[ 1 ] (Ch 40)

สวัสดี​ค่ะ​ทุกคน

It's a good week to be alive. This Thursday, I will hit my one year mark.

One year! That's crazy! 

One year of waking up at 6:30 every day. One year of having another person--someone with their own thoughts, dreams, and opinions--glued to my side constantly. One year of trying to embrace those thoughts, dreams, and opinions wholeheartedly, with a wide open mind--then six weeks passes by, and you've got a whole new personality to discover. One year of rules. Rules about everything--from what we wear to what we watch to when we turn the lights out at night. One year of breaking rules. Unintentionally. Nearly every day. One year of trying to be better--promising to not make the same mistakes again--trying to rededicate, renew, and re-energize. Every day. 

But I won't define my one year by the rules I've kept and broken, or by bedtimes and morning wakeups. I can't! 

My one year has been a year of humbling. "Now... I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed." (Moses 1:10) I guess I never did suppose that we could be so very small, until I saw "God moving in His majesty" every day in a hundred ways. Watching the sun slowly sink below the mountains, setting the rice fields on fire with color, biking to teach a family about the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ--it's not an experience that belongs to this world. Neither is looking up after you say an opening prayer--the first prayer an investigator has ever heard in their life--and asking, "How do you feel right now?" And then you wait, but you already know what the answer will be. "Good," they say, "I feel warm inside." You knew they'd feel like that--God is always listening!--but it still brings tears to your eyes, every time. It's been a year of tears--one or two of sorrow, but mostly tears of joy--tears of being overcome with the goodness of a loving Father in Heaven. Tears because in that moment you know exactly how small you are in the grand scheme of things--small, maybe, yet so very loved all the same. 

It's been a year of laughter and love. It's been a year of coming home late at night and being so tired all you want to do is lie there. And you do. You pull two pillows off the couch and you lie there on the floor with your companion and you talk about your investigators--for a minute. But then someone gets hungry and you find a loaf of bread somewhere in your cluttered, work-in-progress house. And then you eat it by the slice, right there on the floor, and your companion makes bad puns about bread, and you can't help but join in and pretty soon you're on a roll (...) and you're laughing and laughing and all is right with the world. You go to sleep lighthearted and hopeful, ready to face another day of work and miracles. 

It's been a year of defining. I thought I knew who I was before I became a missionary. Maybe I did, a bit. But never more so than now. 

I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I am a child of God. 

Nothing could possibly be more precious to me than this knowledge. These roles were important to me before becoming a missionary. Now, though, they are the focus of my life. They're the North Stars in my personal skyscape. Whatever else comes into my universe as times goes on, comes. But now nothing can replace these two roles in brightness or prominence, and certainly not in importance. 

It has been the year of Romans 8:38-39:

"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

This scripture is true. Nothing can change Christ's love for us--nothing. It is ever-present and everlasting. 

It's the year I decided to write my own response to this scripture:

" For I am determined to allow neither worldly pursuits, nor poor choices in media, nor forgotten prayers, nor half-hearted scripture studies, nor any other sin by any other name to separate me from my ability to feel my Savior's love, and return it back to Him and those around me. "

I have never felt more humble--never more hopeful. I love this gospel. It is true. I don't just believe that anymore. I know it. I love my Savior, Jesus Christ. He did everything for us. He would do anything for us. 

I love you all. Sorry for the very, very sentimental year mark email. I kind of just started typing and this came out. 

To anyone considering a mission--I don't know your situation. I hope you'll stay prayerful as you decide what to do. That being said, my mission has been the most valuable, incredible gift in my life. It has given me a chance to learn things that will affect me far past the ending of this life. If I had to make the choice over again, I'd choose to go--over and over and over again.

I love you! Thanks for all you do for me! Cheers to a year! 

Sister Harris