this week

Dear Family,

I feel so thankful to be alive!
I have learned a lot, on my mission, about faith.
The mission life, as a lot of you old returned missionaries probably remember, is really tough sometimes. They push us to always seek high numbers of lessons taught each week, investigators, baptisms, etc. Sometimes they give us invites to do things that we think are insane, like invite every person to baptism that we teach. And sometimes we fear that all of it is a cruel organization that is trying to impose on our ability to be human.

I have my days when I still feel like that, I'll be honest. But I also have learned an incredible thing over the past year. That when we switch our mindset so we decide to love rather than resent the organizational aspects of the mission, incredible things happen. And we find that maybe it is more inspired than we think it is.

This week, for example, we were invited to invite people to get baptized in every lesson. I heard this and felt nervous, feeling obligated to be obedient but not sure how I was supposed to manage doing this without scaring a million investigators away. So I decided to really pray and study about it. And I decided I would at least have the desire in my heart in every lesson, and determine by the spirit whether or not it was right to bring up baptism.

What happened this week? I found myself thinking of ideas to explain baptism, analogies to use, words to say, that I have never thought of before, even though I have been in Taiwan almost a year. I also found my heart to be humble and oriented towards obedience, even though there were some lessons when I decided not to mention baptism. And we also had SIX investigators commit to get baptized, including the family I thought never would, and a woman who we had asked before and she said no. Not only that, but they all seem to really GET it. The woman said, "Of course I want to get baptized. I want that clean start that Christ can give me."

That was really a beautiful thing.
I have learned so, so much on my mission about the importance of having a full-of-faith, problem-solving attitude rather than a complaining one. Missions, and the church in general, really do give us tough standards sometimes that we want to resent at times. We sometimes really just want to fight back and say its not fair. But when we switch our attitude to one of love, and try to at least do our best, somehow things really do work out.

I really love God. Like really. Sometimes I remember all the doubts I had about the church before, regarding hard-to-handle issues like same sex marriage and polygamy, and in many ways I still have them. But the overwhelming reality of my soul is just that God is real and I love him so, so much. I can't do anything to deny him.

Love you all,

Sister Brown