life

according to my iphone....

mississippi

i constantly say that i am going to get better at updating this. epic fail on my part. however there have been a few events recently that are blog worthy that i feel i should share. 

(disclaimer: i do know how to capitalize things, i just like all lower case. sorry not sorry.)

have y'all ever heard the real way how to spell mississippi?

let me tell you...

this was taught to me in my first few weeks in the mission...

m-i- crooka letta- crooka letter i-crooka letter- crooka letter-i-hump back- hump back-i

there you have it. if you can sing/say that, you are southern. 

now for the point of my post...

in my first area of clinton, ms, i met some of the most kind amazing people i know. i could not imagine these wonderful people not being in my life. well, they were always planning this trip to time out for women, and one day they said it would be so cool if i could come back and be with them when i got home. so for 18 months the plan to fly back for tofw was in the back of my mind. i always wanted this little trip to be a reality, but i did not know if i could actually pull it off. however i got home and stars aligned and the trip back to my dear mississippi was soon to become a reality.

the airplane tickets were booked, tofw was planned and soon enough (after 4 long months of waiting), i was off to my beloved second home. 

i was a little sad not to be able to visit my other areas but my mission is so large and it was just not feasible to travel many hours to these places. one day i will make it back to them though. 

i started the trip off right with going to dinner with my second family and of course a couple of the sister missionaries. my last companion, sister mapu, was still in the area so i was able to see her, and sister carter (below) is now serving in an area pretty close to clinton, so they drove into see me. i was so blessed to know these girls and serve around them.  they are both training baby missionaries and it is so exciting. 

the next day the huge group (sixteen total) met up to travel to memphis for time out for women. it was so good to see everyone. 

memphis is such a fun city. we did not explore too much but we did take a ride on the trolley and of course had some good ole southern bbq. 

 the theme for time out for women was "higher". it was a great conference full of amazing speakers. i loved it all so much. 

one of the speakers talked about holding a power pose (wonder woman displayed below) for two minutes can lift up your mood and give you strength. 

 musical guest perform throughout the day. saturday was jericho road. they are often heard on efy soundtracks. we were the biggest group there and they thought we were fun.

 church on sunday

 memphis temple

 the days were filled with inspiration and the nights were full of laughter and late chats. i have learned more about motherhood and children from these women than i had ever known before. 

 a few days before tofw i emailed one of my dear friends from meridian who has since moved to corinth, ms. she heard that i was headed to tofw and said she would be there too. we planned to meet up. it was so good to see her. i love her and her family so much. she helped me through a lot of tough times. 

 the trip ended way too soon and we found ourselves back on the road to clinton. i got to see one of my other families that night. her girls are adorable and so fun. emily was recently on rachael ray with first lady michelle obama. they went to clinton for a special on healthy lunches.

 the couple above is a sweet senior couple who are getting ready to go home. nana and gpa were there for us constantly. i loved them so much. 

 these are two of the greatest people i have ever met. my dear mission president and his wife. they are two of the most humble people i know and so kind and caring. i just love them so much and cannot say enough about them. i saw them right before i went to the airport. it made me so sad to leave ms again and come back to school and all the fun stresses of life, but the trip was incredible and i am so glad i was able to go. 

books

i have always had a deep abiding love for reading and books. i read all the time and have countless favorites. this year one of my goals is to read more uplifting literature. not that i do not know, but i would like to read a lot more gospel oriented books. i would also like to read a lot of the new york times best sellers. i know some are pretty iffy so i will skip out on those.  my goal is 50 books this year.

1. perks of being a wallflower- phenomenal
2. divergent- not technically read in 2013 but soo good
3. insurgent- same as above
4. the fault in our stars
5. the book thief
6. confessions of a murder suspect
7. calling on the powers of heaven
8. gone girl

many many more to come..

a song

since being gone, i have missed a lot of music. and man do i love music. it was not too difficult to be without songs of the world though. it is like christmas everyday when i hear a new song that i haven't before. lately though at the gym i have just been going through all my old playlists (on my super old ipod classic) to see what i used to love. it is incredible how one song can transport you to a different place in time. such as the summer 08, list, full of boys like girls, the maine, and metro station. the songs that played through my first real heartbreak or those that played in the car as 3 very good friends drove to our first concert sans parents. i was completely carried back to the moment when cori and i bonded over aly and aj and to this day i can still text her the words and we just laugh. i scrolled through to when i first went to college and found all those songs that got me through those first nights of being on my own and memories that i made. and now as i hear the beautiful hymns i am reminded of the time we sang them so loud on the way to appointments and members houses and it is so incredible to me that a simple song can completely transport you.

music has and always been a huge part of our culture and i love that each song has a special meaning full of memories. i look forward to each day at the gym that i get to recreate those times in my life and i look forward to the many more that will soon come.

college.

i guess my last post did not really update so here it is...

i have been so busy the last few weeks. well ever since the new year. i now live in salt lake city with meghan. i love it. i love this place, i love the city (even though it is not very large, it is bigger than wyoming). i am now going to ldsbc for business management. i love it. i love it so much that it is probably not normal. it is ok though because i am so happy with it.

good news: i am going back to mississippi in 2 months!

other good news:

this girl was my "mama" in the mission. she trained me. she stuck with me for 4.5 months. i love her. she is from spokane and i had not seen her in over a year. i love reunions.

i also saw another one of my companions. sister findley. i dont have a picture of it but i love that girl too.

i also saw my very first mtc companion sister urie. she is amazing and i will also forever love that girl.

it was a great week of reunions.

..

i do not even know what to title this post.

an update on my life as of late....

we shall go by month.

november.

 i adjusted to life as a normal human being again.
 well, tried to anyway.

oh and we moved to bountiful utah. 

went shopping for normal clothes:) 

 december. went to my favorite places for holiday. philadelphia and new york city. new york was great. i met up with kylee. one of the amazing girls from one of the wards i served in as a missionary. (above picture). it was a short but sweet visit and i am so grateful to know this girl. 

                                      

 meg and i visited wyoming for a few days and saw our old friends.

can't resist not putting some pictures of these adorable boys on here. man i love them so much. 

not much of an update. but a start. 

how was the mission.

How was the mission? It is a question I have heard so much since being home and I only can give the one worded answer of "it was amazing" before we are on to the next subject and my heart is left a little broken because I want to share so many things about the mission without overbearing and boring them to death. So how was the mission...

The mission was the most incredible thing I have ever done. It exceeded all expectations. I did not realize how much you could possibly learn on a mission, or how much you are stretched and pushed to your limits...all to refine you into the best missionary and person you can be. I loved it. I loved every minute of it.

I did not know it was possible to love something so much you could give all your heart, might, mind and strength to it. I love the gospel so much. I always knew it was true but never to this capacity. I did not know I had this ability to go out and serve and serve faithfully. I saw miracles every single day. I feel so blessed that God would use me as his instrument to touch lives and to change bits of the world astounds me. It really is incredible to know that you are saying what Jesus Christ himself would say. I feel so blessed and grateful and passionate about the mission. I shudder to think that I even considered missing it for a second. I could have never known how great it was but I took that leap of faith and every day for eternity I will be immensely grateful for that.

As a missionary I felt the spirit rush through me literally everyday. I felt the truth like fire in my bones when it was accepted and when it was rejected. I felt divine help all around me every single day. I came to love and adore the people in such a pure and beautiful way and when that love was reciprocated, life felt like Heaven. I was happy as a missionary in a way that I have never been before and never will be again.

What an incredible experience it is to be a representative of the Savior Jesus Christ. this representation took many forms, whether it be offering service to all who we meet, making friends with the homeless, or just smiling at every single person we pass by. I loved being able to make friends with everyone and tell them how much God loved them or unfolding the secrets of life by those who have been eagerly searching and who are prepared by God himself. There were many times where I opened my mouth and out came something that I did not think of and I literally felt like a mouthpiece, a physical vehicle in which God could tell his children what He wanted them to know. I was led by an unseen glorious power to people or places or things or ideas. I remember many lessons where the spirit just radiated and my heart just burned with excitement as these wonderful people accepted commitments or made a decision or found an answer or shared their new testimony. 

I met and taught people from every walk of life. There were plenty of crazies, lots of cruel hardened people, the humblest of the humble and the haughtiest of the proud. I entered the homes of people with astonishing different views on the world, religion, values and culture. I was able to boldly testify of the truthfulness of the gospel, and as I recounted Joseph Smith's description literally thousands of times a chill would run down my spine or my heart would glow and a great comfort would come over me; I said "God loves you" millions of times to all these different people and every time I knew it was true, no matter who it was. All of these people were or will be blessed by the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. I poured my heart out every day to these people and I loved it all. I loved these people so much, even the ones who yelled at us and cursed us and demeaned us in every single way. I loved them so much despite it all or because of it all.

I saw peoples lives change dramatically. I compared the original person I met out in the summer sun with sweat dripping down my face to a new glowing creature at a baptismal service. They had changed. Everything about them, the way they looked, the way they talked and acted, the way they felt, and they way they looked at the world around them. It was a miracle to watch. Sometimes it took longer than others but the miracle was still present. There were many lessons where I realized these people were changing right before my eyes. Member or not. There is nothing like hearing these new beloved friends pray for the very first time to their Heavenly Father. They were almost always nervous and their prayers were perfect in every way. We would open our eyes and look at each other and feel that special spirit of what had just happened. 

This all seems cliché, but suffice it to say, in so many magical, perfect, sparkly moments as a missionary I felt floating above the earth; the joy and peace and love and wonder that I could have never imagined existed. It was magic, and the very best kind, from heaven. 

And you know what made it so fantastically wonderfully spectacularly exquisitely great? The fact that it was so stinking hard. Excruciatingly hard. The fact that every magical moment was matched or temporarily superseded by some horrible, cruel, gutting moment. As much as I couldn't have imagined how beautiful the mission would be, there is no way I could have imagined how brutal and grueling it was. there were so many times when I literally thought I was loosing my mind, or I  literally felt like my heart had been ripped out and stomped on. Disappointment beyond what I had ever touched on before came to me in floods and in torrents. I was so insanely tired so much of those 18 months; every part of me in every facet was exhausted to the core. I felt alone, scared, defeated, tempted, disoriented, beat up, and sorrowful. And isn't that so so great?! This was my favorite part of the mission: it was HARD! I was in the refiner's fire. All the pain made the joy so much better. The contrast was so deep that I felt so thrilled and alive and vibrant. The paradoxes made every second interesting and fascinating and wonderful and amazing. I felt consistently hollowed out my heartache and my heart was stretched to feel more love. Even after being let down over and over and over, I still found faith in people and love for the work. To me, this is another proof that it is indeed the work of God. People often challenged us on the streets or at the door: we were there because our parents told us to or because we had been brainwashed. Several times I told these beloved people of the unpaid, unglamorous and often temporally unrewarded hardship we endured everyday, I explained to them the sacrifice and the real rewards. "there is no way, no no way, i would do this," I told them, "if it was not truly the work of God." and so it is.

Before the mission, I viewed the things I was leaving behind as huge sacrifices... I was stunned by what I was giving up. It seemed huge. Partway through I realized how incredibly small these sacrifices were compared to the blessings of serving the Lord full time. They were minuscule and were paid for a thousand, even a million fold in those magical moments and in those horridly difficult moments. Never could anything be more worth it. 

Towards the end I was reflecting on my time as a missionary just staring at my name badge and what it meant and how lucky I was to be doing what I was doing. Sure there were days that were hard but the good ones that followed made it even more amazing. It was such a huge blessing to wear that name tag, to know that I was an advocate of the Savior.

So how was the mission you ask.....