A Puzzling Observation

So all last week I have been having this crazy craving to do a puzzle. It all started when I saw the receptionist at my place of employment doing a puzzle to save her from the boredom that is working at an on-campus job during the summer. I understand her pain though I try to find less obvious ways of not working. Aaanyways, ever since I have really wanted a puzzle and thought it would be a fun way to waste some time, especially since my former time waster of watching sweet Michael Scott jokes and Jim/Dwight pranks has come to an end. (moment of silence) moving on.  Friday after work I headed to DI *note* I don’t know why in my 5 years of living in provo that I have never really thought to go to DI, its magical! I now buy everything that I don’t really need, therefore don’t want to spend lots of money, there at DI, last week I got shin guards for $1!   

And I pretty much hit the puzzle jackpot. I got 2 super nice puzzles, like Thomas Kinkade and Dowdle for $1 each! Now I was 96% sure that they would only include 84.5% of the pieces but for $1, who cares right?

I decided to set the puzzle up on my bedroom so that whenever I had a spare moment I could just sit and put a few pieces together. I broke up a cardboard box, made a nice sturdy board, and got to work. Friday and Saturday were busy enough that I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it which was fine, but then Sunday came it was the perfect activity! Plus it’s a puzzle of Salt Lake City so I was like a little modern day pioneer building the Salt Lake Temple puzzle version. This is when the problem started…. Sunday night as I was laying in bed, trying to sleep, I felt that I could hear the unfinished puzzle taunting me from the floor. So I got up and worked on it a little longer. The same thing has happened every night since! I am about to go to bed, its late, im tired, I have to wake up early in the morning, but I can’t pass the puzzle without stopping and fitting a few pieces together, but then I can’t just stop after a couple pieces. I get sucked in and before I know it an hour or 2 has passed and im still sitting on my bedroom floor.- like this..

 I also have to admit that its not only at night, but in the morning, afternoon, I can’t go into my room anymore. Its sucking up my life.  All I want to do is puzzle.

Luckily I am almost done now. I can’t handle any more of these late nights due to a puzzle. Im tired. But I have learned something from this experience—I hate leaving projects undone. Its really hard. I better finish it in one sitting or just not start it at all. I think the next puzzle Ill put together in the basement so at least I won’t be able to hear the taunting cries of the unfinished puzzle. 

 

Zoo Day

We went to the zoo Saturday and it was awesome! 

 It was built in the early 1900's and it was really one of the coolest zoos I have been too, which is only a list of maybe 4, but really this was number one. As we walked in I kept seeing signs saying "Don't touch the animals" and I think, "well thats kind of excessive. I mean its a zoo how close can you really get to the animals anyway." -- But then as we start walking around I realize.. you get SUPER close to the animals. We literally could have reached out and touched a lot of them. This monkey was holding out his hand and I could have held it!-- But I stayed obedient, Mercedes helped me on that by saying I would get a monkeys disease and end up on House, (but I still wish I would have held his hand). 

See super close. I could have hopped right over to that elephant. Or better yet he could have charged. I kept seeing a Madagascar situation where all the animals escape. 

I mean the super dangerous animals were in big pits, like the lions, tigers, and bears. (oh my?) But the rest where just right there.  

Another cool thing is that it is right in the middle of the city, our apartment is literally across the street. But then you walk in and its a jungle. And the pathways are super old, cobble stone, and the cages all look like they were made in 1900s. I felt myself going back in time seriously, and imagining this european style argentina in the 1900s. Random argentine fact-- it used to be a 1st world country, but has rapidly declined to 3rd world. One of the fastest country declines in history. But seeing this zoo really showed its 1st worldness. This is one of the older cages. Pretty. 

There was also a really cute marine show. When I see marine shows I think that it would be fun to be a marine biologist and work with those animals. But then I think about it and realize I don't really like animals.... 

There were also animals that I have never seen before in real life! Like a Toucan, and a camel! And animals that I didn't even know existed and still not sure what it was. 

And Bambi! Weird how deer and elk were deemed zoo worthy. (not to mention buffalo and bison)

I love to see what Cordoba has to offer! I think this is one of its hidden treasures. 

Frustrate Comfort Zones

So one week in Cordoba and I have fallen in love. When we were training we were taught that we were going to have to help people frustrate their comfort zones, not totally jump out of them but get close. We constantly need to be changing to progress, and change comes through frustrating comfort zones. I feel like this internship will help me frustrate my own comfort zone, but I love it!

This week was quite eventful. We taught our first workshop. ie the reason we came here. We had spent 4 days in Salt Lake before this getting taught how to teach this workshop effectively. It was pretty awesome being in church headquarters and getting to meet all these guys that work for church welfare and church employment. I fell in love with the workshop and everything it teaches! Seriously you should all go to ldsjobs.org and find a workshop and go. Especially as students the things you learn will help a ton in looking for a job. 

So anyway- first workshop went alright. There was 12 people and it was kinda hard to get them to open up and talk but when we started playing games it went a lot better. Now we are just thinking up fun activities to do for every section we teach. For example, one of the sections we teach called "Continuing Success" so we talk about how to prevent problems. So mercedes and I made this dice of misfortune they had to roll, one said what happened, (like an event), and the other said how it affected them. Then they had to come up with a way to explain it to their employer. They really just ended up being funny sentences and the class LOVED it. This was our favorite grouping.. "Your cat died, so you had no one to leave the kids with" bahah..


We will teach a workshop every week and we will be traveling all over Argentina to do it which is way cool! 

We also go out and explore Cordoba every day! For one of the classes Mercedes and I are taking we have to do different culture activities so we have been working on that. For example, last week we went to a catholic mass which was interesting. At Mass we noticed that there was a ton of people are age, and it kinda surprised us so we went up and talked to them afterward just to know more about mass and everything. They were cool and invited us to hang out with them sometimes! They get together and do service multiple times a week which is awesome, we will probably go help them sometime. That is the catholic church we went to, called Los Capuchinos, which we just thought was funny, haha capuchino.. maybe not?  

Also we went to the movies to study mass media. Again we talked to people in line asking questions about the movies. Anywhere we go we try to talk to as many people as we can. It's pretty fun to use the "so we aren't from around here......... " and then get them to tell us all their secrets.

Well that's about all for now. Here are some more pictures for your enjoyment. and so I can brag about how cool Cordoba is. ; )

 The sister missionaries that served in the Employment center. They left the weekend after we got here which is sad cuz they were really sweet. 

 Area reforested so no dancing? whaaat? also no running. honestly this sign was just hilarious. look at that mans body!

 This is a park where they train for the Olympics... haha. joke. But no really, it just has a bunch of rings and I;m not sure why. 

 The mall!. isnt that the prettiest building ever. 

And the view from my balcony. The city of Cordoba. We live right downtown with all the college students. It's a party. ha. 

M.I.A

Hiiiiiii!

So I have been M.I.A from the blogging world for so long. At the time I didn't really feel like anything "blog-worthy" was going on in my life, but now looking back over the past few months I probably could have had some bomb posts. Oh well... mostly I was just studying, reading, writing, and studying some more and getting AWESOME grades as a result. I am proud to say that I have finally found my calling -- after 5 majors, (or maybe make that 6) we are sticking with Psychology, and I LOVE it! Not sure in what direction I want to go with it yet, but I do know that I want to help people and change the world (or at least the lives of a few people).

Mostly today I decided it was time to start back up again. I mean its January 1st. A new year. How many people are doing the exact same thing as me right at this moment. "This year I'm going to -------" (fill in the blank).  But hey the first step is letting others know your goals so that you have someone to be accountable to. So here goes... Looking back at 2012 it wasn't the best of years. It was full of change, and adjustments, and and starting overs and it was kinda rough. But I am excited to take all that I learned, put 2012 in the past, and move forward to make 2013 the best. 

So after thinking a lot my main goal for 2013 is to get out of my bubble and meet more people. So I want to try to meet at least one new person a day. This doesn't have to be like best friends status but just meet someone, learn at least one fact about them. I'm excited about this! Get out of my comfort zone, know more people, feel more confident, etc. Plus this probably will lead to some pretty good stories! 

So that's the first big news,, and the second.... I am going to Argentina next semester!! I am leaving January 11th and I will be there for 12 weeks. I am going to be an intern for LDS Employment Services. I am making my dream of helping people come true! We will be teaching classes to help people know how to prepare for job interviews, look for job opportunities, gain more confidence in themselves and their skills, and its going to be great! (plus this will make my getting to know a new person every day super easy for 12 weeks, to my knowledge I don't know anyone in Argentina). 

So that is why I have returned from hiding-- stay posted for all my new experiences in Argentina and meeting new people!  

Happy 2013!

Passion trumps fear

First day at the mtc.

I learned a little this weekend. I thought I would share, but in order to do it we need to take a little journey through time. So lets jump in a time machine and go! We are going back almost 2 years ago..Remember this…. Glossophobia… It was my last time to speak in church pre.mission. I got up front and completely froze.. No thoughts were in my brain, therefore no words where leaving the mouth. I ended up only speaking for maybe 2 minutes probly less and was completely embarrassed. At the time I blamed this disaster on my fear of public speaking…

My MTC district

Now lets jump ahead a couple months.. I am in the MTC  and we are having a learning activity with our whole zone. There is where one teacher teachings all of us something and then we practice it. Well this particular day we learned about how we need to teach the gospel with excitement and with passion! For the practice we all had to think of something we LOVED, our most favorite thing in the whole world then we had to talk about it with our partner. Now the point was that when we spoke about this thing we loved we automatically had more energy in our tone, in our face, we didn’t have to think about what we wanted to say or how to say it. We needed to make the gospel and teaching the gospel our passion so that we could teach it with energy and excitement.

Now lets jump ahead a year and a half. Im home. Im speaking in my home ward. See missionaries always have to speak right before they leave like a goodbye, then again when they get home, a welcoming. Well this talk was about 187.6% different from the first. At first I was nervous, but as I stood up in front of everyone and started talking every single one of my nerves vanished, the butterflies in my stomach flew away, I wasn’t thinking about how people were looking at me, or my face getting red, or even worried about what I would say. (although I was thinking about how to say certain words in English instead of Spanish), All I could feel was a love for this Gospel that I have, a love for my Older Brother and Savior, Jesus Christ, a love for Chile and the people I met there, and an excitement to share it with everyone! This time around I wasn’t hoping that the time would fast quickly, but I could have stood up there all day talking.

Just my favorite picture of all time

I had the opportunity Sunday to give a 2^nd talk at my Dads church. Which I fully embraced, Im down for any excuse to talk about Chile, my mission, and this Gospel. But on the drive home, I thought back to that terrible talk almost 2 years ago, and the change that happened to me, then I thought about Hermano Richards and his mtc lesson about passion, and then I realized. That was the change. It wasn’t necessarily that I became more comfortable talking in front of people, or that I gained confidence, although that is a part of it, but more while on the mission I truly developed not only a love, but a PASSION for the Gospel, and for the church. It really became a part of me,. I came to realize that without Christ I am nothing, that with Him I can make it through anything, that this Gospel gives us the ability to change and become more like Him and one day live with Him again, and that now in this life we need to be following His commandments and following Him, which will bring us happiness.

I never had that feeling of love for the church before, it was just always just kidna a thing I did always, and that one day at the mtc learning about sharing with passion I wasn’t sure if I would ever get there. Pretty sure that passion is my favorite souvenir that I brought home from Chile, and probly the most eternal rewarding too.

So maybe I don’t quite have a fear of public speaking….well I have a class come fall so I guess we shall see.

so im a RM and maybe weird.. deal with it.

So we all know those weirdee RMs.. actually its normal and expected yet we all still cant help but make fun of them, and for those that served missions you may have even thought Im not going to be a weirdee RM, im going to be completely normal.. I know that is what I thought then here I find myself doing things I never thought I would and being definitely a little weirdee..  so here it is the weirdieness of RMS ie ME

 

Music….. Yeah still cant really listen to music like I used to anyways, See the thing is before I was a music fanatic.. I woke up to music, got ready to music, first thing at work turned on Pandora, worked out to music, studied to music, even fell asleep to music. And it was something I actually missed a lot on my mission, some days I even longed for my itunes…. But now im here, I have itunes access right at my fingertips, any song I so desire and this is what I find myself doing… usher, skip, secondhand serenade, skip, owl city skip, kanye skip.. wait.. better yet delete!!… efy.. yeah, that’s good!

Movies. im completely out of it, currently trying to catch up on all that I have missed the last 18 months, I have quite the list. However, something about movie watching.. it is hard. And the number 1 reason why…. The suspense. It kills me man!  The first movie I watched was “Tangled” yeah starting small Disney stuff.. and even that movie got to suspenseful for me, I started freaking out not knowing what was going to happen, my heart was beating really fast, palms sweating, you know. Suspense is a feeling that you don’t have very often as a missionary especially in movies, I mean “The restoration” oh whats going to happen to jose smith?! Oh wait….. I know.  I did however get through this suspense phobia thing I got going on to have a harry potter marathon wit my sis, 4pm to 2am. HP5-8.. kicked butt!           

  Dating.. well its true, now that the RM status has been placed the setting me up with people has begun.  Pretty much everyone has me married off to someone, friends, cousins, cousins of roommates friend, random BYU shirt wearing boys on cruises u kno. But hey, better to just roll with it, so bring on the dates, but expect that I will speak of Chile throughout dinner, typical minature golf, and the awkward doorstep scene.

  Which brings me to the next… RMS always just talk about mission stories…. Uh. Of course we do! We haven’t known anything else for the past 18 months, what do you talk about.. oh wait what you have been doing for the past year and half, right, me too! But seriously, I can and will apply Chile/mission to any conversation, nothing else is even in my brain. Sorry. Oh and if not Chile applying, I will apply the gospel to any and all situations, 

Spanglish... yeah that exists. I think everything I want to say still enters my brain in Spanish and then i quickly translate it to english before letting it go. Sometimes. But i will speak Spanish to anyone that I can, not to show off (although i am cooler for knowing 2 languages. ; )bah jk) but just to praaactice! And it makes me feel at home. cuz you know Chile is kinda my home. 

Well thats all the updates for now. Although i have some quite embarrassing stories that I will share with you in the future. now dont you even worry. Mostly I miss Chile a lot and dream about going back everyday. I miss more being a missionary and thinking of others and sharing the gospel. It really was the best 18 months of my life. I dont even care if I have to be a little weird now cuz pretty sure the experience was definitely worth it.

Hello from the MTC!

Hello from the MTC! So I leave on Monday the 18th and I have had an amazing experience so far. I cannot wait to get to Chile and share the gospel and meet the people and love the culture! Im so glad I made this decision to go on a mission Although it has been way hard, cant lie, the god have out weighed the bad, and I have made life long friends with the leaders in my district and other hermanas. Honestly so great. My fam is going to start posting my letters with all my Chilean experiences! Miss you all, Write Me! Here are my top 7 things I have learned, plus some fun/random ones. (list of things I have learned)

1) The best way to teach is through my example and my love for my investigators. Everything I do should bring others to Christ. I need to act like I know this is the true church- though how I live others can know that I know the gospel is true.
     Also, I need to complete love for my investigators- I need to love them enough to save them. (1 Nephi 19:9)

2) I need to "embrace, enhance, magnify every moment" I need to work, work, work and not waste any second. Be bigger, better, bolder than have ever been before. I need to use the Lords time wisely so that I can become an instrument in his hands, because the Lord can make so much more out of me than I can. Christ is not sending missionaries out into the world to hold line but to Fight! To change lives, giving all my might, mind, strength to the work, remembering that I will get out what I put in.

3) The spirit is hosts its all about what I say is not as important as how I make the investigator feel. How I invite the spirit, and provide them with the opportunities to have personal spiritual experience. Soriaxe is an investigator Hermano Anderson told us about who was super difficult, atheist, stubborn- but he ended up getting baptized. Hermano Anderson asked what they said that changed his mind and he said, " The spirit helped my heart understood things my mind couldn't comprehend".

4) To have no fear. To have complete faith! I need to take the first step, just open my mouth, with Faith that it will be filled. Talk to everyone and never, ever, ever, ever, shut up! If i work with faith and focus I will give the Lord something to work with. (D:C 100 4-8; D:C 30:11)

5) I came to a better understanding of the enabling power of the atonement. Through the atonement we can do anything atonement enables us to have comfort and peace, enables us to repent, enables us to become like Christ. When times get hard remember that if we want to be Christs disciple. We have "to spend a few hours in Gethsemne, a little while in Calvary, and take a couple steps up to the summit". We have to go through some of the pains Jesus Christ went through but the atonement will carry us through. Missions are hard for a reason, but during those hard times I can stand tall because I'm standing closer to and even next to Christ himself.

6) The Lord is with me always. He abides in me, and I in him (Moses 6:32-34) God loves me so much, he wont let me be alone. Lord is on my right, and on my left with angels going before me. ( D:C 80:88)

7) Humility, humility, humility. This work is not even a little bit possible to do by myself. Alone I am nothing but with the Lord I can be strong.

                               "Every hour, every day, every step all the way. This is war!"
                                                 -And just some random fun ones-

1- You can create and analogy using a pen that will relate to any gospel principle.

2- " you've got mail" really are the 3 greatest words on the planet, and they may not admit it but every 19 yr old boy knows and will sing the blue clues mail time song.

3- It is possible to be so tired you fall asleep standing, sitting, kneeling, walking- but pulling on ear lobe is an effective way to stay awake.

4- "Called to serve" is an amazing song until you sing it 3 times a week for 9 weeks.