Ocean's May Divide Us, but Friendship Unites Us

Almost three years ago I entered the MTC. On the first day I met a guy who has now become my best friend. We served together in the Twin Cities. Because we were Hmong speaking missionaries there weren't very many of us, so we worked together a lot and got to be very close.

Well, it took our entire missions just to get decent at speaking Hmong. My friend had never spent time around an type of Asian culture, so of course he fell in love with it and even though the two have almost nothing in common, he also developed a interest in Chinese culture.

Now he is on a small Chinese island teaching English to kids of all ages. He went over there with a group from BYU-Idaho. He had only been there since August and has completely fallen in love with their culture and society. He never wants to come home. Not to mention that he is so motivated and inspired to be there doing what he is doing, that he has already mastered Mandarin Chinese as well as he knows Hmong. It really is incredible to listen to him speak to people in Mandarin.

He calls every couple of weeks just to catch me up on how things are going out there. All we do is laugh when he calls. His stories are just hilarious and we have essentially the same sense of humor. The last time he called he had me talk to one of his 16-year-old students. It was so much fun to listen to how well this boy knows English.

The only problem was the time difference. For them, it was only 3 in the afternoon. For me, it was 1 in the morning. . . I kept telling them that I was trying to go to bed, but they just kept talking.

So, basically I just wanted to write a little about this, because I think it is so cool that my best friend is in China teaching English, knows Mandarin already, and we get to talk about it all the time. I am blown away by his diligence and motivation. See, right when we got home from our mission he started at BYU-Idaho, but he didn't have a very good semester, so he decided to try something completely crazy. Now, because he is doing something that he is truly driven to do, he is excelling in all areas of his life. We could all learn a lesson or two from my friend!