Moles with hair growing out of them = prosperity and long life here.

So, Yes, I'm sure you can just imagine the ponytails erupting from cheeks everywhere.... it's pretty ...hilarious.

Well, I used up a lot of time emailing cousins today (Yyaaaay) so I only have a few minutes.

Mid Autumn Festival is coming up! This is A BIG DRAGON DEAL!

I'm pretty sure in Chinese, whenever they want to say that something is Jumbo or Extra or Especially Awesome they put the word luhng in front of it. Luhng= dragon.

For instance, last night, our summer missionary's mom took us to the nicest place to eat I've ever been--probably in my entire life--and they told me they were going to order luhng hah. I couldn't figure out what luhng hah was for the longest time--I knew hah was "shrimp" and luhng was "dragon"... then it came, and the shrimp was as long as my forearm from elbow to wrist, and by that I mean huge! And then I understoood. Ahhh, dragon shrimp.

Anyway, Mid Autumn festival is a HUGE deal here-- the festival focuses on (from what I can sic ting) (I love that sic ting sounds kinda like ascertain and has the same meaning for me) (how do you spell assertain... ascertain...?)

...anyway, the festival focuses on the circle, the moon, and an old legend about a pair of lovers. The legend is that one of them is in the moon now or something and thusly, we eat

MOONCAKES.

...anyway, It's like Christmas here--literally, there are Christmas lights in all the major areas after dark. Mooncakes are basically the most prized food.. it's a little bit ridiculous and by a little bit I mean a LOT. There are entire 30 second commercials on the MTR (bus) of people biting into mooncakes and then having seizures from how delicious they are. It's insane.

I can't eat mooncakes (phew for the waist,) but I can eat ping pei moon cakes--which are ice cream and rice skin and frozen and DELICIOUS. I tried one for the first time a couple days ago! (boo for the waist!)

At 1:30 in the afternoon yesterday, I decided to start a week-long English fast, as we were walking back to the MTR from the mission home from a special missionary meeting with Osgulthorpe and Ochoa from the Sunday School and YM presidencies (It was amazing!!!).

At 1:31 a South American man dragging a suitcase walked up and asked for directions to the temple... in English.

At 1:35 on the MTR a worker from Indonesia asked if she could take my picture so I contacted her ... in English (our discussion went great; I knew it was Ramadan because of Brian/Ali! Yay, thanks Sabeys! Her name is Umi and she was wonderful).

It was a hilarious way to start my "English fast"-- by using more English than I have in weeks! Ha!

We're so excited for September. Move calls are this Tuesday (yikes!!) and I hope our companionship doesn't change. We're finally working as one, and it feels amazing. I finally am really loving Sister C.--not sortof loving her--or haveto loving her. And that blessing is seriously the most amazing feeling, especiallly in a lesson when she's testifying and the Spirit is one of such love. It's... glorious.

Since we've just barely jaahp gwaan (gotten used to) each other and to our area and are super pumped for this next month, it only follows that I'll probably move this Tuesday :(

or get a new companion :(

Because God isn't interested in perfection--he's interested in progression!

So as soon as we get used to something, he changes it (companion, area, idea, calling, children, whatever!). I had this thought this week (as I failed... again...yay!) :(

In PROVING myself, I will always fail.

But IMprovement, I can do!

Lately, I do Luhng Improvement! DRAGON!

Only compare yourself against yourself, and do so with the eternal and loving perspective that God has for you. For this is hope and faith and charity.

LOVe forever and ever and ever,

Sister Darcey (DIA!)

PS in other news, I've started referring to myself as Sister Darcey when I talk of myself. A roomie brought it up and

laughed really hard at me this week....so Ian, you are not alone.

PICTURES! The photo disk came!!!!!

NOTE FROM THE MOM--BLOG ADMINISTRATOR:

[I am going back and inserting photographs onto the previous posts, so if you are interested, you might want to skim back over to see her actual photographs of Hong Kong.

I recommend clicking the one that shows her eating chicken feet.

There are 600 or so to sort through, so it will take me a while. I in the future, I will try to note at the end of posts when I have added more photos. ]

These are the first photographs that came to the family in a big bundle, not one at a time over e-mail or off someone else's internet posts.

The disk arrived just in time for Mom's birthday! YAY. Here are some of the 600 picts of Sis. Dia Darcey in Hong Kong.

Harmony is Being Different--Together

Dear Family

I got your package! Thank you so much... especially for more makeup than I'll ever use in my lifetime, much less my mission... and the deceptive (thanks to IAN) FALSE packing label that said it had "contacts, candy (well, it did have a PICTURE of candy...) and some "scribble, scribble, scribble, thing" in it. HAAA! You people are the best package senders ever. I'll have to return the favor soon! And by soon I mean Christmas! :)

Seriously, though, thanks for the photos!!! Pictures are the BEST. I will carry a few more around with me (I still want some of disneyland! And mom, I don't have ANY of Mom!) and I just wrote the vocab I'll need on the backs so I can talk about my family.

Speaking of Chinese vocab, who's ready for their Cantonese lesson of the week? This week focuses on FIRE (fo! sounds like fah)...

Fo che= fire car = TRAIN

Fo luhng gwo= fire dragon fruit= DRAGONFRUIT

fo teui= fire leg = HAM (I don't get that one, either)

fo gai= fire chicken= (this is my favorite one) TURKEY

I love this literal language.

Anyway! This week has been ... wow. Sunday I lost the keys to the Tai Wai/ Sha Tin chapel. It was a pretty horrible night trying to find them, find someone to get the chapel locked, get home on time etc etc., + the guilt of being a burden to the bishops + all the disappointment and confusion of praying to remember, praying to find and coming up empty over and over. That night I fell asleep praying--just sick at heart. A few hours later, I woke up--seemed like SUDDENLY--and got off my knees (owwww) (at least it was in bed).

I had the parable of the woman searching her house for the lost coin in my head and realized how wrong my focus was. I was so worried about a little thing like keys, but I am called--as we all are, by the voice of the Master himself--to search for his lost children. How sad that I worry so much more about KEYS than these precious people!!!

I woke up the next morning re-energized and READY to be a light to Hong Kong. We still haven't found the keys, but every singe day this week that dream/idea/experience has been a motivation to me and helped me to see the good, hope for more, have faith, smile, be patient, etc etc etc. It's been an amazing blessing.

I also learned much more about patience/leadership/worth of souls this week in my companion relations, but not with Sister C. This week, Tues,. to Th, we had TWO summer missionaries--which is AWESOME because it means we can basically do twice as much missionary work AND don't have to worry about double scheduling people OR locations (because one full miss+summer miss can go to Ma On Shan all day and the other full miss + summer miss can stay in Sha Tin/Tai Wai all day!).

One of our summer missionaries was... in need of a lot of help. In Sister C's words, "Ayiyaaa, hou faaahn!" = I'm gonna kill her. She just... couldn't do the hard things. She would (literally) whine. Out loud. When she didn't want to do something. I mean, OK, I don't really know how to explain well. Prob the best way is just that she is 18, but she IS a great person, has a great testimony, and by the end of the week had worked hard---probably much harder than she's ever worked in her life. What a Challenge this was for her.

Anyway, I learned a lot about myself when I was on splits with her, especially since that made me the senior companion. I have learned for myself that D&C 121 whatever verse (37) is absolutely true--it is the nature of man (and women!) to, as soon as they get a little authority, start to exert unrighteous dominion over others.

37 That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.

.

Yes, my inner thought process was unfortunately often something like "AYIYA! Sister Jang! We're missionaries! The Lord's army! The Lord's warriors don't WHINE about HEAT! NOW Drop to your knees and give me twenty!"

Bad, Bad, bad, Sister Darcey. So on Tuesday we were on a fast zone find (we only had about 20 minutes to find because we had to get to another appt later), and she was basically having a panic attack. She couldn't do it. Couldn't even say hello to people. She was following me around like a lost puppy. And I was, really, honestly, being absolutely heartless.

After a couple days of being on splits with just her, I was really just fed up and frustrated and impatient and etc. FINALLY I stopped and realized how cruel I was being--and we went to the side of a building and I asked her to pray for us. She prayed, I was repenting for my behavior the whole time, and then she started crying, and Wow.

Then. We really found. The Lord blessed us and we found.

Humble works! What a lesson I learned this week. People are so much more important to God than anything else.

Love,

Love

Sister Darcey!

P.S. Last week I got MUGGED!! It was while we were contacting around 8 pm in

Tai Wai on Lion's Bridge (by the Sha Tin Marriage Registry, on the river, see if you can find it on Google Map). A big group of mainlanders came up and surrounded me and I couldn't see my companion and it was terrifying---but don't worry, all they took was...

my picture!! (8000 times...) HA! OK, I thought it was funny..

Cousins Here, Cousins There, Cousins Everywhere

In other news, we don't have P-days anymore! It's actually kinda fun--to be so busy doing the work. This morning at 9 we dropped off our summer missionary (we had a testimony meeting to close), did personal study until 11 when we had another meeting to pick UP our latest summer missionary, then raced to Sha Tin to eat noodles (Taahm Jai, best food on earth) with a sorta-investigator (mandarin) whom I adore named Emma.

After all that, we should have taken a break, but then we had to SPLIT and I came here to the Sha Tin library with one summer missionary, Sister S., who reminds me of Cousin Kaelea, who wants to teach preschool and is AWESOME and 20 years old and a recent convert and hilarious, fun, smart and REALLY outgoing. My companion, Sister C went to MOS with the other summer missionary, Sis. J., who's just 16 and has been studying in England and grew up in the church, to teach a lesson.

We then teach EEFY from 3:30 to 5:30, then there's barely time for companion study before we go to the temple for correlation from 7 to 9! I don't know when we're going to buy groceries for next week... or do any laundry. But it's really fun this way! I'd much rather be busy than not!
HEY six months on my mission this last Tuesday! Did anyone notice? Is anyone counting out there? Cami (too busy with tea parties and decorating cupcakes and being awesome) ...Derick? (no, trying to get his flirt muscle or at least eyebrows back into shape...) Ok, ...Squeaky?

In our apartment, whenever something is broken and I fix it in a mcgiever (how-youspellthat) sort of way, we call it "Cami-rigged" and I'm not kidding. I recently Cami-rigged our bunk beds with a wire hanger and our fan with an elastic band and a lot of tape. Our toilet just got fixed, yay!

Without that experience I would have never known that a broken washer is actually WORSE than a broken toilet, because you can just dump water in a toilet to make it flush. Not so with a broken washer. Yes, so we've been flushing our toilet with a bucket for the past 3 weeks... why am I telling you this...). Don't ask how we've been doing our laundry--not using a bucket or a toilet.

Love to all my cousins, each and every one of you who writes and supports me on this grand adventure for the Lord, Hugs, Sister Dia

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