Charity in Action - Sister Hui-Lian Liew

My mission has been one of the best things I have ever done, I think for my life. I learnt a lot and grew to love everyone I was able to meet, teach and associate with.

One of the highlights of my mission is definitely the companions that I had. Companions are definitely a God-sent because there's no way we can be as effective being solo missionaries. We are with them 24/7 and we have to do almost everything together. So of course, it's not all great. There are times when we have to work out our differences since we are all different and we each came from different backgrounds.

One companion I had was very strong-willed and having two strong-willed missionaries together, we were bound to head butt. She wanted a lot of control and so did I. But being the newer one in the mission at that time, I figured I'll back down and let her "run the show." It was frustrating and I found it difficult to enjoy our missionary work. Yet, we were taught that having the Spirit is important in every aspect of our work and I badly wanted it to work between us.

My companion had a scripture quote on charity, found in Moroni 7:47 which says, "But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him." She stuck it on her bedside and said she reads it every day to help remind her.

I thought a lot about it and thought to myself, I surely needed it, badly. I made a point in every personal prayer throughout the day, to pray for charity. To have the pure love of Christ so I could rid of this discontentment filling up inside. Things slowly turned out better. I began to see qualities in her that I never noticed before. I learnt to see her, as one specially chosen by Heavenly Father to be my companion and to be in this mission, the lives that she touched, the amazing teaching skills that she had, all the things that I wanted to have in my own self.

By the end of the transfer (6 weeks), she got ready to go home and I felt like the time we had was not enough. It was not fair. We have grown to love each other and worked really well together.

But life is such, that Heavenly Father shuffles things around a lot so we get to grow even more with different events in our lives. In this case, I had the opportunity to serve with more amazing sisters and meet so many wonderful people that touched my life even more.

Charity not only brings about the pure love of Christ, but also opens up to more opportunities to catch a glimpse of what the Lord feels for each of us. I love it! :)