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 ;)