Monastery Trip (about a month ago)

All ten of us girls! Bri, Abbi, Holly, Melissa, Megan, Jessica, Marina, Shannon, Jenna, and Sheri














Marina, Shannon, me, Jessica, and Megan

Last Sunday's Excursion

Me and my friends

Ionut and me (sorry about the bad lighting)
















Holly, Bri, and me















Me, Raluca, Stefana, Jenna, and Marina in the Vila

More Random Pictures

My apartment's living room, with six of the ten girls, before one of our Sunday meetings.




















The Vila (the missionaries popped into this picture by surprise--how perfect!). The Church is on the second floor, and the other floors are used for other things.




















The Spital

Pictures of Iasi

The Scala apartment (where the other girls in the program live)















Some blocs close to the Scala apartment
















Some apartment blocs














The Palat (Cultural Palace)

Pictures! Finally!

My apartment (Podul de Fier).

Close-up of my apartment.

My kitchen with Holly and Bri.

The other side of my kitchen with Marina.

My Angels

Iulia
















Ionut (and Holly)

More Romanian Lessons

My time in Romania is teaching me how to better:
Swallow my pride.
Be inconvenienced.
Appreciate amazing appliances such as microwaves, dishwashers, clothes dryers, and toasters.
Understand what my strengths and weaknesses are.
Make do with what I have.
Wait.
Look for the good in others.
Overlook others' weaknesses and differences.
Control my thoughts.
Interact with people with disabilities.
See things in the context of God's eternal plan for His children.
Be creative in cooking meals.
Resist discouragement and feed hope.
Focus on the beauty and not the ugliness in life.
Know when in a foreign country to say "I don't understand" and when to pretend like you do.
Rely on the Savior--I can't do hard things on my own.

Making the Most

I realize I’ve been a pretty lousy blogger for the last three months. I seem to only update my blog every couple weeks or so. Here are the thoughts I’ve had in the last couple weeks:

I don’t think going abroad is the only time people should really try to “make the most” of their experiences. People can live up whatever life circumstance they are in, whether that be being a mom raising three high-maintenance boys in a tiny apartment in ghetto Houston (props to Audra!!), being a mom of four girls in the Georgian countryside (holla for Jessi!), teaching the scriptures to twenty teenagers every morning at 6:00 am (yay for Mom!), or working thirty hour shifts every four days in a hospital that isn’t infested with cockroaches and does have AC (I miss you Chad!). Life has so much to offer, if we just take Audra’s advice and pay attention to what it does have to offer. I have a testimony that Heavenly Father can help us see the beauty in our lives, wherever we are and whoever we are with.

After being in Romania for a couple weeks now, I can tell that Romania has a lot to teach me. I’ll keep a log of them in this blog, both the comical and serious ones.

Lesson #1: I wouldn’t call the Romanian mentality a perfectionist one. Sometimes the washing machine stops working, sometimes the water gets turned off, sometimes the internet goes down, but do Romanians fret over it? Nope. Because, everyone knows that “sometimes it does that.”

Lesson #2: Romanians know how to take risks. If there are driving rules here, no one seems to abide by them or enforce them. So each day on the road is an adventurous one.

Lesson #3: Gypsies really do exist, and they really do wear bright-colored dresses and their hair in long braids. And Romanians don’t like them. But I’ve enjoyed talking (if my molasses-slow understanding and speaking of Romanian could be called talking) to the gypsie moms at the hospital. They have the cutest kids!!

Lesson #4: It is amazing and exciting to see how surprised and pleased people’s faces become when I smile at them! I just love it. One of the highs of this semester thus far has been those moments when I say “Buna ziua” (pronounced Buna Ziwa) and smile at people, and I can tell I brightened their day. And to those other souls I don’t know how to reach, I can pray for them. I’m so grateful for prayer, because it has brought so much peace to my heart, during those moments when I feel powerless to help someone, to know that I can at least pray for them. I’ve been trying to remember to pray for the people I pass when I walk to and from the hospital/store/etc. And of course the beautiful babies in the hospital—those fighters who teach me so, so much about patience and enduring to the end and long-suffering. They help me see the beauty in my life. Please pray for them!

Lesson #5: You have to give up your fears of making a fool of yourself if you want to make your dreams come true. I’m still working on this one—I’ll let you know what more Romania teaches me concerning this!

Lesson #6: If I want to be happy, I should try to love and serve everyone like I love and serve the babies in the hospital.

"I Can Do Hard Things"

I love this statement! My sister Jessi taught her daughter McKenna to say this while McKenna was going through a stage of often getting frustrated by not being able to do new tasks correctly right away. This is something that I think we all could benefit from saying to ourselves periodically.

Last month Chad and I hiked Mt. Timpanogos. During about the third hour of the hike, we talked about how people can often do way more than they allow themselves to do, because they set limits on themselves and don't believe in themselves. If they would just believe in their ability to do hard things and go forward with the commitment to do them, they would surprise themselves by their ability. I think that is so true--we really can do hard things!

Tomorrow I am going to Romania. I am so excited--I have been waiting for this for months. And yet, I am still a little bit scared, especially concerning my lack of fluency in Romanian. I will have to remind myself that I can do hard things. I will have to remind myself to believe in my ability to excel in Romania. Fear won't get me anywhere, but faith will.

There is something my uncle Joe said a few years ago to his scared and crying son that has really stuck with me. He said, "This is a good time to be tough." I love that! I think that is such a good life attitude! Sometimes you just have to be tough and believe in your ability to successfully ride through a time of uncertainty and risk.

Another statement I think is a good life attitude is something my amazing roommate Teri said when talking about an unpleasant situation she was in. In conclusion to her story, she said in regards to what she was going to do about it: "So what do you do? You get over it!" I think that's fabulous advice on how to accomplish hard things. Some things are just out of our control, and we have to get over them! We shouldn't dwell on what we can't change, but rather we should dwell on our blessings and get to work on the things that we can change for the better.

I hope I can live this advice while in Romania. I hope I can remember to believe in myself. I can do hard things. This is a good time to be tough, and I can be. I can get over the things I can't change, as I work my tail off to do everything I can to improve the quality of the lives of the people I come in contact with in Romania. Romania, here I come!

Grammer Answer

Jessi and Audra, that's the same reaction I had when my English 315 teacher put those words on the board! Except for I gave up way before 15 minutes--Jessi, I am impressed with your perseverance! The answer is someone asking whether Sam or Sally was right in their use of the word "had" in a paper/grammar lesson:

Where Sam had had "had," Sally had had "had had;" had "had had" had the teacher's approval?

Crazy, huh?!

Grammar challenge

Believe it or not, these words can create a correct sentence if punctuated correctly. See if you can figure it out:

Where Sam had had had Sally had had had had had had had had the teachers approval

Dance!

"If thou art merry, praise the Lord with singing, with music, with dancing, and with a prayer of praise and thanksgiving" (D & C 136:28).

"Attempt to be creative for the joy it brings...Select something like music, dance, sculpture, or poetry. Being creative will help you enjoy life. It engenders a spirit of gratitude. It develops latent talent, sharpens your capacity to reason, to act, and to find purpose in life. It dispels loneliness and heartache. It gives a renewal, a spark of enthusiasm, and zest for life." (Richard G. Scott, “Finding Joy in Life,” Ensign, May 1996, 24)

“The great principle of happiness consists in having a body” (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pg. 181).

“It is expedient that all things be done unto [God’s] glory” (D & C 78:8).

As you all know, I love ballroom dance. I think there is something very satisfying about trying to use the body Heavenly Father gave me to create beauiful movement. And I think ballroom dance is so beautiful. I really do believe that dance can be a way of glorifying God, of praising Him.

I also love how ballroom dance requires two people, a man and a woman, to work together. There are so many parallels to ballroom dance and relationships. These parallels often come up in my classes as the teachers try to illustrate dance principles or techniques. Here are just a few, some of which have come up in class, and some of which I have come up with:

1. While you should always maintain connection with your partner at certain connection points, you also need to stay out of your partner's space in some areas. If you start leaning into that space, the balance is thrown off and you don't look good.
2. In dance, the man is a gentleman and the woman is a lady.
3. The gentleman should lead, but that does not mean that he should push or pull the lady around. In fact, if he did, the result would be terribly ugly. The lady can, and must, move on her own in order for the partnership to be smooth and beautiful. The man leads by subtle movements, and the lady should be attentive to those movements.
4. You have to communicate with your partner. Your partner often doesn't realize that what he is doing is making it harder for you to do what you need to do, so you have to tell him. But you also have to tell him in a tactful, courteous way that is not accusatory, but explanatory. If you tell him in an accusatory way, he will be even less inclined to change to help you out.
5. Sometimes you just need to get out of your partner's way.
6. If you try to dance on your own, it doesn't work. You have to listen to what your partner is telling you through his movements, and adapt to those movements as much as you can.
7. You have to loosen up, to relax. If you are too tense or uptight, it's not going to be a pretty picture.
8. Ballroom dance takes a lot of practice and patience. You are not going to achieve a sense of smooth synergy with your partner right away. This is especially true when you are learning a new, more difficult routine together. But the more practice you have with a partner, the easier it is to maintain synergy with him even in the face of the challenge of learning difficult figures.

Ballroom dance has brought so much joy to my life in the last two years. Just as Elder Scott said it would, it has brought into my life gratitude, friendship, renewal, and enthusiasm. These results haven't always been immediate--sometimes I have gotten extremely frustrated and discouraged. Sometimes I have lost the vision of why I dance, and have gotten bogged down in the stress of not feeling good enough, not getting high enough scores, and not performing to the level that I wish I could. But during those times, I have had to remind myself why I dance. It's not to be better than the other girls in my class or to win first place in any competition.

I dance because it's fun and challenging. It's rewarding to learn how to do something I couldn't do before. It's exciting to see something beautiful, and then improve in my ability to create that beauty myself. It's refreshing to step away from my studies and just dance to beautiful music, to just enjoy using the body Heavenly Father gave me. I think that if everyone in the world took an hour a day to dance to inspiring music, the world would be a much better place!

P.S. I got this picture from http://dancesportinfo.net/DisplayGallery.aspx?eventId=4132. It is of Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova, the #1 standard couple in the US. I got to see them last March at DanceSport, and they were amazing.

"I Wanna Talk About ME" (You know, the country song...)

I got this list of questions from Jessi's blog:

My four favorite movies are:
1. Sense and Sensibility
2. Anne of Green Gables
3. Lord of the Rings trilogy
4. Searching for Bobby Fisher

The four places I want to be right now:
1. Any island in the Pacific
2. Guatemala
3. India
4. Spain

Four things I accomplished today:
1. Gave a presentation on alexithymia and eating disorders
2. Made a handout for said presentation
3. Talked to three of my four nieces, one of which (Lydia) in a British accent for about 5 minutes! (She's five years old and she can carry on a conversation in a British accent for 5 minutes! Wow, huh!)
4. Studied for my D & C test tomorrow (what I should be doing right now!)

My four favorite things to do in my "spare time":
1. Spend time with Chad
2. Go running or play tennis
3. Read
4. Go to arts or sports events

Four things I think I'm good at:
1. Liking other people
2. Being meticulous with school work
3. Having a good sense of direction while driving
4. Remembering people's names

Four things I'd like to change:
1. Romania's economic and political condition
2. U.S.'s moral condition
3. U.S. doctors' residency hours
4. How fast I can read (I want to be able to read faster)

How I'd spend a MILLION dollars:
1. Pay for Romania and the rest of my school
2. Give some to my parents as payback for the help they have given me
3. Humanitarian aid
4. Investments

Things I'm going to do tomorrow:
1. Go to the temple at 6 am with my lovely friend Jocelyn
2. Dance the foxtrot!
3. Study for and take a D & C quiz and test
4. Volunteer at the Special Needs Institute

P.S. To see a hilarious picture, go to my friend Amy's blog and see her entry from July 27. It might only be funny if you know her, but it's hilarious to me. Here's the link: http://parselysagerosemaryandthyme.blogspot.com/

On Receiving

In the LDS Church, there is usually an emphasis on giving and serving. Which I think is absolutely wonderful, given that I need to be constantly reminded to resist selfish thought patterns, attitudes, and behavior. However, I have misapplied this counsel at times in my life. I have misconstrued it to mean that asking for help is a sign of weakness--that I am only a good person if I continually serve without ever asking to be served. This idea that good LDS people only give and never receive is so off the mark!!

Recently in my scripture study I have been impressed by how the act of receiving is a gospel principle. This idea was mentioned by my IAS teacher last term, and yesterday I looked into it more in my scripture study. I looked up the word "receive" in the Index, and I found that there is almost a column and a half of references for the concept! That is quite a lot. Listen to how many phrases there are in the scriptures and our gospel vocabulary that include the word "receive":

Receive the priesthood
Receive a priesthood blessing
Receive God's counsel
Receive personal revelation
Receive promptings of the Holy Ghost
Receive forgiveness for one's sins
Receive one's endowment
Receive other gospel ordinances
Receive the gift of the Holy Ghost
Receive the sacrament
Receive God's word
Receive Christ's love into your heart
Receive light
Receive God's image in your countenance
Receive salvation
Receive God's servants
Receive the Lord
Receive the Father
Receive the Father's kingdom
Receive all that the Father hath

That is a lot of phrases using just one word! And there are probably more that I missed. Clearly, the Lord wants us to receive all the good gifts He has to offer us. He wants us to accept help from Him. He has even told us, "For unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have." (2 Nephi 28:30). Receiving is an integral part of the gospel, because we can't make it on our own. We cannot gain salvation on our own. We need the Lord's help. We need His saving grace! We need the saving power of the atonement.

A directive from God to man that is found all over the scriptures is "Ask, and ye shall receive." It seems to me that most of us in the Church accept this readily and don't have any qualms in listing off to Heavenly Father in our prayers all the things we want and need. So why then, if we are so comfortable with asking God for help, do so many of us struggle in asking each other for help?

I believe that just as we need God's saving grace, we also need each other. We have been told that we can not be saved or made perfect without our dead (see D & C 128:15 & 18), and I believe that likewise we can not be saved or made perfect without each other. We should ask each other for help. Really, in order for there to be service in Zion, there has to be people who need to be served!

As I reflect on the people I've known in my life, those who stand out as my best friends are those who I went to and said, "Hey, I'm having a hard time, can you lend me a hand?" It was those people I felt the greatest bond with. And I believe it was in those moments in which my friends and I shared mutual insecurities, pain, fears, and struggles that those bonds were formed. Of course there were other times of shared joy and triumph that strengthened our relationship as well, but without the times of shared struggle, I don't think we would have drawn as close to one another. My closest friendships are the products of the applied principle of asking and receiving.

I have a long way to go when it comes to this principle! I need to work on being more humble so it's easier for me to ask for help. I also need to work on internalizing the belief that receiving is not the opposite of service, but rather it is complementary to it. I'm sure it pleases Heavenly Father when His children engage in reciprocal relationships in which there is both giving and receiving. In this way we help each other return to Him.

Love

The talks in my ward's sacrament meeting today were very uplifting, motivating, and insightful to me. Fabio, a member of my ward, spoke on love, and the high councilman spoke on service. Fabio's talk felt so personal to me, I want to share the insights I gained from his talk.

Fabio said that love creates reasons. If a husband's wife is drowning and he has to think whether or not he wants to save her from distress, logically reasoning out in his mind the things she offers him and whether or not it would be in his best interest to risk sacrificing his own life to save her, he doesn't truly love her. But if he loves her, he will jump in and try to save her, without needing to reason in his mind whether or not he wants to. This made me think about my blog a couple weeks ago in which I talked about how love is the only good motivation for doing things. It seems as if this is an important lesson Heavenly Father wants me to learn.

Fabio also said that when we love something, we love it as an end, not as a means for some personal benefit. And because we love that thing as an end, we also love whatever is good for that thing. What they love becomes what we love, and their concerns become our concerns. Therefore, if we love Heavenly Father, what He loves becomes what we love, and His concerns become our concerns. When Fabio said this, I realized that is how we learn to love every human being on this earth.

Sometimes I have pondered on the commandment to have charity, and how difficult it is to truly feel love for everyone on the earth, including the people who annoy me or hurt me. When I have felt overwhelmed by this commandment, I have tried to remember that I shouldn't expect perfection of myself now, but that I can and must remember that God loves them. And I can believe and trust in that love, even if I'm not feeling a whole lot of it at the moment. That was the first part of my answer, and I feel that the second part came to me in Fabio's talk today.

When I find it difficult to love a particular person, not only can I remember that God loves them, but I can revamp my efforts to love God. As I love God more purely, I will love what He loves more purely--including His children I find difficult to love. As I focus on loving God--the first and great commandment--the commandment to love my neighbor will become more feasible and more attainable. And, for me, the task of learning to love God feels less daunting than the task of learning to love my neighbor (i.e., every human being on the earth).

I also find the thought that God's concerns can become my concerns very exciting. His work and glory can become my work and glory. I can learn to connect whatever I am doing in the day to bringing to pass the eternal life of man. I can learn to not care about what is not eternally important. And I can do this by conscientiously striving to love God more deeply.

This evening I read a quote on my friend's website that I really appreciated:
"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life; that word is love." - Sophocles

And a couple lines from Cheri Call's song "Brokenhearted":
"Broken hearts are deeper;
They've been open wide
And the tears become containers
To hold more love inside
And truly feel what only the brokenhearted can."

I hope and pray that as I learn to God more purely:
My love for Him will motivate me to do the right things,
I will see His children more as He sees them and love them as He loves them,
My daily tasks will take on new meaning as my work will become a mission revolving around His concerns rather than a number of obstacles revolving around my own,
I will be more able to carry the weight and pain of the world because of how His love strengthens and upholds me, and
I will use my life challenges as opportunities to become more compassionate.

Just as Fabio said today, love truly does make the world go round.

The Richness of my Life

Today I am grateful for:

The pink, purple, and blue flowers by the entrance of the library
The Cox Cabin
My roommates
The fragrant lilies in my living room
Unlimited night minutes on my cell phone
The Provo temple
The enthusiasm of my religion teacher
The calmness of my English 315 teacher
The William Baker Devotional last Tuesday
The Mary Lou Fulton research grant that paid for our San Francisco trip
The good people I went to San Francisco with
My camera
My new clothes
Love
Friendly people
How Heavenly Father helped me with my waltz and tango tests today
Chad
Natural lighting
Air conditioning
Scripture study
The videos of my nephews Audra sent to Mom and Mom forwarded to me
The opportunity to learn new things every day
Inspirational quotes
My health and energy
People who are different from me
My mom
The knowledge of the Plan of Salvation
Forgiveness

Affirmations for today:

My worth does not come from how skinny or athletic or smart or beauitful I am. My worth comes from the fact that Jesus Christ gave His life for me.

God has given me His love, and I can share it with a world that so desperately needs it. I can choose to live unselfishly and give my heart to the people around me.

I cannot know the reasons behind others’ actions, but I can choose to give them the benefit of the doubt and love them for who they are. I can leave judgment to the Lord (D & C 82:23).

Although it’s easy for me to become impatient and want to know everything right now, it’s important for me to exercise faith. I need to trust in God—that He will lead me along and teach me line upon line, precept upon precept.

The Lord repeatedly says in the Doctrine and Covenants that if we turn our will over to Him, all things (even hard, painful things) will work together for our good. That applies to me, too.

Although my society tells me to be individualistic, I can strive not to be. A good life is one that is connected to other human beings. I can choose to isolate myself, or I can choose to connect to the people around me. I can look for the similarities in our humanity and appreciate the differences in our personalities and viewpoints.

While it is true that I can’t do everything, I can do something. And it is by small and simple things that great things are brought to pass (Alma 37:6).

And as a closing note, and a reminder of how much learning I have to go, here's a story President Kimball gave in his talk, “The False Gods We Worship” in the June 1976 Ensign:

“One man I know of was called to a position of service in the Church, but he felt that he couldn’t accept because his investments required more attention and more of his time than he could spare for the Lord’s work. He left the service of the Lord in search of Mammon, and he is a millionaire today.

“But I recently learned an interesting fact: If a man owns a million dollars worth of gold at today’s prices, he possesses approximately one 27-billionth of all the gold that is present in the earth’s thin crust alone. This is an amount so small in proportion as to be inconceivable to the mind of man. But there is more to this: The Lord who created and has power over all the earth created many other earths as well, even ‘worlds without number’ (Moses 1:33); and when this man received the oath and covenant of the priesthood (D&C 84:33–44), he received a promise from the Lord of “all that my Father hath” (D&C 84:38). To set aside all these great promises in favor of a chest of gold and a sense of carnal security is a mistake in perspective of colossal proportions. To think that he has settled for so little is a saddening and pitiful prospect indeed; the souls of men are far more precious than this.”

Truly, souls are the treasure of this earth, not money or things (see D & C 111:2).

Ice Cream Day

Happy National Ice Cream Day everybody!! Teri and I celebrated by finishing off the carton of chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer. Ahhh, the joy of ice cream. And speaking of ice cream, last Friday I tried a flavor that was divine--it's Ben and Jerry's "Everything But The..." flavor. Lots of chunks of candy-bar goodness. I'm glad I could take the time today to celebrate the good ice cream has done in my life. Just look at how happy it made Adam and me in Italy!

Listening for a Whisper

"And it came to pass when they heard this voice, and beheld that it was not a voice of thunder, neither was it a voice of a great tumultuous noise, but behold, it was a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul." -Helaman 5:30

"For those who shall be destroyed shall speak unto them out of the ground, and their speech shall be low out of the dust, and their voice shall be as one that hath a familiar spirit; for the Lord God will give unto him power, that he may whisper concerning them, even as it were out of the ground; and their speech shall whisper out of the dust." -2 Nephi 26:16

"The Spirit of the Lord usually communicates with us in ways that are quiet, delicate, and subtle." -Elder David A. Bednar, "That We May Always Have His Spirit to Be with Us," Ensign May '06

"Don't expect thunder when the still, small voice will do." -Bishop Beck

Family History

I went to the Family History library today and worked on family history for a little bit. I found out that I have 3,260 names in my direct line! That is a lot of names. My grandparents and aunts have done a lot of my work, and I am indebted to them. I also found out that I have 38 ancestors whose first names are Abigail! Who knew? Family history is so exciting, I look forward to learning more about it.