Leih hou, ligo sinke haih feihseung keihgwai.
This last week has been pretty interesting. Well, as interesting as the MTC gets. I am sure and I hope that my weeks are more eventful when I get to Hong Kong. But I guess I´ll have to wait 4 weeks to find out.
I guess I´ll start off with kind of a depressing, but really not that depressing at all message (if that makes any sense). Most of the letters I got in this past week have been kind of sad. Most of them relate to unfortunate things that have happened or are happening to people, and none of these things really seem fair at all. I remember back in January and February wondering what I had done to deserve my anxiety, and I really did not think it was fair that I was experiencing that. In the end I was able to learn a lot from it and come out a better person, but not all sad stories have happy endings. Or at least not from what we can see.
I thought about that a lot this week. Why are certain people plagued by things like mental illness, not having self worth, and other things like that while others (like me) have been able to get out of those situations. You may say it is faith related or something else, but often things happen that really are just plain not fair.
After I first got to the MTC, one thing I tried figuring out through reading the scriptures and stuff is what happens to those people who have mental illnesses that cloud their judgement and make their lives miserable if they do something drastic. I know we cant judge people because only God has that right and ability. However, it really bothered me because my friend who this happened to was on my mind. I remembered something I had heard about the people involved with 9 11. For some reason, after the planes crashed into the towers, people were jumping out of windows from high up with no chance of survival. Nobody understood why they did this. The people did not think it was sure death for them if they stayed inside the buildings, so people didnt understand why they jumped out of the windows. After 9 11 happened, scientists discovered that the inside of the towers had become incredibly hot. So staying inside of the buildings was incredibly painful. So were these people who jumped out of the towers wrong to do so. (sorry for some reason this keyboard´s question mark doesnt work.) I read 1 Nephi that the Lord will have mercy upon his afflicted. I dont know if the context applies to the same thing I was looking for, but for some reason this scripture gave me comfort and since then I really havent worried about it. God is merciful. That is why he gave us the atonement and gives us so much.
Anyways, like I was saying, there is so much in life that just isnt fair. We can try to think of reasons why these things happen, but we wont always be able to come up with the answer. It is kind of the sad truth of life. But that is not what is important. Whats important is that this life is only a small point on our eternal timeline. God is all powerful. He could stop every unfair thing from happening. But He doesnt. Life doesnt have to be fair, because there is so much more that God is offering us than just this short mortal life.
So when unfair things happen, try not to sweat it. Just keep doing the best you can do, and whether you are rewarded in this life or not, you will be blessed for the good you do here in the life to come.
Sorry if that was a downer at all. It actually makes me really really happy. Because it makes me realize how real the life after this is, and the happiness I can have if I continue to do the right things.
Well moving on past that, we were talking in class this week about Hong Kong again, and some of the things our teacher did there. She told us about giant spiders that are all over. Supposedly their webs are really strong and dont break like normal spider webs. But the worst part is the spiders are HUGE. A kid in our class told about when he was there how a spider was on his friends shoulder so he screamed and ran to his friend and hit it off as hard as he could. He said the only thing he could compare it to is hitting a baseball. It was so big and just solid. Then they talked about the huge bees in the forest and all of the other freakishly big bugs and weird things there.
The new district came in a week ago. There is an elder from Australia, one from Salt Lake, and a sister from Idaho somewhere. They are all pretty nice, but it is kind of obvious they are still kind of in shock. They are all pretty quiet. The one from Salt Lake is going to Toronto Cantonese speaking, but the other two are going to Heung Gong. Right now I am kind of in the awkward limbo between being super excited to get out of here, but also worried because I really dont know as much of the language as I would like to.
Everyone, with school, work, sports, etc... starting up again, dont get too caught up in it all to let it distract you from what is most important, and from just having peaceful moments when you can think and not worry about anything. That doesnt mean all of those things arent important because they are, it is more about taking time from the least important things to do this, or finding time to do it when you dont have to be doing anything else.
Sorry I dont have time to write more responding to the dearelders. Hopefully I get time tonight to reply to all of your letters. But if not, know I love you all and really appreciate all the letters.
Love, Elder Bingham
Ngoi, Bik Jeung Louh
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