Summer Projects

Alright, well I am going to introduce you to a few of my summer projects!

Summer Project Mission #1 - "Guitar Ninja"

I took a guitar class this last semester and I loved it! Guitar is something I tried as a kid and thought I would never be able to do. Of course, my hands were a lot smaller back then (not much bigger now, but big enough to manage). But, I have made a lot of progress and I think I now have the tools and skills to keep learning on my own.

I want to be able to get to the point where I can pretty much play anything I put my mind to. And I want my songs to sound like the originals. The capstone of this project is going to be whether or not I can play the intro to Chuck Berry's song "Johnny B. Goode". On a folk guitar. I'll have to make friends with someone who has an electric I can try out...volunteers can step up anytime now.

Summer Project Mission #2 - "Eh-scahp-ay! Funny, It's spelled just like the word, 'Escape'!" (a.k.a "Summer Reading List")

Not only did I build my own reading list, but my roommate gave me a three page list of her favorite books. So I'll be working on that. Books from both me and her include "Cinder", "Lectures on Faith", and "She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts". Yeah, there's really no reason or rhyme to my selection of books. But if I even read any books for fun, I'll count that as a success, considering I haven't been able to do that since last summer.

Summer Project Mission #3 - "Barkin' Up the Right Tree" (a.k.a. "Family History Book")

I started this project for my New Testament class and quickly realized I wasn't going to finish in time for the end of semester. I am researching ancestors who immigrated from Scotland to Oregon in the early 1900's. This family is stinkin' awesome. There are so many gemstones in this not-even-started-yet-book. (I'm still trying to finish the research before I solidify it on paper.) But I want to have the book finished by the end of August. Here's a little sneak peek!

This is for my ancestor, Peter Campbell Crockatt:

"The picture below is the RMS Lusitania arriving in New York from Liverpool in 1907. In 1908, at 16 years of age, Peter Campbell Crockatt immigrated to America by himself on the Lusitania. In 1915, that same ship was torpedoed by a German submarine, prompting the United States to join the first world war. This picture is probably what it looked like when this wee Scottish lad arrived in America to make a new life! He would be followed across the ocean a year later by his widowed mother and two younger siblings. Peter would grow up to be a Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon, and die in a tragic car accident in 1926 near Spokane, Washington."

Here is the record of the voyage:

Peter's entry is about 8 lines from the bottom.

Well, these projects are only the tip of the iceberg! Hopefully I'll make good progress on them this summer!

Well, I'm no longer living in Provo

Hey guys! I haven't posted in a while because finals week was coming and it was crunch time. But now I am done with my junior year in college and finals went okay! Hopefully I'll be able to find interesting things to post about. Anyways, I have a few leftovers from my pictures of Provo. So here are a few of them. There were so many times that I felt like a weirdo. I mean, how do you cover up walking on the side of the road and then creepily stopping and taking pictures of stuff while people walk past you? I dunno.

First there was this killer sunset happening when I was walking home from finishing a huge project in the lab.

You can probably now tell that I think the temple is pretty.

And finally all the flowers started blooming at the temple and on campus! It was gorgeous! I remember walking to campus one day during finals week and being stunned that the trees and grass actually looked alive!

...But we're ignoring the fact that it is snowing in Alpine as we speak.

Divine Nature: Pretend You're a Seed, Okay?

“According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

-2 Peter 1:3-4

...In summary, we have been given everything that pertains to life and godliness because we have been called by God to gain glory and virtue. Because of this, certain promises have been made to us, and it is through these promises that we can take part in divine nature.

What is divine nature? When I was in Young Women, I had always thought of divine nature as more of a divine temperament. We are who we naturally are based on what our spirits were like in the pre-mortal existence.

"Pretend it's a seed, okay?"

In my New Testament class today, we talked about another interpretation of what divine nature means. The Greek word for divine nature is “phusis” (pronounced “foo’sis”) meaning “growth (by germination or expansion), i.e. (by implication) natural production (lineal descent); by extension, a genus or sort.” We talked about the implications of growth by germination. When you look at a seed of a redwood tree, you’ll notice they look nothing alike. Honestly, how could this...

...turn into this?: (P.S. We're ignoring the fact that I don't know this person.)

 

Clearly seeds are nothing like massive redwood trees. But they have the potential to be.

In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that just as a seed has the potential to turn into a massive tree, we have the potential to become like God. We are, by nature, divine beings who were born to become like our Heavenly Father. We are literally children of our Heavenly Father. Divine nature is about being like God, and this earth was created so we could have the opportunity to grow into our divine nature. In Isaiah 45:18 it says, “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited.” Earth was created for us to come and get a mortal body and experience trials and tribulations, to go through the fiery furnace to rid ourselves of our imperfections and faults.

But lest you get a big head, all of this is literally impossible without Jesus Christ. To be like God, you have to be perfect, and there is no way that any of us can be perfect. That is why Heavenly Father created the Plan of Salvation. We would come to earth, receive bodies, and because of our fallen, imperfect nature, Jesus Christ would come to atone for our sins. In the New Testament, the actual translation of the concept “atone” is “reconciliation”. Jesus Christ would reconcile the difference between God and our fallen, sinful state and make it possible for us to return into the presence of God. For “no unclean thing can dwell with God” (1 Nephi 10:21).

Jesus Christ, through his Atonement and Resurrection, has paid for our sins, and has made it possible for us to return to the presence of God, to be like Him, and to fulfill our divine nature of Godhood. When we return to Heavenly Father, it won't be on our own merit, but on the merit of Jesus Christ. This is why it is so important for us to come unto Christ and keep the commandments. It is only through Him, that we can reach our full potential, and it is only through Him that we can be exalted in the Kingdom of God.

If you have any questions on what I’ve written, feel free to contact missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They can answer any questions you have about what we believe. You can reach them here! Or you can leave a comment and we can talk about it!

Decisions and Wrong Roads

To those who are making decisions right now: Yeah, me too. After this semester is over I have no idea what I will be doing. I'm trying to figure out jobs, school, places to live, when to graduate. Everything is up in the air. This video narrated by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, gives me comfort and peace in the face of my pressing decisions. As he says in the video; don't give up, don't panic, don't retreat. Everything will be alright.

To access this video through lds.org click here!

JFSB and the HFAC

Looks like I'm speaking code, but I'm not. The following pictures were taken in, near, or around of the Joseph F. Smith Building and the Harris Fine Arts Center - the two buildings I spend most of my free time in. I took the first two picture the other day when it was raining, and I didn't want to go to the sociology lab to do homework, just yet.

Ha, guess what this is below! A bench! Weird bench, eh? I like all the lines.

For this next picture, I was walking to my guitar class in the HFAC when I saw this unusually empty courtyard. It is never this empty, and of course, as soon as I pulled out my camera people started trickling in and out of the doors. So I had to perfectly time it so no one was in the shot. I like the different colored tiles and all the windows in this picture. 

Anyways, that's all folks!

A Tourist in Provo

Lately I have been getting random desires to go back to Switzerland/Europe in general. I had the opportunity to go to Europe twice, once when we picked up my sister from her mission in Switzerland and again as a performer for Utah Ambassadors of Music. I loved experiencing the new cultures and the different auras of each place. As I pondered on exactly what I loved so much about Europe, I realized it wasn't as much the gorgeous buildings and the thousands of years of history. Nor was it being able to experience new foods and hear different languages spoken. Instead, it was the way I saw everything. I viewed the world with wonder, and with a photographer's eye. I saw things and took mental and physical pictures of them. I saw the beauty in houses, public transportation, clocks, even bike stands. When I realized this, I came up with the idea to do a Provo Project. For the next few weeks, I am going to see Provo and BYU campus from the eyes of a photographer-tourist. I'm going to actively look for the beautiful things in my own neighborhood rather than wishing to move to a different continent. My camera has found a permanent place in my backpack for when something catches my eye. I just need to remember to charge the batteries. :)

On Friday I got to attend the temple and do baptisms for the dead. Afterwards, as I walked home, I looked back at the temple and immediately stopped to take a picture. It was raining, my umbrella was close to flying away in the brisk wind, and my hair was still wet. But I managed to get the above shot. I like it because of all the lines in the photograph that point to the temple. I also like how even though it was a rainy, gloomy day, the view was still fantastic.

Stay tuned for more pictures to come!

Not in Tables of Stone, But in Fleshy Tables of the Heart

I am currently in a New Testament class here at BYU. One of our assignments each week is to write to someone about what we learned in class for that week, and last week we studied 2 Corinthians. I wrote the following:

One thing that really touched me [this week] was that Jesus Christ already paid the price for us through His Atonement. It’s done. Finished. He atoned for our sins one by one in the Garden of Gethsemane. But sometimes Satan tries to get us to forget that. He want us to have no faith or hope or claim to happiness. Instead of overcoming our sins through Jesus Christ’s Atonement, Satan wants us to be defined by our lowest struggles of mortality. He wants us to be so discouraged that we will pull ourselves away from God. He tells us that it is too hard, that [insert blank here] is so much more fun and easy, and that [insert blank here] isn't that bad. Satan loves telling us that we can never accomplish our righteous goals and desires. He loves pulling us down to his level of pain and despair.

But we need to remember that we worship an all-powerful God who isn't bound by time. For Him, our past isn't written in ink, “but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart” (2 Cor. 3:3). Accessing Jesus Christ’s Atonement is the only way that we can change the past. It is the only way that we can become a new person who isn't defined by the mistakes we made last week, last month, or last year. By changing our heart and coming to Christ, we change our past. As Paul taught in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

I have a testimony of Jesus Christ’s Atonement. I know that if we will strive to be better and rely on the Atonement of the Savior, we will be able to be justified, or pronounced “not guilty” for our sins, and work to become a new person through the Atonement and teachings of Jesus Christ. I know that we can be forgiven of our sins, and that the Atonement is the only way for us to return to live in the presence of our Heavenly Father.

To learn more about Jesus Christ and the Atonement and what I believe, visit mormon.org here.

The Word Which Healeth the Wounded Soul

"And it supposeth me that they have come up hither to hear the pleasing word of God, yea, the word which healeth the wounded soul."

-Jacob 2:8

In Relief Society today we talked about the importance of reading the scriptures. We discussed some of the blessings we get from reading our scriptures, including: peace, an answer to prayers, promptings from the Holy Ghost, warnings from the Holy Ghost when we are starting to stray, spiritual nourishment, freedom from guilt, increased understanding of the scriptures, and an increased ability to repent and receive forgiveness and eventually return to live in the presence of our Heavenly Father.

I have personally felt these blessings in my life. During my sophomore year of college I was facing ever present feelings of gloom and hurt. I struggled every day to be positive and make friends. I was dealing with trials at that time that made me feel weak, fragile, and lonely. Every day was a fight to regulate my overwhelming sense of discouragement. These feelings were especially difficult to deal with in the morning. I would wake up and instantly get on my knees and pray for help from Heavenly Father in being strong, and accomplishing the many things expected of me. Eventually I had the idea to add scripture study to my morning routine. I read from the New Testament while eating breakfast. Each day I read of the miracles of Jesus Christ as he taught the people in the New Testament. I heard His parables, watched His loving treatment towards the weak and weary, and I felt the Holy Ghost testify to me of the reality and truth of what I was reading. As I saw His miracles, I felt my own miracle occur. Each day became easier, and the crushing sense of hurt grew light. As Jacob taught in the Book of Mormon, those words were healing my wounded soul.

I have a strong testimony of Jesus Christ, and I know that the Bible and the Book of Mormon are true. I have studied them and I have felt all the blessings listed above as a result. I continue to read my scriptures every morning, and I treasure that time set apart to come closer to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Looking back, I value the lessons I learned sophomore year, and I am grateful for the opportunity to let myself depend more on my Savior and my Heavenly Father.

Nephi, a prophet in the Book of Mormon, said, “And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.”

This is me writing of Christ so that I too may point others in the direction of the Savior. It is through Him that we may receive a remission of their sins, and it is through the word of God that our souls may be healed.

The Lord lives, and He loves you.

Happy Sunday! :)