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.