my heart will go on....?‏

Hey Everyone,

For some reason, this internet cafe has an instrumental version of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" on repeat. Kind of weird, but I appreciate the reminder, as I going to be breaking up with Taiwan soon.

But life is still so good!
This week I received my last wonderful companion, Sister Chu! I don't know how I've gotten so lucky, but 5 out of the 8 companions I've had on island have been native Taiwanese. I feel I get along with them better than Americans, and I love speaking Chinese all the time, from the groggy early morning to lunch conversations to the happy after-planning talk. I don't know how I'm going to talk to any of you, when I get home. Chinese comes more naturally out of my mouth these days; I catch myself speaking it accidentally to the senior couples or new missionaries who totally don't understand it, and half to correct myself.

Here is a picture of Chu Jiemei and I sitting on my bed, in front of the Christmas tree Mom sent me, which I love so much!! Thank you! The other picture is of me and Vic, who I wrote about last week.

Chu Jiemei and I are always laughing. She is like a child. She says whatever comes out of her mouth, which is sometimes chattery gossip, and sometimes a random song. While she is in the shower she will sing two lines of one hymn and then randomly switch to humming "Happy Birthday' and then thirty seconds later start belting, "You Raise me up!!! so I can stand on mountains!!!" in her cute accent. I love it, it cracks me up, and I am always so curious at how her brain makes these connections.

Lately, in between teaching investigators and talking to strangers who meiyou kong (don't have time to talk), we have been doing a lot of training. This week we had new missionaries come in, and we did some training on dealing with stress in missionary life, and responding to pain the way Christ responded to pain when suffering the atonement. I drew a little diagram that I thought up during studies one day that depicted stress/pain as a heavy weight sitting on top of Christ, and drew another of the same weight sitting on top of the natural man. The Natural man feels it, and resents it, and in resentful response shoots sharp arrows at the world around him, including other people. But Christ is somehow able to bear the weight while still experiencing and sending out love towards the world around him, so I drew little hearts surrounding him. It was cute. Training is really fun; I love thinking of creative ways to teach, like games, or using art, or good discussion questions. We have to give a ton of different trainings, this next transfer.

A random list of things I love about life:

1. Dou Hua. A hot ginger soup with soft, sweet tofu in it. So incredibly SHUFU (comfortable, but that word really can't be adequately translated), Sister Chu and I love to eat it.
2. The Christmas Choir, which I am doing again this year! We start performing next Sunday
3. Chinese puns. Chinese characters lend themselves SO easily to puns, because so many different characters with different meanings are pronounced the same way. A bunch of missionaries in my district were sick last week so I drew them all cards with fun Chinese puns on them. Then I got sick a few days ago, with one of the worst colds I have ever made in my life. (I basically had a fever for three days, but except for one night I was still able to work.) So they made me a cute satirical card with puns and inside jokes on it. Stuff like that makes me so happy!
4. The love I can feel for random people who I just meet on the street, who don't care to talk to me and may even be rude sometimes but it doesn't matter. I still love them.
5. Being close to God. He really is there. Lately I have been stressed about going home and worrying that he won't be there the way he is now, but he has been finding all these ways through scriptures and the words of people around me or analogies I see every day in the movement of birds or water to teach me that he is always there, and always will be, with his arms stretched out still.

Love you all! Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you all have a great week and lots of bread to eat, since we descendants of John Tanner. And I hope it's not gutter bread.

Dai Jiemei