the first time they do it in a way people may think is idol-istic. They will pray for certain blessings as if begging a cold, indifferent king to have mercy on them. Trying to explain God as a constant, accepting, loving friend-father is one of the most important things to establish, when we start meeting with people.

Religion is also extremely tied to tradition and family, here. One of the biggest problems people have as they start investigating the church is that they feel family pressure to go to Miaos with their family, and will feel they are betraying their families if they don't go. Most people we meet, particularly younger people, don't feel like ancestor worship has much meaning to them, which is often a trigger for investigating Christianity. But it is an obstacle nonetheless, because they feel such loyalty to their families. In America, there is a dialogue that always supports the individual, especially the individual's search for a sort of "authenticity". If a person changes religions from their family, there is a sort of dialogue that says the family needs to accept the individual. If the family is unaccepting, they are viewed as the bad guys. In Taiwan, it is more often the individual who changes who is viewed as the bad guy.

Religion is part of a tradition you are born into here, not something that necessarily drives you each day. For instance, many people we talk to each day will say, "Oh, but I am Buddhist, not Christian" or "I have a Christian friend, you can go talk to them!" In America, there already exists the assumption that missionaries will be trying to give you a sort of identity change. Here, many people are so tied to tradition they don't see it as something malleable. This isn't necessarily out of love for the identity their traditions give them; but just because traditions, identies, religious beliefs--these are things you do not change.

One of the interesting things, though, is that when a person really starts investigating the church and coming to know the God of Mormonism for themselves, the spiritual process is very similar to what is for the people in the states. All these differences I just mentioned are obstacles that prevent people from knowing God, much like certain philosophies popular in the United States prevent people from knowing God. People here just have different obstacles, but like all obstacles, they are overcomable with a humble heart that seeks access to God and a willingness to change. It is really beautiful to sit across the table with someone recently baptized, who grew up with completely different ideas about reality and God than I did, but who has had God answer their prayers in similar ways. And across the language and culture difference, you can look her in the eyes and you know you share a special understanding of something.

True religion, I really think, has less to do with your dialogue for it and more to do with that sincere love for goodness in your heart. But dialogues are also necessary to help us get there. I don't believe the Mormon dialogue for God to be seamless--especially the unique, personal dialogues we all individually live by that are skewed with our own fears and hurts--but it is a dialogue that helps us develop a relationship with God leading to the freedom of heart and love that he wants to give us.

Wow, I wish I had all day to talk about this stuff! I'm not as smart as I used to be, but I try to write about this stuff in my journal when I have time, because it is so interesting. One importnat thing to keep in mind to, is that all of this totally depends on the person. I made a lot of generalizations. Also, these tend to be the beliefs of the older generation that linger in the younger generation, but thoughts here are becoming more and more Western. So the way the younger people tend to think seems often to be along these lines I described, but also more similar to Western thoughts than I probably made allowance for.

Love you all!

Sister Brown