Sunday on La Grande Beijing

Happy self-proclaimed Fast Sunday because you don’t want to break the Sabbath day by buying food on
Sunday!

I started to justify in my head why it’s totally fine to buy food—that we don’t have a fridge, that I really
need to exchange money anyway, that I’m going to church, stuff like that. But then I remembered the
example my mom set for me when we went to New York my sophomore year. Before the trip, we went
and bought things to keep us satisfied all day. And we lived off of Pop Tarts, beef jerky, and granola bars.
And I have felt so blessed because of that.

Due to unforeseen expenditures of my time, I packed with no thought toward the arrival tour or Sunday
foods. Last night, when I actually figured out what day it is, it hit me that I’d have to make this choice.
Thank you Mom, for teaching me what is right. It’s the accumulation of simple choices like this that
foundationally strengthen your character.

So I ended up ducking into store after store, trying to find some non-perishable foods that don’t need
refrigeration. After perusing every store along the entire alley our hostel is in, I said a small prayer in
my heart that I’d be able to find food. Thank goodness for the overpriced loaf of stale-ish—but sweet-
ish—bread I was able to find! And thank goodness I have a creepy obsession with peanut butter (can an
obsession with peanut butter be creepy?) and packed two jars!

Lesson learned. It’s not even that if I had bought food on the Sabbath I would be a bad person, or that it
is even the wrong decision. I just feel that because I had the courage to do so, I have been blessed with a
greater portion of the Spirit today. The gospel is more additive than subtractive. Though we may not be
doing things to regress from where we have come, we aren’t progressing, which is absolutely imperative
to do if we intend to someday reach our full potential.

So I fasted breakfast and lunch, then wrote in my journal and took a slight nap (on my journal…) before I
broke my fast and ate a deliciously stale peanut butter sandwich.

We did have church this morning at 10:30, so we braved the ever-ominous and entirely different/
terrifying world of THE SUBWAY to travel to it. Spending time in cities like New York and Chicago, I feel,
have made me relatively subway-savvy. But it certainly helps when the networks aren’t as extensive as
Beijing, there aren’t half as many sweaty bodies, and everything isn’t written in a language that looks
like a chicken got ink on its foot and hopped around.

We did survive, however. I was tempted to buy a shirt that says I climbed the Great Wall, but I would be
thrilled to find a shirt that says I survived the Beijing subway! With the exclamation point, of course, for
added enthusiasm. It’s probably not that much of a feat considering we mostly just followed the group
of about forty people we were with, BUT STILL. I SURVIVED THE BEIJING SUBWAY!

After emerging from the depths, we walked a little ways and entered a nice building where we
proceeded to cram 15 people at a time into an elevator to get to the fourth floor. What a sweet miracle
it was to see those tacky bulletin boards posted outside church offices that feature over-zealous posters
for activities, the baptisms for the month, and a few church messages. In English! INCREDIBLE! It was

like having church in an office building, though, which was more interesting than not. I was surprised to
see how many people showed up! I met a sweet lady who’s been serving a mission with her husband in
Hong Kong for the past nine months, and came to visit Beijing for the week. Also, GET THIS! Anyone here
know Gidianny Gutierrez?! Well she taught Relief Society! She’s been here for nine months also with
her husband and as I stared at her I knew I knew her and then it hit me like a BRICK. She has the same
face, same voice, same way of writing on the board… OH, she was in my seminary class when I was a
sophomore! And then all of a sudden I remembered she wrote Chinese on the board often!

Guys. I have a creepy memory. It’s impeccable. Chances are, I remember every single detail about you.
So watch out. Don’t cross me or it’ll be etched in my memory forever. I’ve decided that I have been
blessed to be very perceptive about people and how they act…I probably know things about you that
YOU don’t even know. There are some that will testify to this. I might be making it up. But don’t pop my
balloon or pin-the-tail-on-the-DONKEY cause “I like that about myself and I like myself and I have a lot of
other really great qualities” (well-spoken, Marcel the Shell).

But yeah. Church was beautiful. The speakers talked a lot about faith, which is something I’ve really
come to learn more about these past few months, and I’m sure I’ll come to develop more of in the next
few years. Which is terrifying, because the fear of the unknown is prevalent in my mind. But although
I may have simply developed theories that haven’t transferred to my everyday life, I’ve learned about
faith as a real facet of our minds and lives.

Most recently, I’ve come to accept that fear and faith cannot coexist. I’ve heard it a million times, but
never truly grasped the concept. If I have a mustardseed amount of faith, fear is immediately dispelled.
Think about it. I’m afraid for what the next four months may hold for me—what trials, insecurities, and
shortcomings may take hold of me. But as soon as I take a step back, take ONE breath, and imagine the
power of the Atonement guiding me through the next four months, I feel fine. Granted, my faith has
a lot of improving to do, but I can repeat that process as often as I need to feel at peace with what my
future holds.

Faith is a hope for the future—a hope that we can move mountains that loom over us. It is more than
simply enduring to the end, though. It’s pressing forward with a brightness of hope and with optimism
and excitement for where our path will take us next.

Thank you, Beijing 1st Branch, for letting my join your ward on Sunday. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for
answering my prayers so quickly. Thank you, family, for loving me despite my many flaws. Thank you,
Shelby, for being the best China companion anyone could ask for. Thank you, concerned citizen, for
taking the time to read the musings of a girl roaming around a Communist country. Thank you, Asian
babies, for being s’darn cute. Thank you, whoever that was out in the hall, for terrifying me with your
strikingly incredible giant-hungry-bird-is-going-to-attack-me sound effect. Wait a minute. Yeah, that just
happened. I’m not even concerned. Hi.

But really. I am so blessed. Hey. Have a little faith. Because life is an adventure. And we’d do well to
remember that it’s the process that counts—not the event. Wise words from a pretty solid teacher I
may or may not have taken classes from for three consecutive years, and probably spent more time with

than my friends. Hi.

Anyway.

Bye.

P.S. I always start writing these posts with a full-intention to proofread and polish when I’m done. Am
I about to do that? Newwwpppp. Sorry for grammatical structural defects, misspellings (silly of you to
think I’d misspell anything), or me simply using the wrong word. I’m in a foreign country here, where
everything is you want buy honey water melon (it’s DEW, not WATER) and stay door colse. I’m working
on it!