"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others"
This is just a random little post because I didn't blog about my week on Sunday, like I usually do.
I found this little jewel when I was looking through old Facebook messages. I had sent it to my sister in 2010 in the middle of my sophomore year of high school. It was an English assignment for my english class. We had to write about what we believe. Well, I'll just let you read it/ Presenting, words of wisdom from my 15 year old self:
The greatest failure of all is giving up on yourself, your dreams, and your talents. You are you for the reasons that you have different opinions, dreams, hopes, and talents. Letting go of all those things because you’ve faced a trial, heartache, and/or rejection is the greatest of failures. Believing that you can’t, wont, or don’t want to achieve much in life is part of that failure.
There is nothing more unique and beautiful than the passion and love that someone has for a dream, talent, or hope. The most crushing, painful sight to see, is someone give up on themselves, their dreams, and their talents. Your dreams and hopes can take you to extreme heights beyond your imagination, but only if you let them and don’t give up. Giving up means backing into a cold stone of fear that sheds no light on your dreams. If you doubt yourself and your dreams, then you give permission for others to doubt you also.
“I have a dream…” are the famous four words of Martin Luther King Jr. He had a dream, just like everyone that has lived, now lives, or will live on this earth. I have many dreams, that seem impossible to achieve, and at many points in my life I became so discouraged by what others said, I didn’t believe that I could achieve them. I believe that dreams are just imagination until you make them your reality. Being someone who has known since I was three years old what I want to do with my life is hard because sometimes I have no support from friends, family or myself. I often surround myself with ideas of ‘what could be’ and ‘what if’, rather than ‘what is’ and ‘how to take the next step’. In the hopes of fulfilling my life long dreams, I’ve been through so much heartache and rejection that often times have made me lose sight of what I wanted.
Giving up is easier than believing in yourself, but believing makes you stronger. It has definitely strengthened me
Shelly Long said, “If you don’t quit, and don’t cheat, and don’t run home when trouble arrives, you can only win.” Don’t quit just because you feel like the trials you’ve faced are too great and that you can’t succeed in what you love to do.
There are only two weeks of school left! TWO! Which is good and bad. Good because I can finally get out of the classes I hate and take a little break. Bad because now I'm stressing out about everything that I have to do before the end of the semester.So. Much. To. Do.
Tuesday Night, I thought that I was absolutely *brilliant* for thinking of the idea to pull an all nighter so that I could finish all my homework for the week so I could go to Montana. Haley (H Spice) , Lauren (Baby Spice) and I went to Walmart to stock up on energy drinks (which I'm NOT supposed to have, fyi.) so that I could last the whole night.
That was possibly the worst idea I've ever had. I woke up Tuesday morning at 6am and didn't go to sleep until Thursday morning at 2am.
On a brighter note, I had the best weekend ever! My roommate's boyfriend invited us to go with him and his roommates and friends to join them in Montana to celebrate the 4th of July and to go boating. We left on Wednesday after our classes, and headed out on a 5 hour car trip to Missoula, Montana.
The ride up, I was in a truck with Richie, Scotty, Vince, Haley, and Lauren. We were definitely a little bit squished, but it was the best car ride ever. We had so much fun laughing and making fun of Vince and Haley, mostly. I was really kind of nervous that it was going to be really awkward, but the guys were so incredibly nice and easy to get along with that it wasn't weird at all. We got to Richie's house in Missoula at around 7ish that night. His parent's home is absolutely beautiful.
We got to ride one of his horses and that made me so happy since I haven't ridden a horse in about 5 years.
(Shout out to Baby Spice for this picture)
Richie made a campfire, we made s'mores, laid on the trampoline and watched the stars. There were so many shooting stars that night!
The next day, we woke up and Richie's mom had made us a huge breakfast. We met up with the people who had come up after us and stayed 5 minutes down the road in Frenchtown, at Kolby's hosue, at a river that we went floating down. There were 9 guys, and 5 girls:
Haley
Lauren
Kaylee
Lacey
Me
Richie
Vince
Scott
Garrett
Tom
Brady
Kolby
Ben
Rory
(German pancakes!PS. They're not really from Germany!Shhh!)
It took us 3 hours to float the river, and I lost my sunglasses, but it was a lot of fun and definitely worth it. After we floated the river, we went to a BBQ at Kolby's house and then went to a firework show at the mall. Just a side note: Very interesting people live in Missoula, Montana.
We went to BDubs after that; it was my first time ever. So here is an obligatory, "food pic".
Friday was the day! We packed up the trucks and cars, drove an hour and a half to Lake Mary Ronan! This lake is absolutely GORGEOUS...and apparently the warmest lake you'll find in Montana. We went tubing, jet skiing, rope swinging, wake boarding and did a little bit of swimming. At one point, we had two tubes attached to the back of the boat, and some of the guys and I got really brave and decided to start switching from tube to tube. I got hit in the face with feet, knees, hands, and the other tube a couple times, but it was all just so fun.
Garrett helped teach me how to wake board, and even though I only stood up for .2 seconds, he still encouraged me to keep trying.
(Shout out, again, to Baby Spice for her amazing ability to edit pictures)
That night, we did some more star gazing, I gave about two hours worth of massages, and we slept...very horribly. Haley, Lauren and I slept in a tent and we had to sleep...very,very closely to keep warm. It only lasted about 20 minutes.
Saturday, we were getting packed to go, but then we decided to go back on the boats for a little while...which turned into two and a half hours. That's the good thing about being on vacation: You can do whatever you want.
When we got back, we got dressed, took a nap, went to dinner at a really weird looking "Mexican" restaurant. It was really good Mexican food, but you would have thought that it was a southern cooking type restaurant.
For more pictures of the weekend, take a peak at Baby Spice's blog here:
So, something I learned this week, more than ever, love the life you live. Don't pass up on any opportunity to take a 'nothing weekend', or even a day. Life is short and can throw you for a...ride. I say this because as we were on our way back from the lake to Richie's house, we got into a little bit of a...hard situation.
We were going down the road, Richie's dad driving towing a boat behind the truck, all of us passengers dozing off, when I get the feeling to look up and I see a car stopped in the middle of the road. We only had two options: 1 Hit the car in front of us or 2. Go off the side of the road. Richie's dad took option number 2. We went down the ditch, up the other side. The whole time I was thinking that we were going to flip and right when I thought it was going to happen, a spot on the side of the road, what looked like a driveway with no house, came up in front of us. Richie's dad was able to pull us back onto the road, no harm or danger to the car, passengers or boat. We got lucky. God was definitely in that car. God was not done with us that day.
Appreciate your life.
(Pigs at Kolby's House! For you, Sir Padre!)
Here's my weekly little jam sesh song: (Still Into You by Paramore)
Today I woke up and realized...I have no idea where my I-Card is. This, if you know anything about BYU Idaho, is bad. Hopefully it shows up...SOON.
Earlier this week (Tuesday, I believe) I was hanging out at Enea's apartment when I got a text message from Haley telling me that I had a surprise that was "super presh" waiting for me at our apartment. I then proceeded to text her back saying "Is this just a ploy to get me back to the apartment? Nothing in my life right now is 'super presh'?" Well, apparently I was so very wrong. I came home to a single red rose taped to our apartment door. There was also a note taped to it. I don't know who it's from, but I THINK I know. It was the sweetest thing ever.
This past weekend was interesting. I honestly forgot what I did on Friday, but then I realized that I spent 4 and a half hours in the sewing lab trying to finish my project (I haven't finished it yet). After that, I'm not really sure what I did.
Saturday, however, Haley, Nahiomi, Lauren and I decided to randomly get in the car and go to Idaho Falls, because we wanted Chick-Fil-A. We also went to Target to find swimsuits. We really like our time away from...Rexburg.
For about a month, Haley, Lauren, Nahiomi and I have been wanting to have a roommate "sleepover" but it wasn't happening, so Saturday night, while Lauren was at cheer, we got our mattresses and moved them into the living room to have a Girl's Night!
We walked to Scoops (a dollar ice cream shop) to get Krispy Kreme and then we went to Little Caesars to get the perfect sleepover food: (Apparently something the four of us REALLY like...)PIZZA! We came back, ate, had a dance party, did some prank calling (yes, we prank called ex boyfriends), and then watched a scary movie...it was disturbing.
Sunday night, I had dinner with my roommates from Fall semester. I missed them so much. Erica wasn't there because she is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Georgia Atlanta mission. For the dessert, I made Salted Pretzel Caramel Brownies and left half the pan for my roommates. When I came back, this is how I found it:
My roommates just took forks to it. That's how we eat a lot of the desserts...it was delicious, so that's all that matter, right? Who needs plates?
We went back to The Ivy (the apartment complex that we used to live in) and tried to go to our old ward's Ward Prayer, but we missed ti by half an hour :/
Later Sunday night, Enea came over and we went on a mini walk. We sat in front of the Pines, and looked at the stars and talked a little bit. I never realized how pretty the Rexburg sky is at night.
This week is 4th of JULY week! Haley, Lauren and I are going to Montana to go boating and all that good stuff with some of Haley's friends. I'm super excited for that! Hopefully we'll get some good pictures to post.
That's about it for this post. I'm really sporadic with my blogging, but I'm trying to get back to a regular basis (weekly-ish) blogging schedule.
Mormon Missionaries are probably some of my favorite people in the entire world. They go out and serve in an area of the world which they were called by the church's Presidency. They teach the beliefs of our church, they do service, they lift up, and make lives happy...or happier than they were. They go and do all these things (an more) for 18 months (for Sister Missionaries) to 24 (For Elders) months. Some are sent to Sierra Leone, Africa; some go to Kiev, Ukraine; and some go to Ventura, California. There are 405 missions throughout the world, with over a hundred different languages spoken. There are over 60,000 missionaries currently serving around the world. Recently the missionary age had changed from 19 to 18 for Young Men and from 21 to 19 for Young Women. I have about 5 friends who have come home/ will come home this year, and more coming home ext year. One friend in particular, Elder Jacob Wenz, will be coming home in just SIX DAYS!
Just a little bit of a back story for you about Jake: I met him at my first Youth Conference in 2008, when I was 14 and he was 16. We automatically became friends.We were friends for about two years or so before our friendship became rocky. We barely spoke for two years. We'd 'deal' with each other when he had to, but we just kind of drifted apart. Another year went by and we kind of started talking again, very infrequently, however. Right before he went on his mission, He sent me a text saying that he wanted me to be at his farewell. My first thought was that I didn't need to go, he wouldn't miss me if I wasn't there. I ended up deciding that I should go. I went and I felt a little bit out of place because I didn't know any of his family except for his little sister, Charlie. I met his mom, who by the way is SO sweet. I wasn't there for very long, but I was glad that I went and that I got to say goodbye to him. Before I left, I shook his hand and called him "Elder" for the first time (after missionaries are set apart, they are not allowed to hug someone of the opposite gender). At the beginning of his mission, I wrote letters to him fairly frequently. In the middle of his mission, however, I stopped writing him because I felt like I hadn't completely cleared the air with him from those years before. About 9 months ago, Jake's mom got in contact with me and (I won't go into detail) we bonded a little bit. I explained to her my reservations about writing to Jake and she encouraged me to continue writing to him. I started writing him again. Once I found out that missionaries were allowed to email anyone (family, friends, etc) I began emailing him. We've become such good friends. So needless to say, I am STOKED for him to get home. Unfortunately, because I'm at school in Idaho and he will be returning to Kentucky, I won't be able to be at his homecoming or the airport when he gets home. I'm just really excited to see him whenever I can.It's always a special, sweet time when Missionaries come home.
Those Mormon Missionaries sure are swell.
Here's a little count down to Elder Wenz's homecoming day. One of my best friends is coming home soon! So close!
Eight days! (June 11, 2013)
Seven days! (June 12, 2013)
Six days! (June 13, 2013)
Friday, May 3, 2013
"Give me a young man who has kept himself morally clean and has faithfully attended his church meetings. Give me a young man who has magnified his priesthood and has earned the Duty to God Award and is an Eagle Scout. Give me a young man who is a seminary graduate and has a burning testimony of the Book of Mormon. Give me such a young man and I will give you a young man who can perform miracles for the Lord in the mission field and throughout his life." -Ezra Taft Benson.
Really, all I want to do with this post is share some beautiful music. I'm very excited for the Harlem Quartet to come perform at BYU-Idaho. So, enjoy! (This is actually The Harlem Quartet with a cellist from the New York Philharmonic).
Monday, April 29, 2013
“To not take counsel from our fears means that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ overrules our fears and that we can press forward with a steadfastness in Him. To not take counsel from our fears means that we trust in God’s guidance, assurance, and timing in our lives.” -Elder David A. Bednar
