Good Things to Come

I love these little videos! They're so good. It was hard for me to pick which one to post.

I liked this one because it relates to some thoughts I've been having lately. I tend to get a little impatient, sometimes, wishing I could have certain things right now rather than having to wait indefinitely for them. But, as I have feelings like that, I keep realizing that I am so blessed right now and I need to enjoy every minute and not wish it away! I need to be patient and realize that those things will come eventually. And they do come! So, it's important not to get too impatient or unhappy while waiting for them.

God's timing for us is always best and there's always a reason things happen when they do.

Greatness

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Mark Twain

The last year and a half

I figure there should be some kind of explanation about what I did the last year and a half. But, the task intimidates me, so that's why I've put it off for so long. I just don't think a single blog post could do it justice, so that's why until now I haven't attempted.

Anyway, here goes my attempt at the impossible...

February 2009, Missionary Training Center. I spent two months there learning Indonesian.

May - July 2009 in the cleanest city on earth: Singapore.

I spent the next nine months in Sibu, East Malaysia.

In Sibu I became acquainted with sitting on the floor, riding a bike in a skirt, in the rain, mud and floods and also had the opportunity to meet many wonderful people and to see how the gospel changed their lives.

(Pictured above is a family we taught. They were pretty young and had four kids. Precela and Vijay are bouncing their two youngest children in these slings attached to springs hooked up to the ceiling. Pretty much everyone uses these nifty devices.)

This is Rose, a tiny thirty-something-year-old mother and her shirtless, deaf, five-year-old daughter and their nine-year-old neighbor. Rose is illiterate, but was able to feel peaceful about what we taught her and felt comforted when she prayed at night. She impressed us by going against her mother's wishes and continuing to learn from us and eventually being baptized.

This is Senia, one of the women we taught who was baptized. She cooked this monitor lizard for us to eat. It was actually pretty good.

She also cooked us cuttlefish, dog, and snake.

I spent my last three months in Miri, East Malaysia.

This is how they barbecue chicken: feathers, bones and all.

They pluck the feathers while it cooks.

So, there's the super condensed version! I had other pictures I wanted to upload, but I didn't plan this post very well and it's too hard to rearrange pictures in these posts, so... oh well! It was a great year and a half. I learned a lot and met a lot of amazing people. They didn't have much, but they were happy. And those who accepted the gospel had what was most important.

If you are curious about what we taught people, or even why someone in their right mind would want to go half way around the world to only communicate with their family once a week via email and twice a year via telephone go here. It was definitely one of the hardest things I've done, but also one of the best.

I wouldn't have done it had I not known the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is true and had I not seen the blessings in my life that have come from accepting the gospel and living it.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was a pretty fast read. It only took me about a total of four or five hours to read. Sandra Cisneros is a talented writer with a unique way of describing things.



View all my reviews

Enjoying forgotten things

Some things I sometimes take for granted, or forget to enjoy:

• Warm showers
• The actual existence of showers (have you ever thought what a wonderful invention a shower is? There's something wonderful about showers. The shower is my favorite place to think, and I've come up with some of my best ideas while showering.)
  
• The ability to hear well (my appreciation of this was especially acute the last few weeks as my ear was clogged after I had a cold. I couldn't help but think of Beethoven and how utterly devastated he was upon losing his hearing).
• The ability to see clearly (thanks to corrective lenses!)
• The ability to smell and taste nice things (such as fruit and chocolate)
• Pretty much the ability to enjoy a well functioning body (unfortunately that isn't something everyone can enjoy and I never know when that might become the case for me. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I were to somehow suffer an accident that were to take away something as simple as my hearing or the ability to use all of my limbs -- things that I take for granted all the time because I don't usually consider what life would be like without them.)
  

Plea from a pack rat (part II)

When I wasn't making any progress in my attempt to throw things away and I was feeling pretty discouraged, I finally humbled myself and asked my dad for his assistance. If you know how my dad is about throwing things away, then you would know that this was a big step for me, because he throws pretty much everything away. He is the antithesis of a pack-rat.

So, he reasoned with me that I should throw away all my notes from classes and that I should even get rid of old text books, unless I had reason to believe that I would ever be needing them or using them again. He said he saved one text book from his college days that he really liked, but even that he never looked at. His reasoning for getting rid of so much is that we live in an information age where pretty much anything can be found on the internet, or the library, and most textbooks become obsolete within a few years anyway.

So, that helped me to throw away a LOT of notes quickly without even thinking twice or regretting it (I haven't regretted it yet, and I don't plan on it!). It also helped me to get rid of my geology text book which I had contemplated keeping since I had enjoyed that class so much.

Then I came up with a little criterion of my own for throwing away notes to talks at church and devotionals and such. My dad had already convinced my to throw away (or send to the recycling) my Ensigns that I had been collecting, under the reasoning that they can all be found online, hence there is no need for me to be collecting them. When I turned to my notes I thought, I haven't looked over these recently, if at all, and if they meant a lot to me I should have or could have written about them in my journal. So, that enabled me to send them to the recycling without any pain. They have served their purpose, as have the rest of my notes, and must no longer add to my clutter.

When I see how much I have been able to eliminate, I feel that a burden is being lifted. I'm finally accomplishing what I've been wanting to do for so long. It will soon be done with, never to hold me back again, and I will be able to move on to other things.

Some things I wrote down to help me stay on track with my purging:

Simplify
Be brutal
Be realistic
Feel good and don't look back

Nice quote

As I've been going through some old things, I stumbled upon this quote:

"An artist has got to be constantly in a state of becoming." - Bob Dylan

I think that applies to more than just artists.