xiexie nimen de zhaogu

Zao an!

My heart breaks with how much I love people, sometimes. You guys, and the people with me here, now. I wish I could just swallow all the pain I sense.
Being in tune with other people's suffering (which I am not always, but sometimes am) is obviously uncomfortable but also really freeing. It calls us out of our own caves of grief, into the foresty-jungle of trying to help others. It is an adventure with an unknown ending and sometimes you don't know if anything you're doing does any good, but there are large streams of light that hit you sometimes, between the trees.

Like seriously. I spend so much effort sometimes trying to make sure I am going to be successful at this and this and that, and then sometimes I do win--like for instance, I'll get a week with super high numbers, or I'll get praised by my mission president, or complimented in the way I wanted to be. And then afterwards I'm like, "Well, is that it?" And then there's other times when I want to eat the mango in the fridge but decide to cut it up instead for my companion to eat after she gets out of the shower. Or when I could count a new investigator for myself but decide to give it to the elders. Or when my old companion Sun Jiemei is so discouraged about her family; I don't know what to say sometimes, so I just sit by her side, rub her back, and reassure her that it's okay to be sad.

Really BEING there with her--even if I don't know what to do--brings a certain kind of hope in itself. It seems like most of the problems in the world come because we are living in our caves, always conniving how to secure our happiness, how to lock ourselves even further inside the mountain. But while that seems like a reasonable thing to do, when we get hurt in the jungle outside, it eventually leads to suffocation. If we at least try to venture beyond ourselves a little bit, risking vulnerability, we are at least allowing for the possibility of real happiness with others. I think all our small efforts to come out of our caves and really BE with someone do a lot more good than we think they do.

I have a new companion, again! It is Sister Huang. This is a picture of the two of us walking back from a meeting, yesterday. She is Taiwanese (YES!!! I love Taiwanese companions), but unlike Sun Jiemei she comes from a very supportive Mormon family and has a very outgoing, loud personality. We are always laughing. Sometimes it is really hard to focus during our planning or study times because she is such a talker. I love it. She eats a ton--literally twice as much as I do at any meal time. She will eat a huge plate of noodles for breakfast. And she has this really funny habit of stripping down to her garments every time we are in our apartment. She always does her studies just in her garments, and gets dressed right before we leave. It's really fun, how open she is. Most Taiwanese people, by the way, are totally not like that! They tend to be much more shy.

And the other picture is this morning, the sunrise, taken from a window in our apartment! So lovely.

So this week we have two investigators getting baptized. One of them is Weng Jiemei, who I want to tell you about. She is not one of the people who before my mission, I would have imagined myself baptizing. She is 29 years old, has no job and lives with her family. She is a very slow person, in her social skills, mannerisms, and ability to grasp things. It's hard to explain--if she were in the states she'd probably be diagnosed with a mild mental illness. Because of this, her family is really cruel to her. We have gone to visit her Mom a couple of times, and it's really crushing to see her Mom yell at her constantly. She will say that she's a failure because she's so slow, so stupid, and takes too long in the shower. (I told Weng Jiemei later that my brother Jeffrey understood well at least the last complaint, haha.)

Because of that, we have always felt so impressed while teaching her that we need to emphasize God's love for her while teaching. We have had such beautiful experiences in her lessons when she really, really feels it. Her eyes will start blinking really fast, like she is going to cry, and she will say in a firm voice that she doesn't use often, "I need this. I really need this hope in my life. I don't know, but I hope that God loves me. I really feel like you all love me, and it helps me to believe that he loves me, too." She was so incredibly nervous for her baptismal interview. But she was elated when she passed. I have never seen her so happy in my life.

There are other people I have taught and helped get baptized who are much more similar to me, who have much more of a gospel knowledge, who understand scriptures better, etc. But Weng Jiemei has such a special place in my heart.

I love you all so much! Hope you have a great week! Thanks so much for all your support.

Sister Brown

Dear Everyone,

I could tell you a million stories about what has happened in the past couple of weeks, with my companion and my area my soul. It has been some crazy stuff, too.  Probably all these stories would contradict each other, too. And I probably will never tell you most of these stories.

But I just want you to know, that I think God is found in that time you got so stressed and worked  up about this or that or that other thing, and then you think about them for a minute, and then you realize that actually--because God exists and I exist, too--that none of those things matter. The gift he wants to give us is that we can have a free, clean, loving heart any time we decide we want it enough. I think Christ wants to teach us that all things can be new, any time we want. Including ourselves.

I think I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. But probably not in the way you think. I feel perfectly capable of being cheerful in January. But I think I still have SAD because in June and July, when the sun comes out, I am SO, SO HAPPY! I can't contain it. Lately it has been insanely hot, and humid. We walk out of air conditioned buildings and it literally feels like walking into a sauna. The air pulls on your breath the same way. I love to throw out my arms and smile an say, "Oh, hen shufu!!" (So comfortable!) And then when we go inside an air-conditioned building, the sensation on my skin is literally like jumping into a cold pool. I am getting used to pretty much always being wet, with a thin layer of sweat.

Another really great think about life is all the biking I get to do in my new area. TuCheng is a big area that requires a lot of traveling on bike. It also has lots of bridges with beautiful views. Maybe next week I will send you a picture of the bridges we get to bike over. When I am up there, looking across at the city and the river area that runs between them, I feel almost guilty with how good my life is here. I also want to take a sentence to brag about how freaking buff my legs are right now. Okay, sentence over.

The other best thing about life right now is realizing how simple and pure I am allowed to be, right now. Sometimes I come at home at night and think back on my day and start doubting myself a little bit. Should I have done that differently, or that, or that? Am I bad person or an okay one? etc. And then I say a prayer, and I affirm that I really did just try to serve people that day, and recommit to do it again the next. And then that's it. Sometimes I pray really hard to do more meaningful service, and will sit there on my knees until I have a specific plan for something I can do for someone in the ward, or an investigator. Other times before bed I turn on Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings (thanks Brian!) and lie on the couch and close my eyes and think about nothing. I've never felt so capable, some nights, of emptying out all the toxic  fears and insecurities that usually stew inside me, and just appreciating the moment.It is really great.

That being said, the past couple weeks really have been crazy and I have had other nights where I feel spiritually numb and my desire to let go of hurt isn't big enough to jump to that state. Why is it that our hurts feel so holy to us, sometimes? I believe in the freedom God wants for us, but I also believe it is hard to get there. Just keep trying!

I love you all very much! Natalie, I am so excited for your baby! Thanks for all your support!

Diana

some nerdy stuff‏

Nihao!

So, this email I totally meant to send last week but it never sent! Here you go!

One of the pictures is from a few weeks ago, Sister Sun and I drinking papaya milk bought from a tiny drink shop next to a Miao. A Miao is a Buddhist temple like the one in the background, where people come and burn incense and say prayers to their ancestors. They also lay out fruit for their ancestors. Miaos are all over the place! Sometimes they are small, sometimes they are huge, but they are always beautiful and ornate, like this one.

The picture with the pillow is where I sleep. I am pretty much the luckiest person in the world, to get to wake up to that every day.

Today, in place of spilling my emotional vomit all over the place, I want to write a bit more about what I have learned from Taiwanese culture, particularly in terms of religion. I think you will find it very interesting, because things are so different from how they are in the states.

One of the most common things we here on a daily basis, when we start talking to people about religion, is "Dou yiyang!" (they are all the same!) If people's response to Mormonism in the states is that it isn't for them because it isn't real, (I.E. Joseph Smith was a fraud, the Book of Mormon is fiction, etc.), in Taiwan people's response is that it isn't for them because it is no different from anything else. People love harmony here, not distinctions and dichotomies like they do in Western parts of the world. They especially don't care as much about distinctions between truth and fiction, what is real and what is not. I have heard many times a saying about whatever we believe to be real IS reality to us. So the most common way we are rejected is by people just not understanding that we have something really good and new to give them; they see all religions as the same, because they teach people to do good and give people peace.

Another thing that is different is the basic concept of God. Most people we ask will say that they believe in God. One question I could probably follow up with, often is, "How many?" In America, the idea tends to be that there is one truth, one reality, one correct dialogue for the way things are (whether that is science or God or something else). But here, people often say things like, "Jesus is America's God; I have a different God from you." And they really mean it. They are intellectually content with totally different dialogues for reality co-existing.

Also, God is not necessarily viewed as the personal, loving, intimate God that I believe in. I have learned a lot of interesting things from the atheists we (surprisingly seldomly) run into. They are usually not like atheists in the states, who reason the existence of God to be improbably in some temporal, scientific way. The Wushenlunzhes (atheists) here explain it more that they are atheist because they don't NEED a God. They say things like, "Wo de shijian hai mei dao" (My time hasn't come yet)--meaning they don't feel a special need to connect with God at this time. Gods are typically viewed as beings possessing power in certain areas that you call upon when you have a need. Sometimes when we teach people prayer for the first time they do it in a way people may think is idol-istic. They will pray for certain blessings as if begging a cold, indifferent king to have mercy on them. Trying to explain God as a constant, accepting, loving friend-father is one of the most important things to establish, when we start meeting with people.

Religion is also extremely tied to tradition and family, here. One of the biggest problems people have as they start investigating the church is that they feel family pressure to go to Miaos with their family, and will feel they are betraying their families if they don't go. Most people we meet, particularly younger people, don't feel like ancestor worship has much meaning to them, which is often a trigger for investigating Christianity. But it is an obstacle nonetheless, because they feel such loyalty to their families. In America, there is a dialogue that always supports the individual, especially the individual's search for a sort of "authenticity". If a person changes religions from their family, there is a sort of dialogue that says the family needs to accept the individual. If the family is unaccepting, they are viewed as the bad guys. In Taiwan, it is more often the individual who changes who is viewed as the bad guy.

Religion is part of a tradition you are born into here, not something that necessarily drives you each day. For instance, many people we talk to each day will say, "Oh, but I am Buddhist, not Christian" or "I have a Christian friend, you can go talk to them!" In America, there already exists the assumption that missionaries will be trying to give you a sort of identity change. Here, many people are so tied to tradition they don't see it as something malleable. This isn't necessarily out of love for the identity their traditions give them; but just because traditions, identies, religious beliefs--these are things you do not change.

One of the interesting things, though, is that when a person really starts investigating the church and coming to know the God of Mormonism for themselves, the spiritual process is very similar to what is for the people in the states. All these differences I just mentioned are obstacles that prevent people from knowing God, much like certain philosophies popular in the United States prevent people from knowing God. People here just have different obstacles, but like all obstacles, they are overcomable with a humble heart that seeks access to God and a willingness to change. It is really beautiful to sit across the table with someone recently baptized, who grew up with completely different ideas about reality and God than I did, but who has had God answer their prayers in similar ways. And across the language and culture difference, you can look her in the eyes and you know you share a special understanding of something.

True religion, I really think, has less to do with your dialogue for it and more to do with that sincere love for goodness in your heart. But dialogues are also necessary to help us get there. I don't believe the Mormon dialogue for God to be seamless--especially the unique, personal dialogues we all individually live by that are skewed with our own fears and hurts--but it is a dialogue that helps us develop a relationship with God leading to the freedom of heart and love that he wants to give us.

Wow, I wish I had all day to talk about this stuff! I'm not as smart as I used to be, but I try to write about this stuff in my journal when I have time, because it is so interesting. One importnat thing to keep in mind to, is that all of this totally depends on the person. I made a lot of generalizations. Also, these tend to be the beliefs of the older generation that linger in the younger generation, but thoughts here are becoming more and more Western. So the way the younger people tend to think seems often to be along these lines I described, but also more similar to Western thoughts than I probably made allowance for.

Love you all!

Sister Brown

Zao an! (Good morning!)

Good morning!

This week was full of lots of missionary success and lots of painful companionship things.

My new companion is a bumbly, painfully-insecure girl from Washington who has been on Island for three months. She is always chattering out loud the thoughts in her head. When she is in a good mood, her words hop around us like butterflies. Unfortunately, more often than not, it seems she prefers to spit out bats. Negativity is a huge problem. She also has an incredible ability to transform the butterflies I try to speak into bats, taking offense really easily. I think she should go to Hogwarts. Another problem was that after having such an awesome, happy time with Sun Jiemei all the time, I have been  bit resentful of this experience and not as ready to jump in and solve problems as I should have been.  It has honestly been a really hard week, in this regard. But it is extremely humbling and helps me gain a lot of emotional/spiritual wisdom. And every time I have challenges like this, I always think, "This is an opportunity to prove to myself again that God is real, that the atonement is real." And I get to work trying to love and work slowly through the challenges as they come up each day. If I really believe any of this is true, then I need to believe that loving her is possible, that she is worth all the struggle every day.

Just about the truest thing in the world is that if a person has a hard time loving you, it is because somewhere deep down they don't love themselves enough.

I want to tell you quickly about a miracle that happened last night, between us.
I had been kind of depressed all day, because of lots of things that there isn't time to repeat. It was tough; my mind felt so clouded with my own hurts that I couldn't be the loving, enthusiastic, sensitive person I wanted to be towards others. At the end of the night, I decided I needed to talk about it with my companion. So we started to talk about it. I told her how I felt, and she got super defensive. We talked and talked, and got nowhere. I was kneeling on the floor and she was sitting on her bed scowling at me and I was seriously about to give up, just get ready for bed and keep despairing that our problems were unresolvable. Then I thought in God's direction, and I felt him tell me, "You need to love her, not reason with her."

So all of a sudden my approach changed. I smiled, genuinely, for maybe the first time all day. And even though it kind of felt like pulling teeth, I started to compliment her, and thank her, for the things she had done to accomodate me that week. I told her the way she had responded to those  situations could be a pattern for how we could solve problems together in the future, and that I was really very grateful to her. Her anger melted SO FAST, it was incredible! Within a few minutes, we were laughing together and things felt more free than I ever could have imagined they would be, just an hour earlier.

I should probably be writing about investigators and baptisms and lessons and the things we do each day. But honestly, these experiences in my heart are the crux of the gospel for me. I really do believe in God's ability to change my heart. I went to bed with a heart so full of thanks. Love is real, and it's there for us when we decide that we want it.


Love you all!

Sister Brown

swallow stuff and don't worry about where it goes‏

Dear Family and friends, 

Thanks so much for your kind letters and support! I really am sorry for being so whiney last week. I know you all have a lot on your plate, too. 

This week I was moved out of my beloved city of YongHe into TuCheng, another suburb of TaiPei. I was sort of wistfully thinking of moving to the countryside where you see wildlife and the green jungle, but it seems like I am destined to be a city girl. My new apartment is probably the nicest place I have ever lived. It is an eleventh-floor apartment with lots of windows, overlooking the city. The window next to my bed is level with my pillow, and every morning the first thing I do is lift the shade and watch the sun rise over the quiet towers and still-sleepy streets. At night I lift it and look out at the million blinking, moving lights of cars and scooters and apartment windows. Next week I will send pictures. 

I am loving it here and I feel a freshness and energy that seemed to be waning under the weight of responsibility, in my old area. At the same time, I miss my old area and my old companion so much in hurts. I didn't ever know, before my mission, what it meant when you switched areas. It is kind of like breaking up with someone you really cared about. Or having someone you love move far away from you. And you remember all the good and the bad times you had together-- all those mornings of lifting my heavy head from my pillow or lifting my heavy heart to God, and swallowing the hurts and letting them just be swallowed forever, resolving not to puke them up. All of the hard times are coated in a blissful haze of nostalgia, because I gave my whole heart to that place. I think moving to a new area helped me see what it will be like to move from Taiwan altogether, in about seven months. The experiences that fill every day are so so precious to me. 

I had a small riff with another missionary last week, which made me reflect a lot on who I was in YongHe and whether I did a good job. His thoughts on how I handled things didn't completely jive with my own, and I felt so burdened with regrets and wondering if he was right--maybe the story I had been telling myself about my life was wrong, and his story was right. I was praying so hard and despairingly over this one night, to know whether I had been a good missionary or a bad one, whether I should carry these regrets or let them go. And all of a sudden I reached this point where my pride collapsed, and I said, "Okay God, I can't do this anymore. I can't stay in control. Just take me where you want me to be and I will do it the way you want me to do it. I will give everything." The spirit washed over me and something clicked in my soul about how the past and all our silly dialogues for it really don't matter. The point of the atonement is that all of that can be washed away if we will it; all we need to do is grasp the moment we have and decide to bear it with love. Let all our resentments and fears go, and determine to let the love of God and our love for him guide our days.

Sometimes we talk about progression in the gospel as if we really are supposed to progress from one basket of charity to ten baskets, one bottle of patience to three bottles. Up ladders, up elevators, climbing our way to heaven. But I think real progression is just towards that inward state of realizing that we are way too crippled to climb that ladder. Our experiences are of course to try to teach us how to better handle problems and how to be a better, more pure person, but beneath all the stuff that really happens, the most important thing is just to realize that we need the savior's mercy. 

I love you all a lot! Seriously. And life is so good. Look at all the beautiful places and people around you. I think when we leave this life it will be a lot like me leaving YongHe, and we will just see it all with nostalgia. We will be so proud of all we gave. 

Have a great week!

Sister Brown

Turning my head‏

Hey, 

 Rachel and Chai, happy birthday! Where is everyone? So many of you who I haven't heard from in so long. Jeffrey, your letter was so interesting, about Chile's history with the church! I think things have definitely, thankfully improved. That's also really cool that you get to be companions with Ron Weasley! Thanks for sending the picture. 

This week Sun Jiemei and I saw a lot of joy and a lot of suffering. 

On Wednesday we sat in a member's house and just held her hand and rubbed her back while she cried and cried. Her Dog recently died, her daughter and her have a very strained relationship, and her husband works in mainland China. She is about 60 years old, joined the church in her 20's, and I think is experiencing an incredible loneliness and confusion about why lifelong membership in the church does not necessarily the care-free life we are all longing for. 

I thought a lot about that question this week. Why should we have faith when there is still so much suffering ahead of us? 

I think, because faith is a reward in itself. The reward we are really looking for. It makes us able to live a freer, truer existence, and after we realize that it does, ever so slowly, bring progress into our lives. 

I had a lot of happy moments this week. But there was one night this week when I was so sad. We had just met at a member's house for dinner. The woman had gone all-out. Her house was immaculately clean and decorated. She had champagne glasses laid out to sip out lemon water, and several different courses, the healthiness and required preparation of which she kept wanting to discuss. She was so simultaneously brimming with delight that her little party had arrived and also insecurity. I could tell she really wanted to be some sort of magazine house wife, and it made me really depressed. It also made me uncomfortable--I felt like I couldn't talk as easily and be myself around her like I wanted to. 

We were biking to a lesson, after this visit, and I thought about this and other things and just felt so, so sad. As I pedaled on I just felt like crying. And while at first my sadness was directed towards this poor, insecure ward member, it turned into a selfish sort of sadness. A more hopeless one. I wanted to cave into myself, and close my mouth--not talk to anyone. At stoplights there were people on their scooters who I am usually eager and excited to talk to, but I just didn't want to. 

One of the interesting things about being on a mission is that the choice between a dead and a living existence is so clear. In my heart I uttered a prayer I have given countless times on my mission. Something like, "Heavenly father, this really hurts. What do I do?" And I felt this gentle, warm, but all the same hard-to-accept answer of, "Love. It is your choice." I knew that to really hang my head at the stop lights instead of turn it cheerfully towards the person on my side was to choose a sort of death. It was to say, "Okay world, you win. I don't want to be a part of you anymore." To let the pain roll off of me, however, and to turn my head in spite of my grief, was to say, "World, it hurts, but you are still worth it." Turning my head was so hard to do, but I knew it was the better choice. I would keep on existing anyway, whether I chose to live in the cave of my disappointments and confusion, or whether I chose to live in the world with others I am trying to love. I want to always choose the better type of existence, and the existence that involves others. 

Faith and love give us the ability to swallow pain that would otherwise swallow us. Christ's atonement is the source I go to for inspiration and strength, when I realize my own amount of faith or love is insufficient. 

But faith is not just a way of avoiding pain. I really believe that faith betters and beautifies, as well. It produces results that are real in the world. For example, after I decided to turn my head at the stoplights and start talking to people, some wonderful things happened. One of the first people I talked to was a man who had absolutely no interest in the gospel, but so clearly had compassion on me. He kept saying, "You need to be careful biking out here on the streets. Good luck!"  (How true it is that sometimes when we finally just decide to LIVE, we receive some tender mercies and it becomes easier than we thought it would be.) And when we finally got to our lesson, I was able to laugh and smile and give genuine affection for the people we were meeting with. That impact on them was real, and it wouldn't have existed without the choice to love, to have faith and hope in the world around me. 

There is a lot people could criticize about missionary work, and yet the moments of really being able to help a person are innumerable and so precious. This week we were eating dinner with one of our recent converts, who is lesbian. She seemed like something was on her mind. As we chatted, our conversation grew deeper, and she came out to us that sometimes she has a problem with looking at pornography. I was filled with so much compassion for her, as I saw her frowning, self-disappointed face. I asked how she felt about it. At first she was a little self-defensive and started saying, "I only look occasionally, and it's mainly just because I'm curious."  We didn't really say much, but let her keep talking. After a while she admitted, "I do feel... uncomfortable about it. It seems like after my baptism I shouldn't be doing that." We talked to her about how sometimes those feelings that something is wrong are hard to trust but will lead us to make better choices. She confessed that she really does want to stop. We built her up, told her we were confident she could do it. We talked about the tactics she used to quit smoking, which she has done successfully, and that really boosted her confidence in her ability to quit looking at pornography. After dinner, she seemed so much more happy, and light. She kept saying, "Thank you, thank you so much for talking to me about this. I feel like a huge burden has been lifted." She left but twenty minutes later came back with drinks she had bought for us, in gratitude. 

These experiences wouldn't happen without those inner-heart decisions to love and to have faith. Living a life of faith is not a guarantee that everything will be good and beautiful, or that the outward circumstances of our lives will be magazine-worthy. But really, every time I make that terrifically difficult decision to swallow my pain and to keep going, little things are made better. No one can take away my testimony of that--I have seen it far too many times on my mission! 

And I think an example of that is just that... In general, I am really, really happy out here. Sometimes it is lonely, I will be honest, in regards to you all. I really miss all of you. I'm sorry my emails are so long and boring and poorly-written. I think Chinese really has taken a toll on my writing skills. Do any of you even read these or would my time be better spent writing personal emails? The experiences I have out here are so big. I totally get what Bill said, about how he can't write to you a fraction of what really happens. It is lonely to want to communicate with you all but not know if I adequately can or if you even want to communicate with me. It is something that sometimes makes me want to cave in on myself. 

But the thing is.. As soon as I leave our little internet cafe, Sun Jiemei and I hop on our bikes and pedal in the hot morning air back to our little apartment, and I don't forget--but I let go. I focus on her. She is one of the best friends I have ever had in my entire life. I focus on God. He is THE best friend I have ever had. The most faithful, the most willing to forgive. I focus on this limited time I have here in Taiwan. And there are hard things, but there are also so, so many happy beautiful things! I feel lucky to say I feel lucky to be here. 

I love you all so much! 

Diana

Stories you may have never heard before

It's ironic that last week I talked about my communication struggles with my companion. Maybe what is needed is just patience and time. We had a lot of those incredible, soul-bursting talks that I wish I could live inside forever. 

I never thought I could love a companion as much as I love Sun Jiemei. I wish I could grab all the things she says and just splash them to the world. I can't, but today I want to try. 

She is a demographic anomally, so I find myself totally intellectually interested in her perspective. Last week for P-Day we went to eat at a pricey Curry House, (about 7 US dollars for our meal). The room was bordered with several fish tanks, had a swamp cooler blowing at us from the ceiling, and had this humid, salty taste in the air that she said reminded her of trips she took in her childhood to Indonesia, where her Mom grew up. People are so poor, she says,  and so incredibly HAPPY.  She has memories of sitting with about a dozen of her cousins in a tiny room, all crowded around a tiny television as if it was the best thing in the world. She told me stories about the old, crippled lady who lived in their neighborhood who all the children and teenagers alike would go and visit, on a daily basis. As she talked, we ate yellow coconut rice and I watched the fish in the fish tanks, and I had this strong desire to leave the boxes of clothes and the facebook comments and my pretentious potential for a college degree waiting for me in America and just join the people she was talking about. Are we really so smart, do we think? Maybe happiness is something much more simple than we think it is. 

Sun Jiemei  has lived a very silent life. She told me that in all her relations with people, including her parents, her role has always been to listen, not to talk. She has never felt like she could trust people, or like they would want to hear what she had to say. Her parents, she said, never seemed to care much about her thoughts. 

I asked her about her companion in the MTC, because with me Sun Jiemei is actually quite talkative. That was when she told me about how she often feared her MTC companion was too judgemental, so she didn't trust her much. She talked about how even though she believes in the church, she knows that a lot of things are really complicated. Some of the first people who reached out to her and welcomed her to church are less active now. She knows that the gospel blesses families and that in her reality, it has more driven a wedge between her and her parents. She has faith in God, and yet she fears that if she expresses these thoughts to some people they will judge her to be a bad church member. (I think a lot of us can relate to this feeling!)

She told me about how she has also always been terrified of reading out loud. Her reading of Chinese characters was never strong--she is pretty sure she had a learning disability all growing up--but reading the Book of Mormon magically changed that, and she is able to read competently, smoothly now. 

She told me stories about all the missionaries that influenced her on her four-year path to baptism. One of the most touching stories was of an elder who she said was tall, always had a blank expression on his face, and who she said affectionately over and over again was a total idiot. His Chinese was terrible, and his sense of humor really childish. He loved to say to Taiwanese people, "Do you pick your nose?" in English and laugh at their confused expressions. I  can just imagine how immature he probably was, and probably depressed to be on  a mission, and probably terribly irritating to his companions, but Sun Jiemei said that it was because of all of this that he had an especially profound impact on her--he noticed the simple things. One day at church he asked her, "Do you have money to get to church?" And this girl, my companion, who had been saving money and pinching on meals to have money for the bus fare to this church that her parents would forbid her to go to if they knew, found that simple question exactly what she needed to hear, to know that God loved her. 

We didn't get to bed until 12 last night because we were talking about all of this, and other things--like her love of recycling and her favorite elements on the period table to elements. (She is really such a nerd, I love it!) But one of the last things she told me was, "Thank you for listening to me talk." She said she has never told anyone as much as she has told me, And I wish I could explain to you all how my heart bursts at the thought of this. 

I only have a week and a half left until our two transfers together are up, and most likely one of us will be moving. It hurts so much to think about. 

At the same time, when I pray about my love and admiration for my companion and my reluctance to have a new one, I get this feeling that I should have this type of curiosity and acceptance about EVERYONE in my life. Whether I have grown up with them at my side or whether I just met them, whether their demographic and background characteristics are identical to mine or totally foreign. I think I am totally a respecter o persons, sometimes. I think 

I want to love everyone in my life as I love Sun Jiemei. I hope we all can do that. 

Love you all! 

Sister Brown