Fabulous Family

Let's talk about family.

     When I first moved to Logan to start school, I thought I was leaving my family.  To be honest, I was kind of happy at that moment to get away from them and be myself, but naturally I still had some struggles moving. I went home frequently, usually to do laundry and get food, but it was nice to see my family too, I guess. It was nice to go back where people really knew and loved me.
     It's been difficult for me to be on my own when I get sick, or I forget something, or need to be somewhere and I no longer have my mom I can just call up to help me right then. I obviously didn't realize just how much I relied on my parents for so much.   I've learned a lot though, and it's been good to sort of grow up, but I've also realized that growing up doesn't mean not needing any help anymore.
     I'm almost done with my third semester of college, and I've been blessed to live with some of my same roommates the whole time. I didn't know them coming in last fall, but it's amazing to me how much like sisters they are now.  Everyday I think I've reached the maximum love I could have for them, and then BAM it grows some more!
     They have been angels to me, and truly my family.  Recently I was sick, and they took such good care of me.  I was also super stressed with an assignment and was going to have to stay up quite late to finish it, and one of them came downstairs and said, "My mom always stayed up with me when I had to finish something. So even though I can't take it away from you/do it for you, I can keep you company."  Seriously one of the sweetest things.   I really can't imagine college without them!!
     Another person I'd like to talk about is the old man who drives the bus. I met him last year, and actually became friends with him because of my two roommates': he's a great uncle to one, and became friends with the other because she rode his bus. He is one of my greatest blessings too, and has become family.  He has taken such good care of me in a lot of ways, and even though I don't really go to him a lot for many things, I know he would help me out if I really needed him to.  His whole family has become my family, and it's so lovely to see and talk with him on the way to school.
     There are so many other people here in Logan that have become my family, and let me know that I'm not alone. I'm grateful that family doesn't have to be just those who share the same blood (although I'm grateful for them too!!!), but it can extend to every person you develop a relationship with. :)

I love my families. They're pretty much the greatest thing I've ever been blessed with. And I'm grateful for the knowledge that they are eternal, and I think that in some way, we'll be able to stay connected to even those that aren't directly related to us in the traditional sense...

Some of my Cache Valley Family!

West Point Family!

"And if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them" (1 Nephi 17:3).
Today it was confirmed to me how much God really does love me, and that He is always listening and willing to provide blessings for our righteous desires.

So my story today is about a rather spontaneous, yet perfectly timed trip to the temple, and the blessings that made it happen, and made it a delight.

I have been wanting to do an Endowment Session for a while now, but I'm new and haven't done one all alone, so I sort of put it off and do other work instead usually. But today I was determined to do a session, whether I found another girl to go with or not.
So then I just had to address my other issue: transportation. It's rather stormy, so walking (which included the city bus because half of the route is walking from bus stop to the location) was out of the question for me. In contemplating, I thought I might text some of my neighbors to see if any of a particular apartment were planning on going to the temple in the course of the day...but it was getting late in the afternoon, and I wasn't sure if any of them would actually be free. That's when my roommate leaves for a study session, and yells to me as I'm waving goodbye that one of the guys from that apartment was dressed nicely, and out by his car. I jumped on the chance to ask if he was going to the temple, and he said he was. So I pleaded to go with him, to which he answered, "Of course!"
I ran back to my apartment, through on a dress, quickly talked to another roommate, and dashed out the door.
Remember how I've been determined to do a session, but a bit nervous without any help? Well, I've walked through many scenarios of what could happen and how I would handle going all by myself, and one of the thoughts that came to my mind was how crazy it would be if I ran into my new bishop's wife in the temple and had her guide me through some things, and how nice that would be if I could run into someone like that. And guess what?? As my friend and I sat in the chapel, IN WALKS THE BISHOP'S WIFE. So of course he came in a minute later, and we were able to wave them over, and I introduced myself. I was blessed to sit by her through the session, and even talk to her briefly afterwards in the dressing room.

What I'm trying to show, is that both of my prayers and desires concerning the temple were fulfilled, and I think that's definitely because I had righteous desires to do that missionary work I'm commanded to help with, and God loves me so much as to provide a comforting and easy way for that work to happen.

The things of the temple are blessed, and bring ultimate joy. Strive your hardest to attend the temple and feel of those peaceful and beautiful things constantly! Heavenly Father loves you, and wants to bless you in your righteous desires, specifically those that align with His will in bringing others unto Him.

I hate to break it to you, but Disneyland is not the happiest place on Earth--the temple of the Lord is.

Collegiate Life (7)

I wrote this really genius essay for English that explained how life needs dissonance, so that the consonance is more appreciated.  Basically, I was saying that sometimes we need the bitter trials, to more fully understand and love the joy and happy things in life.

But no matter how much I say I love the dissonance in music, I'm not always the biggest fan of dissonance in real life.  Opposition is hard. And it's real. 

I'm going to talk about my testimony on the reality of Satan.  He's real, guys. And he's mean. But without the temptation and opposing role he plays in my life, I don't think I would be able to so confidently say I have a testimony of the Savior and this Gospel.

Leading up to receiving my endowment, I was plagued with many things that I knew was Satan trying to keep me from doing a good thing. From the greatest thing.  But I would not allow him to keep me from making those covenants and growing to be more like God!
He attacked me with things like thoughts; I would make mistakes I'd never really made before, and those thoughts lingered in my mind, and Satan would try to make me think that those mistakes would keep me from going to the temple. But that's when I would shout back at him that those mistakes would be erased with the Atonement by taking the Sacrament. And how better to understand and appreciate the Atonement than going to the temple to be healed and grow closer to the Christ that atoned for those very sins I had made?  

These thoughts, though hard they were to fight at times, were a good way for me to strengthen the testimony I already had.  They helped confirm that I absolutely needed Christ and the temple in my life because of all those mistakes and imperfections.

How much sweeter the Sacrament and Atonement in general becomes when we have a reason for it.  When we realize we are weak and imperfect and need the strength from the Lord to overcome our difficulties, the bread and water become so much sweeter to the mouth than if we were already perfect.

Life is hard.  I probably say this in every post, but it's true.  Sometimes it's really not fun at all to face the various challenges and to-list in front of us, but we can do it with Christ!  But it's also funny how sometimes, even as the hardest things happen, so do the sweetest things.  And I think we realize just how wonderful those sweet blessings that come from being righteous are because of the dark trials that we face.

The consonance is so much better to the ear after those moments of dissonance in God's grand symphony of our life.


*Pictures: Day I went through the temple. My family came and it was the greatest! I was the happiest person on the Earth that day. Guaranteed.*

(#PerfectDiscriptionOfMyFeelings #MyWordsExactly)

"It's a Christmas Miracle!"

Foreword: With help from the title, I want you to think of that episode of the Brady Bunch where Carol losses her voice right before she sang in church for Christmas, okay??
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I'm a voice major. Choral Education to be exact. Because voice is my main instrument, I'm required to take vocal classes and private voice lessons, obviously, and one of the grading criteria for this class is to pass a jury.  At the end of each semester I have to get up and sing in front of a panel of professors, and I get graded on my singing.  This is the equivalent of a final test that other classes would give, except it's completely different; it's not just 15-20 percent of your grade like other classes I'm in, it's 50 percent of the grade. That's right. 50%.
So you try your hardest to perfect your music and stay healthy and prepared at every moment, and then something truly awful happens.  It's less than a week before your jury, and you wake up with a terribly sore throat.
NOOO! You scream internally, because heaven knows you can't, for the life of you, make any sound come out of your mouth except the hacking of a cough which hurts like none-other.
You think to yourself: surely it's just because I haven't gotten up and warmed up my voice- it will go away as the day goes on.
But the next day comes, and the sore throat is still there, burning, and your chest hurts from all the coughing, and you can't believe your jury (in which you have to sing lots of F5s and even an Ab5) is in four days. 4 DAYS. How is it even humanly possible to be healed of this sickness in 4 days?!

And then  you remember what you read in your scriptures the previous night.  You had been discouraged, and feeling ill, but you pulled out your scriptures and started reading in 3 Nephi 17.  The Lord was still visiting, and about to leave when suddenly He's filled with great compassion and asks that all the sick be brought to Him so that He may heal them, and because of their faith they are healed.  You continue to study this chapter though, because wow were there some great blessings that came in a situation similar to yours, so you look through footnote scriptures, and as your turning from one to another, you lose your grip on the book you're holding and lose your spot, for the book has opened to another page. It's landed on Mark 5, and a single verse is already underlined and draws your attention immediately to it: verse 34.

"Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace and be whole of thy plague."

WHAT.
Yeah. I wasn't even turning to that scripture. It just appeared.  Heavenly Father must really love me. And I think because I was searching truth, He gave it to me.

All today I've been thinking of ways I can channel my faith and be healed.  Immediately what I thought of was to have a priesthood blessing. And then I thought about what others may think if I ask for another blessing when I'm not even the only person who's sick.  I shared these thoughts with the friend I asked to give me a blessing. He assured me that asking for a blessing was not a sign of weakness, but of strength and humility; it shows that I turn to the Lord in my trials.  I was reminded of D&C 6:36 where it states to look unto Him in every thought, to doubt not and fear not. What I took from this scripture was that it's okay to turn to the Lord for strength in every thing, especially when it's important to us. I learned that I shouldn't fear man's opinion of me; it's okay to ask for blessings when we've been striving to stay righteous and are in need.
So Trevor and Jonathan came and gave me a blessing. It was beautiful, and I wish I had recorded it.

Then there's Nicole. She's amazing, I tell you! Nicole has been heaven sent, that's for sure, and I don't know how I would've survived this past week, nay, this past semester, without her offering me love and support the entire way. She has been the biggest blessing to me.
She has been praying for me, and offering to help me every minute this week, and even put my name on the temple prayer role and told her family to pray for me because she realized how important juries is.  Then she called over the guy she's dating to come give me another blessing this morning before my jury, and assured me that asking for another blessing is not bad at all.
So Jameson came over and gave me a beautiful blessing, and this time I recorded it.

HOW GRATEFUL I AM FOR PEOPLE WHO MAKE IT SO EASY TO LIVE THE GOSPEL AND FEEL GOD'S LOVE.

Having worthy priesthood holders all around is truly so amazing to me- that I could call on almost any of my neighbors and they'd be over in minutes to use their priesthood power. They're the greatest!

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So juries:
I was really nervous, and at the same time, not at all nervous.  It's a weird thing to experience.
But I got to the building and was so glad that Heavenly Father sent angels before me so that I would know a familiar face as I got there to calm me down a bit.  Brooklyn, a friend from choir, was there and as we conversed, she just soothed me so much and I felt everything would be okay because Brooklyn was there to answer my dumb questions and give me the best advice and be my friend.
And then more angels arrived as I waited and just so many tender mercies as I went into the room to perform (side note: the Caine Room, where I performed, is the epitome of a Jane Austen novel setting. I'm pretty sure one of the professors sitting by the window was actually Mr. Bingley writing a letter, but this is besides the point of this blog post.), and I'm just so grateful to be a daughter of a Heavenly Father who loves me, and I love Him!!
Although I was nowhere near perfect, I did my best in that moment and just tried to perform like everything was normal.

Basically, this whole experience was a Christmas miracle, but unlike the episode of the Brady Bunch, I recognize and know that this all happened because of a loving Heavenly Father and the faith I exercised in Him.

Have faith, kids. God loves you and is looking out for you. He'll bless you if you just turn to Him.

These things I know to be true, and I say them in the name of my Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

P.S. My Relief Society Presidency gave our apartment little photos of Christ, and this was mine. On the back, it said, "The Savior is my friend and knows my every need."  I found it very uplifting during this discouraging trial. :)

Give Love, Not Gifts

Let me start with a question that I want you to answer for yourself.
What is your love language?

If you don't know, go here and take a little quiz that will give you a pretty good idea.

Then I want you to think about those you love most. What is their love language? Generally it's the top one or two love languages that affect a person most, in my opinion.

Now think about this Christmas season.  There's a large focus of showing love, right? Because Christ's light and love is something we try to emulate especially at this time of year, but have you noticed that people try to show love in a generic way at Christmas time? And that way is usually through gifts.
The problem with this, is that this is not everyone's number one love language, so getting them a gift is not very meaningful.  I mean, have you ever tried to think of the perfect gift for someone, but had the hardest time thinking of what they would want and be really excited and happy with?  My thoughts are that it's so hard to think of gift ideas because we're thinking giving a physical object is the only way we can show love, the only type of 'present' we can give.

From personal experience of taking the quiz, and other friends taking it as well (hopefully my roommates don't mind me sharing), the love language of getting gifts has come in last place by a long shot for most of us.   Maybe we're unique, but for people similar to us, I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that gift-giving is not the number one way we'd like to be shown love this Christmas.

In Relief Society yesterday, a young women raised her hand and shared similar thoughts with us.  She pointed out that Christmas time is a time to show love, and that we should tailor the love we give to others for them, and not just go with the flow and try and find a good gift. She shared that by loving others how they feel most loved is the best possible way we could ever love them.

Say someone's love language was quality time. Do you really think buying them an expensive gift, and simply dropping it on their doorstep would be a better Christmas present to them than coming over and talking for a bit while doing something simple like making snowflakes??
Personally, I would definitely opt for making snowflakes and talking, over making someone spend money on something that I might not even like, or ever use.

I challenge you to think of the people you want to show love to this season, and perhaps you still get them presents, but try and give them the kind of love they deserve in the way that's best for them. :) And maybe you can change your own Christmas-Wish List to things that fit your love language.

May your Christmas season be filled with Christ's love, and may you be a reason others feel it too. :)

Collegiate Life (6)

Today I want to share things on patience.

Because I'm still working on this principle of having patience, this will be an incomplete post without much conclusion or confirmation from me that it works, but I think that's part of it. I think the point of having patience is to build our faith in Heavenly Father and His plan for us.

Basically, there are a lot of things I'm impatient about.  I want a lot of answers right now, I want a lot of things to be over now, I want a lot of things to be here already, and the worst part is that they don't come and happen when I want it (which is right now, in case you didn't catch that).

One of my friends serving a mission right now told me in a recent email:

"I've been learning a lot about patience this week. We all have an abundance of challenges in our lives and we suppose that the solution should come now. Right now. President Monson said that in such circumstances, "the heavenly virtue of patience is required". Fussing over things never fixes them. The best fixer is Jesus Christ, and He comes in His own time."

I love his example to me, and another friend's who posted this link on Facebook today which I really loved.  Go read it here! It had some great insights about patience; all of those great prophets we read about in the scriptures didn't get their prayers or wants answered right away.  The majority had to wait 15 years or more for things to happen. Over 15 years!!  In my problems right now, 15 years would seem like an eternity to wait for answers and solutions.   

But I'm also slowly trying to focus my perspective on the part where earth life is but a small moment in my eternal progression, and the things I want fixed shouldn't need to feel so pressed for time, because some of them are eternal issues that don't need to be worried about not happening right now.... which probably doesn't make any sense to those who don't actually know what I'm dealing with, but basically I'm trying to get more comfortable with the idea of not rushing Heavenly Father because he's going to take His time anyway.

I don't know how the future will turn out. I don't know when my problems will be fixed, or my questions answered, but there must be something God is trying to teach or prepare me for, so I've just got to do my best to build my faith, and have that faith that He will make things alright for me, that things will work out better than I could even ask for or imagine.

Collegiate Life (5)

Today I'm going to talk about how God loves others.

For a lot of my life, there's always been an emphasis that Heavenly Father loves all of his children, including myself.  There was a push from leaders of "Remember that He loves you, individually." For some reason, I think that begins to take a selfish root (because we all know Satan likes to twist true things to make them evil). I think that people, me at least sometimes, begin to think that because God loves me so much, I should get this and that and this, or we begin to simply forget that God can bless the lives of others because He loves them too.  We can get jealous at times of others' blessings, and wonder where ours are. But I've come to learn that Heavenly Father loves me because I have first learned that He loves His other children.

We had a Stake Day of Service for Stake Conference.  Our ward decided to rake the leaves on the church grounds.  When we first started going over to the church, I wondered where we would get all the rakes (because let's be real: a college student isn't going to think about bringing one to college).  Apparently, one of Bishop's neighbors had a whole bunch of rakes that he willingly lent to our ward.  But he was an older gentleman, with a large yard of his own, and this year had been exceptionally hard for him to rake his leaves.  He was out of town on the day we raked the church grounds, so when Sister Anderson told us about this brother, we all decided that those who could, would go over right then and rake his yard.
There was maybe a dozen or so people there raking this huge yard, but we got most of it done in about an hour/hour and a half.  As we were in the backyard, I stopped to rest for a moment, and looked around to see all of the people (who had already been raking for 2 hours), continuing to work hard to rake the yard of a man none of us had ever met.  It was then that I realized how much Heavenly Father truly loved this man we were serving. If Heavenly Father didn't love this brother of mine, no way would He have made it possible for so many people to serve this way for a total stranger.  As I realized the love Heavenly Father had for this little old man, I also realized that He loves me that same way.  He sends so many blessings my way--so many angels--because he loves me.

Another experience I had was when a group of friends decided to go to an elderly care center to visit.  We went to what's called "Memory Lane," where most people there have dementia or something similar.  At first it was awkward to try and have conversation, especially with those who weren't completely there...But after a while, we were able to get the talking going and have a grand time with those old folk.  My friend asked at one point if they liked listening to piano music (there was a piano in the room).  Some replied that they did enjoy it, so he volunteered me to go play some music.  There was a book full of oldies which was absolutely perfect.  I chose a few songs that were really popular, such as Dream a Little Dream of Me, and even though I couldn't see or hear any of their reactions, I'm pretty sure they did enjoy it.  Later, a woman really wanted to hear the piano, so they called me over to play. I was able to ask her what songs she liked, and she told me hymns.  As I played, I could feel the Spirit enter the room because of those songs, and the feelings of love for those people which accompanied them.  Another lady cried out that she wanted to hear hymn 301: I Am a Child of God.   It really got to me, and continues to do so.  We were all children of God sitting there together, visiting and loving one another.   I think that at that moment, my friends and I were representatives of Heavenly Father, showing His love to His children in that facility. How neat it was to love them that day! And I look forward to when we go back and visit!

One last experience that really showed me this principle, was when I attended a Musical Therapy concert.  The MT department put on a concert where they presented different possible scenarios they may be faced with, and how they would go about solving it with music.  To think of people dedicating their life to helping others with their talents in that way just fills me with the warm and fuzzies.  I think that it is so incredible that we have music, and that I have the talents in music, and others do to, to reach out and touch the lives of others, to improve their lives, and in turn improve ours.

Heavenly Father is absolutely the coolest.  He knows exactly what everyone needs, and He sends us as His angels for others, and sends us angels in return.  I think I am just beginning to learn this, and I can't wait to continue to see and be His hands as all of us children go through life. :)

In the name of Jesus Christ I share these things to testify of Him and His love. Amen.