Merry Christmas!! How as Christmas for everyone? I hope it was wonderful and great!
Christmas here was great. On Christmas Eve we had a fireside by the MTC presidency that was really neat about spiritual gifts. They also did a really cool thing with the 12 days of Christmas in the MTC. It's dorky, but it went something like this:
12 hours of class
11 loads of laundry
10 new commandments
9 outbound calls (RC)
8 hours of rest
7 lukewarm showers
6:30 wake up
5 hours of gym!
4 chocolate milks
3 new companions
2 haircuts free
and a rock solid testimony
Maybe you'd have to be in the MTC and be easily amused to think that was funny, but it was way fun. Then Christmas morning me and my companion opened our gifts! Thank you so much for your presents!! I didn't get everything before Christmas, but it's all awesome!! Thank you!
After that we set up our little stockings for the Elders and they were way surprised. It worked out awesome. Then we had a "morningside" with Elder Perry and his family. He talked about Christ and the Nativity Story. It was so cool! After the morningside, he ate in the nasty cafeteria with us! It was so cool of him. I sat 7 seats away from him. Haha. We had the rest of the day to write home (which I did, but never mailed the letters, bah, sorry). Then we had a talent show which was pretty fun. My favorites were: a kid techno dancing to the Primary song, "I like to look for Rainbows", an Elder playing the Ukelele and singing rubber ducky and some Elders impersonating bagpipes. It was fun...unfortunately some Elders took advantage of the music coordinator's innocence because a couple Elders sang some songs from "Babylon" like "Wonderwall" and a song by Sublime with slightly changed lyrics.
We had another fireside by Greg Olsen that night which was actually pretty special. I love it when people talk about the Savior. I didn't feel THAT close to Him before I left, but I feel as I study the New Testament and the Book of Mormon that I just can't get enough of reading about Him. I feel like He's become way more of a reality than anything else in my life. I feel so much love for Him, and have such a crazy impatient desire to see Him again. It's really neat what the MTC does to your testimony.
So remember that lady Roberta that I spoke with over the phone in the RC? The one who asked who the Brother of Jared was? Well, I've been talking with her on the phone and been so scared of sharing the gospel for the first time FOR REAL. BUT, things have been so special with her. I really feel like my companion and I are in her life right now for a reason. She likes the Book of Mormon but is struggling with cancer and she's divorcing her abusive husband and is really having such a hard time. She shut down the missionaries when they came to her door because her husband gave her such a hard time for it. But her husband hasn't stopped a phone call. She sobbed while I was on the phone with her today and I could just tell her to pray and know that God loved her and everything would be okay. Even if she never accepts the gospel, I know this poor woman just needs someone to listen to her and make her feel special. It is a neat thing to be able to do, despite my fears of "blowing it".
My biggest challenge recently and above all in the MTC has been alot of self-doubt. I find myself feeling so weighed down about it. But at the same time, I am learning so much about myself and God. My Patriarchal Blessing says that I'll teach others about the true nature of God not being a person who "persecutes those who missteps but rather a loving father who weeps with us through our challenges and rejoices in our triumphs. He loves and lifts and encourages and fortifies His children." I've realized that any feeling beyond that is NOT OF GOD. When you feel like God doesn't love you because you're just too flawed, too imperfect, that is NOT GOD. If you feel down because you aren't good enough, that is NOT GOD. It's easier said than done to just change the way you think of yourself and the Lord, but I'm learning and growing and I know the Lord is building me to be the person I need to be. And He's helping me know who He really is. So I guess that's my take home message today. Heavenly Father loves us and just wants us to be happy and do the best we can to obey. He loves us more than the best earthly parent could love their child. Just feel loved, because it's true.
Oh, so I got a letter from someone in the Eastdell Ward, but I have no idea who it was! It must have gotten caught in the post office conveyer belt because the only thing that made it to me was the front of the envelope with my name and address and the corner of the return address which said "...ily, ...andy, UT...84092." So whoever that was, thank you for your card! Brett and Yun, Grandma and Grandpa, the Wardles and few others also sent a Christmas card, which was really nice!
Well, I hope the family has been doing wonderfully!
Love you all! The Church is true!
Monday, December 28, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Pray for China!!!
Merry Christmas!! I hope everyone is happy and so excited for Christmas! I hope you are seeing the lights, drinking hot chocolate, sitting by the fire, making snowmen, and watching Little Women. For some reason, of ALL the things to do on Christmas, I really just want to watch Little Women. I feel like that is the epitome of Christmas.
Thank you for all the letters and presents and stuff!! I really appreciate it. I'm never lonely here.
So, this week at the MTC has been a rough one. I have a bulls eye on me and Satan is sitting around and shooting me with his beebee gun full of discouragement. The meany. I have just felt overwhelmed with those thoughts of "you can't do this" "you'll be an awful missionary" "why waste your time, go home and get married." But I know that thoughts and feelings like that are not of God. I also know I'm not alone. One particularly bad day, a few of the other sisters got back to the room also saying how they felt strangely depressed and beaten down. It is just hard sometimes. I know things will be okay, but it just takes patience and faith in Jesus Christ that things will look up. The Lord protects and fortifies His servants and I know we'll see peace and success as long as we are patient and endure it well. I know that the Lord will use me to bring the gospel to the people of Taiwan.
We had a really good experience in the Teaching Appointment on Saturday. It was our first week teaching in Chinese. We felt like we were children or something because our sentences were so basic. "I know God loves us. God loves us so he gives us families. God loves families." But at the same time, since we were weak, we were more humble and focused alot on listening to the Spirit. We taught better to this investigator's needs than when we've ever taught in English. In the words of the investigator, "the Spirit was thick." We committed her to pray with her husband and children and read the Book of Mormon. It was so neat.
Yesterday we had a fireside be Stephen B. Allen of the Missionary Department. It was so neat!! He used to produce all the "on the homefront" commercials. He played about 10 of these commercials and compared them to us as missionaries. It was exactly what I needed. There was one called "the practice" that won an Emmy even. It showed a kid playing baseball and a girl playing a piece on the piano and failing but then trying again then succeeding. At the end the message was, "when all else says you can't, listen to that little voice inside that says you can". That was sooooo what I needed and was so neat. Then there was one that showed a dweeby kid with glasses and a pig-tailed girl with glasses that both felt gawky and awkward, but then at the end they smiled at each other and the message said, "don't think of who you aren't, but who you are. And that's pretty great." It was so cute!! The basis of alot of Brother Allen's talk was for missionaries to remember who they are, believe what they can do, and be themselves...because they were called to their certain mission for being who they are with their experiences. It was again, what I needed to hear.
Haha, so I do some crazy things sometimes. So there's this picture developing machiney thing in the MTC bookstore that is really hard to use sometimes. But I swear I figured out its quirks. So anyway, there was a little piece of tape over the SD card slot saying "out of order". But I figured I was smarter than the tape and knew how to work its magic so I peeled back the tape. I shoved the SD card in hard and it sailed right into the belly of the machine. The bookstore lady was not happy and I don't know if I'll ever see that card again which is really regretable since there are pictures of my district and Grant and stuff on there. Bah!
Oh! Important bit of info. I CANNOT call home for Christmas! I will be able to write a quick note, however, so sorry Mom! But I'm pretty sure I can call from the airport on January 28.
So guess what?? One of our Sisters in our zone ran into a Branch President who works with the Church to try to get us into places around the world where the gospel cannot be taught and has some crazy news about China! So apparently China re-wrote part of their constitution/manifesto or whatever to include the allowing of Christian religions. But before it's totally put into play, they want to read Christian materials to see if this is a good idea and if Christianity is something they want in China after all. So China is waiting as BYU Law School translates over 100 Christian works into Chinese!! Isn't that crazy?? That means that in not too long, they could ratify that and we could be IN China teaching the gospel!! WOW!! Pray everyon, PRAY!! Pray all day, every day that it goes through and we can preach the gospel there! Miracles are happening!! It gives me the chills!! Fast and pray!!
Well, I love you all and wish you a Merry Christmas!
Coley
Thank you for all the letters and presents and stuff!! I really appreciate it. I'm never lonely here.
So, this week at the MTC has been a rough one. I have a bulls eye on me and Satan is sitting around and shooting me with his beebee gun full of discouragement. The meany. I have just felt overwhelmed with those thoughts of "you can't do this" "you'll be an awful missionary" "why waste your time, go home and get married." But I know that thoughts and feelings like that are not of God. I also know I'm not alone. One particularly bad day, a few of the other sisters got back to the room also saying how they felt strangely depressed and beaten down. It is just hard sometimes. I know things will be okay, but it just takes patience and faith in Jesus Christ that things will look up. The Lord protects and fortifies His servants and I know we'll see peace and success as long as we are patient and endure it well. I know that the Lord will use me to bring the gospel to the people of Taiwan.
We had a really good experience in the Teaching Appointment on Saturday. It was our first week teaching in Chinese. We felt like we were children or something because our sentences were so basic. "I know God loves us. God loves us so he gives us families. God loves families." But at the same time, since we were weak, we were more humble and focused alot on listening to the Spirit. We taught better to this investigator's needs than when we've ever taught in English. In the words of the investigator, "the Spirit was thick." We committed her to pray with her husband and children and read the Book of Mormon. It was so neat.
Yesterday we had a fireside be Stephen B. Allen of the Missionary Department. It was so neat!! He used to produce all the "on the homefront" commercials. He played about 10 of these commercials and compared them to us as missionaries. It was exactly what I needed. There was one called "the practice" that won an Emmy even. It showed a kid playing baseball and a girl playing a piece on the piano and failing but then trying again then succeeding. At the end the message was, "when all else says you can't, listen to that little voice inside that says you can". That was sooooo what I needed and was so neat. Then there was one that showed a dweeby kid with glasses and a pig-tailed girl with glasses that both felt gawky and awkward, but then at the end they smiled at each other and the message said, "don't think of who you aren't, but who you are. And that's pretty great." It was so cute!! The basis of alot of Brother Allen's talk was for missionaries to remember who they are, believe what they can do, and be themselves...because they were called to their certain mission for being who they are with their experiences. It was again, what I needed to hear.
Haha, so I do some crazy things sometimes. So there's this picture developing machiney thing in the MTC bookstore that is really hard to use sometimes. But I swear I figured out its quirks. So anyway, there was a little piece of tape over the SD card slot saying "out of order". But I figured I was smarter than the tape and knew how to work its magic so I peeled back the tape. I shoved the SD card in hard and it sailed right into the belly of the machine. The bookstore lady was not happy and I don't know if I'll ever see that card again which is really regretable since there are pictures of my district and Grant and stuff on there. Bah!
Oh! Important bit of info. I CANNOT call home for Christmas! I will be able to write a quick note, however, so sorry Mom! But I'm pretty sure I can call from the airport on January 28.
So guess what?? One of our Sisters in our zone ran into a Branch President who works with the Church to try to get us into places around the world where the gospel cannot be taught and has some crazy news about China! So apparently China re-wrote part of their constitution/manifesto or whatever to include the allowing of Christian religions. But before it's totally put into play, they want to read Christian materials to see if this is a good idea and if Christianity is something they want in China after all. So China is waiting as BYU Law School translates over 100 Christian works into Chinese!! Isn't that crazy?? That means that in not too long, they could ratify that and we could be IN China teaching the gospel!! WOW!! Pray everyon, PRAY!! Pray all day, every day that it goes through and we can preach the gospel there! Miracles are happening!! It gives me the chills!! Fast and pray!!
Well, I love you all and wish you a Merry Christmas!
Coley
Monday, December 14, 2009
Fond good-byes and Elaine Dalton's visit
How's everyone doing!? How's Christmas plans?? I love Christmas. They have Christmas lights around the MTC which makes it nice and cheery.
Well, I just made a little list of the things I did this week...I'll just go down the list, not in a particular order of importance.
So we have the most amazing branch President here. His name is Liu Huizhang (huizhang is his title meaning president...). He comes on the weekdays and tutors our Chinese (he's from Taiwan). He's seriously the cutest, most humble, caring nice man. The other day he beckoned me to the white board to "tell me a secret". He secretly wrote "you are on your way to..." erase "Chin..." at that point I had a heart-attack because I thought he was going to write "you are on your way to China" but then he finished writing and said "you are on your way to Chinese excellency." He's so nice. He has a lot of faith in my Chinese skills and said that my accent sounds good and not to let the Taiwanese pollute it since they don't sound very good. Haha. So yeah, we LOVE him in our branch. Yesterday we went to Church and saw the Mission President there which was kind of interesting. Then out of the blue, President Liu was released!! All 6 of us Sisters started bawling our eyes out. The 8 Elders in the zone were also leaving which was sad as well. The Lius spoke and we kept crying and crying, which was slightly embarrasing. I haven't cried that hard in a long time. The MTC makes me cry alot. haha. ("Ku" is "cry" in Chinese...so our district jokes around that the girls always go "ku ku ku", sounding much like pigeons. haha.) We're way sad to see President Liu leave. He and his wife remind me a lot of why I love Chinese people so much. They are such wonderful, humble, kind, happy, and selfless people. They are so amazing. I'm really so happy to teach in Taiwan.
That reminds me! Our very first investigator from the TRC (the place where we role-play) who was the REAL investigator...Wang Xiaojie....remember? Guess what?? She's getting baptized in a week!! I don't think our lesson we taught her was the first or the last, obviously, but my companion and I cried (of course) when we found out because we knew that she'd felt the Spirit in our lesson and were so happy that she accepted the gospel.
So we had an interesting mishap the other night. We were all asleep when we were abruptly woken up by the squealing fire alarm and flashing lights in our bedroom. Sister Clyde yelled, "Don't DO this!" haha. We thought it was all a drill so we were pretty bugged. But we wrapped ourselves in our trenches and/or blankets and stumbled out of the building with 200+ other sister missionaries. They herded us into the gym where we huddled in little groups. Apparently a water pipe had burst and flooded the basement and somehow it set off the alarm. Weird. A few days before this happened, something wacky had happened with the furnace in our class building and we were evacuated and everything smelled like tar. All's well now, but it's kind of strange the things that happen.
So He Jiemei and I are pretty excited for Christmas. We're going to surprise the Elders in our district with a mini-Christmas. On Christmas Eve we're going to put presents and "stockings" with candy on their desks. It's definitely not necessary, but if anyone wants to mail some *unused* cheapo nylons to use as stockings...that would be grand. If not, I'll figure something out. :) We're excited for Christmas here.
Elaine Dalton came and spoke to us in Relief Society yesterday. She shared a really neat testimony of the Savior. Then she gave a neat story about how she was running with her husband one morning when he started going up a really steep hill. She said she didn't feel like she could keep up or reach the top, so she told her husband she was going to turn around and get some water from the car. Her husband laughed at her and said, "Elaine, don't you know you never turn around when you're in the middle of a hill?" Then she pushed harder until she reached the top where they had the most amazing view she'd ever seen. She compared that to our lives, how often we're in a "hill" of our lives and it's just so hard and we just want to give up and turn back, but if we keep going then we'll reach the top and have the most amazing view. She said she'd shared that same story to some MTC sisters a few years ago. Then a couple years afterwards one of those sister missionaries came up to her in a restaurant and said, "thank you so much for that story about never turning around while you're on a hill." Then sister Dalton said it was amazing because she'd forgotten her own story and at the time that that sister missionary had come up to her and reminded her, Sister Dalton was in the middle of another hill.
That was really neat. I feel like every week it's a new hill here at the MTC. Then I reach the top and have some amazing experience or grand perspective then I head up another hill again.
Anyway, sorry this is so scattered. I love you all!
Coley
Well, I just made a little list of the things I did this week...I'll just go down the list, not in a particular order of importance.
So we have the most amazing branch President here. His name is Liu Huizhang (huizhang is his title meaning president...). He comes on the weekdays and tutors our Chinese (he's from Taiwan). He's seriously the cutest, most humble, caring nice man. The other day he beckoned me to the white board to "tell me a secret". He secretly wrote "you are on your way to..." erase "Chin..." at that point I had a heart-attack because I thought he was going to write "you are on your way to China" but then he finished writing and said "you are on your way to Chinese excellency." He's so nice. He has a lot of faith in my Chinese skills and said that my accent sounds good and not to let the Taiwanese pollute it since they don't sound very good. Haha. So yeah, we LOVE him in our branch. Yesterday we went to Church and saw the Mission President there which was kind of interesting. Then out of the blue, President Liu was released!! All 6 of us Sisters started bawling our eyes out. The 8 Elders in the zone were also leaving which was sad as well. The Lius spoke and we kept crying and crying, which was slightly embarrasing. I haven't cried that hard in a long time. The MTC makes me cry alot. haha. ("Ku" is "cry" in Chinese...so our district jokes around that the girls always go "ku ku ku", sounding much like pigeons. haha.) We're way sad to see President Liu leave. He and his wife remind me a lot of why I love Chinese people so much. They are such wonderful, humble, kind, happy, and selfless people. They are so amazing. I'm really so happy to teach in Taiwan.
That reminds me! Our very first investigator from the TRC (the place where we role-play) who was the REAL investigator...Wang Xiaojie....remember? Guess what?? She's getting baptized in a week!! I don't think our lesson we taught her was the first or the last, obviously, but my companion and I cried (of course) when we found out because we knew that she'd felt the Spirit in our lesson and were so happy that she accepted the gospel.
So we had an interesting mishap the other night. We were all asleep when we were abruptly woken up by the squealing fire alarm and flashing lights in our bedroom. Sister Clyde yelled, "Don't DO this!" haha. We thought it was all a drill so we were pretty bugged. But we wrapped ourselves in our trenches and/or blankets and stumbled out of the building with 200+ other sister missionaries. They herded us into the gym where we huddled in little groups. Apparently a water pipe had burst and flooded the basement and somehow it set off the alarm. Weird. A few days before this happened, something wacky had happened with the furnace in our class building and we were evacuated and everything smelled like tar. All's well now, but it's kind of strange the things that happen.
So He Jiemei and I are pretty excited for Christmas. We're going to surprise the Elders in our district with a mini-Christmas. On Christmas Eve we're going to put presents and "stockings" with candy on their desks. It's definitely not necessary, but if anyone wants to mail some *unused* cheapo nylons to use as stockings...that would be grand. If not, I'll figure something out. :) We're excited for Christmas here.
Elaine Dalton came and spoke to us in Relief Society yesterday. She shared a really neat testimony of the Savior. Then she gave a neat story about how she was running with her husband one morning when he started going up a really steep hill. She said she didn't feel like she could keep up or reach the top, so she told her husband she was going to turn around and get some water from the car. Her husband laughed at her and said, "Elaine, don't you know you never turn around when you're in the middle of a hill?" Then she pushed harder until she reached the top where they had the most amazing view she'd ever seen. She compared that to our lives, how often we're in a "hill" of our lives and it's just so hard and we just want to give up and turn back, but if we keep going then we'll reach the top and have the most amazing view. She said she'd shared that same story to some MTC sisters a few years ago. Then a couple years afterwards one of those sister missionaries came up to her in a restaurant and said, "thank you so much for that story about never turning around while you're on a hill." Then sister Dalton said it was amazing because she'd forgotten her own story and at the time that that sister missionary had come up to her and reminded her, Sister Dalton was in the middle of another hill.
That was really neat. I feel like every week it's a new hill here at the MTC. Then I reach the top and have some amazing experience or grand perspective then I head up another hill again.
Anyway, sorry this is so scattered. I love you all!
Coley
Monday, December 7, 2009
"My eyes have been opened"
So this week has been amazing. First off, the doctors took 2 Xrays and were positive for a few days that I had Tuberculosis. BUT I was lucky enough to be shuttled out of the MTC gates for a CT scan and was found to be healthy. Phew!
So I never have much time to write, so I'm just going to write about a couple days that were really special to me this week.
As I've been in the MTC, my eyes have been opened to all the holes in my testimony and knowledge of the gospel. I've been praying to know and appreciate the Atonement better since day one at the MTC and I feel like Heavenly Father answered my prayer and I got to feel the miracle of the Atonement. It's come little by little, but I love it so much. First off, in class last week my teacher Brother Money shared a scripture, Alma 13:3 that said that we excerised faith in the pre-earth life. That struck me because I realized for the first time that the 3rd of the host of heaven probably weren't devil worshiping psycho spirits. But they just didn't believe and were too afraid to come down to this mortal existence because of the chance that Jesus Christ would back out and not perform his sacrifice. I thought of how amazing it was, because Jesus Christ COULD have messed us all up and we could have been lost and fallen forever, but he DIDN'T back out.
Then on Saturday we taught a fake investigator the plan of Salvation. Learning about the plan of salvation in this way has been really eye-opening. I've never seen it from the perspective of not knowing it. Seeing it that way has made it wonderful and beautiful to me. When we taught the lesson, my companion and I decided I would introduce the Atonement. I shared Alma 7 and bore my testimony. The Spirit was so strong and I cried and so did my companion. Typical girls, but it was so neat. I just felt so much love and appreciation for Christ. I think we never realize how much we know and love him sometimes.
Then a couple nights ago I was really sad about something specific. I was crying in bed (the MTC has made me such a baby) and my thoughts turned to the Savior. As I prayed I imagined the Saviors hands and feet and felt so comforted and loved and so grateful that there was someone who loved me so personally and knew me so well to have compassion on me.
Then the Christmas message from the First Presidency was our devotional yesterday. Elder Uchdorf's talk about seeing Christ in our lives and not missing Him was so amazing. I imaged how it must have been to live in Jerusalem at the time of Christ, yet be so busy or hard-hearted that I didn't have time or couldn't see Him for who he was. I felt so jealous of those in Jerusalem yet so afraid that maybe I would have been one of the ones that missed Him because I was too absorbed in myself to notice. It was such a neat talk. We had a district "sharing time" about what we thought of the devotional after that and I felt that same witness of Christ that was just so amazing. That night I also realized what a miracle prayer is. It's amazing and such a privilege that we can pray through all matter and space to an omnipotent loving God who will truly hang on your every word and give you His undivided attention. What an amazing thought that is. It was so humbling and has caused me to drastically change how I pray. Praying is alot more meaningful now. I just can't believe we all have this opportunity. Wow, the gospel is amazing. God's plan is incredible. I can't believe I didn't appreciate it until now. And as all good experiences do, the strength of the Spirit of this experience may wear off, but I hope not. I hope it just grows.
Wow, also, everyone needs to go RIGHT NOW to LDS.org and watch the "lifting burdens" video. It makes me cry every time. It's so neat. Also, I challenge everyone to buy Preach My Gospel and read it as a family/together/alone, whatever. It's so neat. It opens your eyes to the little important things in the gospel.
I really love my district. Every single Elder in it. They are such good kids. I just want to squeeze them and give them noogies all the time. Sad, one of our Elders is getting reassigned because he has a cyst on his toosh that will keep him from biking. :( We're hoping he'll get reassigned Mandarin speaking so that he'll stay in our district. The Elders are great. They are good to learn from. They are so cute because they have so much respect for us Jiemeimen (Sisters). When we talk they hush as if saying "Hark! The Jiemeimen speak!" Haha, they're so nice. A couple of them are writing a "rap" about our district. "zuo wei wode diqu" ("do it for the district"). Haha, the're crazy.
Thank you all for all the letters you've sent!! I love getting them. Dear Elder is the coolest. Love you all!!!
Coley
So I never have much time to write, so I'm just going to write about a couple days that were really special to me this week.
As I've been in the MTC, my eyes have been opened to all the holes in my testimony and knowledge of the gospel. I've been praying to know and appreciate the Atonement better since day one at the MTC and I feel like Heavenly Father answered my prayer and I got to feel the miracle of the Atonement. It's come little by little, but I love it so much. First off, in class last week my teacher Brother Money shared a scripture, Alma 13:3 that said that we excerised faith in the pre-earth life. That struck me because I realized for the first time that the 3rd of the host of heaven probably weren't devil worshiping psycho spirits. But they just didn't believe and were too afraid to come down to this mortal existence because of the chance that Jesus Christ would back out and not perform his sacrifice. I thought of how amazing it was, because Jesus Christ COULD have messed us all up and we could have been lost and fallen forever, but he DIDN'T back out.
Then on Saturday we taught a fake investigator the plan of Salvation. Learning about the plan of salvation in this way has been really eye-opening. I've never seen it from the perspective of not knowing it. Seeing it that way has made it wonderful and beautiful to me. When we taught the lesson, my companion and I decided I would introduce the Atonement. I shared Alma 7 and bore my testimony. The Spirit was so strong and I cried and so did my companion. Typical girls, but it was so neat. I just felt so much love and appreciation for Christ. I think we never realize how much we know and love him sometimes.
Then a couple nights ago I was really sad about something specific. I was crying in bed (the MTC has made me such a baby) and my thoughts turned to the Savior. As I prayed I imagined the Saviors hands and feet and felt so comforted and loved and so grateful that there was someone who loved me so personally and knew me so well to have compassion on me.
Then the Christmas message from the First Presidency was our devotional yesterday. Elder Uchdorf's talk about seeing Christ in our lives and not missing Him was so amazing. I imaged how it must have been to live in Jerusalem at the time of Christ, yet be so busy or hard-hearted that I didn't have time or couldn't see Him for who he was. I felt so jealous of those in Jerusalem yet so afraid that maybe I would have been one of the ones that missed Him because I was too absorbed in myself to notice. It was such a neat talk. We had a district "sharing time" about what we thought of the devotional after that and I felt that same witness of Christ that was just so amazing. That night I also realized what a miracle prayer is. It's amazing and such a privilege that we can pray through all matter and space to an omnipotent loving God who will truly hang on your every word and give you His undivided attention. What an amazing thought that is. It was so humbling and has caused me to drastically change how I pray. Praying is alot more meaningful now. I just can't believe we all have this opportunity. Wow, the gospel is amazing. God's plan is incredible. I can't believe I didn't appreciate it until now. And as all good experiences do, the strength of the Spirit of this experience may wear off, but I hope not. I hope it just grows.
Wow, also, everyone needs to go RIGHT NOW to LDS.org and watch the "lifting burdens" video. It makes me cry every time. It's so neat. Also, I challenge everyone to buy Preach My Gospel and read it as a family/together/alone, whatever. It's so neat. It opens your eyes to the little important things in the gospel.
I really love my district. Every single Elder in it. They are such good kids. I just want to squeeze them and give them noogies all the time. Sad, one of our Elders is getting reassigned because he has a cyst on his toosh that will keep him from biking. :( We're hoping he'll get reassigned Mandarin speaking so that he'll stay in our district. The Elders are great. They are good to learn from. They are so cute because they have so much respect for us Jiemeimen (Sisters). When we talk they hush as if saying "Hark! The Jiemeimen speak!" Haha, they're so nice. A couple of them are writing a "rap" about our district. "zuo wei wode diqu" ("do it for the district"). Haha, the're crazy.
Thank you all for all the letters you've sent!! I love getting them. Dear Elder is the coolest. Love you all!!!
Coley
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