Spiritual Thought of the Day

In my attempt to get spiritually ready for my mission, I am going to use this blog to record a spiritual thought or two every week.

I was thing thinking of shortening the title, because "Spiritual Thought of the Day" Is sorta a mouthful.  but the acronym "STOTD" doesn't really roll off the tongue either... I mean "stot'd" sounds like the past tense of "stot" which actually I just found is a real word! It doesn't sound like one but I googled it and "stot" is another word for "pronk" which is: "when a springbok or other antelope leaps in the air with an arched back and stiff legs." Since  this is my attempt to record a spiritual thought and not talk about antelopes, I nixed that acronym and decided to explore other possibilities.

Here is an antelope "pronking" or "stotting"

Just in case you were wondering what that looks like :)

My next idea was to take out a letter or two, turning my acronym into "STOD" which sounds like "stud" and since that's a word that is usually associated with horses or attractive guys, I decided to take it back to the drawing board. Really, I can't get away from animals today! First antelopes and now horses! What will I come up with next?!?

And here's quite a Stud of a horse. Kinda looks like Black Beauty if you ask me, but this is what came up when I googled "Stud Horse"

So, you can see my dilemma for if I were to take out any other letters, I am afraid the meaning would be lost completely! So I decided to just write out the whole title and take up an exorbitant amount of space to explain myself!

So now, on to my spiritual thought of the day :)
In The Book of Mormon, there are many chapters which talk about the Nephites going to war against the Lamanites. It's a fairly common occurrence but I would like to talk about one specific instance. In Mosiah, King Zennif recounts a few different battles that his people (the Nephites) fought against the Lamanites. In chapter 10 verse 10 and 11, he says that his people did  "go up in the strength of the Lord to battle," while the Lamanites did "depend on their own strength." In the end, the Nephites are able to drive the Lamanites out of their land because the Lord is much stronger then man.
I think, even though I am not usually faced with a whole army of Lamanite warriors wanting to kill me, I too need to learn how to "go up in the strength of the Lord" as I "do battle" with the things in my daily life. Too often, we feel we have to do everything ourselves and the basic long and short of it is, we can't. But with Christ and his atonement, we can do everything.
Have you heard that Heavenly Father won't give you anything you can't handle? Well I heard a quote that I like a little more: He won't give you anything He can't handle" because he expects us to rely on Him for support.
In Voice lessons at BYU Idaho, my voice teacher taught us that the Atonement is like good breath support. When you sing without good breath support you can make a pretty sound, but it's harder to manage and it's not as beautiful as it could be. When you don't rely on the atonement of Christ, you can still do good things and be a good person but you aren't as good as you can be, and honestly life is harder. When you have good breath support, singing is easy and your sound is full and beautiful. You rest on the breath and allow it to carry your sound. When we rely on the atonement, we can do amazing things, and our lives become more beautiful as we turn them over to Christ and let him take control. Resting on the atonement makes our lives fuller and more peaceful and easier! :) I love that analogy! (partly because I'm totally a music nerd :)

I love my Savior, Jesus Christ, and I am so grateful for his sacrifice for me. I feel the personal affects of his atonement working in my life on a daily basis. I am so excited for the opportunity I have to go on a mission and share my love of my Savior with others! :)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is God's Church here on the earth! :)
~Keep Smiling~ :)

Missionary Form Letter

You are sitting at home, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the mail. As the mail truck pulls up to your mailbox you watch with bated breath as the mailman unloads the mail into your mailbox. As soon as the small white car pulls out of your neighborhood, you throw on your shoes and rush to the street corner, keys in hand. Slowly, you insert the key into the lock, turn it gently and tentatively reach into the silver box. Your hand wraps around a thick stack of letters and you smile with anticipation. Today is the day! How could it not be? As you walk back to your house, you slowly thumb through your mail, but as each letter makes it's way to the bottom of your stack, your smile slowly fades. No, the letter has not come today. You will have to wait another day by the window, watching for the mailman hopping that your missionary will write you. 

Obviously this scene is a little dramatic, but in all seriousness what do you do when you have a sibling or other family member on a mission and they don't write you for a very very long time? (like we are talking two months of a long time)? Obviously, missionary work is incredibly time consuming so it's not like your missionary has a ton of time to sit down and write a lengthy letter explaining all their exploits (that's why they take a million pictures and keep a detailed journal so they can regale you with all this information after their mission) How do you help them make their letter writing more efficient. You don't need details, you just need the basics like if they are alive, who their companion is and if they need anything. Well ladies and gentleman, we are very innovative people where I come from and we have come up with the latest and greatest invention to keep your missionaries writing home! It's called "The Missionary Form Letter"! (Yes you may applaud) :)

Basically you print up a copy of the same letter and have them fill in the blank or circle the appropriate phrase to answer the corresponding question and voila! You have all the information you need with minimal effort from your missionary. These form letters take a very very short time for a missionary to fill out so they have no excuse not to write to you :)

This idea came about because my dear dear brother Jakob is currently serving in Samoa.

This is Me and Jake 

Another Picture of Us

This is the last time I saw Jake before he left for the MTC

Anyhow, he doesn't get to email so everything is snail mail, which understandably takes awhile to get back to the states. Well, he hasn't written in a good two months, so my dear mother and I came up with these form letters as a sort of joke to get him to write to us.


 In the letter we have incorporated a few movie quotes (because that's our kind of humor :)
Here is what the letter basically looks like: :)

Date: June 22nd, 2014 

Dear Family,

I am: (Circle all that apply)

-Alive -Dying

-Sick -Mostly Dead

-Deathly Ill -Check My pockets for loose change

This week can be described in one word as: (Fill in the blank) 

__________________________

Random leading statement about my week that I will describe later on in my letter in fuller detail... or not... (insert here):

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I Love (Circle all that apply)

-My companion -Mom -Food

-The Gospel -Dad -Toothbrushes 

-My family -Raw Sea Urchins -My investigators

-Alina -Bug Spray -Samoa 

-Myself (The beginning of a lifelong romance :)

-Indoor Plumbing (it’s gonna be big)

-These fill in the blank letters! They are so accommodating  

My Companion’s Name is: (Fill in the blank) ________________________

If you could please send me: (Circle all that Apply)

-New Sandals (Size________ Style____________________)

-Clothing (Type_________________ Size___________)

-Refried Beans -Corn Tortillas -Taco Sauce

-Dried Apricots -Multivitamins -Ibuprofen 

Other things I need: 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you so much for your continued love and support as well as your letters (most of which have gone unanswered... whoops! :) But don’t worry, I am keeping a very detailed journal which I will show you all when I get home so you all know what I’ve been up to for the past two years :) 

Random Samoan Phrase of the Week without any translation so you can always wonder what my letters mean: (Insert here)

__________________________________________________________ 

__________________________________________________________

Love,

Your most devoted and consistent correspondent,

________________________________________

Signature Here

So can you see how efficient these would be?!? :) Anyway, we are sending these to Jake, and I will let you know how well they work :)

~Keep Smiling~ :)

Let the Guessing Begin

It's Official!!! :) My mission papers are IN!!! Can I tell you what a relief it is to have that all done. Now comes the hard part... waiting... As Inigo Montoya said in Princess Bride (Insert Spanish Accent here) "I hate waiting"

I am hoping that it will come in two weeks, but it will probably be three just because Heavenly Father wants to teach me patience! haha :) So now that they are all in, the guessing has begun. Thus far the guesses have included:

-Tacoma WA (probably not...)
-Spokane (Also unlikely...)
-Texas (I'd come back with a Texas Drawl! :)
-Provo UT (Do they speak a different language there? :)
-London (I'd come back with an English Accent and I wouldn't even have to learn the language)
-France (YES PLEASE!!!)
-Chile (I could learn Spanish! All those years of French though..... haha :)
-Denmark (What language do they speak there?)
-Alaska (I'd have to get a much warmer coat)
-Eastern Europe (That would be cool!)
-Tempe Arizona (WARM!!!!)
-DC South (Well Mom promised me a trip to Washington DC when I graduated, which never happened because she had twins so maybe that was foreshadowing... :)
-Japan (I would have to learn how to eat fish! haha :)

So where do you think I'll go?
My guess is Australia... or Michigan... I had a dream I got called to both of those places :) So we shall see! :)

~Keep Smiling~ :)

Paper Progress

You know I mentioned in my last post the whole mission decision thing (if not, you can just scroll down and look, it really isn't that hard... :) Well I have made progress!  I went in to the doctor today to finish up that part of the paperwork (you have to have dental exams and doctor exams to make sure you get any medical issues resolved before you head out) Turns out, I'm healthy so, I passed!!! :) Dental was easy (dad's a dentist) so that was done ages ago, and now that the whole physical examination is over I get to move on to the submission process!

The next step is interviewing which is something done in two parts. First, the bishop over your ward interviews you and looks over your paperwork to make sure everything is in place and the your Stake President interviews you and basically does the same thing. (He's the guy in charge of all the Wards in a collective area) Lucky me, I called and met with the bishop tonight and I have a meeting with the Stake President on Sunday so I should have this whole thing in by next week! Can I tell you how thrilled I am!?!? (Of course I can, it's my blog! I can tell you whatever I want!! :) I AM SOOOOOO SUPER DUPER MEGA ULTRA CRAZY OUT OF THIS WORLD THRILLED!!! :) Can't wait to get my call and figure where I am going and when I am going. After paperwork is submitted at a local level it goes to church headquarters in Salt Lake City where an apostle of the Lord looks at it. Crazy right? :)

Oh, and I almost forgot. One of the MOST important things you submit is a picture of yourself. Okay... so maybe it's not the most important thing, but I curled my hair and did my makeup and dressed up super cute for this picture, so I might as well include it in this post so someone besides my bishop and stake president get to look at it :)

 Here I am, looking like a cute Sister Missionary! :) All I need is a name tag! :)

Also, just because I dressed up (which is something I don't do all that often because I'm just too crazy busy) I decided to take some selfies with some of the cutest boys on this earth: My two year old twin brothers!! :) I wish I could send these in instead, but apparently the picture has to be of just you! haha :)

First two are David and Me, Second two are Matthew and me. I would like to get a picture of all three of us but holding two kids on your lap and managing a camera at the same time is something I haven't quite figured out how to manage yet.

So there you go, you just got a sneak peak at one of my missionary outfits. True Story! Mom and I went shopping and got some clothes for the mission, so unless I go somewhere FREEZING COLD (like Antarctica... do they have missionaries there...? I don't think so... haha:) I have a few outfits already that are Sister Missionary appropriate. I can't wait to show them all off to you because they are super cute... but that will have to wait! :) Another post, another day! :)

~Keep Smiling~ :)

New Adventures

Sorry... it's been awhile! I kinda fell off the bandwagon... again! Really, I am super bad about keeping up with things! Life just hits and blogging falls by the wayside. So here's an update on life:

-I finished my freshmen year of college!!! WAHOOOO!!!! I am now a.... (drumroll please) SOPHOMORE!!!!!!!!! (sooooo old right?)

-My mom came up to get me from school. We loaded all my stuff into the suburban and drove the 14 hours home in two days.

-For the past week or so I have been getting used to my new house, hanging out with siblings, applying for millions and millions of jobs (seriously I don't even know how many applications I have filled out!!!) and now I am getting ready for my next adventure....

(Another drumroll please....)

I AM PUTTING IN MY PAPERS TO GO ON A MISSION!!!!!!!!

WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! :) 

So yep! I am pretty excited about that (if ya can't tell) :) I also don't know if you noticed it or not, but I changed the picture at the top of my blog. Maybe that gave away the whole missionary thing... haha :) Photo credit goes to my sister Jessica Haws, who is currently serving her mission in Alabama. That's her name tag and scriptures, but I figured "Hey, I'm gonna be a "Sister Haws" soon enough, and it's a cute picture, so I might as well use it right?" 

Basically, I decided awhile back, when the prophet of our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) announced that they lowered the mission age for girls from 21 to 19 and for boys from 19 to 18, that I wanted to go on a mission. I went through the rest of high school, headed off to college and went on many adventures with this decision in the back of my mind. The funny thing is, every single time (and I mean every single time) I started to doubt or feel like I maybe had other plans, it seemed like Heavenly Father lovingly smacked me over the head. He did a lot of course correction for me! :) Honestly, I have felt so good about this decision every time I've prayed about it and received so much personal revelation about it, that there is absolutely no possible way I could do anything else. I know that Heavenly Father has told me to go on a mission so I guess that's the end of it! :) haha. Also, aside from the whole revelation thing, I am super giddy about this whole thing! More giddy then I have ever been about any boy! The idea of not flirting or dating for 18 months does not bug me in the least!!! I feel like I have been blessed with such a good attitude and excitement towards missionary work, and for that I am truly grateful. When we do good things and when we make good decisions, we are blessed. I have literally felt like the windows of heaven have been opened for me. 

So, that all being said, I am going to change the focus of this blog just a little. I am going to try to make this blog a little more spiritual in nature (don't worry, I will still write about the funny things that happen because in a house with this many people, life is always funny) as I focus my life a little bit more on getting ready to go and serve the Lord. 

~Keep Smiling~ :)