twenty one one

the new year has started out great.

woke up at 4:58 this morning and started chatting away on mormon.org 

even though i went to bed at 2:45 working is great for two reasons: 

1. today = double time

2. my boss let me work from home (praise the heavens)

it was rough at first but a few things have gotten me through the last six hours.

thing 1: wearing this sweet wolf shirt from urban. 

i originally bought it because i knew ryan would love it 

(since he would date a wolf if he could) 

but it's growing on me. 

thing 2: chatted with a girl from beijing in chinese! 

thing 3: efy 2009 came on shuffle and brought back so many mission memories

thing 3: chatted with some really sincere people, one in particular who had his records removed because of family/peer pressure (but regrets it and 

wants to be re-baptized..hollerrrr) 

thing 4:  had a friend request on fb which to my surprise was this pretty lady below!! 

meet my (not so) new member, 王少千.  

she was one of my most favorite people in taiwan and for some reason or another i just love her so much.   considering i haven't seen her in two years, 

that friend request made my life. 

if it is anything like the first few hours, i think 2011 is going to be a good year. 

(this little gem would be our 2010 photo taken this time last year with my companion sister tong.
 can you tell from my clothes that i embraced the culture?? haha)

happy new year!!

back.

so i just realized that i think about posting but i haven't actually done it for a really long time haha. whoops. i thought i had!
but anyways. its been a busy life i guess. i'll try to briefly catch you all up.

ten weeks of this outfit

..and this team, are over. 

i packed everything in bertha and moved out of my parents basement.
sad that brynne did the exact opposite.


i'm now back in provo in this little beauty.
(my landlord named it "the green gables". haha)

 and finally after never even living in the same city 

as this guy below.. 

(taken at the candlelight serenade concert two weeks ago)

..we live two blocks away from each other. 

(my house is A. his house is B.)

we deserved this raise.

i work at the mtc. and if you click on that little pink button you just might be chatting with me. that is right. i get paid to chat about the gospel! pretty much the sweetest job ever.  

 i'm also back at uvu. kinda feel like a super senior and even the mom's that sat in the front row of my classes are gone but whatev. i enjoy learning these days so i feel happy about it. 

something i feel less happy about is i still have to wear glasses and not contacts. i think its been 2 1/2 months now. hate your guts eye virus!

but being in provo after two years is weird.

i really miss this life. 

aaaand this. 

and this too. emily and the glasses. i loved those glasses.

while we're at it, i miss this life too. but..that is besides the point. 

anyway. i welcome any and all of you to join me in provo.

i'm currently obsessed with these so if you come..i'll let you have some.

k..bye. 

busy..

..as a bee.

a little efy bee that is. 

(photo in honor of this one) 

i have been there for the last 16  days (with about 24 hours off in between) and might i say it has been crazy but so nice to be too busy to think of myself, sleeping, eating, or even creeping. it's like a mini mission and it feels great.

 in a second i will be driving to the airport to go to this place 

(photo courtesy of my 2007 fb album "seattle and such")

i should be packing but i hate it so this seemed like a nice way to procrastinate before i absolutely have to. 

anyways. i haven't taken a ton of pictures (well, for me at least) so here are just a few of the highlights. 

highlight 1. cleaning out big bertha with my dad so that times like this could happen. just transporting all my girls to the cannon center. they loved it. and so did bertha. and yes, there are no seats. i thought it would be better that way.

highlight 2. i got to be the dj at the dance last friday and i have never felt more pleased with myself. the only way it would have been better is if efy would approve me some justin bieber and a little more taylor swift. 

highlight 3. saturday melissa marsh and i went with ashlie to her friend's cabin in pc. melissa and i took a lovely walk and self-timed some photos in random peoples yards.  ..anything for a good time.

highlight 4. i got to see my girl ashlie who came back from texas for a wedding. luckily, one night she stopped by and brought her friend who just so happened to sing the efy 2010 theme song. this would be him, and my roommate definitely told me after he left, "wow i don't think i have ever met a celebrity before! that was so cool!" hahah. wow.

oh, and i cant forget how we finally creeped my asian neighbors yard to see what all the clanking is about. you cant really tell and we still dont know for sure but we felt good about doing it. 

highlight 5. byu just kept forgetting to schedule rooms with enough seats so we got to go down to the cougar room at the stadium for a morning side. you cant even tell what it looks like in this picture but i was sick of pictures with just me in them. we had to be real careful as to not ruin this room that people sit in before the game who pay 100,000 for their seats each year. it was a once in a lifetime opportunity because i would never in my life pay that much to see a football game.

highlight 6. being a bc has its perks. for example, you cannot tell in this picture but i am driving on brigham square on byu campus. getting to drive their vehicles basically allows you to do whatever you want..so i do.

highlight 7. coming across this little man made by some participant. 

it looks like they weren't too interested in what we were doing at the time. 

anyways. my ten minutes are up. many other nice times happened but this will do. just thought i'd give a little update because i haven't really talked to anyone in weeks. if you asked me four months ago what i thought i would be doing right now it would not be anything like how things have turned out..but it's good. life, is good.

courage to stand strong.

so on this lovely sunday afternoon i have been preparing for efy and we have been asked to ponder and study this years theme (which i wrote above, and can also be seen below).

my coordinator sent me the theme song so i have been listening to that as well. the songs are always a bit cheesy but they usually have a good message. the first line of the chorus says, "it takes courage to speak". as i heard that line it reminded me of the ucap (utah coalition against pornography) conference i went to with my dad back in march. at first i only went because he didn't want to go alone but i'm really glad i did, it was very informative and i learned a lot. at one point one of the speakers boldly stated this:

"silence is acceptance".

..when she said that it really got to me. then of course i forgot about it two seconds later and never did anything. i think many times we want to do things about issues we see around us yet we don't know how to go about it. as i thought about this i decided to stop thinking about it and feeling guilty and just do something. i then remembered a website they told us about that just started in march.it gives you the ability to make a difference in a really fast and efficient way.  

the website can be found here. 

here is a little summary about it:

"The Family Action Center empowers individuals and organizations to defend the family. Through FAC's website, individuals can find, launch, and take action on efforts to promote decency, marriage, life, and religious liberty. Organizations can share their efforts and find others with whom to collaborate."

..So here is how it works. You create an account (it takes five seconds) and then you decide if you want to  see issues on decency (the nice way of saying pornography), marriage, life, or religious liberty and if you want to just see things happening in your state, nation, or internationally. you can skim through the different issues and when you see one that you feel impressed to agree with, you just click on the "take action" button. it will then take you to a PRE-WRITTEN (you don't even have to write it yourself, how great is that) email that you just type in your email address and name and then click send.it is great! they do all of the work and find all the issues, and then we get to feel good that we made a difference. its a win-win-win situation. ..i just tried it out and in probably a good 2 minutes (if that) i sent an email to bath and body works about a new ad they have out with naked women on it, protesting that it is just short of soft pornography.

i know, for most of us, we are in a bubble and we like to think that the world is awesome and that nothing bad will happen to us. for some, maybe that is true. for most, it is not. whether we realize it or not - things like this are happening all around us and i think it will be a sad day when we closed our eyes too long to find that things our happening to our own children and family because we didn't do our part. i was reading a talk today that discussed how important prevention and awareness is and how much easier it is to withstand the temptations of satan when we don't even allow ourselves to be tempted. i think about all the filth that is out there and then i think about my nieces and nephews who are now in junior high and high school and it breaks my heart to think of all that they have to deal with. going on a mission opened my eyes and as much as i would like to shut them again and pretend like i didn't see the things i saw or realize the things i realized, i cannot do that. the next line in the chorus is "it takes courage to know"..and it really does. when we learn of things and gain knowledge, our Father in Heaven expects us to do something with it. maybe it is to be more obedient to his commandments or to repent. or, quite possibly, it might be to take five minutes out of your day and with the click of your mouse protest something that offends Him. 

i'm sorry if this was too wordy or serious for a blog such as mine, but i couldn't stand to be silent any longer. i hope you can't stand it either.