你们好！
Grind time has not stopped.
Because both my classes are in the afternoon and evening and
so is my companion study, I wake up at 6:30, exercise, shower, eat, read
scriptures until about 8:30-9ish, and then I'm studying up on that Chinese
until 1. Every. Day. It's awesome. I've started to think in chinese sometimes
without meaning too and I've said 谢谢(xie xie, thank you)
multiple times instead of saying it in English, completely on accident. What's
really weird is sometimes just these random chinese "words" come into
my head and I look them up and they're not actually words, I'm just mashing up
some characters in my brain or something. Don't know if that's a good or bad
thing.
Elder Liang is still a beast and it is SUCH a blessing to
have a companion who already knows so much Chinese. After taking Mandarin in
high school, I have some basics so we've been able to study some stuff ahead of
the class and it pushes us both I think.
One day this week during class we were doing some role play
with some basic chinese phrases. I was paired up with Elder Welker. The guy is
hilarious. Anyway, in our very broken Chinese he invited me to read the Book of
Mormon. I said I was willing too. After a good number of seconds of him trying
to figure out what to say, he just invited me to get baptized. For some reason
we both thought it was absolutely hilarious I really can't tell you why. Now
that I'm typing this out I realize it won't sound that funny to most of you...
but I was laughing so hard.
Anyway my spiritual thought is actually not mine, but my good
friend Elder Chen's. Elder Chen is my good friend Elder Fagergren's companion.
They're both in the advanced language program, Fagergren for Japanese and Chen
for Mandarin. Anyway, I was just listening in on them talk over zoom and Elder
Chen was talking about our ability to choose for ourselves and things like
that. He talked about how many of his friends have unfortunately done "bad
stuff" because many of them believe that as long as they believe in God
and Christ then they are saved. Then Elder Chen said something that really
stuck me and I wrote it down. He said "My dumb actions will never
overpower my personal accountability". Elder Chen probably doesn't even
know I was there listening, but I loved it and it made an impression on me. I
do not wish to criticize anybody's beliefs or faith but just testify of what I
believe...
From one of my favorite talks, by Brad R Wilcox, he relates
the Atonement of Jesus Christ to practicing piano. I will do my best to explain
this. Think of God as the teacher, Christ as the parent, and you as the player.
The parents pay the teacher: Christ has paid for our sins by suffering them and
giving His life for them. Do we ever pay our parents back? no we can't, we
don't pay our parents who then pay for the lesson. Our parents don't demand
Payment, they demand Practice. Christ does not demand Perfection, He demands
Practice. When we mess up learning a song... LEARNING a song, does the teacher
stop teaching? does the parent stop paying? No they don't, if that was the case
we would NEVER learn the song. When we make a mistake in our lives and choose
the wrong, all that is asked of us to keep practicing. If not we would never
learn how to be Christ-like.
However, In NO way does our practicing repay our parents. In
NO way does our repenting and living a Christ-like life fulfill our debt to
Christ for atoning for each and every one of us. But for paying for our
lessons, our parents can demand us to practice, and by seeing our growth and
improvement they are happy, they have joy, they are proud. They have gotten
what they wanted: they have not gotten each lesson paid back in cash and in
full, they got a piano player. They paid each and every lesson, hoping that we
would choose to practice and become a piano player. By paying for our sins,
Christ demands practice and by seeing OUR growth and OUR improvement He is
joyful and happy for us and proud of us. He hasn't gotten the pain he suffered
for us taken away, like it never happened. He got a disciple. He suffered, each
and every sin, every anguish, pain, suffering, affliction, hoping that we would
choose to practice and become a disciple, His disciple.
I hope that make sense, and I hope you can apply that
perspective to your life and see how it can change your life like it has mine.
Please reach out to me and email me if you have any questions, or just want to
talk, I'm always down to talk. Stay safe and healthy everyone, 再见！
Pictures:
1) my amazing view from where I sit every day. So beautiful
2) my cool looking tag
3) I like to call him my other companion: Elder Liu has
taught me much about Chinese vocab and grammar through pre-recorded video. Too
bad he will never have a chance learn from me the way I am learning from him
4) a day in the life...(ft. Elder Fagergren) VOLUME UP
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