It’s been two whole weeks since we’ve last spoken… Sorry about that.  Well, in my defense I was gone for over a week of that, at this amazingly beautiful place called Sri Sailaam, but I will get to that.  First, I want to talk about church today, because during sacrament meeting a beautiful talk was given by someone visiting from the district presidency, and it was in English with no false doctrine shared, but also it just filled my heart with understanding and a desire to repent. So this brother started out by telling us how, after Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit in the garden, it was Satan that told them they needed to hide themselves from God, while Heavenly Father sought them out and invited them to come before Him in spite of their disobedience.  He then said that we, too, are often told by Satan that we should hide, rather than go humbly before God and seek His help (remember, it was Christ who clothed Adam and Eve after they choose to go before Him and the Father).  And these last few days I have been feeling dark and distant from my Heavenly Father without really knowing why or how to return home to Him within myself, and part of it was that I didn’t have the opportunity to take the sacrament last Sunday (oh, how I love the light that enters into me upon partaking of the sacrament!), but I realized that the other part of it was that I was hiding from Him.  Like, I want to be close to Him, and to have His love close to me, but I don’t (didn’t?) want to give up the thing that was dividing us.  And so, because I was cleaving to my sin (anger towards some people I work with her) I was choosing to hide pieces of myself from my Father.  I wanted the feeling of love and being perfectly known, and the feeling of forgiveness and power as the atonement works in my life, and yet my Father couldn’t give that to me if I was only giving a part of me to Him.  It was like I was saying “fill 2/3 of me with light, but I have this dark 1/3 of anger right now, and I’d really like to keep that so could you just turn the other way?”  Shockingly, He doesn’t work like that, haha.  I was trying to hide in my anger, but still get the blessings that come from being in his presence, and honestly, I was trying to do the impossible.  And because of that, the other stuff wasn’t ‘working’.  My prayers were hollow and left me feeling hollow because they were untrue, and while I was reading my scriptures, I was making room for the light of their words because I was busy nursing the darkness of my pride.  And, well, I haven’t fixed it yet, but I was just so grateful today for this idea of how we still do things to choose to hide from the Lord, even though we know that it is only when we leave our place of hiding that He can really help us and clothe us with His love and light.  And I am not totally over what has been bringing me down, but I am ready to come out of hiding, and I think that is a pretty good first step.  Oh, I wish I could love people better, and be more like my earthly father who has taught by example to give without question and to continually and proactively choose to be unoffended by my fellow Children of God.  I wish charity came naturally to me, as it does to those who so eagerly and continuously love me each day.  I wish I could love people just because they are God’s little ones, rather than continually dissecting and over-analyzing and worrying about how it is they are seeing me.  I wish I was less self-absorbed.  But, I am so grateful, because I know that the atonement of Jesus Christ is real, and that He fills us with light in spite of the darkness we sometimes choose for ourselves.  I am grateful for His promise that we can change, and I am happy to think that, maybe, just maybe, He has grown in me greater charity than was there two years ago.  And I am grateful to come out of hiding, and know that He will heal me over and over again, while continually building me into who it is We want me to be, the greatest and most expanded and most full of light version of me there can possibly be.  Mostly, I am so grateful for the privilege it is to repent!  What a joyful word of light and hope!!!

Other than that, I also went to Primary this week, and the kids are doing so well and I have found I am in love with me.  My new dream is to be Nepal’s primary chorister once I am living there, because there is just something so good and sweet and pure in sharing the gospel in its simplest form with these oh so faithful kids, who, of all the millions and millions of people in India, are privileged to know that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and He lives.

Well, after all of that, Sri Sailaam seems to fade in glory.  As much as I enjoyed seeing this temple and taking part in rituals, learning about them and seeing how they brought people joy (for even these things can add light to lives, though it is certainly in a lesser degree than is done through knowledge of and a relationship with Christ), well, I am just grateful that I KNOW that my Savior Lives, and hope lives in this world.  But, I will share some funny things, as I know (or tell myself to keep myself happy) that you are interested.  So, I went on this trip to Sri Sailaam and it was so fun, and the area was BEAUTIFUL, and blissfully not humid (as much as I am a Virginia Girl, Virginia has air conditioning), and I was there with these 5 Indian women, each of whom felt they needed to take on the role of my mother.  So I had 5 overprotective, micro-managing ‘moms’ this last week, which was an adventure all of its own.  The oldest woman there was probably about 70, and she went so far as to force feed me by hand when I turned down food (at least one mouthful), because… well, I actually don’t even know why.  She didn’t speak a lick of English, but she knew how to get her way.  Then there was Padamaja, who was so lovely and also spoke only Telugu, but she watched me and let me communicate with her, so that while everyone else was trying to make me take some curd with my lunch, she was explaining how it triggers my gag reflex and they really ought to just let me be.  And then we met up with a women there who spoke perfect English because of her brother who lives in the States, and she made me Quaker oatmeal that her mom had brought back from her last trip to Maryland.  I am so tired of eating rice, it is all I can do to eat half a cup at lunch each day (whether this is a physical or psychological rejection of rice, I have yet to determine), and so you would have thought that little packet of oatmeal was manna from heaven.  She also gave me 5 little mangoes.  Okay, I am realizing that this is all revolving around food, but food is an important part of life, and becomes more so when you are always hungry but can’t bring yourself to eat what has been made for you (okay, it is not as bad as all that.  I PROMISE I am not starving, though it would not be an overstatement to say that we students go to the local bakery about once a day to eat something that won’t make us feel slightly sick).   Anyways… But, these women were just so very funny, and they were proud of me because they said most other foreigners make it through about two Kalavahena rituals and then bow out, but I just kept on keeping on.  That made me happy.  I like being in this community of women and learning from their meekness and faith.  I am learning here the true meaning of “meek does not equal weak,” and I want to be a more gentle and submissive woman than I am.  But, yes, it was a very good and funny and productive and meaningful week.

Okay, that’s it.  This was all a whole lot of random put together into one unit of a weekly report, but then, isn’t it always?  Love to you all,

Emilee