Singing and Singing and a Little More Singing

Leihdeih hou! I hope you're all doing well! It's been a good week over here in Hong Kong! Our investigator pool is running a little low so we've been trying to come up with some good Christmas finding ideas to spread some holiday cheer over here at it's been really fun! There really is such a special spirit around Christmas time when we all get to celebrate the Savior, and it's cool to see that even in Hong Kong (where the majority of people are definitely not Christian) it makes a difference. The highlight of the week this week was singing! The missionaries from our zone got asked to sing a bunch of Christmas songs in one of the big malls here, and it was so much fun! Tons of people stopped to listen and hopefully we got to brighten their days. :) We also sang at a baptismal service that day, and this coming week we'll be singing in our ward Christmas party, and then the week after at our ward Christmas sacrament meeting. I haven't sung so much in all my life! Spiritual thought for this week (straight out of my study journal and only slightly paraphrased, not going to lie, haha): So Sister Risenmay and I were going through our study journals the other day and were sharing cool things that we've learned over our missions, and she shared this quote from Mitch Davis (from an MTC devo) with me and it really stuck out to me: "No one wants to go on a mission and lose who and what they are, but maybe, in a way, they should. Lose yourself and you can find your true self. You are putting yourself in the Lord's hands and letting Him make you better than you've ever been. Are you afraid God is going to mess you up? Make you something you don't want to be? Don't you trust Him?" When I was in MLC (mission leadership council) the past week, we talked a lot about obedience and that quote that Sister Risenmay and I had just discussed the day before kept coming to mind. This is so true not only for mission life, but also for life in general. Sometimes if there's a commandment/rule/standard that's really hard for us to adhere to, it's because there's a gap between where we are currently and where that rule says we should be. Sometimes it's natural for us to resist that rule and try to stubbornly remain where we are and how we are. However, God gave us that rule for a reason--to help us become something more. Maybe to follow that particular rule we'll have to let go of a little bit of the person that we were before. Maybe we'll have to change, and maybe we'll have to change a lot. That can be scary, but we KNOW that God isn't going to meses us up and any change we have to make for Him will be a change for the better. That change isn't something to fear; it's something to embrace with eyes, mind, and heart wide open. After all, as someone said in MLC, "Obedience isn't about what Heavenly Father wants you to DO, it's about what he wants you to BE." That was kind of a big paradigm shift for me and it's a big motivator for me to be more perfectly obedient (always something I'm trying to do) so that I can become the person that Heavenly Father needs me to be. Thank you all for all the love and support. I'm so blessed to know each of you! Love you all! Gayauh! Sister Wasden 郭姊妹 Pictures: 1. Three generations (my mom (my trainer, Sister Christensen), me, and my daughter (my trainee, Sister Risenmay)) 2. Ten Thousand Buddhas last week :)