My experiences here have changed me. . .

Ne Hou!! (Chinese for Hello)

Hello Beautiful Family!!

It was SO good to see you yesterday too. I'm grateful for Tango, that's all I have to say :).

You all look great yourselves and it helped me almost feel like I was at home and chatting on the couch with you. Especially you Allie, I am so glad that you have NOT taken after your older sister and actually look cute and done up when you are 13....even however shocking it still is to see you with makeup ha-ha.

Discovery! Remember that camera card that I sent home that never got there, but the letters did? Turns out people actually slit the envelopes and steal the cards, and are so good at it that they seal it all back up like nothing happened. I bet that is what happened (esp thinking how I was silly and didn't hide it as I usually do). Gosh I feel so dumb! The same thing goes for cash. So we just need to be extra careful. This world we live in!  But I printed pictures and copied them to discs and made copies of those discs and so will send the discs home. That's all I got now while I look for a card reader (which is harder than I thought).

So yes, as I told you yesterday, I am leaving Flushing and off to become a new "Training Sister" (or Sister Missionary leader). This area is seriously out of this world and so hard to leave. The love that I have developed for the people here and this area is impossible to describe in a quick email. My experience here has changed me. The people have changed me. My companions have changed me. I can even see it in the difference between my pictures from before and now. The mission is so hard to take in. I feel like I am standing in front of a fire hydrant of opposition, blessings, love, and every emotion and feeling. I try to make time to write it in my journal--I can't. I try to capture a small part of it in a tiny email like this--impossible. I try to take pictures, they all get lost (see above ha-ha). All I feel I can do is let Him change me through it all. I am learning feelings are what guide and mold and change us. The ENTIRE Atonement of Jesus Christ was FELT. And what He FELT caused him to bleed from every pore for me and for you. And so I must ask myself, “Why have I spent my whole life trying to ignore how I feel and plow forward?”  All I know is that I am learning to feel, and that how I feel is important enough to my Savior that he chose to take those feelings upon himself so he could heal me and my wounds and change me.

I love you and miss you! Take care!