21 July 2011

I have 3 months left in the mission. Its so weird because I don't want to go home, but almost every day I think about it. like how weird it'll be and how much i'll miss hong kong- not like oh i cant wait to get home. but yeah. Its weird. i had a nightmare the other night about having to go back to a singles ward at byu. it was terrible hahahahaha. seriously though I have only 2 transfers left and everyone knows how fast that goes.

This past week was really good. We had the 2nd week with our summer missionary and she did really good. It would be tough to be a 16 year old girl and do missionary work for 2 weeks with 2 white missionaries. Seriously tough. She got pretty exhausted by the end.

Biggest/best story of the week is A. A is the one who prayed to know which church to join then her old classmate from high school facebooked her that night. Well.. there is a rule that they must attend church for 3 sundays before being eligible for baptism and sunday morning came and.. no a. Sister d gave her a call (since i was attending the other ward that day) and she said her daughter couldn't watch their son with a heart condition so she had no way to get to church, but could still get their in time for the baptism. To make a long story short, we ended up having to have our correlator call the mission president and ask him what we should do- then he put it in our hands. Can i say how grateful I am for leaders and bishops stake presidents everyone who has to make decisions in the church? I respect you so much. Because we went aside and prayed and discussed and eventually felt like she should get baptized, but its kind of a big responsibility. So yeah, I'm grateful God has priesthood leaders. seriously. So a shows up for her baptism. The ward likes to give the young men opportunities to do things like perform baptisms, so they had this young man planned to baptize her- his first time. and he's small. Anyways it took 7 tries before she actually was fully immersed-- talk about a stressful baptismal service. He'd also try to get her under by just holding her there longer and i'm pretty sure sister d almost died worrying if a was going to drown. later i'll have to act it out for you. oh dear. But it was really beautiful too because a has really waited a long time for this and she was so happy. SO happy. i didnt bring my camera today so. . yeah i'll send pics later.

Then in other things, I'm doing my 2nd english fast. no english for a whole week. Its KILLING ME. and probably sis. d too. Especially because yesterday some weird stuff came up that i should have dealt with but since i only speak chinese now i didnt know how to deal with it. anyways. its nice to do email. i can use english. haha.

I am really grateful to be a missionary. I was thinking the other day how awesome it is to be here and to have changed and learned this much. The idea of having eternal progression is really exciting but kind of exhausting as well. I'll have to really work at that. I was reading in the D&C manual the other day about becoming someone worthy to go to the celestial kingdom, and there was a quote i really liked.. i think it was l tom perry who said it? i donno. but it was about how there is a marked difference in the person who is conducting their lives in a way as if a citizen of the kingdom of God, and someone who is conducting their lives based upon the standards of the world and whatever everyone else is doing. Then i was thinking about how after going on a mission elder Jay E Jensen talked about keeping the change, and about how elder holland told us that this is the closest thing to real life we're ever going to get. And even so, I still feel like I fail so often at this "real life" of missionary work. Even when there are so many blessings, even when things are so hard you just want to quit for a day and have a vacation, even when you're happy, no matter what the circumstances are, there is always room for improvement, and that is tough. There is no "I've got an A+ already, no need to keep working" in the mission. there is no A+, just improvement. Soooo i guess the point of that was- dont give up, things will always get better if we dont give up. Put that into practice and youre good to go (note taken for myself).

And also, just one side note, I think its really cool how Heavenly Father arranged sis d to be my companion. next week is transfers, and I really hope I dont move. Though if i move, it'll be fine because its what God wants, even if its not what I want. :) I hope you all are doing well. I've got you all in my prayers.

Thank you everyone for your prayers. We missionaries need them! :)

see you in 3 months. bye!

Sis Black