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