Aggggghhhh My Computer is Melting -- I'm Hot Here!

Family and everyone, 

Every time I click on this computer the email melts off the screen and onto the floor... so... let's just say I only have a couple minutes  left of emailing time and then I'm gonna need a mop over here. 

Your Chinese Lesson for the day:  M'goi! (the call for, "Hey, waiter!" or "excuse me!" or "please" or "thank you"...)  This is for my little group of white people Christmas time touristers who are coming to Hong Kong for Christmas!  YAY, but who had better get to polishing up their 101 simple Cantonese phrases!! Use my Pimsler tape. #1 is "m-goi").

Anyway.  I'm still plugging away, and shining away off here in smogland China. My favorite Primary song (besides "A Child's Prayer," which I STILL sing to myself when I'm tired, wet, hungry, sad or all of the above... but in Chinese...) when I was little was "I am like a star shining brightly! Shining for the whole world to see--I can do and say happy things each day, for I know Heavenly Father loves me." 

I know that realizing someone loves you has more power than any other motivation--that's why we do so much for the love and acceptance of other people, and that's why the MOST significant service you can provide someone is to really, really love them.  This is not just treat them nice or overlook their mistakes, but LOVE them and want the best for them and keep your own prideful jerky self from wincing when they succeed or celebrating when they fail but REALLY, REALLY, loving them. 

Mormon was so right to ask us to pray for this kind of love!!! It would fix the whole world --I know because it's fixed MY whole world before :) ) AND isn't that the basis of Christianity. 1 John 4, right? We love him because He first loved us, just like our parents. 

Thank you mom and dad for loving me first; it has meant everything to me--and to the estimated 17 million people so far that I've been blessed to have the opportunity to lift, bless, minister to and serve. 

Seriously, there are days when I think that it might just be about 17 million people. I remember sometime in the middle of the winter of my mission (figuratively and spiritually...) worrying that I would be one of those missionaries who would look back on my mission with regret and bitterness.  My greatest concern then was that I would never be able to say, as did my Chinese namesake Sister Blair (Lisa Sabey) at the end of her mission, Ammon-like, "that God has used the glory of His power and His grace and His goodness to work miracles through me. I could not see how my efforts were helping anyone at all---

But, in retrospect, these past couple weeks I've been really thinking about the people I've met and loved on my mission. I've pictured their faces and names in my mind--I spent one whole night before I fell asleep imagining the faces of just the MISSIONARIES I'd worked with and loved here, and I fell asleep before I finished. Every day we have so many opportunities to bless and to give.

I am so happy!

again, this picture is from way back on Monkey Mountain with
Sister Cheung. Back when I was a fat Sister missionary.

  

 (even when RANDOM THINGS KEEP POPPING UP ON MY SCREEEN AYIYAAA I don't want to go to Bejiing for $1888! I just want to write an email with my 18 more minutes!!!) seriously though. 

SO HAPPY. I don't know if it's just been a blessing or a habit learned over the months and months and months of smiling through pain/fatigue/fear/worry/stress/heat/SWEAT etc --but probably both as I think of Elder Eyring's talk on Adversity. 

"It is clear that for us to have that gift and to be given that trust, we must be transformed through making righteous choices where that is hard to do. We are prepared for so great a trust by passing through trying and testing experiences in mortality. That education can come only as we are subject to trials while serving God and others for Him.

In this education we experience misery and happiness, sickness and health, the sadness from sin and the joy of forgiveness. That forgiveness can come only through the infinite Atonement of the Savior, which He worked out through pain we could not bear and which we can only faintly comprehend."

It is now clearer to me how God's grace complements and enables our efforts as we go, and I've been so blessed to be so happy lately. Apart from the sweat, I just feel like I am glowing. It really has been wonderful--nearly every single time we step outside, I've taken the opportunities to share. 

I just feel so grateful and happy and I'm so blessed that I have the opportunity to serve here right now, in TKO with Sister Clements, who is doing so well. She has so, so, so many challenges--normal new missionary ones, hard hard hard health ones, family  and childhood.  So much, just like mine and all kinds--and she's doing remarkably well with them. We're working together so, so hard. I can see her becoming such a powerful, mature missionary. I have so much faith in her.

Psalm 40: 1-5  I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.  He brought me up also out of an horrible pit out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock and established my goings.  And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.  Blessed is the man that maketh the Lord his trust and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies. Many, O Lord, my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward:  they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.

And I made mango pudding yesterday; SO HAPPY :)

Love you so much,

Sister Darcey

Even when people guess that I'm THIRTY YEARS OLD are you KIDDING ME... real experience this week :P phooey <---sister cook pointed out that at least they thought I'm a HOT thirty year old... bleeeeh ;)

The Little Glow Worm Continued

And so it continues...

Tuesday we went finding--and we ran into a member whose phone number we'd just tried and that had been  CANCELLED.  The Lord is mysterious right?  But she gave us her new number--and then the member came with us--and then we found four new investigators and two of them came back the next day to English class and brought another friend and they're coming again today with ANOTHER friend!

Miracles!!!

Yesterday I made a call, just so I could purge our telephone of old former investigator's numbers and it was answered by an individual who came to English class-with another friend. Miracle, yay!

Today we navigated Mong Kok to the Crocs store and back to the library in 15 short minutes to make our appointment to email--miracle! (We seriously prayed that I'd be able to find it, because Mong Kok is TERRIFYING).   These are the happiest missionary shoes, cheap, comfy and waterproof!!!!  

But then the miracles end and my computer was dumb for 40 minutes... Eh, whatever, at least Sis Clements got to email her family on time.

I'm kinda whitewashing my world right here... trying to convince myself that it's all happy.  Truthfully, I'm weighted with the responsibility of a very new companion in an area totally new to me--but the members are great (even if I don't know them well yet) and we're having patience and working hard and being obedient and PATIENT and focusing on individual people. And I'm focusing on my companion.

Sorry, I know this is all so random--but I'm just walking on clouds lately (not because everything's been easy! But because God is so good anyway!) and particularly after the blessings of yesterday. 

Everyone in our zone was called to WanChai--A "just drop everything and come" kind of call. So weird. When we got there it was a meeting for a Pres-Chan's-leaving-and-wants-to-do-one-last-interview kinda thing. 

I went into my conference with him and was floored. Pres Chan is really, really grateful for MY service. And said that he called me to TKO right now because he needed a strong sister in the mission.  He said I support and renew every area I go to and every companion and roommate I contact. 

AND,  And, and, for some reason he thinks my Chinese is ...the best in the mission. He SAID that!?!??!!! 

And he thinks I GLOW! That was the only part where I didn't turn around in my chair to look for the person of whom he might be speaking.... because I DO feel like I'm glowing :D 

I am so, so happy, and I want to hold up Christ's light for others to follow home.  It's a hard area and people in hard, hard situations but I can't help but smile. Seriously.

So keep smiling, everyone. And hold up the light... Matthew 5: 14-16  "Ye are the light of the world.  A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.  Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may  see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."  

Love you so much,

Sister Darcey

I Finally Tasted Durian -- It Tastes Like Lemons!

But it still smells like death!

[here, on the email Dia has a pile of dung animated with flies flitting around it]

hee, hee, hee.

[Durian is called the King Fruit of the Orient and is banned from major hotels and restaurants due to its odour.]

Dear Family, friends, and beloved,

It was a great, hard emotionally, but great and miraculous week. It was such a weird experience staying in my "old" area for such a long time until the next Tuesday (usually we transfer on P-day right after moves/calls CALLS--so we typically only have one full day in our area knowing that we're moving).

I had a week! I was able to polish up all my records and really see how much we built up and worked on and accomplished in that miraculous Macau 42 or so days :) It was an amazing time. I'm really missing Sister Wong, older Sister Wong, Sister Hsien and Salenga and especially Sister Mercado, whose name I've been spelling wrong (but I write the chinese character right... go figure) for 5 moves (EIGHT MONTHS!!) (I just found out like last week, that I'd been spelling it wrong in English!  ha ha!

[Here she has inserted a blushing icon--where does she get these--ah, Hong Kong].

We had one miracle in particular where V., our landlord's daughter who was the sole attendant at the new Saturday English class last week, brought two awesome friends to this week's AND a street contact of Sister Mercado came, too! SO I invited them all to church the next day and they ALL came! No problems at all, I didn't even hear one "but it's so early"??!?!?!?!! Four girls at church after 5 weeks of no one in that ward was just TIU HOI SAM!

(so happy!)


It was an amazing Sunday. I also was surprised to find out that a couple people I've only had some contact with--a less active, HILARIOUS poh poh just coming back to church, a spunky LA girl  and two sweet Indonesian ladies at whose baptism I was invited to speak--were really, really sad I was leaving. They sent me off with notes and hugs and little weird trinkets and we took about 1000 pictures... who knew that in so short a time your heart could grow to include so many people??? Our hearts are on growth spurts in this weird, insanely fast mission life... so no wonder they ache so often. Growing pains.

 

Ways to know you're from Macau and just coming back to HK: 

• You walk out into oncoming traffic ... every time you cross the street.
• You are so excited that fruit and veggies are so cheap ....you buy out all the street vendors.
• You get hit by a handbag or shoulder... every time you walk outside (PEOPLE WALK SO FAST HERE!)
• You get confused at the early schedule... every night!

It's weird coming back to the city life. My new area reminds me a lot of my bb area--Sha Tin and Tai Wai, especially, even up into Tai Po. There's plenty of trees and hills (yay hills like Macau!) and it's basically a suburby, typical HK... thing. I like it a lot; the best part is how the church is HUMONGEOUS and gorgeous. When Sister Clements opened the doors to the chapel I GASPED! It's so big! It's THREE HUGE FLOORS tall and has it's own room for the chapel and cultural hall... it's huge. It's the biggest I've been in except for Wan Chai, for sure.

Well, I still need prayers! I'm getting more and more excited to be here but I need a lot more patience and love than I have now. No worries, God will provide as I do all I can.

I love you people!

Sister Darcey

Relief Society - My Substitute Mommy

Dear family and friends,

Please thank Sister Rinda Myers for me. She's so sweet to keep me updated on the ward's growth and news, and I love that she's my visiting teacher. What a blessing she has been in her support; there is such peace in knowing that my efforts are not forgotten by the world there.  

There's a neat quote I'd love you to look up in the "Daughters in My Kingdom" book and put on the blog about RS--a mom who is moving far away and her daughter with a brand new family asks, "What will I do? Who will be my mother?" (This was before Skype and facebook and tweets and texts etc) Her mother said something amazing about RS--it was "Bind yourself to RS. Relief Society and it will become a mother to you" . Look it up yay, thanks. 

It made me just catch my breath---there is such a power in a society of woman to do good and to teach, to uplift and even be a mother to those who have no one to go to or to learn from. I'm still reeling from the state of that [person that I talked about on our telephone call] individual's home--"Wow, I didn't know our church helps people like this!" (please insert a description, ma?) 

[Dia went into detail in her Mother's Day telephone call about some service she was able to perform for an individual who was struggling with the chaos of her life that had overspilt into her home environment.  She was so shocked as she had to call on the services of the priesthood for help excavating some of the worst-- and for Dia, who is accustomed to some pretty bad stuff, this was life-alteringly memorable.  Back to her letter.]

Our job as missionaries is often to wake up the ward or the branch--or just to refocus their efforts in the areas they need to focus on. 

When another person I admire wrote last -- Sister Lisa S.-- she said that as a RS president she's learning that unity (Zion!) is only accomplished when everyone is invited to work together, NOT when everything runs smoothly and only 3 people prepare everything while everyone else just shows up and sits through it. 

I learned while reading the white handbook on leadership the other day that a leader is NOT someone who does everything themselves.  A leader's job is to inspire, uplift and help others find in themselves the motivation and ability to put their shoulder to the wheel in the aid of others to learn pure Charity--the true love of Christ as He would practice it.

Wow!  Strong Stuff,

Working to become stronger in faith,

Sister Dia D

BEST MAIL EVER!!!!!

Dear Family, Friends, 

A Great Day In The Morning!  I received the mail and in it was a note from my dear Sister Cook, who wrote on the outside, "Happy Mother's Day!" and included just one thing: a picture of J's baptism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was just overcome and pretty much just sat right down on the empty floor of the new senior missionary couple's apartment (I love them, they're the "Wellings" and the mom reminds me of Margaret Young) and cried. It even had a photo of S in it--in a gorgeous pink dress! She doesn't wear dresses--she was always too shy so she'd wear her school uniform (her baptism date is for mother's day!!! and she HAS PERMISSSION!). They looked so beautiful, I almost couldn't believe it. It was like mail straight from heaven. 

J MADE HER DATE that we set with her almost 2 months ago. I'm so sad I didn't get to see it, but I'm so grateful, so grateful. On TOP of that, J's DAD was in the picture... I can't even explain. They've had such a hard family life--Which MAKES for Strong People!  I have a testimony that hard lives make us STRONGER.  Yuen Long District is doing amazing.

Macau is doing amazing, too! We've seen so many miracles and tender mercies. OH, and it's my one year mark in China TODAY! One year of water filters, three-hole British plugs, sleeping in the same room as an Asian, not a taste of bread but daily sharing the bread of life with these beloved people. I can't believe it and at the same time I can't believe it's only been a YEAR! I feel so at home here.  And I've learned I Can Do Hard Things. 

This Week's "E" Miracle--was amazing.  Let me tell you the story.  

First, we ended up at TWO BBQ's here in Macau in the last week! Chinese and Phillapina flavors, and both were at "Black Sand Beach" up on Taipa (or maybe down? My directions are all mixed up). The first was maybe just a warm up for the second-- although we DID have an amazing miracle--no rain on a thunderstorm warning Saturday. The zone prayed together in the morning because it was POURING when we woke up. Then, at 9, nothing. NO RAIN!   No rain, that is, until EVERYTHING was totally packed up and the bus was pulling up to take everyone home! PERFECT!

Anyway, the second bbq was even more eventful. We met four referrals and pulled together a ton of beach games and ate until we died and met less actives and new members and probably had more than 100 people we were NOT PLANNING ON there.

AND I got sunburned AND  stung by a bee the size of an eagle on my hand and when I was done screaming CRAP (in front of the entire branch... great....) and flapping my hand around the stinger was still attached to its HUMOUNGEOUS EAGLE SIZED behind anyway. 

It hurt really bad, but the awesome part is that I had to leave to go bandage the throbbing crater in my now hotdog sized index finger (I may be exaggerating just a tad) and we saw E-Gem--who hasn't been answering our calls because her phone's out of money but must be the sweetest, goldenest Phillippina ever. Miracle!

this picture is from when I was Sis Cheung's companion and was
 taken on Chinese New Year

Actually, all our investigators are pretty sweet and SHINY GOLDEN because we had two other amazing experiences this week-- one where the person was just standing outside the church, I opened my mouth and she (said later in the lesson) felt like her feet were PULLING her inside.

I'll end with the other (named E. hence the title of the miracle week) who started bawling and threw her arms around me when I casually pulled her aside and gave her a Book of Mormon after the activity Saturday night and for pretty much no reason opened up to 1 Nephi 1:1 and testified that she, too, could teach her family about God even though her four kids were so far away in the Philippines and now she has a baptismal date and (later found out) she was a hard-core 7th Day Adventist before. Wow.

God's Work is so amazing! Thanks family and friends for your support.

I found a Mandarin hymnbook this week so now I'm forcing Sister Wong to sing in Mand, Canto and English every day... gotta love it :D

Love ya'll,

Sister D