A Little ♥ and Soul

Okay, I'm going to preface this blog with a little warning. I rarely talk about religion. I'll bring God up once in a while, but I don't really write about my faith and religion here. Today is different. Today I am writing about my God, my faith, and my religion. You've been warned....for lack of a better word. My dad came home from babysitting my nieces and nephew for a week and a half and needed a break. I was all too happy to oblige. I like sleeping in my bed and waking up when I want to. Anyway, a weekend at home meant that - after being in Ogden for almost three months now - I got to go to my actual ward. There are few things that I tell people about myself. If you don't ask, I don't tell. People NEVER ask about religion. Most people don't know I'm Mormon. I'm a Mormon. Like Gladys Knight and the Osmonds. If you don't know who those people are, do you live under a rock or were you born in the last 15 years? Anyway, I've been str...

Things I'm resolving to do better in 2012: 1. Actual journal writing. I broke out my paper journal when I moved to Oregon to remind myself that I needed to document the move and neglected to even open it till last night. I wrote until my brain was thoroughly swished around in my head. I still need to write more about what is going on in my life. There is so much that has happened in the past couple days. Big, huge, gigantic life changing decisions need to be made and I'm scared. These type of things I've neglected to write in my journal the past year. 365 days of life has gone by and I haven't written any of it done. 2. Read my Patriarchal Blessing more often. I really am a dummy when it comes to spiritual things. In all the stressful things that have been happening in the past year, I've practically had to smack myself for not reading this sacred piece of personal scripture more often. 3. Scripture study. My friend Claudia started this little challenge on...

This conference talk given by Elder Holland says what my heart means to say today about how much I am grateful for the Gospel in my life. I love that the church is true anywhere you go in the world. I was looking through some Facebook pages the other night of friends and Young Women's leaders of days gone by and I am thankful for the testimony that I was able to gain while growing up in the Fresno North Stake. Having such strong leaders in my youth has given me shining example of the kind of woman I want to become. One in particular, Danielle Lewis, is a woman I look up to. Aside from my mother, she is someone that I try to emulate because of her goodness, her testimony, and her love of the truthfulness of the Gospel.  I'm thankful that I was able to strengthen that testimony before my mom passed away. I used to talk to my mom while she was under the stupor of morphine during those last few days of her mortal life. I wasn't sure if she could hear me, but I could feel her ...

So, I wanted to update on my little challenge of rededicating myself to putting the Lord first in my life. Just to warn you, my eyes are burning right now from lack of sleep, but this oddly ties into this blog. Monday, I started after my institute class and I told myself, "Self, you will do this challenge. You need to do this challenge to remind yourself that the Lord is there for you." So, I did. I started immediately after my institute class. I had 2 hours left and 2 institute classes to attend so I figured that I'd read my scriptures before my English class after institute. I read my scriptures and said a quick prayer that I'd do well on my English quiz. We didn't have the quiz. Which I guess was sort of a blessing in disguise and a clue that I should study for said quiz. I didn't of course. Anyway, I digress. Monday, we ended up writing a sample paper on happiness so that the Professor could tell if we're plagiarizing any future papers. Tuesday rolls ...

I had a hard day at work. I felt like I'm always the one that does the dirty work. A quick recap: towards the end of my shift, I got a call from the Transient Office at DI for a gas voucher. So the guy comes and brings his voucher in. Easy enough. Well some mofo decided to drive off with the hose on the pump this guy was using prior to him coming in for his gas. If the hose is pulled on hard enough it'll eventually come off. It happened. The "blessed" day came where I had to do an emergency shut off for the gas pumps and clean up the effing mess. So I had this gigantic mess to clean up on top of the paperwork I had to do for my shift. The whole time I was trying to clean up the mess, I was saying a prayer that I would just calm down and not get mad about it. It didn't quite happen. So instead I prayed that it'd just rain so I could stop going in and out for buckets of water to clean up the gas. That prayer worked. Long story short, I decided that I couldn'...