After joining the LDS Church in 2005 while working in Cambodia, Chinese senior Qinghua “Claire” Zhou Leon has since served a mission, got married, is expecting a child and will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from BYU-Hawaii on April 18.
Later this year Leon said she will be moving with her husband, Roberto S. Leon, to BYU for him to work on his master’s degree in English composition and rhetoric.“I will stay at home as a housewife, take care of my baby and family, and let my husband focus on school,” said Leon. “Later, maybe I will find a part-time job when the baby grows up a little bit, but not soon. Family is the most important for me.” Leon said she discovered the church at the time she was working in Cambodia in 2005.
One of her friends and co-workers had met with LDS missionaries. That friend joined the church, and Leon decided to get baptized because of her friend’s influence. In 2009, Leon finished her job in Cambodia and returned home to China. She said coming back to China was the most perplexing time for her. She said she felt she had lost her goal in life and didn’t know what to do. During this time period, she watched General Conference and said one of the talks inspired her.
“My English at that time was not good enough,” Leon said. “I couldn’t totally understand what he said, but one thing he mentioned pushed me up: Paying tithing is a blessing from God and serving a mission is another way God leads us to receive blessings. At my hardest time, I really wanted more blessings, and also I needed a goal for my life, so I decided to go on a mission.”From September 2009 to March 2011, she served on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. She said serving there was totally different from her previous life and a cheerful experience.
On Temple Square, she said she got the chance to meet people from around the world – including students from BYUH. She learned from the students she met that BYUH was a college willing to offer more opportunities for international students and especially members of church. She decided to continue school at BYUH, she said, even though she had already graduated from a university in China and had been working for years.
Leon said her working experience in China and Cambodia helped her to choose a suitable major at BYUH – accounting. Leon said she felt business skills like marketing, human resources and supply chain could be learned from on-the-job experience, but she felt accounting could not be. Plus she felt accounting was an academic challenge and also valuable for life in general.
During the time Leon studied at BYUH, she had two different jobs. As an I-WORK student, she first worked at the Polynesian Cultural Center for the Maintenance Department for three years and then became an accounting teaching assistant. She met her husband at BYUH and they got married in June 2014. He graduated from BYUH in English two years ago in 2013. He teaches both English as an International Language and English classes at BYUH.