The Why Child and Why You are So Trunky- Nov 13, 2009

So I appreciate the fact that everyone is counting down the days until I come home. That lets me know how much you all love me. Are you all trying to make me trunky? Hahaha… I am doing fine. We stay so busy in the office that even if I wanted to be trunky, I just don’t have time to be. Right now I am in the process of stringing up the Christmas lights for the office. Not to mention planning for Elder Watson the Asia Area President to come on Monday. Then we have zone conference Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And then on the 4th I am helping Taipei install the new referral system that I have been working on for their cell phones, consider it my birthday present to mom. And then if I make it through all of that I have to get everything ready for Christmas, including planning all the choirs and making sure the Missionary Conference goes well. When you have 180+ missionaries it takes a lot of work to keep everything all organized. I am loving being busy, it makes me feel like I am making a difference. You should see my office right now; it is covered in Christmas lights and cell phones. If you thought mom had too many Christmas lights, think again. We have more here, I guarantee it. And they AREN’T the good kind that don’t break. They are the kind where if one goes out half of them go out. It’s okay though I am getting pretty good and finding the broken ones. Oh I forgot to mention that we have to close down 6 apartments too. We just closed one down the other night and we were out until 2am finishing it all up. Then we had to get up at 5am to help the returning missionaries get up to Taipei. There was one normal missionary that was with us on that day and he was ready to pass out. All of us in the office were just giggling because of how tired he was. Despite the fact that I like to sleep, I have realized that you don’t need that much of it, as long as you have a good attitude and are taking good care of yourself you will hardly be tired. Attitude has a lot to do with it, if you allow yourself to be tired you will be.
I have a ping pong appointment in a couple of minutes so that will be fun. It is hard to find people to play ping pong with me. Before I came I thought that every Asian could play ping pong and do kong fu at the same time. I guess not. Oh well as long I can play ping pong.
We got a referral from the California missionaries last week. They faxed us the information for a man that they had been teaching there in Richmond. I called him up and he is super nice. At first I thought that he probably spoke English since he was meeting with the missionaries there, but then I realized he didn’t speak at all. I was really confused! He must have been meeting with the Chinese Speaking Elders there in Richmond. I have several friends from the MTC that went to California Chinese speaking. Anyways this guys name is Lin Jing and he is awesome. I talked to him on the phone for about 20 minutes the other day and he seemed to me to be a real thinker. I love thinkers, they are the best ones to teach. A lot of people just listen and then after you finish the meeting they stop thinking. But thinkers, they absorb everything you say and think about it. They think up questions and they try and spot the areas that aren’t that clear. Well this Lin Jing was a thinker. I could tell he put lots of thought into everything the missionaries had told him before. He had all these questions. The key to learning is questions, if you never ask the question, you never get the answer.
As a kid I remember being a “Why?” child, I am sure that my parents can attest to that.
“Why does the TV hum when you turn it on dad?”
“Mom, why do dogs wag their tails when they are happy?”
In Chinese we call these the “move your head questions,” meaning that you have got to put a little bit of effort into the question. Of course we all know, what you put in is what you get out. If you want to get the answer, then you have got to ask the question.
The same law applies to the Gospel. If you want to know why Jesus had to come to earth to perform the Atonement, then you have got to ask the question. The only problem with the “why child” situation is that the “why child” is asking an imperfect parent (Sorry mom and dad, but for this example you have to be imperfect.) When the why child ask mom or dad why a certain thing is the way it is they get an imperfect answer. However, when we as children of Heavenly Father ask the “why questions” we get a perfect answer. Not only is the answer perfect factually, but it is also perfect as far as the timeline of Heavenly Father is concerned. There are certain questions that a young child may ask that a wise parent my simply leave to a later date to completely answer. Heavenly Father works the same way, sometimes it is not the correct time to answer our questions. Sometimes he will answer part of it and let us continue to ponder. Then once we have reached a higher stage of spiritual maturity, He will finish answering the question.
Oh ya, don’t let me forget to tell you about my companions sleep walking story. I will wait a couple weeks to tell you this one. It was hilarious, and I know I wouldn’t be able to do it justice in an email.
Gotta go love ya,
Elder Craig Alan Anderson