Dear Mom,
Sounds like your time in Cali has been fun! I am glad you were able to spend some time with Paula, Coy and Laci. How's coy doing? Still throwin hard? I am glad Shane has been talking to Kay Rae a little, is she still sick? I wrote her a letter last week and hope to hear back soon. Tell Shane to encourage her to some how communicate with me haha
I am not sure if we will get transferred. Looks like we're staying. Last week everyone one was saying I will train the new chinese sister coming in. The Sister Training Leaders thought so and many other chinese sisters but saturday night we saw President Tilleman at our ward's chinese New year Party and as he left we said "maybe we'll see you thursday at transfer meeting?" and he stopped and started thinking then said "no. I think you're both staying. Would that be okay? Are things going good?" This kind of threw me for a loop. I really thought a lot of changes were going to happen in the chinese areas but after that I think we're staying. We'll find out tonight for sure. I really love Sister Lin, she's taught me everything but I felt strongly the Lord was going to push me a little more. I felt like He was going to make me stretch but we'll see. Maybe I need another transfer with her. We get a long pretty well and have a ton of fun but we'll see.
So neat to hear about the Gilbert Temple. I am looking forward to going when I get back. Only another year, I've been out 6 months on Friday. Can you believe that? It's still boggling my mind. I'm a third done. and WOW, have I learned a lot! I know my time here is short so I am just trying to give it all I have. Sometimes I fall short but the Atonement works wonders :) Back to your questions about the temple, We get to go about every 3-4 months, if you're in the lower main land. We went a few weeks ago so a few more till I get to go again. It's in english. They have sessions in Mandarin every 2nd saturday of the month and tons of our members attend, it's great! The temple here is so small though! Dang it's tiny.
This week I went on 2 companion exchanges. My favorite was with the Sister Training Leaders. I was with Sister Wright and she's completely white. Doesn't know a single word in mandarin and wow. That was a breath of fresh air haha It was super weird not being able to speak mandarin. Praying in english was so uncomfortable, I didn't know what to say! I just kept apologizing to Sister Wright because I felt like i was praying very well. It was neat to be with her though. I had so many opportunities to speak mandarin and she was pretty impressed. I could communicate with people and she said I spoke so fast! I didn;t miss a beat. It was really a cool blessing.
She was so kind to me and built up my self esteem a ton. Chinese people are not one's to compliment (at least Sister Lin isn't) and I think after 4 months of little to no encouragement kind of wore on me. Everything Sister Wright told me was so hard to believe. She just said I have this pure righteousness about me and people are just drawn to it. She said I just beam virtue and purity. She went on for days. I felt so special and full of worth. I feel like I sometimes forget some of my divine qualities since I'm not often praised here. (although you and Dad are really good at that) As I was on this exchange I learned so much and realized more about why I am in the chinese work. It has taught me so much, so quickly. It really has humbled me in a way I can't describe. I think sister Lin has blessed me a ton in that aspect and all the chinese people. It is amazing where I've come in the last 6 months.
Since that exchange we decided to try and take their advice of contacting as a companionship. Usually Sister Lin and I split up and try to have quality gospel conversations on our own but last night we tested it out. We found 5 new investigtors!!! It was incredible! We found 2 in chinese, one for us and one for the elders, then a couple for english. The man was someone I talked to about 2 months ago and I recognized his face, then remembered his name, his history, our whole conversation, it was crazy! The spirit is so cool in bringing things unto our remembrance! Then we found one for the Korean elders and all we needed was spanish. We said a pray that we could talk to somone in spanish. We kept walking up and down the street and finally we saw a woman on the street talking on her phone and she was speaking spanish! I stopped her and said "Nosotros estamos misioneras por la iglesia de jesucristo de los santos de los ulitmos dias" and I couldnt say anything else and she doesnt understand english so she wasnt very interested after that but Heavenly Father answered our prayer! It was a miracle! Sadly my spanish is a little rusty, too rusty so she'll have to have another opportunity to hear our mesaage. It was a great night overall, God blessed us so so much! And it was fun!
Overall I am doing well. I was a little uneasy about what President said about transfers but I prayed really hard yesterday to feel peace. I told Heavenly Father that I didn't want to feel upset or unhappy in staying, I was willing to accept His will. And as I partook of the sacrament and listened to the testimonies of our ward, the peace came, just like it always does. I loved it.
Please keep praying, I pray for everyone all the time and also Scott. I hope you enjoy your time with him and he can feel the love we have for him and his family. Tell him to Bear Down and give it to Christ. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled , neither let it be afraid." (John 14:27) Tell Scott it'll all be okay. Christ knows how he feels and he is there to lift him up. "Let not your heart be troubled, niether let it be afraid" It's a commandment! I'm praying for him still and know he can kick this!
Hopefully we can chat a little more! I love you!
Love, Sister Dahl
No comments:
Post a Comment