As a dessert... Chinese soup? When I'm expecting sweet dessert soup... Why???

In Chinese Soup, you have one big carrot, one big potato, and one creepy meat + broth. You fish everything out with chopsticks first, then drink the broth. It's good, but it's not Dessert!

This week a poh poh (Grandma) held my hand for about half an hour during the lesson. Just because I'm white--or because I really needed it? ...well, yes. It was HILARIOUS (and actually kinda nice. I miss physical contact with other people! especially holding hands!)

Great, Sister Darcey, that was a really awkward way to begin a missionary letter home...) (pretend that didn't happen, ok, everyone?)

Anyway. (I opened rogue, might as well keep going, right?)--it was during a ...what's the english word.. .gau wuhn.... switch? Anyway, during a companionship gau wuhn... oh yeah the English word is EXCHANGE!

(That's good isn't it that I'm having trouble thinking of the word in English?)

So I was in Tai Po with Sister Y(a sister missionary whose English is perfect, who lives with us in our apartment, who is GORGEOUS and whose father introduced us to Angel) and her summer missionaries (Sister L and Sister Yp from Tai Wai) and the four

of us were sitting in an investigator's tiny, cluttered...

(cluttered takes on a new meaning in the tiny spaces of HK...like, cluttered-to-death!)

SQUIRREL!!! (What movie?)

Now, for your Chinese language class of the day: In Chinese you can pretty much use dou sei, adjective meaning to the death-- hot to death meaning really hot, hungry to death meaning starving, etc.)

Back to the story:

...so we were sitting in a cluttered apartment with an adorable new investigator, W Poh Poh (we really call her that!),

[Another FYI language interruption: [this one from Mom--the blog editor] Poh Poh means Grandmother. I wrote and asked Dia if it was pronounced poo, poo and Dia responded no, it was pronounced Pah, Pah. I wrote that this was hilariously odd and asked her if her grandkids were going to call her that--their grandmother--Pa, Pa?" And she responded, "No, Mom, Your's are."]

Back to the story:

...we were sitting with this investigator who had been baptized as a Christian in MAINLAND somehow about 8 years ago and is investigating our church to see what's different, when I happen to glance to the left and see, in a closet-sized room, a pretty-much-entirely-naked-just-wearing-his-not-to-be-mentioned's man napping (her husband). Oh, awkward-dou-sei (they think it's totally normal...). HILARIOUS.

OK, now I will get back to the straight and narrow.... after one more thing!

Last Saturday TW had a BOM play activity. Each auxillary was in charge of putting on a skit from a BOM story. IT WAS HYSTERICAL. The best part by far was when Ammon, a member's husband who actually ISN'T a member, got pants'd (or rather, skirt'd) by his 2 year old son Gabriel, who DID NOT LIKE Daddy wearing a Lamanite skirt and ran up on stage in the middle of everything to fix the problem. He didn't... skirt around it...

I feel like there's a pun waiting here somewhere... Brian'll find it) (PS happy birthday to Brian in two days! I sent him a little package... can't even call it a present, it's so dumb... last P-day, so it WOULD've gotten there in time if I had written Airmail on it, oops). Sorry.

NOW back to the straight and narrow. Promise.

Yesterday I was slurping my favorite thing on the surface of the planet--this drink-- Cha chaang teng, red bean/ice/milk thing that I get at a Chinese whatsitcalled, a Chinese... Wendy's (i was about to call it fast food, but China's fast food is WAY FASTER than America's fast food. As in you hand them money and they hand you heaven-in-a-glass and you don't even have to stop WALKING) in Cantonese, called Daaih Ga Leih-- And then I learned WHY it's my favorite thing on the planet.

Again, off topic--minor squirrel, more of a chipmunk:

I was with Sister C and our summer missionary (Alice-- the most amazing girl ever I love her so much!!!! We just returned her and got TWO new summer missionaries! These ones are going to be great, too, I'm so excited! I love summer missionaries!!!!!!!!!! And since we have TWO, we can SPLIT ALL THE TIME AND DO TWICE AS MUCH MISSIONARY WORK YES!)

Anyway... and we were discussing if we could make this drink at home because it was REALLY easy. So I was trying to translate the ingredients so I could buy them. Ice, Ok, red beans-- you have to soak them for an hour, OK, a little bit of sugar, water, and... what kind of milk IS that? Soy milk? No... Coconut milk?

NO, Sister Darcey... OK, what does it look like? Our summer missionary pointed to the can behind the counter of the restaurant. Oh, daisies--I choked on a red bean mid-suck, for I had finally figured out WHY I've been gaining weight--I've been drinking straight up SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK for three months!!!

So I only have 13 minutes left to try to express what I should've been writing about this whole email (instead of this... laahp).

I've been pretty down lately--the past couple weeks or so? I don't know if you could tell from past emails. It kinda reached a head on Tuesday, my 6-mo anniversary on the mission, when I wrote these notes in my journal:

• "Not doing so hot. Sometimes I feel like such a waste--like "being a missionary" and "what I do/who I am right now" just doesn't match up.
• Members bring me something new every week to put on my bug bites and they are concerned about me just because I'm wearing this black name tag and I"m supposed to be a MISSIONARY. Maybe I can blame it on being in China, but I"m just putting together the idea of "the missionaries" that I recall from being a kid and "me" --and it's not matching up.
• Sometimes... I feel like I'm wandering around in the dark, trying to help but hurting a lot, too. My faith really is so pitiful, my actions and beliefs so based on sight and not God. I've lost a lot of "the joy," the vision of "the army of God" and joy in the Motab singing "Called to Serve".
• Missionary work is much less glorious and much more daily grind. So often I feel like I should be leading confidently, walking in the full light of constant Spiritual guidance but I'm wandering blind--like today when I took Sister L out by myself to go finding (tracting) and had no idea what to do.
• Even my scripture study is infiltrated with pride, selfishness, or misguided diligence (spending 1/2 hour today working on similar phraseology between Joseph Smith and Isaiah, of what use was THAT!?!).
• I wake up so tired. I feel like a good summary of my mission so far might be, "Failure: A mission in twelve move calls"

But then I read somewhere in Personal Study about the devil's power to CAPTIVATE--and I feel that I've been ensnared lately. I really pounded on the spiritual door on Wednesday and it was opened and blessings poured out--I read in 1 nephi 20-22 and somehow all of these Isaiah chapters all related to ME and my problem today.

21:4 promises my labor is not in vain and

21:5, though israel be not gathered, my God is my strength. Remember his covenant (vs 8) and his mercy (13)

21: 1-2 I believe, I remember, that I was saved for this time and place and I can be a light to the ends of the EARTH--EVEN IN HK.

(21:6). HE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN ME, how could he? My walls are continually before him.

Sorry, no time left, suffice it to say that slowly I am learning that God is good and is blessing me, despite... me.

LOVE ALWAYS Sister Dia