Dear whoever reads these,

Next week I won't be writing until Wednesday because we are going to the temple next week. Also, this week are transfers. I will be separated from Sister Du (*sad face*) and I will be moving to a new area. President Day pulled me into his office when I was at the mission home last week and had a talk to me. My life is going to change a lot next transfer. But you'll have to wait till next week to find out why.

I feel at a blank as of what to write right now. I don't remember what any of you think is important or like to hear about. If any of you have things you WANT to know, ask and I will try to answer next week.

If I had to sum up everything I have learned so far on my mission into one sentence, I would probably say this: Everyone needs a savior. On my mission, I have given so much of my heart and energy to working, to loving people in the ways I know how. But then there are times like this past weekend when I sort of crash and see how maybe I should have expressed love differently than I did, maybe I was emphasizing the wrong thing all along. Specifically, I have always struggled trying to balance having a strong work ethic with being patient with companions who don't. I have just tried to deal with this every day--every hour figure out when it is right to push or relax, when it's right to talk about investigators and when it's right to talk about boys, when it's right to take time to laugh with my companion as we're on the bus and when it's right to talk to the person sitting next to us--but even with this approach, I make many mistakes. Sometimes I feel so overcome with regrets about how I handled things, about pain I have been blind to. But I know that going forward in the other direction will lead me to be blind to other types of pain. I feel sure we should seek balance more than extremity in one virtue.

Anyway, I have learned about myself that I am always, always going to have blind spots. At the end of the day I just feel so thankful to have a savior who can forgive me, for all of it. I really never, ever wanted to hurt anyone.

That is sort of depressing. But I also want to say that I have learned so many beautiful things about how good life can be and how many people we can help and how many problems we can solve if we will just ask ourselves what is right and then try to do whatever we think is best. I think most of the time we think we are living lives according to our consciences, but we live rather passively. We don't actually ask ourselves that often what the right thing do about this or that is. I don't think nearly as much as I should. Sometimes answers are so obvious when I just take time to think about it clearly.

I forgot what I was going to say.

Oh yeah. So like in 2 Nephi 32:9, it talks about how we should pray before we do things and God will consecrate what we do. I take that to mean that even though I have lots of blind spots and sometimes the right way to do things is really unclear, if I do everything with a prayer in my heart and try to live by actively (rather than passively) doing what I think is right, he will make whatever I choose the right thing. Following the spirit is not so much about doing what was engraved in the heavens that you shoudl do as doing whatever you choose to do with a heart full of love, full of desire to be good. I think that's what it means to be consecrated, to have a savior.

Love you!

Diana