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