Diamonds

Our investigator was baptized yesterday!!!! It was the most amazing day
ever. She was baptized after church (we have RS, Sunday School, then
Sacrament Mtg here) and so many members attended and even gave her little
gifts. I am so thankful for how welcoming the ward has been. We even had
another investigator attend church and her baptism! I am so proud of her
testimony and faith. Before she met the missionaries, she heard voices and
didn't like being around people. Now she doesn't hear voices, and she
understands charity so well. Her gospel knowledge and faith is truly
admirable. She is such a strong spirit. I am eternally grateful Heavenly
Father let me meet her and teach and learn from here. My trainer met her
with a sister who is now in a different area, so I am so grateful they
found her in that Hong Kong park a few months ago. It is humbling and
amazing to think about how a simple encounter has changed her life. She is
a different person. The Atonement is real. Baptism is the first step and is
a way we can follow our Savior. I cried when she got baptized and fought
tears as we sang "Nearer My God to Thee, I Need Thee Every Hour, Come
Follow Me and Testimony." And as I said the closing prayer.
One of the most spiritual moments of this week was on Tuesday when we were
walking the familiar path to the bus stop that goes to our church. It
passes this big retaining wall/stone hill with water and greenery flowing
down it. The stone steps had little shards of glass and the sunlight
streamed through the leafs of the trees on the side opposite the wall. All
the sudden the quote from Dieter F. Uchtdorf from this past conference
entered my mind, "We tread a path covered with diamonds, but we can
scarcely distinguish them from ordinary pebbles." That quote was just so
incredibly perfect for the moment, and I'm so thankful the Spirit brought
to my memory that beautiful line from an apostle's message to the world. I
looked at the glittering path, and the glowing sunlight and felt so much
hope, joy, and gratitude. It was one of those moments that you feel like
your happiness is like a bubble of joy that can hardly fit in your heart. I
knew that our mortal journey really is a path covered in diamonds,
especially when we have the knowledge of our Heavenly Father's plan of
happiness. I knew that my mission still had a long path before me and that
I had diamonds yet to discover. How lucky are all of us to be children of
such a loving Heavenly Father!?
An older man who works as kind of an assistant to President Lam shared his
testimony with us this past week at Trainer/Trainee meeting this past week.
He has severe tremors that cause even his jaw to tremble, but he is the
most humble, grateful, happy man I have ever met. I loved everything he
said. He served in Hong Kong years ago, before the MTC, before the many
resources missionaries now have. Whenever he speaks of challenges and
trials, he does so reminding us that they are signs of love from Heavenly
Father, and are for our good. I am grateful to see how real that is in his
life-he is an amazing example. Something I really liked that I wrote down
was that he referred to them as "remarkable challenges." Our challenges are
remarkable! They are to mold us into something better. Something more like
our Savior. And in the midst of them, we turn to our Savior with more
purpose and humility and dependence. We need Jesus Christ every hour,
especially in moments of remarkable challenges, surrounded on all sides
with diamonds perhaps now masked as ordinary pebbles. See the diamonds this
week.

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*Sister Dopp*