Hooray for learning!

I am learning sooooo much, I can hardly keep up with myself. It's so exciting! About international adoption, humanitarian efforts, dealing with other people, reciprocity, analyzing your value orientations and seeing if that's really how you want to see the world, seeing the world from another person's perspective, not being ethnocentric, not freaking out over life, remembering that you don't know everything, submitting your will to God's, being a friendly person, having a quiet heart, the Romanian language, attachment disorders... It's so wonderful. This week has just been so, so great. I have to go write about my discoveries for my IAS class, but I'll hopefully write more soon!

The Y

Another marvelous day. Hiked the Y for FHE. It was beautiful--we got there right before the sunset and got to watch it and then see all the lights turn on. I was so happy and grateful, because a guy in the ward and I walked up the whole way just the two of us, and one-on-one interaction is always easiest for me. It was nice to chat with him, although it was kinda embarrassing how out of shape I am and how hard I breathed the whole way up. Haha. Oh well. We made it up in excellent time--we were the first ones to get to the top (first ones to start, too, though). I'd say maybe 25 minutes. Oh, happy day. And then afterwards, I went and visited with a girl in my ward whom I adore--she and I had Humanities together last semester and she just makes me laugh! Oh, and today was a wonderful Romanian day, too. We laughed a lot throughout the whole class. Life is good.

Wonderful Day

So, today's been a wonderful day. My wonderful roommate Lorette got home yesterday and so I have a friend to live with!! And she can't stand the heat, and so we turned on the AC last night, and I can't tell you how much more wonderful my life is now that I'm not living in a 76-86 degree apartment anymore. And today after church and having a bite to eat and visiting teaching an awesome girl who's from Taiwan/China/Australia, I treated myself to a siesta on my favorite couch with my favorite afghan, preceded by a few pages of my favorite book, These Is My Words. And then after my exceptionally relaxing nap (which was augmented beautifully by the cool nature of our apartment), I got to read my scriptures. The Book of Mormon and prophets and apostles are so true!! And then I realized that I had started my period. Which shed a whole lot of light on why I've been such an irritable/depressed nutcase for the last week. Happy discovery--I'm more normal than I thought! And after eating some yummy pasta with Prego garlic and herb spaghetti sauce and peas, I called my brother. It was marvelous to talk with him while I meandered around the iris- and rose-spattered streets of east Provo. He made me laugh so hard for so long, and I definitely needed that. And then I went to a fireside given by Dean and Kathleen Hughes. And when I got out from the fireside, I had received a message from a guy who is super good at tennis asking me if I wanted to play tennis with him this week. (Hooray!! I've been looking for someone who's better than me to play with now that my brother is in Georgia.) And then Lorette and I visit taught another amazing girl in the ward, and then we just chatted while I had some dinner. And then Lisa Jenkins came over and graced me with compliments that I had been hungering for all last week. Pretty much it's been a splendid end to a monstrous week, or perhaps a splendid beginning to what's going to be a splendid week! And all despite the fact that both sacrament meeting and the fireside today were on preparing for marriage, which is a topic that, given the irritable/depressed pattern of responses I'd been having last week, could have made me even more irritated and depressed. But alas, I think I'm over those days--or at least for another month or so. :)

Body image

Funny/pathetic/sad things I learned today while researching for Dr. Hawks:

There's a test that measures body image dissatisfaction which is called the "Body Uneasiness Test" and in articles it's referred to as the BUT.

There's a disorder called "Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder" which basically is a clinical way of saying, "You have REALLY bad PMS problems." I think most women can relate at some time or another with those with this disorder.

There's an article called, "Plastic surgery addiction in patients with body dysmorphic disorder." Plastic surgery addiction?!! Well, folks, I think we're in the last days.

Dedicatory Prayer

Elder Russell M. Nelson dedicated the land of Romania for the preaching of the gospel on February 9, 1990, less than two months after the Romanian Revolution took place. Here are a few things he said in the dedicatory prayer:

"We acknolwedge Thy hand in the miracle of victory for Romanian people so long oppressed."

"Bless their widows and orphans, and their wounded sons and daughters to rise from their beds of affliction and become strong once again. "

"Let this nation become a great citadel of spiritual strength and a beacon of light to neighboring nations."

"This land is rich with the blood of Israel."

Isn't that so exciting? And I get to be a small part of it.

And on a completely different note, here's a quote that I love from a talk President Hinckley gave to single adults in 1996. I think it applies to all of us:

"I have enjoyed these words of Jenkins Lloyd Jones, which I clipped from the newspaper some years ago. Said he:

"Anyone who imagines that bliss [in marriage] is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed.

“[The fact is] most putts don’t drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. …

“Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.

“The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride” ("Big Rock Candy Mountains,” Deseret News, 12 June 1973, A4)."

Isn't that fantastic? I need to remember to enjoy the ride. (I owe finding this quote to my visiting teachers' fridge.)

You Gotta Love This Place

No smell of smoke
Flowers everywhere
Get to walk up a hill and get my heart working every time I walk up to campus
Reading quotes from the prophets on friends' fridge doors
Modesty
I'm pretty sure my neighbors aren't getting drunk
They let undergrads do research and go cool places like London, San Fransicso, and Iasi
I can include spiritual insights into my homework
The National Anthem every morning and evening
Places on campus to recycle
Places on campus to send packages
The unparalleled ballroom and country dance programs
Tuesday Devotionals that give me a spiritual, emotional, social, perspectival boost every week
BYU wards that give you fun stuff to do and fun people to do them with
5 minute drive to the temple
The mountains
Sports games
Music concerts
Dance concert
Access to an amazing amount of scholarly journals and articles
BYU computer labs!!
The amazing cleanliness of the place
No foul language around me
The many, many couches to rest on and study places to study on
Hearing from apostles and general authorities at CES firesides and Tuesday devotionals
Close to Grandma and Grandpa Howe and other aunts and uncles
BYU bookstore with all its good gifts, books, LDS stuff, etc.

Cartea lui Mormon!

I'm so excited because I bought myself a Romanian Book of Mormon and hymn book today. I calculated that if I read three pages of the Romanian Book of Mormon aloud every day, I will have it finished by the end of the program. I figure this will help me with my pronunciation and vocabulary...and hopefully by the time I'm in Moroni, I'll be able to understand at least a little bit of what I'm reading. Plus, if I'm going to want to be able to go on splits with the missionaries and fulfill my calling (which could even be a Relief Society teacher!) while I'm there, I'm going to need to have some proficiency in the language. I'm not going to have Romanian class for two months before I actually go to Romania, so that will also be a way I can keep practicing. Today I started Cartea lui Mormon, and I only understand words like "and," "yea," "my father," "parents," "Spirit," and "God." But I also learned the verb "to make," so that's exciting.

I'm learning so much every day, I can't even tell you how exciting it is. I just want to come home and tell everyone all the fun words and phrases and grammar I'm learning. For instance, in English, if a verb is definitive, we just slap a "the" in front of it ("the car" rather than "a car"), but in Romanian there are many different articles to make nouns definitive, depending on whether the noun is masculine, feminine, neutral, plural, singular, ending in a consonant, ending in a vowel, etc. And the articles are at the end of the word, rather than being a separate word in front of the noun. So, yeah, it's hard, but I'm slowly catching on. I love the Romanian language so much!! One of my favorite words is "uşoară," which is pronounced "you-shwa-duh" and means easy. I just think it's so fun to say. :)

Oh, one more thing--I prayed in Romanian in class yesterday for the first time!! And I only opened my eyes once to check my cheat-sheet. Yay for me!! My life is so grand.

Library

I have an abnormal love for the BYU library. I just love it. And I guess the whole rest of the BYU campus too. It's so beautiful this time of year. And it's fabulous spring term because it's quiet and not very busy, so you feel like you own the place. And it's a wonderful feeling to feel like you own a place you love so much.

5

Jessi "tagged" me with these lists:

5 things in your purse:
Crocheting yarn/needle/bandage
Extra polar ice gum (half gone)
A pass-along card
A list of questions from a game at Kari Hutchinson's bridal shower
A Ross receipt totaling to $6.37 (for one shirt)

5 things in your fridge:
String cheese
Yogurt
Watermelon
Ham lunch meat
Apples

5 things in your car:
Mary Wollstonecraft's The Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Latin dance shoes
A desk lamp (which I didn't need when I got to the apartment)
A registry list for when Andrea Hunter and I went shopping for Katie Lent's bridal shower
An ice scraper

5 things on your desk:
A dictionary
A G-2 pen
A package of sugar I got on the plane on the way home from Italy
Jane Austen's Emma
The lamp that was already in my apartment

5 things in your closet:
A filled laundry basket
Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles
Deoderant
Running shoes
Three sweatshirts

5 things in your backyard:
Don't have one

5 things in your garage:
Don't have one

5 things under your bathroom sink:
Cetaphil face wash
Listerine mouth wash
Cotton balls
Tampons
Hairspray

5 things in your hall closet:
Vacuum
Ear-warmers
Extra hangers on the floor
Blankets
Beanies

5 things in your child's room:
Don't have a child

5 things you can't live without:
Water
Prayer
The Book of Mormon
Pajama capris
Food

The Romanian Legacy

Last Friday in my IAS (International and Area Studies) class I learned a little bit about the last twenty years or so of Romanian history. Nicolai Ceauşescu (pronounced Nee-koh-lie Chow-she-scoo) was a Hitler-like man whose communist regime from 1965-1989 caused a lot of grief in his country. I would love to tell you about it, so please ask me, but I'm not going to expound on it here. Basically, it's tragic stuff. Broken economies, families, trust, unity, history, communication, lives, etc. But Liz (one of the teachers of the class who has also gone to Romania twice with this program) ended class on a really good note--she said that to the rest of the world, the Romanian legacy is the horrendous things that happened there, but that is not what the Romanian legacy will be for me. When I come home from the program in December, the Romanian legacy that I will carry with me is the amazing generosity, passion, resiliency, and beauty of the people there.

In class we discussed how Ceauşescu's rule would emotionally and socially affect the people. We talked about how after the fall of communism, it was embarrassing for them to find out what awful things were happening in their country that they didn't know about. After the state of the Romanian orphanages, economy, etc. got so much press from America and other countries, it was irritating to them to have foreigners treat them condescendingly because they "didn't even do anything about it." It was frustrating for them to be sensationalized by people who had no idea what it was like to experience such things. And it was even more frustrating when those very people looked down on them for "letting such awful things happen."

We also talked about how the breakdown of family ties, trust, and communication (ask me how he did this) would make it hard for people to feel secure, trusting, or open to communicate anymore. We also talked about the messiness of how since the fall of communism, things really haven't improved all that much, and so a lot of people in Romania wish Ceauşescu was back in power because "at least under Ceauşescu we had jobs."

After class, I think we were all feeling a little heavy, even with the positive note Liz ended class with. Right after class we have Romanian (the language class), with our teacher Maria. I love and admire and adore Maria so much--she is just so full of cheer and kindness and light. She is from Romania, and so that same day we talked to her a little about Ceauşescu and the Romanian Revolution. She was 6 when the Romanian Revolution happened (in 1989) and remembers little about it. But she remembers some of it, and knows extremely well how it has affected the Romanian people. Just as Liz had told us the people would be, she seemed very uncomfortable talking about it. When we asked her how she felt about Ceauşescu, all she said is that she couldn't really be sure what he did, and that a lot of people wish he was back in power because at least they had jobs while he was in power, and the morality of the people wasn't so low as it is now that people have freedom of expression.

Talking to her really made the reality and pain of the history come alive to me. It was really hard to see someone I care about so much seem so uncomfortable and reticent to talk about that aspect of her country's history and reality. We had just been in a class where we were taught about the effects of being under Ceauşescu's rule...about how people don't like to acknowledge the bad things that happened, about how a lot of people wish Ceauşescu was still in power...and then we got to really interact with someone who has lived the history we were taught and is experiencing the effects of it. It was good for me to have a taste of what it's going to be like in Romania, meeting absolutely amazing people who love their Romanian heritage, but don't want to dwell on the painful things that have happened in their country. It is so sad, but it also makes a lot of sense to me.

Anyway, so I've thought a lot about that since Friday night. What is the purpose of such messiness--why are things not much better in Romania under democracy than when they were under communism. How do the millions of broken lives fit into the plan of salvation. How is it that people's lives can be so bad that they are driven to wish for something so awful as to be under Ceauşescu's rule? And this is what I've come up with:

First of all, Heavenly Father didn't send us to this earth to sail through without any challenges. We were sent here to be tested, and tested through challenges. Physical, spiritual, emotional challenges. And while it's easy for us to see the challenges and pain the Romanians went through, because they are so apparent, perhaps there are people everywhere in the world who go through just as much pain (even in the U.S.). Romania isn't the only place in the world where there are broken families, poverty, broken trust, broken lives. And maybe God let the Romanians, and all the rest of us, get broken to test our faith. To see if we would have the faith that Christ can fix all things broken. To test if even in the face of atrocious things such as Ceausescu did, we still will believe and trust that Christ has more power to heal than Ceauşescu has the power to destroy. (See Elder Holland's "Broken Things to Mend" and President Packer's "I Will Remember Your Sins No More" talks from last conference!)

Another thought that I had, that may very well be completely incorrect (I'm open to commets!) is that maybe people like Hitler and Ceauşescu needed to be given the opportunity to mess up as bad as they did in order to show their true colors. So they could fail in their tests as much as they deserved. So the blood of the innocent would be upon them. So their works would speak against them when they would try to say, "No, really, I'm not that bad of a person." So God is justified in letting them descend into hell.

Two thoughts also came to me in church today. In Sacrament Meeting, someone quoted Paul as saying, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith" in 2 Timothy 4:7. And although the word "my" is in italics (signifying uncertainty as to how accurate of a translation it is), I'm going to assume that it is completely accurate. I think it's fascinating that Paul didn't say, "I have finished the course," but rather he said, "I have finished my course." We don't all go through the same tests. God doesn't expect us all to experience or overcome the same challenges. Our tests are customized to what we need to (and can) learn, overcome, experience. And although it seems to me that Romanians (or the Mormon pioneers, or whoever) had to go through way worse things than I do, maybe that's the kind of tests they needed. And maybe I need different kinds of tests. I need to finish my course, not anyone else's. And that goes for everyone else in the world, too.

Okay, one more thought, and then I have to go. And this thought is kind of what all this has been leading to, why I sat down to write this in the first place. It's a quote in the Relief Society lesson today, on page 87 of the "Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Wilford Woodruff" book. He said:
"When we have passed through the sorrows of mortality and have the joy and glory of the celestial kingdom conferred upon us we shall then know that the afflictions of mortality have prepared us for and enabled us to appreciate the blessings which God has in store for the faithful."
!!!!! What an amazing quote, huh!! So all the terrible things that Romanians experienced, if they endure them well, will only prepare them and enable them to appreciate the blessings God has in store for them. It will lead to increased joy and glory. Truly, "all things will be for our good." It's so exciting to think that one day all the pain of mortality will one day be over and all the broken lives of the faithful will be fixed! And that their experience of being broken will enable them to feel more joy over their blessings in the celestial kingdom! It's an amazing thought. It's a hopeful thought. It's a thought that I need to hang onto to help me endure the hard things in my future.

So, basically what it comes down to is that the Church is true, life would be unbearable without the gospel, without Christ we are lost, and with Christ we have it MADE. Christ has overcome the world, and it's up to me to trust that He has, and not despair over the horrendous things that have happened in history. And thus, we come full circle. Christ can transform our histories that seemingly seem like legacies of poverty, pain, and destruction into legacies of generosity, passion, resiliency, beauty, and glory. Truly, Christ is the Redeemer and Savior of the World!!