More of Mah Story

So, family, here I go:

Continuing with mah story (tee hee): Finally getting into the van was such a relief!! It was packed with 6 missionaries and their 115 lbs+ of stuff each, but Sister Farr, Elder Smith and I could've powered that thing all the way to SLC on pure JOY, I'm positive.

We experienced our very first non-Mormon contact on the plane to San Fran--a sweet elderly couple who asked, "Now what does 'Elder' mean?" We stayed awake until we got on the plane to Taiwan at about 2 am in San Fransisco--an amazing feat for 3 tired missionaries whose normal bedtime was 10:30!!--to help us adjust to jet-lag faster.

The Taipei airport was crazy--they had an entire "Hello, Kitty" terminal and I mean entire. The walls were pink for like half a mile. It was so terrifying. Things smelled different, for sure, but not bad at all, and EVERYONE was speaking Mandarin. 

Sister Farr pretty much had a panic attack every single time we heard Po Tung Wa (Mandarin=common words)--worried it was Cantonese and we didn't get ANY of it--and she even worked me into worrying that I couldn't tell the difference. We finally realized that the reason for the confusion were the cognates (...is that a word?) that are the same in both Mandarin and Cantonese--every time we caught one while listening to the Mandarin, we lost all confidence in our language differentiating skills AGAIN.

This was also my first experience ever where people have literally stared at me. For no reason. It was the creepiest thing ever--people told me it would happen, yup, so I should've been expecting something, but it's one thing to expect it and another to keep checking your head for blood and your skirt to make sure it isn't tucked into your waistband because people just keep LOOKING AT YOU.

A lady also took a picture of me on the sly. She actually took two--on on the "sly" (c'mon lady, I've taken pictures of handsome men {AND BABIES! How could Dia have forgotten the babies?} before on my phone pretending I was texting, I know what you're doing... and you're doing it with a CAMERA), and one where the flash went off accidentally and she squacked...squaked...sqwakedcity... how do you spell the sound a duck makes?...and stuffed it into her purse. Another lady took a picture of me on the MTC (metro) yesterday. But she asked.

Anyway. I wanted to tell you this actually important story... (I'll tell you other important things--all about meeting Pres Chan and Sister Chan and etc on the phone on Mother's Day, no worries). Yesterday we went to get Hong Kong ID cards and to the "Peak," a tourist attraction on HK island where you supposedly can see all of HK (we couldn't since it was so "misty." Everyone kept calling it "mist," I call it pollution. Tomato, tomaato, whatever). The APs took us and we contacted on the way.

It was fun to try to talk to people once I started--especially nice that lots of people told me my Cantonese is amazing [one man who spoke excellent English asked me how long I'd been learning, and when I said "Saam (3)..." he said, "Oh, 3 years?" and I said, "Mhaih, saam go yuht! (No, 3 MONTHS!)" It was really funny--and I'm still not sure if he was kidding or not...]

Then I basically had a panic attack. There were so many people. So many! I could never share this life-saving, life-changing, family-focused message of the Savior Jesus Christ and the restoration of His gospel with so many! I became so frustrated with my limited Cantonese--I couldn't even bring up the gospel with most people because to have a normal, comfortable feeling conversation took up all the time they had on the MTR [mobile transport-railway?].

Even one conversation--even saying, "Where are you going? How do you like your job?" took 10 to 15 minutes because I was so slow. I'd also never experienced an automatic refusal before--so many just wouldn't talk to me after they got a glimpse of my name tag. After about 4 hours of this (scattered throughout the rest of the afternoon)--trying, getting rejected, starting a conversation and not having enough skill or time or guts to bring up the gospel--I felt like such a failure as a missionary.

It was all I could think about that night in the dark--lying on the second bunk, on the hardest mattress I've ever tried to sleep on. I'm not exaggerating--the patron housing for the temple's mattresses are a mission joke. I was bone-weary and overwhelmed out of my mind, and all I could focus on were all the faces of the people that I'd talked to and hadn't shared with, all the faces of the literally thousands I'd passed by that day. I felt like a failure and could not remember why I was trying to do this.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to go home--then I'd be a failure AND a quitter--but I could not see the point of trying and failing every single day for 15 more months, nor how my heart or spirit or body could withstand it.

Morning's dawn brought no light to my heavy heart--I woke dreading the rest of the day and the rest of my mission. Sister Farr could tell, I'm sure, and she asked if I was OK a couple times as we exercised, prayed and got ready. I responded happily, of course--that there was nothing she could do about it, and I was sure I'd break down and cry if I even mentioned my sudden and total loss of hope.

I climbed back up onto my top bunk and opened the heavy shade over the window to get enough light to write in my journal (giggling dejectedly over the past night's 3 scribbled lines of almost-falling-asleep text which read something like: "so tiread, really hard day. whya m i here. ? i think. yeah, presidnnt chan is so nce hard day thoguhs. i need to just go . to sleap. woops. ok--").

Then I looked up, through the now sun-filled window--and saw my purpose. The temple is right across the street from our housing, and angel Moroni is just visible from my pillow.

I can do this!

Love, love, Love your missionary--Sister Dia Darcey!