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!