What I Am Learning about Scripture Study from Reading them in Chinese

I feel like I am a new member again, or that I’m a new member for the first time when it comes to scripture study.  For as long as I can remember, I have understood the scriptures I read to some degree.  And if I stumbled across a passage I couldn’t connect with, I would either ask one of my very available and willing parents to help clarify it for me, or I would skip to a passage I was more familiar with.  Not too shabby.  Now I am learning why some of the people I taught on my mission would tell me the Book of Mormon was difficult to understand while others, with just as little previous experience with it, never seemed to have a problem with it.

As I read the words in my new study-edition of the Book of Mormon in traditional Mandarin Chinese, I enjoy the luxury I have long yearned for to have the characters for each verse in one column, the phonetic spelling of those characters (or “Romanization” or “pin-yin”) in the next column, and the familiar English verse in the last so I can study all three side by side.  This great blessing takes a great deal of work to take advantage of, and after studying this book almost every day for the last two or three months, and occasionally before that for another two, I still haven’t ventured past the Testimony of the Three Witnesses.  I have determined that, this time through, I am not reading for speed (last time through I simply skipped every word I didn’t already know) but for reading fluency, and eventually comprehension.  I am determined to make it through each section just reading the characters and recognizing every one by sight, without checking the pin-yin, before I move past it and call it conquered.

There are several paragraphs between the Title Page and the Introduction that I can now read through without checking, and I am finally enjoying the luxury, which I never fully appreciated before going through this exercise, of reading every word in a sentence without stopping, freeing me to put the ideas together into one coherent thought.  Language truly is a marvelous thing!

The question that has entered my mind several times through the last few months, and been excused largely without an answer about as many times, is “Does it count as scripture study if I can understand so little of what I am reading?”  One paragraph could take me five minutes to muddle through, leaving me too tired to attempt another.  So tired, that I actually fell asleep when I’ve tried it.  Does tripping over one paragraph of words I can hardly string together in a coherent thought count as study of the Book of Mormon?

Today, I learned why the answer is a resounding “Yes.”

As I was reviewing a few verses I still struggled a little with, in preparation for turning the page on them permanently and moving forward in my quest to read every character in the Book of Mormon in Mandarin, I enjoyed the flow of the words together in sentences I could now comprehend and appreciate.  I had worked hard on this, and the progress, while slow, had been exciting because my skills improved each time.  I felt the Spirit whisper to my heart words I had spoken to my son in recent days and I realized that I was keeping Heavenly Father’s commandment to “be obedient.”

“Things always go better when you are obedient,” I tell my son, “even when you don’t know why.  I know it’s hard sometimes, but when you’re obedient, you will always be happier.”

I knew this because my mother had taught me, “I’m not going to tell you why, because you’re just going to argue with me.  You obey first and then if you still want to know why, maybe I’ll tell you.”  It makes me smile to remember myself, short and pompous, trying to process those words as I pouted and humphed out of the room, but it is a true principle.

God tells us what we need to do to be happy, and He rarely tells us why upfront.  But when we obey, we often figure that part out for ourselves.

So the Spirit taught me this morning that we study the scriptures to be obedient.  The other blessings that come through that process are but blessings He already wanted to give to us.  We show we are ready to receive these blessings by keeping His commandments.   So, while I have many great, enduring, and even life-changing lessons during my scripture study, they weren’t taught to me by the words on the page.  Rather, they were taught to me by the Spirit I had put myself in the right place to hear by consistent obedience.