Tectonic Mormon

9-1-1 on 9/11

2009-09-12T13:15:00.000-07:00

I'm proud of myself for coming up with that title :). You'll know why pretty quickly here.
Kay, the craziest thing ever happened yesterday.
My old young women's president asked me to babysit, and I didn't have anything better to do, so I said I would. Once I got there, all the kids wanted to do was play in the back yard and their Mom told me they'd probably just keep that up the entire time. Much to their dismay I ended up forcing them inside about half an hour later and I think I had a pretty good reason for it.
The house is on a street corner and you can see the intersection from the back yard. I was pushing the kids on the swings and out of the corner of my eye I saw something red flash by and I looked over just in time to see a red SUV speed past a stop sign, try to turn the corner and fail miserably at it, and flip completely over. I wasn't sure exactly what to do for a second because I didn't want to leave the kids alone, but within half a second I'd figured they could stand to be by themselves while I ran to get a phone, so that's what I did.
So I got to call 911 for the first time ever. For some reason it weirded me out that a guy answered the phone. Just 'cause in movies it's always a woman, but I told him what I'd seen and the address despite his gender.
Other than that I don't think I was much help. I explained to him that I couldn't leave the back yard, but that I could kind of see what was going on. He asked me a bunch of questions and I answered as best as I could. After a minute I noticed that there was another guy who was actually at the site who was on the phone and I figured he'd take care of the stuff that I couldn't do considering I had kids with me and I couldn't leave them alone or bring them to the site. So the 911 guy took my phone number and name and told me to make sure that everybody stayed away from the cars and that an ambulance should be there any second.
So once I was off the phone I took the kids (kicking screaming and crying) into the house and made them watch Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs (some kid show I don't particularly like) and they calmed down somewhat quickly.
Because of that I missed most of the cool stuff. I don't know what happened to the guy in the SUV, but his car barely had a scratch on it other than the front bumper, the windows and probably the roof. I didn't even see him at all. He must have either run away from the site (I wouldn't be surprised if he was drunk, he was driving pretty carelessly) or gotten taken away in an ambulance way faster than the other guy.
I felt pretty stupid after I looked out the window and saw that there was a second car involved. If you could still call it a car at that point. It was practically folded in half the dent was so big. The dent was on the driver's side and once I saw it I was pretty sure the guy was dead. I didn't see it at first because a bush was in the way... stupid bush. I saw him on the stretcher and he wasn't covered up, but he also wasn't moving and the paramedics didn't seem to be going as fast with him as I thought they could have. I don't know whether he's alive or not, but I'm not allowing myself to think the whole thing was cool unless he is.
I did get to see the people flip the SUV over though, which was pretty... not uncool. I'm still kind of freaked out by seeing a vehicle like that just turned upside-down and right-side up so easily.
I've always wondered how I would react to something like that. I can now proudly say that I'm a person who can keep my head. I think I was the only person who actually saw the car flip over, even if I didn't actually see most of it. That stupid was bush was the exact right size and in the exact right place to stop me from seeing the second car. I hope I didn't screw anything up by telling 911 guy there was only one car. But yeah, the several people who were there after it happened either froze and didn't know what to do, couldn't do anything or completely freaked out. The other guy that called 911 was seriously freaking out. He was yelling into the phone and I have to wonder if he was any more use than I was. I mean, I didn't really know what was going on and I completely misinformed the 911 people, but as least I kept a level voice. I think the reason for my calmness was that my adrenaline was pumping like crazy so I was ecstatic and capable of freaking out, but the solemness brought on by knowing that somebody could be hurt or dead counter-acted that. Plus having to brave for the kids probably helped. Although to be honest with you, I was kind of annoyed that they were there because they were screaming so I couldn't hear the 911 guy that well and they stopped me from leaving the yard. I kept on thinking he was asking me something when he had actually said something completely different. For example he asked me "Is anybody pinned inside the car?" and I answered "Is somebody killed? I don't know man I can't see the person in the car,".

I've been asked by several people if it looked like something out of a movie and I think I can safely say that it did. Dude, that car flipped over like it was a bumper car! The mental footage of that just keeps on repeating itself relentlessly in my head and I'm amazed by it every time.
To be honest with you, I'm not shaken up at all by seeing a car flip over, although it did freak me out a bit. I'm still kind of numb from knowing that I was the person who got the ambulance there and I misinformed them. I mean, what if they were only prepared to help one person because I said there was only one car and that guy died because of me? I dunno. I just need to know what happened. 'Cause I don't know if he actually died or not and not knowing is the worst.
Also, I'm kind of mad at that jerk wad (excuse my profanity) that ran the stop sign. I mean, who runs through a stop sign at 60 km/h (about 40 m/h I think)? I think he deserved to flip over like that. It looked terrifying, but I don't think he was hurt much. If he was wearing his seatbelt I wouldn't be surprised if he was completely uninjured.
So yeah, that was my adventure of the year. Last year's adventure was almost getting arrested. And in case you're wondering, I am a magnet for interesting stuff like this. For some reason things just always seem to happen to me. It's a curse and a blessing, but all-in-all I think I enjoy it.

So in other news, the whole bass clarinet thing is going okay-ishly. Plus I started taking piano lessons again. I taught myself to play, so I'm not very good with notes. I can play the piano pretty well, but my teacher is making me start pretty much from the beginning. It's kind of frustrating to play Old McDonald when I know I'm capable of playing hymns, but whatever.
If you don't play the piano you might not get that, but what I do is that I take half an hour figuring out the notes and from there I just memorize the hand movements. So I don't really know the notes, but I can play just fine. That's why I find it easier to play with my eyes closed... probably has something to do with the fact that I'm a kinaesthetic learner.

Also, I started seminary on Tuesday. Yeah, I don’t like my teacher. She teaches nursery and she dresses and acts like it. Her first lesson was basically just “Jesus Loves you” and then she made somebody a balloon animal to explain that we’re in charge of our own lives. It might not sound that bad, but you’d just have to hear the way she talks and the smile she’s constantly giving us. What annoys me though is that she seems to think there’s little difference between teaching seminary and teaching nursery. She uses metaphors to explain extremely simple concepts and she’s the kind of teacher that I constantly imagine a non-member coming in, hearing the lesson and automatically assuming that she’s brainwashing us with naïve stories and universally known stories.

Oh yeah, I got my name on the list for a trip to Europe. Our school is setting one up for the students taking modern languages. There are 36 spots. I don’t know how many are taken though, all I know is that I’m on the list.
I’m going with my friend who’s in French emersion. She speaks fluent French and she’ll be super handy when we’re in France.
The trip is over Easter Break (Spring Break), it’s 11 days long and we’re going to Germany, France and Spain.
So I’ll be the German speaker in Germany, she’ll be the translator and speaker in France and we’re pretty much screwed when we’re in Spain. Not to mention all I can do right now in German is say hello, goodbye, introduce myself and others, tell my age, ask other people for their names and ages and count to twenty. Oh yeah, and I can ask people where they’re from and tell them where I’m from. I can also put together some phrases if I have to and I can usually understand what somebody’s saying when they speak to me in fluent German.
In our school we have a lot of students in the French emersion program, so a lot of my friends speak to each other in French just to annoy all the Anglos (English speakers) that are around. So to annoy them, me and a guy from my German class always speak to each other in German.
The conversations usually go something like:
Tag
Morgen!
Wie Heisst du?
Ich heisse Johanna. Wie heisst du?
Ich heisse Jens
Eins, drei, achtzehn
Zwei, vierzehn, elf
Funfzehn
Wer ist das?
Ja, ja, dast ist Mackenzie (or the name of somebody nearby)
Nein! Nein! Bist du dumm? Das ist Julie!
Nein, ich bin nicht dumm! Das ist Mackenzie, Verzögerung!

It annoys them so much! Little to do they know all we said was something like:

G’day
G’Morning
What’s your name?
My name is Johanna (my name is Christi, this is just to confuse them) What’s you’re name?
My name is Jens (his name isn’t Jens. Which is pronounce yans, popular German name I guess)
One, three, eighteen
Two, fourteen, eleven
Fifteen
Who is that?
Yes yes, that is Mackenzie
No no! Are you stupid? That is Julie!
No, I am not stupid! That is Mackenzie retard!

We both find it very entertaining, so does our German teacher (mein Deutchleher :D).

And we had our second salsa lesson on Wednesday. Haha man, I'm really getting the hang of this. We learned how to switch partners and at one point we were going so fast that half the time I didn't know who I was dancing with and honestly I didn't care.

So yeah, there you go. That was my week... More or less.

An Update on My Life.

2009-09-02T20:00:00.000-07:00

So I started school on the 31st and my timetable is really weird. For my first semester I have nothing but Art, German, Foods and Math. My second semester has the rest of my cores and gym first thing every morning except for Tuesday.
My first German class frightened me. It's a 10/20/30 class, so even though I've never taken German before, I'm in the same class as people who can speak it almost fluently. So in the first class the teacher spoke almost everything in German and I was completely lost. And then he mistook me for somebody who could speak German (I don't think I look like a person who can speak German, but whatever) and he asked me a question. The only word I understood was Dutch (however you spell that) which means German. So I guessed that he was asking me if I spoke German and I said nein, which means no. All the 20/30s laughed, but it was the kind of laugh as if I'd just made a joke, I could only guess that I'd said what I thought I'd said. The teacher then said something else and looked at me expectantly and I just stared at him and after a moment I said "No, seriously, I can't speak German". Everybody laughed again and afterward I asked somebody what had happened, because at the time I wasn't too sure and I was worried that I'd said something stupid. Luckily, what I thought had happened had happened.

So this is totally random, but I think it's kinda funny. In my math text book somebody left their cell phone number on the inside of the cover and so I texted the number saying that I had the person's old notebook. I figured that they either wouldn't answer or it wasn't their number anymore, but they answered and it was them. So I had the weirdest conversation with some guy I don't know. I just know he's a year older than me and now goes to some private school. Except now I'm kind of regretting it. What if he gives my number to people, like hobos or telemarketers? Needless to say, that wouldn't be enjoyable.

Today was my first time playing the bass clarinet in a group. I did okay... The atmsophere kind of brought back my fluotist instincts so I kept on fingering flute notes by accident, but other than that I didn't bother the rest of the band too horribly... or at least that's what my firned on the other side of the room told me.

Another first today, was that we started our lessons for that centenial celebration dance performance thing I mentioned earlier. In case you don't remember, it's a gigantic performance that all the LDS youth are doing. Each stake has their own genre. At first ours was ballroom, then it was samba and now it's salsa. I'm glad it's salsa, little more exciting and less awkward. I actually did okay with the steps; I only messed up occasionally. What worries me however was the video of a dance simular to the one we're performing that we watched at the beginning of the lesson. The steps we learned were the easy part at the beginning where you only had one partner. Next week we'll be learning the swerving and switching partners part. That worries me a bit, but I think I'll survive. There were people who were doing way worse than me there so... unless I break something I'll be fine. Or actually... maybe breaking something would be a good idea.

EFY.

2009-08-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I read the post I did on my previous EFY experience back in February and man, I have to say I didn't represent myself properly.
I was making myself look like some anti-social teenager who's afraid of human contact. Not true, and anybody who knows me would be surprised to read that. I'm the girl who randomly gives my friends hugs when they least expect it and who actually means it when I casually tell people that I love them.
I'm actually a very outgoing and reasonably friendly person, but by reading that you wouldn't be able to tell. I'll admit, usually when I first meet people I'm kind of quiet. I like to figure people and situations out before I "come out of my shell" but yeah, once I get over myself I'm a pretty lively person.
I was writing like that because I was (and still am) kind of sick of people assuming certain things. Just because my sister who looks and acts a whole lot like me got married when she was 18 doesn't mean that I will or that I appreciate everybody assuming that that's what's going to happen.
So that's why I act like I'm not too fond of the idea of getting married (I secretly am, don't tell anybody)
Also, I live hard by the rule that you should be the type of person you want to marry. I hate it when guys talk about how hot certain girls are, so I don't do anything of the sort with guys. Ask any of my friends; the words "he's hot" haven't escape my mouth for a long time. That's where the whole thing where I was acting almost like I wasn't interested in guys in the least came from.
Plus, I just don't like the idea of being some stereotypical Mormon girl with her eyes set on nothing but having a family and who bakes cookies in her spare time.

To be honest with you, I'm still the exact same person who wrote that post. Back then, I was trying to convince everybody that I was somebody who I've never been and never will be. I was sick of people assuming that I wanted to get married and that I was boy-crazy and that I was unconditionally friendly and what else, so I was just trying to put them in their place.
I've learned since then that I become a very unhappy person when I attempt this, so I've been acting more like myself. That is to say happy, friendly, crazy, bumps-into-chairs-and-says-sorry-thinking-they're-people Christi. I'm sure all my friends appreciate her return almost as much as I do.

So now that I've weirded you out with my emotional/personality change I'll tell you about EFY.

My roomy used to be my best friend, but she moved away to British Columbia over a year ago. Recently she moved back, but we haven't had much of a chance to re-unite, so we decided to be EFY roomies. It was so nice to see her again. To be honest with you, it's a miracle that we get along so well. I prefer to have a few, really good friends while she prefers to have as many friends as she can get. So although I'm not the type of person who's comfortable in a huge crowd of people I don't know, I found myself in that situation many times and somehow managing to enjoy it. Although we stayed friends, for the most part I spent my time with a smaller group than hers.
The first night I had trouble falling asleep because all the girls in our group had turned our evening devotional into a 'let's talk about how much our lives suck' fest. There was one girl whose best friend died, another whose boyfriend was in the hospital after a car accident who’s probably never going to walk again and another whose parents are going through a nasty divorce. All three of these girls were brought to tears by their troubles and of course... I was too. Everybody assumed that I had some tragic story to share because I was acting like I did. It seemed to them that there was some deep hurt which I wanted to talk about, but wasn't. I guess that was true enough, but it wasn't what they were thinking, far from it I think I can safely say.
I only shared why I was so upset with my roommate that night while we were lying in bed, supposedly trying to fall asleep..
I never get upset about anything. Even the things that I really should get upset about, I don't. The only reason I cried when my dog died was because my sister was beside herself with tears and it was practically torturing me to see her so upset. The only reason I cry at funerals is because not everybody has what I have. They don't believe in God and in Heaven and if they do they usually don't understand why He'd take away their loved one(s).
I wasn't crying because of something that happened to me, I wasn't even crying because of what happened to these girls. Although they were upset now, I knew they had testimonies and that they'd find solace in the scriptures or in prayer. I was crying and found it hard to sleep that night because I couldn't stop thinking about the people who struggle alone. When something bad happens to me I read some scriptures, pray and/or read my patriarchal blessing. All the people out there that don't have the Gospel also don't have the scriptures, communication with God and definitely don't have any written blessing to turn to.
My natural instinct when I see somebody in pain of any kind is to help them. What bothered me was that I couldn't help those people. I wanted to take away their pain, completely willing to suffer for it myself if I had to, but most of them wouldn't take a Book of Mormon if I offered it and I couldn't think of any way to just take away their pain.
When I said earlier that when I casually tell people that I love them I mean it, well I really do. I can't stand to watch helplessly as other people struggle. I need to help them, yet rarely ever can. My true happiness and sorrow can only be found in theirs. If that's not love -even on a small degree- I don't know what is.
So yeah, that love is what brought me to tears that night, it's what kept me awake for over an hour even though I was exhausted, it's what makes me compliment people so often and it's also what makes me critique people as bluntly as I do. To be honest with you, my worst fear is for the wrong person to realize how much I love them and to use it against me. This, on a deeper level is what made me act so anti-social before. Like I said though, I've learned that I'm happier being myself, even if it means I might get hurt from time to time.

Those who love are the happiest people alive, those who love, but hate to love are the saddest people alive and those who can just mind their own freaking business are probably the luckiest people alive. Since I can't just mind my own business, I have two choices: 1) hate the fact that I love everybody and let it torment my soul every night as I think about it or 2) I can embrace it and let it control me instead of the other way around and be happy while influencing others to feel happy as well.

So yeah, sorry. For some reason I felt I needed to write that. I can't imagine why, I don't think anybody even reads this blog, but I have faith that there's purpose in everything, so there you go.
Other than that, nothing in particular happened that’s worth mentioning at EFY. Well… I dunno, I guess that’s not completely true, but I think this post is long enough already, so I’m ending it… now.

Evening Devotional - In terms of EFY it's a short, small meeting with your group before you go to bed.

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, etc...

2009-08-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

I've bee so busy over the summer so I haven't been able to write. My last post was about a month ago and it's about how I almost got arrested; probably not the best thing. Haha.

I took some bass clarinet lessons and I'm more or less where I want to be with that. I've been out of town and bringing the bass clarinet was completely out of the question, so I haven't practised in a while.

Also, a while ago I mentioned a short story I was writing. I finished that and it ended up being a novelette with 72 pages and 42.6 thousand words which is longer than The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe.
I let some friends read it and it brought most of them to tears and all they could tell me was that it was awesome and needed little to no improvement, which I know isn't true. That's what I hate about letting people my age read my work; all they can tell me is how awesome it is. If I want to be better I have to know what I did wrong and I know that this story is far from perfect.
So, I'm giving it to my writer buddy from church. He's a writer, just like me. He's got a novel in the works, but he doesn't have anything published. To be honest, I don't know how good he is (I've never read any of his work) but he seems to be at least a decent writer. I know from his daughter (who's a few years younger than me) that he's finished it and that he thinks it's good, but I haven't actually talked to him yet. Hopefully I'll get the chance tomorrow at church.

Other than that, I just got back from a ten day trip to the states with my sister and her family (husband and two young children. We spent most of our time in Salt Lake City with my sister's Father in Law and his wife. I got to go with my sister to a FAIR social and the second day of the FAIR Conference. I greatly enjoyed the Conference, more than I thought I would. I'll have to admit that the parts about physychs behind Cosomology and about half of the last lecture went over my head, but it was seriously quite awesome.
The trip was pretty fun, although I didn't get to see many of the Mormon sights. I met and shook hands with a lot of people who I'd only heard the names and reputations of and I met some new people. Plus it was nice to actually see the other members of FRG.

The last important thing I can think of is that I'm going to EFY on Monday (two days) and as is tradition, I'll write about this event after it takes place.

Coolest thing of my LIFE!

2009-06-13T00:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, so there's this game that some of the youth in our ward play. We call it fugative and it's basically like hide and seek outside in the dark. When we were done we're just waiting for this one guy who lives on the other side of town to get picked up by his Mom and this cop pulls up next to us. He looked at us all, then asked somebody on the other side of the radio to give him a description of some people and they describe me and one other guy with us perfectly and we're totally freaking out. So Then he asks us all for our names and numbers and adresses and everything else.
And I have to admit, we probably looked really suspicious 'cause we were all dressed in dark clothing because we wanted to be hard to see 'cause we're playing fugative. And because we're all scared of getting caught by the other team we're sneaking around in alleyways and whatelse.
So during this whole interogation everybody's looking over at me because without a doubt I was one of the people who was described because I was the only female there. So yeah, most of them were dead scared, but kept on looking at me like I'd be the one who was the most scared but I just thought it was the coolest thing ever.
So eventually he checks that we all have a way home (we made one up for me since I was planning on walking but I live pretty much across the city) and leaves us as soon as that guy's Mom picked him up.
But yeah, no, most intese ten minutes of my life 'cause he was acting like we'd actually done something, but we seriously hadn't.
So yeah, I thought it was so cool. I should have told him that I didn't have a ride, then maybe I could have gotten a ride in the police car. Sadly I only thought of that when it was too late.
We've all decided that we're gunna tell everybody that we all got tazered and spent the night in jail etc. Haha, so if somebody comes up to me and asks me if it's true that we got beaten and tazered and pepper sprayed I'm just gunna tell them it's true, you know, keep the chain going. It'd probably turn into something hugely out of purtion pretty quickly.

Fortune Cookie.

2009-05-30T18:38:00.000-07:00

So I just got a fortune cookie that said something like "No obstacle will manage to stop you from achieving your objectives this month,"
So in your face world, cause June is MY month.

FAIR: RG

2009-05-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

So YFAIR is no longer YFAIR, but FAIR's Rising Generation. I don't have much to say on the change, only that I'm glad that it happened, I just figured you should know.

And I've been given the assignment of being a blogger for the FAIR: RG blog. I'll be posting on Tuesdays, unless something changes, and if (and most probably when) it does I'll tell you.
Here's the blog, hope you read it. I don't have any posts up yet, but I will soon.
http://youth.fairblog.org/

I think this is the coolest thing ever.

2009-05-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, so today is my birthday. Yay me. And you'll never guess what I found out today in church.

Kay, so apparently May 17th 1909 (exactly 100 years ago today) was the day that the LDS church was officially established in my province. Cool hey?

I've been alive all my life and I never knew that my birthday was the birthday of Alberta's Mormonhood. I think this is so cool that you just don't even know. In fact I'm exstatic about it. I'm far more excited about this than I am about my birthday.

However, what I'm not excited about is that apparently, to celebrate this our entire city's Mormon youth are being forced to put together a massive dance performance. I don't know much about it, but it's not happening until next fall. Apparently each ward has been given a style of dance. We got ballroom, which is probably the worst one I could imagine for this other than the tango.

I'm sure I'll get stuck with some 12 year old as my partner, like I always do. That combined with the fact that I'm not that great of a dancer is giving me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomache. My best bet is that they'll pair us up according to height, but even then I'd probably end up with "Bob". The guy I mentioned earlier who's really monotone and who has a thing for our Sunday school teacher.

Oh man. Well, I'll let you know more about that when I learn more about it.

Maybe it'll be okay... maybe not... I dunno. I'm not gunna worry about it until it comes.

...But ballroom? Seriously?

Guess what I did!

2009-05-15T21:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, our seminary director guy (I can't remember what the exact title is) gave us a deal about a month ago. He said that if we memorized all 25 of our scripture masteries we could go to a pizza party.

We only had to memorize one at a time and then either get our seminary teacher or one of our legal gaurdians to sign off the card saying that we had memorized the scripture.

I (like pretty much everybody else who was confronted with this deal) just kinda shrugged it off and didn't see much of point in trying. It'd be easier to just go to Little Ceasar's Pizza at lunch and just buy a pizza, so for the first three and a half weeks I didn't do much to memoriz all of the scripture masteries.

Then my friend (my somewhat agressive friend) finished all of hers the day before the dealine and didn't want to go alone so she encouraged/threatened me to get all of mine finished. Then the guy who sits behind me shared his opinion that I wouldn't be able to do it.

Now there are two things you should know about me. #1, I never abandon a friend as long as I can help it and #2, I always do the exact opposite of what everybody thinks I'm going to do (I think it's called teenage rebellion) so I pounded my fist on my desk and said "I'll do it,". I realized that this meant memorizing seventeen scripture masteries in one night, but hey, the sky's the limit right?

So yeah, I pulled it off and I was one of the six or seven people in our entire seminary building to go to that pizza party. Of course two of them didn't show up because they "forgot", but showing up was probably just as vital a step in getting pizza as the memorizing of the scripture masteries.

oh yeah, and another unexpected thing I did recently was screaming in the middle of an important performance on a mini-tour our school band went on this weekend. I think I should probably mention that I was supposed to. It was kind of unexpectedly pounced on me by the conductor. The peice is called 'The Phantom Train" and it's about a train that derailed in 1890 or something, and apparently people still hear the screams of the people who died in the train wreck. So at the part where everybody begins their chromatic decline to symbolize the train going off the tracks somebody was supposed to scream. It wasn't in the music, but about a month earlier our conductor had an epiphany (that word always makes me laugh now because of the Simpson Movie) which instructed him to instruct one of us to scream. Originally it was another flute player and she did it for a couple of performances, but she didn't go on this trip. Everybody had completely forgotten that she wasn't coming and didn't remember her absence until we were playing the peice in front of a guy who was giving us a workshop. During our rests we (the flutes) hurriedly discussed who should do the scream and I ended up agreeing to it. So yeah, I screamed and everybody agreed that I should do it for the performance so I did. Apparently it was better than the original girl's scream. I didn't think so, my voice cracked when I started trailing off at the end (because I was surprisingly nervous) but apparently that made it more realistic.

I think it's the mixture of being a swimmer and a fluotist (flute player) that's built up my lungs to the capacity that allows me to scream louder than what's normal. I don't think anybody in their right mind would try to kidnap me because you could probably hear me scream from several blocks away if I really tried to scream as loud as I could.

Another interesting thing I did (a month ago, but I just remembered it) was that I rode a donkey. It was awesomeness undefinable by the english language, which is part of the reason I'm considering trying to teach myself some latin.

My sister Heidi unexpectedly acquired a donkey and I was the first grown person to ride him. His name is Melvin and he really likes to lick me. Just me. He rarely ever licks anybody else. He also bit me and unexpectedly jumped over a low, broken fence which caused me to fall off. It kinda hurt, but over all I was pleased to say that I had ridden and fell off a donkey.

Scripture masteries - These are scriptures that the General Authorities of the church decided we needed to know, so they put them on little cards and strongly sugested that ever seminary student memorize them.

Rests - (in the musical sense) just means when you're not playing but other people in the band are. If nobody's playing it's called a 'Grand pause', one of the few non-italian terms used in music.

Tectonic Mormon?

2009-05-07T20:30:00.000-07:00

What's with the name?

I've wondered that myself. To be honest with you the idea came from the name I came up with for mine and my friend's rock band band name. Rock Band the game, that is. We came up with infinite amounts of band names, most of them were um... to say the least, really stupid. Eventaully it was a decision between two names I came up with; Tectonic Boom and Metallic Aqua. I liked Tectonic Boom WAY better and it's what we ended up going with.

Originally I was going to go with Tectonic Boom for my blog's name, but then I knew I'd have to encorperate my Mormonism into the title, so I did.

As for what It actually means, I've interpretated it. As much as I'd like to think I subconsciously did this, I realize it was just chance.

Tectonic, if you think about it metaphorically instead of it in terms of the movement of the Earth's crust means structural or foundational.

I've always thought of myself kind of like a foundation. I've been told by many, reliable sources and people that I have been blessed with the gift of faith. Although (like everyone else) my testimony dwindles and strengths occasionally, I've always found that, spiritually, my feet have been fastened tightly to cement. Deep down I know that I will always believe in this church, that I will always realize the truth which I have been introduced to. I could fall away from the church and become the least Mormon person in the world, but the entire time I think I'd regret it and know what I was doing, I would merely ignore my knowledge. Never do I think I would ever loose the seed in my heart(check the bottom of the post if you don't get that) even if the plant shrivels up and dies.

Although I have had my doubting thoughts, I've never truly questioned my religion. I don't call this stubborness, in fact I'm very openminded and it's my nature to at least consider every concept that is put in front of me. Despite the fact that I've leggitimate looked at plenty of other beliefs and theories I've consistantly stuck with this one.

I don't know if everybody does this, but I know I do. I can tell what somebody's true, deepest strength is. A lot of the times I can't put this into words as it's always a feeling, like each person has their own individual spirit that I tune into sometimes or something. I've always thought of myself kind of as a blazing fire that's never going to be put out or, better yet a statue digging deep into the ground standing at the ready, constantly prepared take a strong blow.

So considering this, I think the title of tectonic Mormon fits me well. Plate tectonics is something that -although having it's earthquakes and sudden appearing mountains- simply cannot be swayed by human hands.

The seed thing- This is from my favourite scripture, Alma 32, which I've talked about before. It's most commonly known for it's analogy of a seed being faith. If the seed is good then it willbe planted in your heart and if you take care of it, it will grow into a tree.

A Quick Thought on Service.

2009-05-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

I might elborate on this later, but right now I'm kind of tired, so I'm just writing this down so I don't forget it.
Haha, I always do this. My room is full of sticky notes and recipe cards with ideas and thoughts (mostly for a story or my book). Also, on my iPod I have infinite amounts of thoughts under the Note "Story".

So I was reading a talk to summarize for my Seminary Make-up and it said something about members helping non-members after a flood.
I have to wonder why it's so much greater for us to help a non-member than it is to help a member. Is it that it takes more charity, a longer arm to reach out to them?
Sadly, I think it's because as members, we constantly help each other. We're there for each other on another level than we could ever be with anybody else and we fail to realize that although it is important to build each other up as a church, it is even more important to make the entire world a better place. This will help spread the message of the Gospel and in general it'll make other people happy. It would be selfish to want to serve another person for any reason other than to help them, to make them happy.
Personally, I think that there's nothing special about a person who helps non-members. There's absolutely no way that it could be so. Why should somebody be considered more of a hero for helping to remove a tree from a Jehovah's Witness's lawn than the Bishop's lawn?
You should not measure your service by how much work you did, but by how much happiness you cause. Service for a member and service for a non-member will always inflict the same amount of gratitude and joy.

Bishop - the leader of a ward.
Ward - a group of people living in the same area that attend the same church building at the same time.

Conference Summaries.

2009-05-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

So I've got a confession to make. A couple of months ago I over-slept for two weeks in a row and missed every seminary class in those two weeks. I know, I'm a horrible person.
Well, you need at least an 80% average in attendance, and coupled with a few other days I missed for whatever reason, I have to make up nine days in order to pass this semester of seminary. To make up one day I have to summarize two talks. My teacher suggested the conference talks, so that's what I did. So far I've done the first two talks of the first session on Sunday.
I found that I got more out of the talks while summarizing them than when I originally listened to them. In fact, quite a bit more. I'd suggest that you try this, if you want of course. I know it doesn't sound that exciting, but it's one of those things where by the end of it you're convinced it's the awesomest thing since awesome itself.
So you can read mine if you want. Apparently I did way more than I needed to and my seminary teacher decided to give me two days off for the two talks. So that means that I'll end up doing anywhere from 7-14 talk summaries. After this I think I'll just wait until I've finished all of them, then I'll post them, but here are the two I've finished so far.

http://thewritings.piczo.com/pageone?cr=2&linkvar=000044

Badminton Tournament

2009-04-27T19:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, so we had another badminton tournament. It was out-of-town, only by fifteen minutes though. It was purely doubles and the girls went to one school while the boys went to another. Both of us got second place.
And something really funny happened. It's one of those things where you probably had to be there to truly appreciate how funny it was, but the people I've told who weren't there found it at least kind of amusing.
So me and my partner were playing this team and we knew that they hadn't lost yet. It was pretty early in the tournament, but that was still a big deal. So these people were both really happy and hyper (as people on a winning streak often are) and the match started out in their favour. They won the serve and got... I think four points on us or something like that. Then it was my serve.
Apparently my serves are very intimidating to recieve. What I do is that I stand there, ready to serve, adjusting my hold and flexing my fingers on my racket and glaring at different spots on the court, looking for my opponents weak points. Whether they're trying to cover up a back hand or if they're too far back I notice and use it to my advantage, not only in the serve but in the game as well. I usually do this for about ten seconds, and that may not seem like much, but with the pressure of your parents and half your team and your coach and the other team watching you, it seems really long 'cause not returning a serve is like fumbling the perfect rebound shot in hockey or basketball.
I honestly didn't really realize I was doing this until my coach commented on my excellent serving strategy. I mean, I look for weak points on purpose, but he told me that it was genius because I was freaking out the other player. People never react to them well. Of course, I'm aiming for what I think is their weakest point, so they can rarely return it well. What I didn't realize is that ebcause I was tkaing so long and giving their position and court the "death stare" I was causing the other player to:
-Loose confidence
-become intimidated
-Miss it because they've stopped paying attention
-Get out of their ready position
-Get annoyed and try to smash it even though it isn't a lift and hit the net
-Just plain old not hit it because I'm good at getting it barely past the service line
- And if nothing else they lift it and my partner smashes it or otherwise hits a good shot back at them. She's really good at stuff like that, so we're a good team.
So after I realized that I was accidentally intimidating the krap out of the opponent I took a second to look one of them in the eyes before I served it to them and was surprised to see an expression displaying something close to fear. It was kind of weird, I almsot felt bad, but I remembered we were trying to scare them so we could win.
Other teams in the tournament, just didn't say anything about the serves or left, definitely showing signs of being motivated to work on their serves. One team even complimented me several times, during and after the match on my serve.
This team we played though didn't take it that well.
Everytime I served, one girl on the opposite team would get SO impatient. She usally ended up dropping her racket (not literally, this just means she's not standing in her ready position), stomping her foot and yelling at me to hurry up. So of course as soon as she did that, I served it and she either missed it or hit it really horribly. Several times she almost stormed off the court she was so mad. Not to mention she asked me "politely" to hurry up with the serve. I "politely" reminded her that I technically had thirty seconds.
Constantly she would complain about how unfair it was, but my partner reminded her that she also had the right to a thirty second serve, but she, nor her partner decided to take it.
We ended up winning by two points. I felt really bad for making her so upset (you should have seen her, she was about to hit me over the head with her racket) but I had my right to the way I served. In fact I was only usually using a third of the time I was allowed to.
So we shook hands and she tried to crush my hand, but being mormon I was just flat-out a better handshaker than her and she failed miserably. So I apologized to her, not wanting her mad at me. I didn't realize how angry she was until later on because people usually try to get me to hurry up or try to distract me while I'm serving so I've trained myself not to look at them unless completely necissary.
So as soon as we finished she stormed up to the officials and her coach and started ranting on-and-on about how horrible I was, that I was cheating and stated plainly that her goal was to get me disqualified. Of course I had followed her to make sure she told the score keeper the right score because she was so mad I didn't know what she might have done.
My partner (behind really protective of her friends) was about to punch her and was fuming about it for the rest of the tournament. I just felt bad, I swear I was about to cry I was so sorry I had made her so upset. I wasn't sorry I had taken so long to serve(I -along with her- had a right to serve like that) it just bugs me when people are upset, especially when it's caused by me.
So her coach was trying to calm her down, not completely sure of the facts and whether or not I had been taking as long as she was saying. By the way she was swearing that I had taken over thirty seconds, which was ridiculous. Over twenty witnesses said that I had not even come closeto that. My coach talked to her coach, telling him that I rarely took more than ten seconds and they both agreed that she was being unreasonable and that I was not to blame, nor was I in line for any punishment.
All the people who were watching and had unbiased opinions knew that she was being an idiot. Getting so upset about something like that is like getting upset at somebody for smashing it because it's hard to return. Guess what? That's the point. We want to do stuff that makes it hard for the other team to return it, without that competitive badminton wouldn't exist.
She was just trying to justify why she was loosing and make it my fault. It took me a really long time to realize that, but yeah, she was just blaming me for making her loose. Of course that's the stupidest thing ever, because your opponent is trying to make you loose. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
To sum it all up, she was getting mad at me because something I (her opponenant) caused her to loose. Oh yeah, that's a such a huge injsutice when playing a sport.
Most of the people watching thought it was hilarious. It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and my sister and I were doing something and she ended up winning and I got mad at her, complaining that she was "winning on purpose". My team and coach were especially amused. My coach was almost crying he thought it was so funny. At the time I thought they were being mean. She was really upset about it, but looking back I have to admit it was pretty funny.
She thought she had been the victim of some horrible injustice and the entire time refused to accept that she was not. The officials told her she was being unreasonable and to take a seat and calm down or else she would get kicked out. At this she finally shut-up, well kinda. She spent the entire rest of the tournament trying to make me mess up on serves. She would sit on the side lines with as many of her teamates and family members as she could and never failed to point me out whenever and wherever I was was serving. Once I messed up and she laughed hysterically, trying to make me feel bad. I was hardly even paying attention to her though, I'm good at tuning out stuff like that. Although after a while it got annoying and I was about to tell somebody about it because what she was doing was definetly very worthy of being disqualified.
After a while I stopped feeling guilty and accepted that an hour after the match it was no longer my fault that she was so upset.
So anyways, her school ended up winning the tournament. I have to admit that as a whole they were pretty good. The winners got T-shirts and nobody else got anything.
Afterwords my partner and I were sitting on a bench in the playground at the school holding the tournament and she walked by. She stopped to smugly inform us that her school had won the tournament and I calmly replied "Yeah, okay, I hope you have fun with that T-shirt,"
She was trying to make me jealous or something I think, but I'm not really the jealous type, so it didn't work.
My partner was absolutely furious and I actually had to grab her arm to silently remind her that her superb sucker-punch was for self defense purposes only. She admitted later that she was just glad I had come up with a good come back.
Other than feeling sad that somebody was having such a horrible time and I was to blame, I was just glad that I had a partner I enjoyed and that we both played well and got our school a good amount of wins. In fact I think we only lost three out of our fifteen matches, so nothing to be ashamed of.

Difficult Story and Career.

2009-04-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

Gosh this is hard! I've discovered something recently and that is that I am not a depressed person. I never have been, and never could be. It's impossible for me to truly be upset about anything for more than two minutes and even though I understand the horrible things going on in the world I can't fathom myself not believe what I always have. I've always been of an opinion that all-in-all the universe is a decent place and that the potential for good is greater that the potential for bad.
You cna call me naive if you want, but as far as I'm concerned that's not the case.
That is why I am struggling so deeply with this story I'm writing. It's called 'The Unknown Artist' and it's about a 13 year old girl with the worst of circumstances imaginable for modern North America. I won't go into details, but basically her mom died when she was eight and since she's been holding together her household while her father abuses her regularily. He leaves her siblings along however (they don't even know about it) and poses their family kind of as the modern day Brady Bunch.
This 13 year old girl is the angriest, most depressed and self-isolating person known to man and although I'm pretty sure I'm pulling it off, writing through the first person perspective of such a person is very difficult for me.
I'm doing this because I've been having some difficulty creating characters for my stories that don't resemble myself majorly. It's not noticable, but I need to be able to convincingly write through the perspective of some one much unlike myself and this is how I'm going about it.
In the end the story is happy. She finds an old notebook under her bed while attempting to kill herself and ends up calming herself down by sketching her heart out in the pre-used notebook.

And at school before Easter Break we took a career test. This was the first one I've ever taken and I answered it as honestly as I could. The end result was that we got fourty different jobs listed in order of which ones you were most likely to suceed at. To my surprise over half of the results were different kinds of doctors. Other than find out what kind of doctor each of them was (there are some weird kind of doctors with weird names out there) I didn't pay much attention to any of them.
The reason this surprised me so much was becuase I had meantioned not really wanting to work constantly with people, not caring about being involved with medicine, not caring about making much money and not wanting to live in the city.
Apparently I have the determination, people skills, lack of comfort zone, ability to keep cool under pressure and intelligence to be pretty much any kind of doctor I want to be.
At first I wasn't even considering this. Being a doctor involved too much schooling for a lot of money that I don't care about getting and a little too much everyday chaos for me to find it an enjoyable life path.
Lately though, I've been thinking about one of the types of Doctors it suggested. A Naturopath.
A naturopath is basically a modern day medicine man (woman). Instead of convering up symptoms with drugs and surgery, a naturpath finds the problem and solves it using all-naturl means. The crazy thing is, is that this works amazingly, although it's a little on the expensive side and still viewed as kind of urban mythology. It'll probably begin to become more popular and accepted along with the whole enviromental thing.
Targetting the problem instead of temporarily covering up the symptoms is something I believe in strongly.
Even since I developed a temporary and mild depedancy to ecinatia (sorry, don't know how to spell that) I've hardly ever taken any pills or medicine for anything. When I have a headache, instead of taking an advil I eat and apple and take a nap or meditate.
ever since I've been getting sick half as much and my migranes have turned into mere light headaches.
Suddenly, in the past week or so, the idea of dedicating my life to helping people become healthy the right way just kinda almost seems like something I might consider. Although I did spend six months of my life convinced I was gunna be a firefighter (which I still think would be cool) so I'm not sure if this is leggite this time.
Of course, I'm always going to be a writer no matter what. Even if I have to make like Mary Higgins-Clark and get up at four o'clock in the morning to write for two hours before getting ready for the day and driving my kids to school becaus eI don't have any other time I can do it at because I'm juggling two dead-end jobs because my husband died then so be it. My love of and dedication to writing are only rivalled by my religion.

As intense as that may sound, I think having one or two things that you care deeply about is good.
As much as I love Weezer, I don't wnat to end up like them.

(In case you didn't know, Weezer is a 90's alternative rock band which is known for being built up by those nerds you knew in hoghschool who hung out in their garage all day, not doing anything until somebody handed them a guitar and they just kinda rolled with it)
If you need more of an understanding listen to the songs 'In the garage' and " dreamin' "

Ask a Mormon #2

2009-04-06T21:04:00.001-07:00

I think it's about time I do another one of these.

Why are you called Mormons? The name Mormon is an unofficial name that both member and non-member people have been caling us for I don't even know how long. I'm pretty sure it was a misunderstanding of the title "Book of Mormon". People must have thought it was a book written to explain the church, not the other way around. The church is based on the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon was composed somewhere around 400 A.D. and the Church was built upon the finding of it by Joseph Smith under the direction of the angel Moroni.
The reason the Book of Mormon is called what it is, is becuase it was composed mostly by a Man named Mormon who lived obviously around the time the book was created. He wrote very little of it though, in fact only 20 pages were written by him. What he did, is that he took multiple, ancient scrolls from times before and after the birth and resurrection of Christ and assembled them so that only the important parts were contained in the book. He mentions several times in the parts that he wrote that he was solely under the direction of God.
He ended up dying before the book's completion and his son Moroni finished it and added his own words to the end of it. He named it after his Father, probably a mixture of honouring his memory and acknowledging that he did most of it in the first place.

How can you stand to live like that? Yes, it's true, Mormons do have a fair number of rules we are oblidged to live by. Some think this is brain washing, but they don't understand that every single one of us has the choice to quit anytime we'd like. That (I think) is what is so amazing about our church. Yeah, sure it's hard sometimes, but even though we're in no way being forced to follow Gods comandments most of us still do.
I'd also like to throw in that God doesn't randomly put restrictions on us because he thinks it's funny or something. There are reasons why. The Word of Wisdom for example tells us not to smoke, drink coffee or tea or do anything else that is unhealthy for us. Although we are not being forced to abide by these rules, we understand that everything we're not supposed to do will keep us healthy.
Oh yeah, and I can live like this because I know it's right. Nothing in the world could prove to me otherwise and I know for a fact that being a part of this church has blessed me deeply. To be honest with you, if I hadn't been taught to live by the rules of Mormonism I'd be one messed up kid.
Some say that plenty fo kids grow up just fine without those rules and restrictions. They live and learn. I'd like anybody with that view to take a look at a good mormon and compare them to just another random person.
If you could compare me to one of my friends you'd notice that I'm probably happier, more patient, more selfless, more determined, more understanding and whole bunch of other things.
Although I am just one person, it could just be chance that I have abided by the rules of the church my entire life and that I'm probably the most content person you'll ever meet, but hey, I'm only one person.
Besides, I'd rather learn and then live than live and learn.

Badminton Tournament.

2009-04-06T20:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, there was a Worldwide Conference yesterday and Saturday. I'll have my thoughts on it soon, but I only have a few minutes here so I'll write on a less expandable subject.
Last Saturday our school hosted a badminton tournament. I was in girls doubles and me and my partner only made it to the quarter finals. This was because she only showed up to half the practices because she's also in choir and we had just started playing together for a week (two practices).
She's not that good and by the end of the round robin games I was so frustrated with her that I wasn't even bothering with trying to hit any difficult shots. So yeah, by the end I'd say it was half my fault. Plus she managed to stay positive the entire time since she was just pleased to even be on the team. So I'd have to say she was the better woman in the situation.
The coach saw how horribley we were working with each other and put us with other people. Thank heavens. Now I'm with my friend who I play really well with (and vice versa) so I'm looking forward to the next tournament.

Age

2009-03-28T00:18:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure whether to think this is depressing or not, but lately when people have asked me how old I am I have to stop and think. Never in life have I truly felt my age, nor really appreciated people my age. I've always tended to connect with people significantly older than me or who are extrmely mature for their age.
I have absolutely no idea what's different, I'm actually quiet insterested in finding out if their is something unique about my brain. I know my sisters were all kinda like that, so it must be genetic.
So far in life I've always been able to decide what age I felt like, when I was 8 it was 12, when I was 14 it was 17. But I recently realized that I don't feel like an age anymore, hence the forgetfullness. It dawned on me a while ago that my age doesn't matter because I've never really truly been my age, so why should I be stereotyped under it? Shortly after my realization I stopped caring about my age and the only significance it has in my life anymore is how far away from graduation I am.
Lately it's sounded so weird to me when people tell me I'm 16. It's like growing two feet and people still making eye contact with where your eyes used to be. I have to remember that they don't see my inner change, but it still just feels so weird. I've decided that the bounds of age no longer apply to me, so it's odd to know that other people are still classifying me under a two digit number.

On a completely different note, I've discovered that I cannot play ping-pong. I can play tennis and badminton, but shrink it down and put it on a table and I'm hopeless.
AEvery day at our seminary building at lunch a bunch of guys hang out and from what I've heard all they ever do is play ping pong (yeah... I know).
Once a month the seminary building also hosts a little mini-party for everybody who's had their birthday in that month. Neither I nor my friend have March birthdays, but there was cake so we kind of had to go.
And yeah, my friends insisted that I try playing ping pong and uh... yeah. I ended up stopping because the guy I was playing against was trying to let me win and it took all my strength not to chuck my paddle at him because of it.

Also on a different note from the first thought and the title of this post, there was a dance tonight. There were a lot of awkward moments. I don't think I've mentioned this yet but I'm a magnet for awkward situations. Name pretty much any awkward thing you've ever experienced and I bet I'll have gone through it before.
Kay, the first one is that my friend's younger brother brought his cousin to the dance. He was my age but you wouldn't be able to tell. He was probably about two feet shorter than me and he could fit a glowstick around his waist.
Apparently it was his first dance and he was too shy to ask anybody to dance, so the guys convinced me to ask him. They said it had to be me because I was probably the only one who could get him to talk, he was oober shy.
So I asked him to dance and it's starts off pretty good, other than that he switched around the hands. The guy's supposed to take the girls right hand with his left hand and he did the opposite. I figured I wouldn't mention it since the whole things was awkward enough, but he quickly noticed that everybody else was doing it the other way around and then I corrected him.
Then I ask him what his name was, he answers, then I tell him my name and he responds by saying "I know". Apparently the guys told him I was gunna ask him and he got really nervous so they calmed him down by telling him all about me. I found that part out afterwards from one of the guys. My favourite thing they said to him was "Dude she's not gunna bite you her name's Christi, that means follower of Christ,"
And I am typically very outgoing, but this kid was SHY. At first I only managed to find out that his favourite colour is red and that his toothbrush is white and dark blue. Yeah, I had to resort to the krappy conversation starters I learned from a skit at EFY done by the councillors called 'How to avoid awkward mormon dance moments'. It didn't really work that well... Then I started talking about sports and it was okay.
And there were several other awkward moments too, but I'll only tell you one.
Okay, so there's this guy in my ward that goes to another school and who never comes to activities, so I've never seen him in anything but Sunday clothes. So at the dance he was wearing normal clothes and I go up to him and say "Spencer, you're wearing a shirt!" Then the girl beside him (and guess what? She's his freaking girlfriend) gives us both a look and says "And last time you saw each other you weren't?"
She took it quite seriously and I started clumbsily explaining what I had meant. I figured Spencer would back me up on it, but he seemed to think it was funny and didn't say a word.
I have to wonder why these things always happen to me... Whatever, I don't mind. Once you get used to them, awkward moments can be really funny.

2009-03-20T12:41:00.001-07:00

Just all the random stuff that's been going on in my life.

2009-03-20T12:22:00.001-07:00

I've been having difficulty writing stuff. This is a mixture of nothing interesting happening and being busy with school and such.
I'm considering teaching myself latin. I've tried to learn spanish and french before, and neither worked out. I'm just not good with languages, but I think it's msotly the way they teach it. The only way I'm gaurenteed to remember something is if it's connected to something else. So when the teacher throws a bunch of random words and phrase at me without explaining how they're connected I just can't remember them. To prevent this from happening once again, I'm going to learn the grammer first, then learn the words.
I'm really sad right now because my only Mormon friend I ever get to see is going to Japan for four months. She's one of those people you just get along with really well and quite frankly I don't know how I'm going to live without her. She's promised me she's going to be spending her life on Facebook, so I'll still talk to her, but Im still gunna miss her hugely.
The whole bass clarinet thing has been going well. Since we've been having a lot of concerts and stuff lately I've had to concentrate on my flute, but I think I'm getting close to the point where I'll be able to make the switch and only play the bass clarinet.
I've been trying to come up with a shortened version of bass clarinet. It's kind of hard to fit it on my arm (which it where I write my homework and other things I wish to remember). Nothing so far, if you have any suggestions post them or I'll punch you in the face.

Drivers License!

2009-03-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

I got my drivers license! Yay me!
Just thought you'd like to know.
It's also pie day today. Or maybe it's pi. I'm not entirely sure which one, but either way that's pretty cool.
It's also my Mom's birthday today and my oldest nephews birthday tomorrow.

Talent show and The brute.

2009-03-06T19:15:00.000-08:00

So I just got back from the talent show. Our act made everybody laugh since our Young Womens is known for being extrmely spiritual. I'm not kidding, I swear we all cry ever other week because our lessons are so intense.
And I absolutely have to tell you this, it's SO funny. Our sunday school teachers are married to each other and they're really new to the ward. The girl's really pretty and the guy's kind of a nerd, but all of the guys in our class have huge crushes on the wife. It's hilarious.
One of them is especially in love. Let's call him Bob to avoid confusion. He's one of those guys who never shows any emotion. Dead serious, it weirds me out ever time I see him smiling just 'cause it's so out of character. He's really shy. Apparently he's only like that in front of girls... but I wouldn't know, he stops talking every time I'm around. He almost never laughs. In fact I'm the only girl in our ward who can pull it off and I have to be talking about foot ball, video games or Star Wars. But every time this girl does something he laughs, and he thinks he's being nice but it's just kind of awkward and hard to keep a straight face whenever it happens. Not to mention he compliments her on everything.
So the girl sang a song for the show(she has an amazing voice) and the entire time me and the girl I was sitting with were watching Bob's face. It was SO funny! He was trying not to look at her by pretending to be looking at something in his hands under the table, but he snuck a look every ten seconds or so. The funniest part though was that he was trying SO hard not to smile, but he wasn't suceeding and he was blushing really badly. Then he gave her a standing ovation when she was finished and his friends joined in with him to save him some embarassment.
The next person on was her husband and some other guys and they were really good. Then, near the end I had an awesome idea. I told the girls around me that we should give him a standing ovation. So we did and you should have seen the look on Bob's face. He wasn't sure whether to laugh or not, but his face was extremely red.
So I decided that I'm gunna make fun of Bob (I'm hoping he'll take it well) by pretending to have a crush on the guy teacher. I started this off by telling him I thought it was "neat" that he "went up there and... like sang like that".
And at every table they had a bunch of pages from colouring books and some crayons, so I coloured a picture of a pirate for him and wrote "To Travis from Christi" on the back in kindergardten style writing.
This is going to be very entertaining, and I hope this guys catches on and doesn't think I actually have a crush on him 'cause that'd be really awkward.

I have no idea whether you've ever heard of Antone Chekov, but he was a Russian play writer who wrote a lot of one act plays. Our class re-enacted "The Brute" and for a project me and two of my friends re-did the play in front of the class. I wrote it and the teacher wanted to keep it because she liked it so much. She's the evil one who drew a smiley face on my poem. I find that kind of weird because she REALLY hates me. I think she's given me three detentions for very unreasonable things, like being a few minutes late one time. Most teachers give you a detention if you're late twice a week or three times in a reporting period.
So I think the re-written version that I did is pretty good, so here it is.

www.thewritings.piczo.com

Sorry, I tried to do a link, but it didn't work. If you don't believe me here you go.
The Brute

Spiritual Thought

2009-03-05T21:53:00.000-08:00

Well, the day that I got to give a spiritual thought, I showed up late. I told myself that I didn't need to put on eye liner to have a good day, but my eyes just looke naked without it.
So I get there just in time to ask somebody to pray and to give my spiritual thought. I did end up just going with my favourite scripture. I just summarized what was going on in the chapter, then read a couple of verses.

So the scripture I read was Moses 1: 13 & 14
What's happened so far is that God has appeared to Moses, but Moses says that he doesn't see God with his "natural eye" because if he had then he would have "withered and died" because his glory is so exceedingly great. Then Satan comes and basically tries ot convince Moses to come to the dark side (as I explained it to my seminary class). Then I read Moses 1:13 & 14.

13. And it came to pass that Moses looked upon Satan and said: Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten; and where is thy glory, that I should worship thee?
14. For behold, I could not look upon God, except his glory should come upon me, and I were transfigured before him. But I can look upon thee in the natural man. Is it not so, surely?

And yeah, I just like that because it says that the glory of God is so brilliant that even the most righteous of men are overwhelmed to look at him, but Satan can appear almost as if a normal man.
I like it when he says "Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God...". He's saying that even though he is merely a child of God, he has the potential for a much greater glory than Satan could ever wish for.

I always repeat this scripture to myself when I'm being tmepted. If somebody offers me drugs or something, I just think "who are they?" and then "who am I?" and it becomes pretty clear who I'd rather be.
I'd strongly suggest that you read the first chapter of Moses, or at least Moses 1: 11-16 and possibly verse 18 too.

Also, on a side note, the talent show is tomorrow. It's gunna be so funny. And I invited my friend to come too. She said she wanted to go, but that she hasn't asked if she can go yet, so it's not garaunteed. Quite frankly I'm relieved that she definitely still wants to go.

I just spent three hours writing two short stories and a letter to my future self. I'd post them but they really suck. They're good for my age and I'll probably get high marks on them but for my standards they're not very good.

Alas, Eden

2009-03-04T19:20:00.000-08:00

I wrote this poem for a Language Arts(A.K.A english) assignment in response to the book Alas, Babylon.
In case you've never read it or heard of it, it's basically about a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. This leads to an almost post-apocolyptic life lived by the few survivors. I didn't really like the book much. It was pretty cool, but it wasn't much of a story as for description and having an interesting plot.
So I wrote this myself and I liked it. My teacher gave me a 10/10 and drew a smiley face next to my mark. From what I've been told this rarely ever happens as this teacher is kind of evil.
My favourite part personally is the last two lines. Whenever I'm having one of those moments (you know, the ones you get when you're on the peak of a mountain overlooking a lake at sunset) I always repeat them to myself.

Alas, Eden

Through Adams transgression all men are bound
To this new world of pain and of ground
Once we had a paradise as wide as the world
But the banner of war we alone have unfurled
The Garden of Eden has been ripped away
By our repeated history of men gone astray
Again and again we regret our actions
But yet we get worse fraction by fraction
None seem to know few figure it out
An unfortunate fate this is not about
Some ask what stops us from reaching perfection
Few seem to see it is our own transgression
Our race is prone to fighting each other
We strive for peace but really who bothers?
The peace keepers way is seen as weak
Fighting and strength the only path to the peak
Only one can be right they always insist
The only solution must be using our fists
The fear and the hurt we bring on ourselves
We become proud of and place it on our shelves
When men go to battle they do not see
They only know their forced enemy
They do not remember
They don’t understand
Across their fingers they’ve put their own bands
If they could just stop and close their eyes
They’d see right through their own disguise
They would see the flowers, the cool green grass
The lack of pain that can never last
The peace that used to be is in the past
Gone forever what used to shine
Few claim this gift to define
But if you could just stop and simply listen
You’d hear the long lost sounds of heaven

Spiritual Thought

2009-03-02T20:41:00.000-08:00

This week for seminary, I'm conducting. This basically means I welcome everybody, announce the song and choose who gets to say the prayer. Tomorrow I also have to give a spiritual thought. Last time I really liked my spiritual thought, and this time, I dont' want to just get up there and read my favourite scripture like everyone else. I think I'm going to end up doing something like that though.

Last time, I told the class a story about a soilder that I heard when on Seal Island. Seal Island is basically a tiny island off the southern shore of Nova Scotia. My family used to own all of it, but my Great Aunt Mary sold part of it because she couldn't afford the mortage or something like that. The island is still considered (not legally) to be pretty much ours though, and I'm probably going to inherit some of it. Enough to build a summer house anyways.
Since there are so few people who are on the island at one time, there's only one church. It's "Seal Island's Church of all faiths", even though it's sporting a nice, white cross on top of a steeple on the roof. It really is a Christian church, and that's not a problem, I don't think anybody's ever had a need for anything but a Christian church on the island.
So this lady told this story on a Sunday we were there and I really liked it, this is basically how it went.

There was a group of soilders traveling by foot through a small area of enemy territory. Their intentions were merely to get to their outpost some miles ahead and they had no intention of hurting anybody. In fact they had lost all but a few guns because of certain incidents. John was not one of the soilders lucky enough to be holding a gun.
They knew they were getting close to their destination soon, so they were letting themselves relax a bit, which of course was the perfect queue for an ambush, and guess what happened? Armed enemy soilders came streaming out of the mountains beside them.
Before any of the tired soilders could even begin to break into a sprint they were overwhelmed by the force of the opposition. John was the only one to get away.
He didn't even know why he was bothering to run. Where was he going? The outpost was out of sight and he was exhausted, unlike the enemy soilders. He was outnumbered and everybody but him had a gun. The only thing he could think to do was run into the cover of the surrounding trees and search for a place to hide.
After a moment of frantic searching he came upon a small cave, barely big enough for him to fit into. He worked hard to steady his breathing and waited for the enemy to pass by. There was no way they'd miss him. They had probably seen almost exactly where he had gone and they knew he wouldn't have been able to go far. Without anything left for him to do, John prayed silently. He prayed that somehow the soilders wouldn't find him, which he knew would involve the involvement of a miracle.
He waited, and as he waited her heard the muffled commands of the enemy soilders. Phrases like "No prisoners" and "He'll wish he'd never been born" added to his anxiety. All he could do was wait for that miracle from God.
The answer to his prayers came in the form of a little spider. The spider crawled from outside the cave and began to weave a web in over the openeing of the cave, inches in front of John's face. Although the spider was going at an impossible speed, John worried it would not be able to finish in time. He silently urged it to hurry, then realized how stupid he was being.
"I don't need a spider web, I need a brick wall!" He thought impatiently.
He thought it was a joke. Maybe God was mocking him, or trying to get him to laugh one last time before he died. Whatever was going through his head immediately stopped as the spider finished just in time for a booted foot to stomp down in front of the cave.
John held his breath as he heard a voice.
"Jackson, check that cave!"
"There's no need Sir, there's a spider web covering it. If anybody had gone in there they would have broken it,"
"Very well then, look elsewhere,"
For a moment John laid there, in complete shock. He had been too much of a fool not to realize that through the power of God, a spider web can be stronger than a brick wall.

So yeah, I liked that story a lot, just kinda clarifies the moral that people often think gOd is being cruel when really he's testing our faith and/or saving us.

Badminton Team.

2009-02-27T15:50:00.000-08:00

I made the badminton team! Hurray for me! They still only cut one person, and I knew it wasn't going to be me, but I'm still happy. The girl that got cut was my partner for most of the second try-out and... well... yeah. I'll leave it at that.
Oh, and I can't find my glasses. Kind of depressing. I've looked everywhere, and as far as I'm concerned I just took them off before going to bed, but they're nowhere in my bedroom. I can't find my old glasses either so I'm stuck wearing contacts whenever I want to see.
My nephew had a "sleep over" last night and convinved his mom to let him stay over night again which means he's coming to church with us tomorrow. I wouldn't be surprised if he just ends up following me around instead of going to primary.
I just got back from watching my nephew's Timbit hockey game. I have to say those five years olds could school me if I were on the ice. Not to mention they're too adorbale to take the puck away from.
After the game (we won - not that it matters with Timbits) my Dad, my sister, my two nephews and I went 5 pin bowling. I've never done 5 pin, and it's been a couple of years since I last bowled at all, so I only pulled a 123. I did get a strike on my first try though.
I have this weird beginners luck thing. I think I must have really good intuition because when I'm not thinking about something I do it really well, but then when I do well I start to think about how I did it and I almost always mess up the second time.
There was a dance last night. I went with my non-member friend but neither of us knew that it was Sunday dress, so we had to wait out in the hall for our parents to bring us skirts. Then she invited some guy who came wearing skinny jeans. He borrowed an extra button-up shirt and tie (which I had to show him how to do up) and he almost got kicked out because of his pants. It was kinda funny.
Apparently now they're going to make us bring dance cards. I've gone to about four dances and I've gotten in without one no problem. In fact I don't think I've ever even been asked for one. To be honest I don't know what one looks like, but I guess I should consider getting one if the stake leaders are serious about being more strict with letting people in.
I don't usually go to dances, simply because I can't dance and other than dancing the only thing to do is talk and that's kind of hard with the music and everything. It's been so long since I've been to one that the first time a guy asked me to dance I needed to think about which hand went on his shoulder.
I was kind of mad at all my friends because the only reason I went to this dance was because they all got upset when I said I probably wasn't going. So I gave in and said I'd go, but only one of them showed up. I still enjoyed myself though. The friend I brought moved last year, so we haven't seen each other since. We still talk on the phone, but I'm the most awkward person in the world when I'm on the phone. I don't know what it is, I feel like I'm missing a sense or something. It's like walking around the block with your eyes closed.
Anyways, that's what happened today and yesterday, in case you were wondering.

Talent Show and Christi Shrute.

2009-02-24T20:43:00.000-08:00

Our ward recently started having an annual talent show and last year all the Young Woman did a sort of musical number. This didn't really require much talent, all we did was play Reach For The Stars by S Club 7 using a CD player, and mouth the words. The hardest part was coming up with a dance to do while "singing" it, which only took us about 3 hours to work out and memorize. My friend and I got to do this duet thing, then at the end the same friend and I jumped off the stage to dance the last verse. I have to say it was pretty pro.
So this year we're doing basically the same thing but with this snowman song. It's basically a couple of lines from a bunch of songs and the words are changed so that they relate to a snowman.
Like "Buddy you're some snow sitting in the back yard, gunna be a snow man some day, you got coal of your face, big disgrace ...something something... we will, we will melt you"
I thought it was kinda lame at first, but we came up with this awesome dance. We each take our turn having the spotlight every time the tune changes. I got "the final meltdown" I basically do the air guitar with one of those ribbonny things while everybody else does some free style with their ribbonny thingies.
We're also gunna put on white face paint, wear scarves, glove etc... and top hats. It's gunna be awesome.
This song was inspired by the Primary snowman song and that's how it starts and ends.
My favourite part is deffinently when Brooke goes gangster for her solo with the "we will melt you" part. She's so pro at stuff like that.

On a completely different note, my friend that went on the cruise came back insisting that she met a guy who is perfect for me. She does this ALL the time. She keeps on having "epiphanies" of me hooking up with random guys. It's quite annoying. I think she's tried to set me up with almost half the guys we know. This time it's some guy I've never met, but apparently he has a simular sense of humour and he's obsessed with the office.
Also, on that note, a while ago my sister and I found my dad's old glasses and we started trying to do impersonations of Dwight Shrute from the Office. I have to say, mine was pretty awesome. Then the next day I kept on saying stuf like...
"Question!... When somebody asks me what my favourite colour is, what is my response?"
*They answer*
"False, my favourite colours are black and white, but most people - the idiots- insist that neither are colours. I, of course disagree, but to avoid conflict I just say green,"
If you watch the office you're probably lying on the floor laughing. So anyways, here's a picture.

When my nephew saw this he looked at me and said "Oh, auntie Christi, you're not very pretty in this picture," and I think that sums it up. lol. I don't usually look this um... unattractive I swear. The combined force of the wet hair, parted bangs, glasses and fake double chin didn't compliment my eyes the way I thought they would...

So yeah, I've decided that next Halloween, I am totally being Dwight. It's gunna be awesome since I can act and look pretty much just like him. I only need to find a tanish button up shirt, something to make me look pot-bellied and I need to learn a bunch of random facts about stuff and question people on said facts. I don't think I have to worry much about that until it's a little closer to Halloween though.
Oh yeah, and a name tag so I won't get asked who I am ask much and some nerdy pants.

Badminton Try-Outs and Blaire.

2009-02-23T16:31:00.000-08:00

Okay, well I tried out for the Badminton team and there were eleven girls there. They're planning on taking in ten. Apparently it was even worse than that for turn out last year. They actually had an announcement saying something like; first three people to show up in the small gym tomorrow after school are on the badminton team.
Personally, I don't really think they should just cut one person, you know. I mean, two, that'd be okay, but wouldn't that be aweful? Seriously. they should give her the choice. She can stay as an alternate or she can just not be on the team.
I don't know how many of those ten are gunna be alternates and how many are gunna be actual players.

But, ugh! The small of my back hurts SO bad! It's an actual problem. When I was a kid I was twice the height of the other kids, so I just naturally slouched, so I gre into a natural slouching position. I corrected this by sitting up as straight as I could muster one day, then going back to my comfortable position the next. This got me looking like normal after a month, but you have to imagine, sitting as straight backed as you possibly can all freaking day long. And this isn't just arching your back, this is putting your shoulder blades back, making your neck go back as far as you can AND arching your back. It's heck I tell you! Try it sometimes. I'm used to it now of course, but my back gets way soarer, way faster than everybody else's. My back should stop hurting after a while, but for now I'm sucking it up and not mentioning it to either of the coaches unless they ask.

But yeah, you probably want to know how likely I am to make it. I'm not gunna let myself get too relaxed or anything, but I'm almost certain that I'm in the clear.
At the beginning I was diving all over the place with these killer reflexes that I have, but my reflexes usually told me to dive, and who am I to question them? Then I wouldn't recover from my dive fast enough and I would either miss the birdie once they hit it back or my shot would go high and they'd smash it at me.
I'd also return these crazy shots. You know, those ones where you look away 'cause there's no way the person's gunna get it. But yeah, I'd almost always get those, but then I'd fumble when it came to the basic stuff.
I've never been showed how to hit the birdie properly, so my form was horrible, but the coach showed me what to do once and I was perfect every time after that, which seemed to impress him.
I also got lots of opportunities to show my sense of humour and I had a good attitude the entire time, although I'm not somebody you'd call a team player. I'm patient whenever my partner sucks, because half the time I'm the sucky partner and I'm just a pretty patient person. I rarely ever just tell people "nice try" and "good job", I come up with creative or funny things to say.
Personally, whenever I have a super-jock partner who shows me up so bad I feel like nothing afterwards, I hate it when they keep on saying "nice try" and all that krap. To be honest with you it'd be way more effective if he yelled at me 'cause then my rebellious instincts would kick in and I'd spend the next match proving to this jerk that I'm just as good as him. But NO, I'm fine the way I'm playing even though we're loosing because of it.
So even though I know this is probably something uniquely me, I don't do it to other people just 'cause I dislike it so much. Although I do gain a lot of respect for a guy who could probably lift three of me and still play better than I am, but can still look a foot down at me, smile and say "good try".

Also, by the end I had improved so much I was amazed at myself and the coach who was helping the half of the gym I was always on seemed to like me. I don't know if the other one did, the only time he spent caring about me was when I was playing and I almost never even noticed him.

The only thing I'm unhappy about with the try-outs is that my hair is gunna be SO frizzy at the end of every practice. Maybe I'll find a style that'll keep it out of my eyes and not get too frizzy. I'll get back to you on it.

On a completely different note, my friend (Blaire, the one who said she wanted to be Mormon) is still interested in coming to an activity. I haven't been able to take her so far because two weeks ago was Standards Night, then last week we had a temple trip, then tomorrow we're practicing for a talent show. The week after that (hopefully) we should be doing something that she'd like to come to.

Smash - It's basically what a spike is in volleyball. Fast as an arrow and straight as a conservative Mormon.

Standards Night - It's a stake meeting of all the youth and their parents and we mostly talk about the church's standards. In our stake we almost always have floats after, it's pretty sweet. Floats (in case you don't know) are just ice cream and pop mixed together in a cup.

Mall Cop, different church, cruise... You know, the usual stuff.

2009-02-22T09:17:00.000-08:00

Sorry for not writing, nothing interesting has happened to me lately. I'm just writing so that my blog doens't look abandoned.

Well, I went to see Mall Cop with a friend yesterday. It wasn't as funny as I thought it would be, but I have to say that Paul Blart was adorable. I don't know what other word I could use, but he had that kind of innocent, child-like humour.

Also, in case you care I can still put on earings, my ears haven't grown over, even though I haven't worn earings in a couple of weeks.

My sister and her husband are both giving talks in their ward and they need a ride out to where their church is, so I'm going to church with them, along with my dad.

I'm a little sad that I won't be seeing my friend who went on the cruise (she's supposed to be back by now). She's always so pale so I want to see her with a tan, but it might still be there for our activity on Tuesday. She's infamous for not being able to hold onto a tan at all, it's crazy. Maybe I'll get to see pictures...

Ward - Since there is a usually a large amount of Mormons in a city, we are divided up into Stakes and then Wards. Each stake goes to one building, but each ward has different church times. So you only go to church with your ward.

Activity - LDS Young Women and Young Men have weekly activities that we go to. Sometimes we're divided by gender and sometimes not.

Valentines Day

2009-02-16T22:21:00.000-08:00

Most people think of Valentines Day either as the greatest day of the year or as "Annual Single Reminders Day". I however think of it as the annual I'm-going-to-pretend-this-is-just-another-normal-day-and-hopefully-it-will-be day. And hallelujah, for the most part it was just another day.
For Valentines Day, our school had this thing set up where you could buy a rose for somebody. My friend bought one for me and some other people. Her and the rest of an after school musical group went to California for a week so she wasn't here on the 14th and won't be back until the end of Reading Week. She asked me to drop anything (particularily flowers) that she received off at her house, so needless to say she was expecting something; if not from a loser in tin foil than at least from a friend.
Nothing came for her however and I felt the majority of the guilt for that. I didn't want to get her a flower because it would be jealous of her beauty, or so I told her. I really just forgot to bring money to school the entire week the flowers were for sale.
I felt kind of bad that she didn't get anything, so I decided that I would drop something off at her house. Exactly what I wasn't sure at first.
I started out with the envelope, then added a heart shaped sucker that I got from seminary. Next I looked up a bunch up pick-up lines and put them on recipe cards. If you're a constant watcher of 'The Office' like we are you'd get that.
I decided that that wasn't enough so I also wrote her a love poem. You're probably thinking I'm absolutely crazy, either that or a very confused young woman, but I know her well enough to know that she'll find it hilarious. I also made it very clear that it was from me so she doesn't think it's from some anonymus guy.
After that (not being the most romantic person in the world) I couldn't think of anything else to give her so I sealed the envelope and today I walked over to her house and left it in the mailbox. On the front I put that it was 'to Alexa from Christi' but I can't help but worry that one of her brothers (or worse her parents) will open it and think we're lesbians or something.

And man did I ever have fun finding the stupidest pick-up lines ever. My favourite was "I have three months to live..." followed closely by "So... you're a girl huh?"

Oh, and I also found the perfect song for my wedding. I swear this is the only planning for my wedding I've ever made and although I would go through with this it's a total joke.

My Best Friend - Weezer

There aren't any good videos, but this'll at least let you know what it sounds like.

Alma 32 - If you have faith in the Lord he can turn the most dier of situations into the cause for your salvation.

2009-02-16T00:15:00.000-08:00

I don't think I'll ever understand why, but when I read a scripture or hear a quote I almost always get something completely different out of it than everybody else. I like to think of it as listening to the Holy Ghost on a whole nother level or something, as apposed to everybody else's theory that I'm just weird. Which I'm not disagreeing with. Everybody's weird, I'm just the only one who has the guts to admit it.
So anyways, if I dare stay on track, what I was talking about was how I always get something different out of scriptures than everybody else. My favourite chapter in the Book of Mormon is Alma 32. This chapter is basically all about faith, but that's not why I love it. I mean yeah, the whole knowing isn't believing and faith is like unto a seed stuff is awesome too, but what makes it my favourite chapter is the story behind the metaphor.
The chapter basically starts out with Alma (who for simplicity's sake I'll just say is a missionary) going into a city and trying to preach the gospel, as missionaries often do. After a while he finds that nobody will listen to him. House after house he is turned away by the pride of whoever happens to open the door. After a long while of this (I'm not sure how long, could be all day could be all month, I don't think it says) he comes to the poorer part of town, having so far no success at all. He finds that the less wealthy people have been humbled by their poverty and are more open to the gospel.
This city did have a church, but the poor people weren't allowed in it because they were not dressed well enough. A principle taught by Alma through response to this is that anybody, anywhere can worship God as long as they are doing their best.

Everybody else who reads this chapter kind of skims over this part and rarely pays any attention to it, going on to the majority of the chapter which is based on faith.
The part that I found significant though was that at first glance, the poor people were kind of being screwed over. I mean, they were poor ad not well dressed. They were the base of the hierarchy and they weren't even allowed in the synagogues (churches, of sorts), which - may I add - they did build in the first place. Although I should have known better than to think such mundane trials would prevent any decent, humble people from happiness. As Alma said '... their afflictions had truly humbled them, and that they were in preperation to hear the word.' (Alma 32: 6).
Because these people weren't so obsessed with earthly treasures they more easily opened their hearts to the treasures of the spirit (that is to say the gospel). This reminds me of another scripture (yeah I know, I'm a little scripture obsessed for my age)
3 Nephi 13: 19-21
'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth currupt, and theives break through and steal;
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where theives do not break through and steal.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'

Although at first glance the rich people may have seemed to have it good, their joy was only temporary.
The real gifts given to us by God are the trials. It is in these that we find ourselves, find our path and find our happiness. Without pain you cannot know joy and in the end it really comes down to having faith that whatever happens happens because it was meant to happen and it will make the world a better place. God would never give anybody a trial that he didn't think they could conquer and learn from.

So yeah, long story short:
What everybody else got out of Alma 32 - Faith is a seed, if planted and cared for it will grow.
What I got from it - If you have faith in the Lord he can turn the most dier of situations into the cause for your salvation.

Hey cool! That totally rhymes. Now you have to remember it!

Scriptures - this is what we call the Bible, The book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price and The Doctrine and Covenants. Believe me when I say it's just better this way.

Just a Bunch of Little Things

2009-02-14T22:27:00.000-08:00

A bunch of little things (hence the title) have happened lately or are going to happen soon.

It's reading week, which means I don't have to go to school un the 23rd. I find it funny that they tried to make it look educational by calling it reading week. Come on, like anybody but me is going to read anything but text messages in the next nine days.

Two families in our ward teamed up and are on a cruise to Florida right now, which means half the youth are missing. Well, half the YW anyways, I guess only three young men are gone. I have to admit I'm a little jealous, I kind of wish I were on a cruise right now. This isn't helped by the fact that it started snowing again. Gosh! I swear it hasn't gone above zero for the past four months.

Over the break I'm planning on finally getting my license. I've been pretty chill about when I'm getting it, but I'm having my brithday in a couple of months so I need to get going. I don't know why it's such a big deal, I just don't want to be 17 and without a license.
My borther in law offered to let me drive his truck on some uninhabited roads by the highway once I get my license. That should be fun - no sarcasm intended. If it's unihabitted then I won't hurt anybody, except for my brother, but he can get over it. He was the one who offered.
I've always been terrified that I'm going to hurt somebody when I'md riving. I swear I can paralyze myself for life and total the car, but as long as I don't hit anybody else I'm okay.

I'm also considering getting a job at the hockey arena. I have a friend who's been working there for a while and says that it's good, as far as minimum wage jobs go anyways.

February 9th was national pizza day so my friend and I went to Boston Pizza for... pizza. While we were there (I can't remember how this came up) but we were talking about me being the only "good" Mormon in our grade last year and she randomly blurted out that she wished she were Mormon. And quite frankly, this is ever Mormons dream! I stayed pretty calm and asked her why and then invited her to one of our activities, but inside I was screaming something like. 'Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh! I've been waiting my entire life for somebody to say that!'. I'll let you know how that goes. The way she said it kind of made it seem like she'd been wanting to say it for a while and it didn't sound like a random thing. She seemed pretty serious. I'm pretty sure of this because I asked her if she was serious several times before inviting her to an activity.

On a completely unrelated note, I took my earings out and plan on keeping them out. I hope they grow over, which they probably will. Quite frankly I'm tired of having a metal rod through the lobe of my ear. 'Cause yeah, that's just how I roll.

Rugby and Badminton try-outs are coming up soon. I'm excited for both and seriously hope I make both. I'm gunna need to start jogging again. The fact that I stay thin no matter how much I eat has me in the illusion that I'm in good shape. Ha, yeah no.

I think I've so far failed to mention this, but I'm writing a novel. Well, trying to anyways. I should probably put some of it on here. Just a little, so you can grasp an opinion on good or bad of a writer I am.
It's an intermediate science fiction about a girl who thinks she's from Mars. At the beginning you don't know whether or not she is, especially since I've casually mentioned that she has all the symptoms of schizophrenia.
So anyway, I've written 20 000 words now. I get excited every 5000 words to be honest, but 20 000 just seems like a noteworthy amount so I'm mentioning it.

And yeah, I think that pretty much brings this blog up-to-date.

"Ask a Mormon" #1

2009-02-07T19:19:00.001-08:00

So none of my friends are Mormon except for the ones I see at youth activities and on Sunday. Because of this I'm constantly surrounded by people who don't understand my religion and have been getting their questions answed incorrectly from either Anti-Mormons or people who are too stupid to realize that we don't practice human sacrifices in our temples. Because of this I'm constantly needing to clear up misconceptions and I figured it'd be a good idea to put the questions my friends ask me followed by my answers. Today I'm only answering one question since it has a very long explanation.

What makes you different from other Christians, like Catholics?

I can't pretend to be an expert on other religions, so I wouldn't feel right comparing us if I'm ignorant of their beliefs. I do, however know a decent amount about the Catholic religion, since my entire Dad's side is Catholic and I've attended their church a decent amount of times.
First off, do not think that I am, in any way, attacking the Catholic religion. Personally I think that there's nothing wrong with a church as long as it teaches it's members to be better people. I'm only comparing the LDS church to the Catholic Church because it's the only other religion I know enough about.
So here we go.
There are endless differences between the Catholic Church and The Mormon Church. One main one is our perception of God.
Mormons usually referre to God as Heavenly Father and to ourselves as Children of God, and this demonstrates how he think of him quite well. We think of him kind of as an all-knowing loving Father who - if we listen to his guidance - will lead us down the path that is best for us to travel. We believe that like any good Father he has to use discipline sometimes. We don't believe that he punishes people out of rath, but because if he let us run wild we'd probably get ourselves blown up, like any child.
We also believe that Heaven Father and Jesus Christ are two completely seperate people. They have different personality traits and two different bodies as you'd expect from any two different people. We believe this because when Joseph Smith experienced the First Vision he saw "two personages" God pointed to Christ and said "this is my beloved Son, hear him". Information on the First vision can be found in Joseph Smith History, Chapter one.
The Catholics beleive that Christ was merely God's mundane form, sent to Earth to conquer both life and death. I don't want to expand on this much, because I don't want to misinform you. It's also my understand that Catholics believe that God punishes people for being bad, which we do believe in to a certain degree. This doesn't really work all the time though because "bad things happen to good people". I'll get into the LDS veiw on the next time I do one of these.

Another major difference between The LDS Church and the Catholic church is that Catholics believe that all God has needed to say to mankind has been said in the bible, we do not believe that. Although we do still believe in the Bible and are taught about it in Church and Seminary.
Our belief that God has more to say to us in modern day is expressed through several different things.
The first is that we receive modern revalation through our Prophet (currently Thomas S. Monson). This means that he receives present-day instruction from God through the Spirit (I'll explain who the Spirit is in a later question).
We also (of course) have and believe in The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price. The Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price were both translated by Joseph Smith, and the Doctrine and Covenants were written by God through Joseph Smith. That is to say by revelation.
We also believe in something you can't understand unless you've experienced it; personal revelation. This is when (often through prayer and/or scripture study) we recieve instruction from God through the Holy Ghost (AKA the Spirit). This is for things relating to the individual and not everybody as a whole.

Another, more obvious difference between Catholics and Mormons is that we have different "rules".
Catholics beleive that (more or less) to avoid going to Hell (we call it Outer Darkness usually) you simply must obey the Ten Commandments.
We, on the other hand follow many rules, so many nobody's ever bothered to number any of them. Of course we do follow the Ten Commandments, but those are merely the beginning for us.
We don't consume addictive substances (alchohol, drugs, coffee etc...) and we don't swear or wear immodest clothing. There are many more, but basically we can't do anything that is likely to interfere with our health, harm others or ourself or get us into undesirable situations.
People constantly ask me why our church has set up so many rules. At first I wasn't completely sure, but now I know. It's becuase the members of the Church have a duty to uphold the light of Christ, and in order to do this we cannot be the same as everybody else. We need to be stronger, have more integredity and have a better peace-of-mind.
Next I'm usually asked why I personally follow all of these rules. I always answer simply that "I believe in my religion,". If they ask me to expand I do, but that's usually enough of an answer for them, whether they think I'm crazy or not.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure I've covered the major differences, if you have any questions you can ask me or go to FAIR.

http://www.fairlds.org/

EFY

2009-02-03T14:18:00.000-08:00

I'm really excited for EFY. I'm going to the second session with a friend from B.C. We registered a couple of weeks ago, but I just thought about it. I'm hoping this year will be better than last because last time I didn't have a roomie since I don't know any Mormon girls my age. I do now, obviously, but back then I only knew the girls in my ward and none of them are my age.
So because I didn't request a roomie they chose one for me. I'm not a loser, this is perfectly common; just in case you were wondering. Okay, so I got there about an hour earlier than my roomie and I didn't want to wander around for fear of getting lost (I have a horrible sense of direction) so I just entertained myself in the dorm until she got there. For a little while I was SO nervous about meeting my roomie, since I'm a little awkward around people I don't know, so if my roomie was shy we'd both be screwed. After a while though I decided no matter who my roomie was or what she was like I'd suck it up and be her best friend for the next five days.
So she shows up (finally) and we find that we have a lot in common, the only difference being why we were there.
Most girls go to EFY mostly because of the boys. Ha, yeah I know right. I was going to have fun with whoever was in my group - although the funniest guy in the world ended up taking me to banquet :). Of course I also went for the spiritual progress.
So when she warned me that she was a little boy crazy I wasn't too surprised, I mean most girls get crazy when at EFY. I didn't think much about that, but after when met the guys in our group it took her a total of five seconds before she fell in love with one of them. I was getting a little worried then, I didn't want my roomie to be insane the entire time. It only got worse when she admitted to me that night that she'd spent most of her free time that day following him around and spying on him. I didn't really know what to say to this, except that I'd been wondering where she was the entire time. Then of course there were the several times I walked into the dorm to find her crying because this guy would barely even look at her.
I felt bad, but she didn't seem to want me to share in her misery so I ended up not even seeing her except for when we were sleeping. I befriended some other people so I still ended up enjoying myself.
I wasn't mad at her, I just felt guilty. I'm one of those people that if somebody's sad I get more upset about it than they do, which is odd because I never get upset about things that happen to me. Thinking back I should have done more than calmed her down when she was crying, but she didn't want me around. I guess it's for the better, she would have just taken me to stalk this guy around.
Now that I know I'm going to be friends with my roomate the only problem I have with EFY really is the guys. It's just that I'm not one for dating or relationships or whatever - probably because I don't like getting my emotions mixed up in something that's likely to end badly. Usually this isn't too much of a problem, because in "real" life guys advance slowly so I have plenty of time to hint that I'm not interested in anything but random hang-outs, but at EFY they don't give you any time. You only have five days to get to know each other so you have to act fast and most guys are too stupid to pick up on my hints with so little time.
A little note to guys, when a girl mentions that she doesn't want to get married until she's 30, it usually means she's not guy-crazed like all the other Mormon girls, which means don't assume that she's thrilled by you escorting her everywhere she goes.
I didn't really like the escorting at first, in fact I hated it and it took all my strength not to roll my eyes every time a guy asked to escort me. Of course I couldn't say no, that'd hurt his feelings. By the end I got used to it though.
Just so you know, I'm not a jerk, I just don't like unexpected touching. I'm fine if I'm the one touching the other person, but if they're touching me then I can't stand it.
The thing I liked most about the guy who took me to banquet (besides that he was hilarious) was that he understood that I wasn't into the whole C.O.W. thing (crush of the week) and that I didn't want to "pair" up with somebody. Instead of linking arms with me to escort me he just walked beside me and started up a conversation. I don't know how he knew I hated the elbow contact (I hope it wasn't that noticable) but I really appreciated it. He even (not happily) let me clear my own dishes after banquet - which a Mormon guys will rarely let you do. I told anybody who asked that I threatened to punch him in the throat if he dared to clear my plate so he didn't look impolite. I was prepared to tell him that though, keep in mind.
A lot of people wonder why I'm like that, and to be honest I don't know. I know there's nothing wrong with me. I guess it's just how I roll. I guess I just don't want to be one of those Mormon girls who doesn't know what they'd do if they don't get married at 18 and who day-dream about their weddings and all that stuff.
People always tell me my very pronounced lack of interest in guys scares them off. Whenever somebody tells me this they assume tha tI secretly care, but I really don't. People also always assume this means I don't want to get married, this isn't the truth. I just only need one guy to love me to get married, so what's the point in trying to get more?
So anyways, now that I've weirded you out with my odd opinions on whatever I've just been talking about, I have to leave.
So yeah, hopefully this EFY turns out as awesome as I'm threatening it to be.

EFY - Especially For Youth. The only way I can explain it is that for 5 days Mormon youth get together over the summer and have one gigantic, spiritual Mormon party. We have lessons and dances and meals and everything. Considered by many to be the best part of the year.

YFAIR's mission statement

2009-02-01T21:29:00.001-08:00

This is our new mission statement. It explains the purpose of YFAIR. Figured I should post it.

YFAIR's mission is to bear witness of Jesus Christ and His restored Church while helping strengthen and defend the testimonies in the hearts of youth everywhere. To this end, we will assist other youth in understanding the doctrines and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We will support them in this capacity with media and information that will develop comprehension and testimony, and we will do it in a style that is both logical and inspirational.

Teaching Primary.

2009-02-01T16:59:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've realized that once I get some followers, this is probably going to be read by a mixture of Mormons and non-mormons alike. That being said I understand that most non-mormons will have difficulty understand many of the terms or words that I use, but I don't want to constantly be explaining things in my entries. So, I've decided to put definitions of church lingo at the bottom of each post. As far as I'm concerned this is an awesome idea, but if you have suggestions go ahead and tell me.

I don't remember exactly why, but all the Relief Society members had to abandon their callings today for church. I think they were having a special meeting or something that everybody had to go to. This meant that the Young Women had to teach all the Primary lessons. We've done this before, but last time we were each paired up with a Young Man. Our Young Women's president kept on saying it was a good thing we didn't have to babysit the Young Men this time. Whenever she said this we all laughed politely, but once she was gone we confessed that we would've liked it better if we'd had a partner like last time.
Of course none of the Young Men actually helped at all, from what I heard. I was lucky, I got the only one that actually did anything. I did all of the preparing but he did a good share of the teaching. He's way better with kids than I am. Don't get me wrong, I love kids, I actually admire them for their innocence and the fact that they're not ashamed of showing emotion. However, I find them kind of intimidating in large numbers since I'm really awkward and out-of-place in a situation where logic is practically useless.
Last time I suggested to my partner that we just play hangman the entire time, but he thought I was kidding and didn't consider it. With him out of the picture this time I really was severely tempted to just bring in a board game or something. I could've told anybody who asked that I'd modified it to be spiritual, but I ended up thinking I may as well just teach the lesson.
The lesson was on Joseph Smith's first vision, and it surprised me how little the kids knew. I don't remember being that ignorant when I was seven, but oh well. I finished the planned stuff early. I think I was about half an hour too fast, so I had to improvise. I looked through my scripture case and realized with great relief that I had enough paper for all the kids and the penicl crayons I use for marking scriptures.
I distributed these out and despite complaints that "trees aren't supposed to be purple!" (I couldn't give them all the green one) they each drew their idea of what the Sacred grove looks like.
After they had finished their drawings they got a little out of control, but I guess it could have gone worse.
My favourite part was when the only girl in the class of seven randomly decided it would be a good time to tell me who she was "in love" with in the middle of me explaining to them what it meant to "lack wisdom". This was even more humourous once I realized the boy she loved was sitting right next to her. He seemed to take it pretty well though, and I suppose there were worse things he could have said than "I heard that!".
So yeah, not that that whole thing wasn't enjoyable, but I've decided I REALLY hope I don't get called as a primary teacher. I don't think I could take it. I need intellectual socializing otherwise I tend to start calling everybody idiots and saying more sarcastic remarks than what's necissary. Kind of like that dim-wad from 'Get Smart'.
On a simular note, I decided a while ago that unlike all the other Young Women (who want to work witht he nursery, Young Womens or pirmary) that I hope I get called to teach Sunday school for the Young men and Women. I think I'd also enjoy teaching seminary.

We just switched times, so now we have church at 9 in the morning instead of noon. It's a huge change and quite frankly I hate it, but church seems to go by three times as fast. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Since it doesn't feel as boring or long I pay better attention, but I also don't get that I-just-went-to-church kind of satisfaction when it's over in what seems like an hour and a half.

So here are my first sent of explanations, I hope I've made this a little less confusing...

Relief Society - It's what the adult women go to instead of Preisthood (which is for men), Young Womans (girls 12-17) or Primary (kids 4-11)

Callings - These are different positions that are given to people in the church, like teacher, pianist or Relief Society president which has certain responsibilities that person is responsible to take care of. These are reserved for adults who are capable of baring them, but there are also callings inside of Young Womens and Young Mens like secretary.

Joseph Smith - The 'Founder' of the LDS church. He's the one who restored the gospel (our church's beliefs) through the direction of God and translated the Book of Mormon.

The First Vision - This is how we referre to when Joseph Smith was fourteen and he went into a forest near his house to pray about which church he should join. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ both appeared to him and told him that the true church of God was no longer on the Earth. This was the beginning of the restoration of the Gospel, although Joseph Smith didn't actually start reforming the church until a much later time when he was ready.

The Sacred Grove - this is the name we've given the place where Joseph Smith has the First Vision.

When I said that I was explaining what it meant to "lack wisdom" I was referring to the scripture (James 1:5 'If any of ye lack wisdom, let him ask of God...') which encouraged Joseph Smith to ask God what church to join.

Seminary - This is a sort of class that Mormons go to, usually in the morning before school. There are "release time" classes we can take in our spares, but most of us choose to go to the early morning ones. We study the scriptures (both of LDS origin and the Bible) and it really is in a class format. There are desks and lessons, you take notes and you CAN fail (although you really just need decent attendance for that). The classes are about the same size as your regular school class and we're with people who are in the same grade as us. The only exceptions are usually if you're in a small or rural community that doens't have enough Mormons to have a proper set-up.

Owned By a Four-Year-Old

2009-01-30T23:31:00.000-08:00

I'd use the word pown, but to say that he only practically owned me would be a flat-out lie.
So I've been playing the flute for the past 3 and 1/2 years of my life and quite frankly I've gotten bored and recently grown to hate it's high-pitched sound. I was considering learning to play the violin, and I acquired my sister's old and surprisingly in tune fiddle (as they're called in the maritimes). I was pretty excited about this but then my mom broke the news to me that we can't afford violin lessons right now, so I decided to stick to the band-class instruments.
Also as long as I've played the flute I've loved the sound of the Bass clarinet, which is basically just a giant, five-foot long clarinet. I talked to my band teacher about it and he let me borrow an old school one. It hadn't been touched in so long that the case was completley covered in dust and I had to soak the reed in warm water for about half and hour just so it was playable.
After about four hours of frustrating, near-tear filled practice I managed to get out a B flat major scale. I was so proud of myself as the Bass Clarinet is a hard instrument to play, especially if you've become so accustomed to the small, hollow rod I now think of as the flute.
My nephew Cole (I mentioned him in my first post) has always been facinated with my flute. I've tried to teach him to play it on countless occasions before. He usually just ended up hummin the tune to "spider-man" (Which I play for him almost every time he comes over) into the hole in the head joint. So today when he asked if he could play the bass clarinet (I don't yet feel comfortable calling it MY bass clarinet as I'm not even paying the standard fee for it yet) I figured it'd end up basically the same as it always did with the flute.
I was sorely mistaken. I showed him how to tighten his bottom lip and to put his teeth on a certain part on the headjoint and to blow as hard as he could. You should have seen the look I'm sure was on my face as this four-year-old (with little difficulty) managed to play a G (open). At that point I was embarassed, proud, amazed and disappointed in myself and didn't know how excatly to react. Without a word I fingered the notes for a B flat major scale and the kid played the notes with little difficulty.
Now you probably don't understand how freakish that is. I, a 5 foot 9 inch tall teenage girl of decent health was panting after my first attempt to play G, but this four-year-old with the combined lung capacity of his piggy bank played it better than I did.
I should have a video up soon if I can figure out how that will prove this to you.

My only comfort taken from this incident was that instead of continueing to try hard and conquer the musical beast that the bass clarinet is (like I did) he still ended up humming "spider-man" into the headjoint.

So on a slightly different note, I've been getting slowly better with the bass clarinet. Before I was actually getting worse every time I played it, but somehow I managed to keep my cool most of the time. I'm pretty sure I know why I was (and still kind of am) having so much difficulty is that the reed I'm using is, first of all extremely old and in horrible shape, and secondly it's a #3. Beginners are supposed to start on a #2. I'm thinking I'm going to buy a #2.5 and see how that works. Hopefully I'll stop sucking so freaking bad.
My main concern is not catching up fast enough. Playing the scale we usually use to warm up is one thing, but I don't think I could last an entire band class without throwing the entire band off just yet. I'm thinking I'll come in as often as I need to after school to get help from my badn teacher. I fel a little awkward doing it, but he's always offering everybody extar help so he'd better not mind it. I guess I just feel weird going up to my teacher and asking him the next time he's free after school this week.
Another concern, although I'm sure this one is illogical is the other bass clarinet player in the band. He's always ben the only one and he's really quiet. Personally I'm more comfortable around shy people, I don't know why. I usually enjoy just listening to other people talk since I'm so horrible at starting conversations. I asked my friend (who used to play the trumbone as usually sat right next to him) if he was a nice guy and she just said that he was quite. I guess at least he won't be openly annoyed by me, but he seems like the type of guy who'd help me if I asked him.

There's this thing after school called wind ensemble which is basically an after-school band class. You get credits for it and everything, so I'm thinking I'll play the flute for that and the bass clarinet for Band. It's kind of weird that now that I'm not trapped by my flute I'm okay with it. I suppose it'll be nice to have a mixture of melody and bass in my life.
The main question here though is; Can I play two (3 if you count the piano) instruments actively at once without becoming a band nerd? You'll just have to keep track of my entries to find out.
Or I suppose you could ask me later...

Why Exactly I Choose to only have one blog.

2009-01-30T22:34:00.000-08:00

Most of the members of YFAIR have two blogs. One depicts them as just your average person, telling about day-to-day adventures and thoughts and the other contains the depth of their spirituality and shows them as some sort of super-mormon who thinks of nothing else but their religion. In other words one shows the activities of a human and the other of a person who simply doesn't exist. Even if the Prophet himself were to create a blog he'd still mention, or at least be tempted to mention some everyday occurences.
There's something warned against by our church and that is being Mormon sometimes and a "regular person" other times. I never think of myself as just another person. I think of myself as a Mormon, it is part of my iddentity, my past, my worldview and my personality. I don't think I could split my everyday adventures and my spiritual experiences into two definite descriptions as the two intertwine too much. I'm 100% Mormon 100% of the time and I don't think that I'd be able to accomplish what I want if I displayed myself as anything but.
The general reason that members of YFAIR are being encouraged to create these blogs is to get our message out there, gain some necissary popularity. Not that there's anything wrong with this, but I see that kind of as advertising. Of course advertising works and it's needed, but I've decided to spread the message on a completely different level. Whether this level is higher or lower you can be the judge, but I think it's what needs to be done; by me anyways.
What I want to accomplish through this blog is to gather some people who can follow my blog and realize that I am a person. Most of my friends view me as the innocent little Mormon girl who's off in some other level of life that they couldn't possibly understnad. Personally, I think this detatches us, no matter how much they may admire my solitary stand of perception.
What I want my blog followers and pass-by readers to see is that I am their equal. I am not some super-human, I am merely passionate about something they are not.
If I may give you a metaphor, a Mormon and non-Mormon are like a writer and a musician. Both are passionate about their work, but don't understand each other's professions. They don't think of each other as different levels of human though do they? If these two people are smart they will realize that they are both trying to reach the same destination and are merely taking different roads.
I want people to see that connection, I want them to think of me as an equal and not as an idol. I don't want people to try to be like me, I just want to make that connection. We're all human here, you can't deny it. We're all fueled by the same inner-strength that cannot be defined but somehow understood by those open enough to embrace it.
There was a quote that my friend showed me. For some reason (I think it's 'cause she's secretly a million times softer than she puts on) she temporarily carried around a "Book of Hugs" which held inspirational quotes in it last year. My favourite one was by somebody who's name wasn't interesting enough for me to remember.

"Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be a friend"

I'm not saying we have to be friends, but I find myself in a state of life where I can't be lead or followed, but merely accompanied on my path.
There are some people in this world that need someone to lead. There are some who need someone to follow. There are so many other people in the world who can fill those rolls. I'm here to accompany those who are like me and just need that connection of equality.

What is YFAIR?

2009-01-30T17:27:00.000-08:00

First of all, if there are any terms I use that you don't understand, don't be afraid to ask me. Even if I did want to bite you I don't think I could pull it off.

Y outh
F oundation of
A pologetic
I nformation and
R esearch

This is a version of FAIR which is a group containing Latter Day Saints (Mormons) who wish to set straight any incorrect views on our religion, answer questions to investigators (people who are checking out our religion), and answer questions from Mormon people who are just confused about something related to religion.
YFAIR is FAIR but for youth (hence the Y), both LDS and not.
If you'd like to know more about YFAIR, FAIR, or the LDS church, you're completely welcome to go to our Wikipedia Page or our Blog. You can also ask me questions as long as you're not just trying to degrade me, in which case I'll politely tell you to get out of my face.

Wikipedia page - http://youth.fairmormon.org/Main_Page
Blog - http://youth.fairblog.org/

At the moment we're still in the process of creating a thriving organization, so you're welcome to check it out, but if you have immediate questions you might want to go to FAIR and try YFAIR later if you still have questions.

Hockey Game.

2009-01-30T13:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, you probably don't know this but I'm a total Hockey fanatic. Way more than normal for a sixteen year old girl but I've never been one to follow stereotypes.
So last Tuesday for our Young woman's activity we went swimming, but I was informed by my friends brother that the Young men were going to watch a hockey game the next day. I was totally jealous, of course, so I asked if I could come with them. Apparently the only extra tickets they had were stand-ups (when you don't actually get a seat, you're jsut allowed in) and I was kind of on the fence about whether I should even be asking so I decided I wouldn't go.
In my ward there are about thirty young men and eight young women. It's not as great as it sounds, but when I think about it I guess I preferre it this way. I couldn't imagine what it would be like if it were the other way around, with only eight young men. So, it's not that uncommon for there to be way more guys than girls at a youth activity. There was actually a hike where I was the only girl once. It was a little awkward and I had a lot of fun. To be honest with you the YM are way funner than the YW sometimes. The only thing I regretted from it was that I felt like I was getting in the way of their fun sometimes; mostly my presence prevented them from certain topics of discussion. In the end though there had to be the combined company of me and a Young Men's leader to prevent them from saying some stuff I really didn't want to hear.
Anyways, as upset as I was that I wasn't going to the hockey game, good news came today. My nephew ( Cole, who's a four year old Timbit) won a Minor Hockey Hero award provided by the friendly brainwashing of Wendys. This entitled him to several free hockey tickets to a WHL (Western Hockey League) game, and of course a twenty dollar Wendys gift card.
So I'm going to the game soon. Our team is playing the top team in the league, so we're not gaurenteed to win, but I hope Cole will still have fun, which will lead to me and my dad having fun.
Bye.