Dear friends/family,

The highlight of this week was on Saturday, getting to go to the coast for a stake activity!  I got special permission to attend because my ward invited me to play violin. Yay!

In the morning we went to a beach and had a baptismal service in the ocean! It looked just like a movie--stunningly white clothes in blue water with a backgound of green cliffs and a foreground of dozens of admiring people standing on the sand. After the service, we all cleaned up the beach as a service activity. Everyone pulled on white and yellow vests, grabbed trash bags, and picked up litter that people had left or that had washed up on the shore. The first picture is Sister Du and me with some of our friends in the ward.

The second picture is from the afternoon, when we went to a park to eat lunch and have a mini concert. I felt like I was in paradise the whole time! It was so lovely, quiet, and peaceful feeling. The mini concert was just me playing several pieces, and this old guy and his wife from another ward,  who performed Classical Chinese music with a Chinese harp. I am always so thankful to Taiwanese audiences who think I play really well even though I don't play near as well as the average BYU music major.

Anyway, that day was wonderful!

I think Jeffrey and I had similar themes in our missionary work, lately. This week, I found myself over and over in a sort of counselor situation, sitting next to crying middle-aged women, trying to summon something from my 22 years of life experience and pretentious hopes for the world that seemed appropriate to say to them. Mainly I learned to just listen and ask careful questions.

On Friday night, we sat in a dimly-lit Thai restaurant with a ward member, Sister Wang. She barely picked at her plate of rice and her big brown eyes filled with tears as she told talked on and on about how hard it has been lately to keep faith. Her work--selling eyeglasses--requires her to always think of money, and her own needs, and it all just feels so empty. On Saturday morning, I sat on the beach with a non-member woman who had been invited. She sullenly watched the waves as she told me about the noodle restaurant she and her husband run.  with her husband run. They work all day every day, with only two days off a month, and also have to take care of their daughter. She embarrassedly started crying as she told me how tired she was, and how she wants to be a daughter again, not a mom. On Sunday night, we visited an investigator, Sister Zeng, whose husband lately had bad things happen at his work and has been taking it out with a temper on his family. We watched the side of her face as she read the card I had written for her. (I can lots of stuff in Chinese, now!) It really touched her; she started crying and reached out to grab my hand.

That was a depressing paragraph.
But actually, all these experiences, I think, were positive ones. I felt like I was doing good in the world, by being at these women's side. Most of the time I didn't know what to say, and didn't feel like I had any credibility to say anything about their pain--I have never been in their shoes. But I really listened and cared about them. I thought about what God would want them to know, what pieces of the whole picture they were forgetting about. I found little things to say here and there that seemed to come from the bottom of the universe, not just the bottom of my own little heart. All of them left feeling better than they had before; and I think mainly that was because they had someone to talk to them, to sit at their side, to express concern.

Sometimes helping people is so much simpler than we think it is. I used to think I needed to help solve people's problems, in moments like this.  But problems are so complicated; they take weeks or years to unravel, and then there are new ones. Now I am trying to be better at just listening and loving people in their weakness, the way God loves me in mine. I try not to emotionally demand for the problem to get better immediately.

The other thing I learned, is that as hard as it is to have faith, there isn't any other real option. In all of these conversations there was talk of "giving up"--but we all were able to see that giving up doesn't take you anywhere. Having hope for things to get better allows us to continue to live, find enjoyment in things, and honestly, bravely work at problems when they come up. Giving up just kills any desire to do this--and is that really a desirable life?

Sorry for writing so much. Life is great! Mom, could you find out when I am able to register for classes? Also, you might have to register for me!
Love you all! Have a great week!

Diana

Happy Mid Autumn Festival!

It was exactly this time a year ago that I first came on island, and got to witness Taiwan celebrating "ZhongQiu Jie" (Mid-autumn festival). The families huddled around their barbecues, laughing, talking, biting at shrimp and mushrooms from skewers, were all the same. But now I can understand what they're all talking about. Also, now I enjoy eating the moon cakes and green lumpy fruits called youzi, that people give to their family and friends during this holiday. Last year I thought moon cakes were tasteless. Now I love them--especially taro flavored ones!

Hope you enjoy these pictures! They can give you a feel of what people's houses are generally like--very cluttered and colorful. Taiwan packs a lot of people and a lot of stuff into small places. The first picture is just of a pretty-painted house I saw this week while walking around contacting. The second picture is of me, (yes, I did totally forget to wear my nametag that day), and the Liao family in their house. They are a less active family that can't come to church because the daughter is handicapped and can't move her legs. It is fitting that Liao Jiemei, the Mom,  isn't looking at the camera. She is an adult, but painfully shy. Usually she just giggles and smiles at her feet when we talk to her--but if we get her to start talking about her childhood in Indonesia, she will start talking to her feet about the yellow rice she would cook and how slow the pace of life was, and go on and on. Our lessons with them usually include just a short spiritual thought and then some sort of game we make up to get Liao Jiemei to talk about Indonesia.

When I think about the phrase, "The first shall be last and the last shall be first", I think about people like the Liao family. They are so simple, down to earth, and forgotten by the world in many ways. And then there's me, smiling confidently at the camera as if there isn't a doubt in me at all that later people will want to look at my picture and think I am cool. What makes me feel like I am so important?

One of the things I have learned on a mission is that there is no such thing as a bad missionary. Sometimes people's success is judged by their numbers, by their ability to be bold and energetic in the work, etc. But here's what I see in real life: The bold, energetic, no-fear missionaries do have a lot of success. It's true. But sometimes it seems the people who have the easiest time being bold are those who are most convinced of their self-importance and just seem to automatically assume that people should want to listen to them. There is certainly a beauty in this way; we Americans grow up assuming we have talents and are encouraged to share them, expand on them, and enjoy them. But then  I compare that type of missionary to people like Sun Jiemei, that extremely humble, shy companion who I trained. She is in some ways really limited in the work she is able to get done because she has such a hard time getting over her fears of talking to people. And yet there is a lovely, delicate kind of sincerity to everything she does. When she talks to people--she knows with all the fluttery feelings in her stomach and her shaking legs that she is talking to another human being! It terrifies her. And I think there is something beautiful and true about how nervous she gets to talk to people, that us more-arrogant Americans could really learn from.

I don't think there is a right or a wrong way, necessarily. I think there is a beauty in both.
On my mission I have really learned that everyone has a place. Every companion I have had does things so differently! People don't come in categories of good or bad. Their worth and their contributions to the world can not be answered with yes's or no's, or even on scales of one to ten. Each person's influence on the world is a different color, a different shape, a different melody. I think we are all infinitely valuable because each of us has such a unique awarness of the world that no one else can imitate, steal, or make unreal. Sometimes these awarnesses are different in huge ways, like growing up in Taiwan or America. And sometimes the differences are so small, like the taste of garlic on our tongues.  To kill, neglect, or deem stupid any human being is to press mute on a song you have never heard and will never hear again.

Have a good week!

Sister Brown

Hello everyone!

I hope this week went really great for you all! And for some reason I almost spelled great totally wrong. I didn't think this was possible, but if you haven't been able to tell--my english really, truly has digressed. I don't really speak English much, anymore. I just write english, to you and in my journal. It makes me feel much more unarticulate and awkward when I write emails, but that's just how it is! Thanks for your patience. And also, seriously, thanks if you really do read my emails. I know they are long, but it's all I have to communicate this life with you all. There is so much to say.

Sister Du and I! We are the cutest! I can't express how much I love her, how thankful I am to be her companion. The first picture of us is from an outdoor zone conference we had this week. We got to go hiking with a bunch of other missionaries, and stopped several places along the trail to have a training.

The other picture is of us in an elevator of a rest home, about to visit a very special girl named YaFei. She just turned 25 on Thursday, but she lives in a rest home with old people because she can't move her legs. She used to be an investigator, so she has had all the missionary lessons, and still really loves reading the Book of Mormon, but because she is kind of... well, crazy, she isn't able to get baptized. I feel really bad for her; I think her loneliness has led her to develop some really terribly mainpulative social habits. Sister Du and I visit her almost every week, partially because it is a service opportunity (we know how much it means to her just to have someone talk to her), and partially because we are coerced. Like seriously, every time we leave she pulls out her planner to schedule another time. If we are unsure of when we can come, she starts telling us that we don't care about her and that we are going to forget about her just like this person, this person, and this other person in her life. So we go back week after week.

Every time we go to visit Yafei, we have to wear the surgical masks, (which people always wear here if they are sick or concerned about air pollution). Then we sit down at a table with Yafei; she wheels her wheelchair over to us. We sing a hymn, say a prayer, and she starts preaching to us about whatever she feels passionate about that week--usually about the Word of Wisdom. I don't know why she has a special love for that topic, but she does! She recommits us to keep it every single week! I am always shaking silently, trying not to laugh behind my mask. This week was her birthday, and we have been being commanded every week to visit her on her birthday and bring not only a card, but cake as well--ever since June. In her birthday card, I wrote that I was really thankful for her teaching me about the Word of Wisdom and that it had totally changed my life. She read the card out loud, and she was delighted! Then she pulled out the Word of Wisdom pamphlet, put on her best baptist-preacher impression, and taught us once more that we really ought to quit smoking. It was great.

But thankfully, most people we teach are not like that.

I have been feeling really, really humbled lately. It's hard to explain why.

I've been studying the Pearl of Great Price lately, and every day it blows my mind. It's been about two weeks now, and I still am not past the Book of Moses. Here is something I have been learning lately that has helped me a lot:

while I was reading, I was just thinking a lot about what makes God, God. I thought about the significance of him giving man their agency--him giving humans the capacity to do things he could not control. I think to be a God means to be able to create/oversee/deal with things we can't control but to love them anyway. And that is what gives him ultimate control, because such a perfect love is something that won't die when we disappoint him, and will eventually overcome all things. It's a kind of control that doesn't come for the thrill of having power or security; it is not sought after for itself, and is certainly not for God's personal benefit. The kind of control/power God has is a natural side-effect of his perfect love, and ironically can only come to us when we admit, accept, and continue forward in the midst of what we cannot control. It comes when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in the face of another's agency. God is so powerful because he is so okay with vulnerability; he chooses to have this love for us that is never swayed.

And I thought about how so often we try to make others into objects we can control; like we talk about them as slaves, or women, or enemies, or dumb blondes, or less actives, or some other sort of category like that. Other times we use these categories to blame them, to insist that they really should be acting another way than they are. But these are all deceptions; they delude ourselves into thinking they are nothing more than what we say they are, when in reality they are infinitely more. And we also really try hard to control other people's impressions of us, to make them love us by acting in accordance with whatever categories they place us in.

I think I could do so much more good if I could just grasp the secret of seeking the control that comes from love/vulnerability. I want to love and be loved, but if I try to secure love for myself by trying to control others, I'll never get it. I want to choose to let love come, not make it.

Sorry that probalby made no sense. I love you all  a lot!

Diana

Dajia Hao,

This week it hit me that I only have FOUR MONTHS left in Taiwan! I felt like someone punched me, as I thought about that. I had been riding through strip of the MRT (metro), looking out the window at the rows and rows of apartment buildings, advertisements strapped to their sides, shops at their feet, colored roofs and bird-cage windows, and the sweetness of this lovely, simple life overwhelmed me. It feels so wrong to ever have to leave it.

I know I will need to decide to love life in Utah as much as I have had to decide to love here. But just know I am genuinely enjoying life--especially lately. And that sometimes things we need to choose to love at the beginning can turn into the things we feel absolutely sick about parting with.

I don't think I ever had to choose to love Taiwan. From the day I set foot on island, I have been enamored by the culture, food and people--rice with every meal, people's openness about pointing out your weight or acne changes, Buddhist shrines, women's insistence that cold drinks are bad for your uterus, cluttered houses, on and on and on...

But I have had to grow and decide to love missionary work. There has always been a desire to do it, a sense of its importance, but there are times when thinking about others so much or talking to strangers has been difficult, and not the joy it is now. And don't get me wrong--I still have to CHOOSE to let it be a joy, every day. But it really has come to be just that--joyful--to me.

I think contacting strangers on the street is so fun and interesting. I used to worry about what I was supposed to say that could get them to show interest, or to lesson the sting of rejection, but now I think about things really differently. If they don't have interest, just smile and let them show you care about them anyway, and talk to someone else! It's not a big deal!

You never, ever know what you are going to encounter. Last Friday, Du Jiemei and I were eating Hong Dou Bing for dinner (a sort of cake with mushy stuff of various flavors inside--read bean, cream, taro, cabbage, peanut, black sesame, on and on...) We were going to buy them from this guy who only had one arm and was selling them on the street, but he refused to take our money. We questioned him why, and he pulled a bible from off of his cart. In America that would probably be some sort of threat against us, but in Taiwan that was his way of saying, "I'm Christian, too! I approve of missionaries!" So we gave him a Book of Mormon in payment. Then he told us that he wanted to go home and see his daughter and that if we didn't help him eat the rest of the Hong Dou Bing he had in his cart, he would throw it all away. So he filled up more paper bags full of them and gave them to us for free! This is a picture of Du Jie mei and I enjoying them together! (By the way, Hong Dou Bing is one of my absolute favorite things to eat here!)

Another thing I love about missionary work is just teaching! As my chinese has progressed, I've realized that lessons are just really great conversations with people about stuff that matters. I absolutely love teaching, if I am in a good mood, have the spirit with me, and am willing to really dive into the conversation.

And other times, teaching is just hilarious. A few weeks ago, Du Jiemei and I were having a lesson with one of our recent converts (who is a little slow),  who admitted that lately she hasn't been coming to church very much because she is really constipated.  She worries people will laugh at her if she has to go to the bathroom and takes too long. We told her compassionately that there are three stalls in the chapel restroom, and we of course would not judge her for this issue. Then Du Jiemei went on to confess that when she was in high school, sometimes she would spend up to an hour and a half in the restroom because she woudl start reading Harry Potter and didn't want to stop. Our recent convert felt very comforted that Du Jiemei could understand her experience.

Probably the most joyful thing about missionary work is just knowing people. I have come to love people more than I ever thought possible. That girl has changed my life. I don't know how it is that I--a spoiled Mormon girl from Ogden Utah--was able to become best friends with a Chinese-speaking, painfully shy, Muslim convert to Mormonism who grew up on a Mango farm in Southern Taiwan with parents who have never written her once on her mission--but somehow we are best friends. We stayed up really late that night, just talking and talking.  She told me she thinks I am her "Qiansheng de Pengyou" (Her friend from the premortal life). And I responded that of course I am--not because I necessarily believe that is literally true, but because sometimes we need to say dramatic things like that because what else can express the meaning of the friendship we have together? One of the hardest things about leaving Taiwan will certainly be leaving her.

When I give my heart to God, things just go well.

I love you all so much! Keep up all the hard work!

Diana

zhege libai de qifa‏

Hello everyone!

Thanks so much to everyone who was just emailing me! I love you all so much and miss you and find so much joy from knowing you! Happy Birthday to Chris and Tanner!!

Sometimes I am completely awed by the way I can find answers to tough intellectual/spiritual blockades through simple prayer and scripture study. I used to struggle so much with a lot of philosophical difficulties I had towards the existence of God, organized religion, and sometimes the Mormon church specifically. I still have a lot of questions that come and go, but I have found that if I take seriously the promise of finding answers and guidance in the scriptures and from the Holy Ghost, answers really do come. Usually they come by showing me the error of how I'm perceiving things from my heart, which leads me to some change--a decision to be more open to something, or to admit that this thing is more important than that thing, or to see that my thoughts are too extreme in some aspect. And somehow such a tiny decision in my heart can change my world from darkness to light. Or maybe a less arrogant way of saying it would be that my world becomes several shades lighter than it was before.

This week I feel I slipped into some bad, old habits of thinking. Things have been going really well in the work, lately. Du Jiemei and I have been having a lot of success with finding and teaching people, and we also get along really well. I think this week I started feeling more prideful and self-satisfied than I should have, which doesn't feel so bad until it starts making me feel entitled. So then when the little annoyances come up that I would usually stoop to solve in a humble way--like laughing when Du Jiemei tells me my garments show when I'm biking, instead of getting annoyed, or trying to help an investigator understand in another way instead of wasting time feeling hurt that they don't appreciate my well-thought-out metaphors. So yeah, I start to get entitled and when I keep being demanded by my environment do work work work, I just get tired and things feel doing chores. It's not a physical tiredness, but a spiritual tiredness, a wanting to stop the relentless kicking at the hulk of my weaknesses.

So anyway, last night I was feeling kind of like, "What is the point of all this? I'm supposed to get people to come towards Christ and learn to deny themselves the way he did so they can feel tired like I do?"  And that might not seem like a very important question to you, but it felt like a matter of the purpose of life to me.  I started praying about it, really opening up my heart to that dream and memory and hope of the loving God I believe in. And then things sort of clicked. I was reminded of some scriptures I love, some ideas of books and philosophers I used to read, and I was reminded of my own previous experiences that have taught me this: that we don't deny ourselves and devote ourselves to serving others the way Christ did because our selves are bad, we do it because others are SO GOOD!  Really! Human souls are valuable things, and our greatest joy in life is found in that space somewhere between the two of us and we commune and communicate and love is expressed. I really believe all of religion is to teach us how to have the joy that comes from truly loving and being loved by other people.

And I realized, while saying this prayer, how the pride I had fostered in my heart this past week had led me to live in a world where the role of others was either that of serving and flattering me or blocking me from getting what I wanted. I wasn't living in a world that was really open to enjoying others as they are, independent of me. I was turning people into objects, not letting them be people. So obviously "serving" them would feel like a chore, not a blessing. Suddenly it became clear how I needed to change my heart, and once I decided to I felt this love and gratitude wash over me that suddenly made everything clear. I felt reconnected with my purpose. And suddenly the struggle to be humble, kind, forgiving, and loving wasn't such a struggle because I thought about how much I love Du Jiemei, Sun Jiemei, the Huang Family, Lu mama--all these people's faces ran through my mind. When I think of how I love them, I WANT to serve them. I WANT to reject the tendencies in me that would hurt them or would choose to see them as burdens or obstacles or anything other than precious people who deserve to be loved. Serving them is a joy! And that's the kind of life that I want to give people--one that can experience people as they are, and find joy in doing whatever I need to do (even hard things) to be able to do that.

Anyway,  I guess that was a really long way of saying that I really love prayer. And God. I think he is really smart, way smarter than me. I'm glad I have learned tools and patterns of thinking that allow me to learn from him.

I also think that even though we claim we see clearly who God is and what our purpose in life is, as if  they are pieces of food on a plate that we can talk about and serve to all the world,  these matters really are so delicate and indescribable.

Hope you all have a great week!

Sister Brown