It was another lovely Sunday morning here in Cardiff. Even before I got out of bed, I was met with the happy sound of girls bustling in and out of the shower in the room next to mine; the hallway floors groaned their good-mornings and every door on two floors welcomed everyone everywhere to the new day with their typical banshee shrieks.
Hallelujah for construction workers who don't trim doors, otherwise we would never be able to experience such hilarious mornings.
I got cleaned up for the Sabbath and went over my lesson one more time, adding and subtracting from the notes I had made in my little book from yesterday. Fortunately I didn't give myself a lot of time for this; the nervousness was starting to kick in, so I knew the more I just left my lesson outline for class discussion, the less I'd be able to worry about it then.
After breakfast and our group had gathered, it was off to church. I had no idea, but apparently its a 25 minute walk to church! I didn't even realize this until Katy mentioned it as we left. It never really seemed to be that long, for some reason, but I thought it was super cool that I get the chance to know how it feels to walk a ways to get to church. Being born and raised in Utah Valley, sometimes its hard for me to feel like I'm doing much for my church. While some people sacrifice so much that I take for granted, just to make it to the temple or to go to sacrament meeting, I live in the town where there are more church buildings than major grocery stores. I guess I'm the kind of person that really values the things I have to fight for, so having the chance to walk a while longer than usual so I can go to church is something I'm very willing to do.
The church meetings today were very nice. I especially liked one of the talks from Sacrament Meeting and the lesson from Relief Society, as they were both on humility. I won't sugar coat this at all: I'm a pretty proud person. I don't mean to be, but my thoughts sometimes drift along paths that I don't think The Lord most appreciates. I really want to become the person he wants me to be, so I was really glad I got to be there for those lessons.
For future reference here's a few of the notes I took:
As soon as you think you have humility, you don't have it any more.
"Your difficult patient, my apprentice, is becoming humble. Why not change that by making him aware of it?" --Said the Devil in The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis
Are we running our own gospel in our lives, or is it 'thy will be done?'
When you do something solely for another to see you, you have lost something great.
Pride has many names: envy, superiority, entitlement, comparison...
"Appreciation and the praise of men are NOT to be inhaled" (Pres. Faust). It can be as addictive as a drug, so appreciate it's presence, but do not ever try to breath WITH it, or you'll lose REAL air.
"Humility is not thinking less OF ourselves but thinking less ABOUT ourselves." --Unknown
My lesson went alright. I was able to get through all the material I had planned out and we had some amazing discussion. It was all about learning from our trials and putting them into perspective. It's amazing to think that trials come from Perfect Love. Think of it, our loving Heavenly Father loves us enough to let really hard things happen to us sometimes. We talk often about how much we need to trust The Lord, but I think he trusts us an awful lot too. How hard is it for Him to allow difficult things into our lives so that we can learn, while we always have an option to fall away because of that trial and choose to turn away from Him? It's amazing.
It was interesting to discuss what the class members thought was worth enduring their trials for. We had all come to Earth, knowing that this life would have pains and afflictions, so why did we still choose to come? It was cool to hear about them talk about family, eternal progression, the chance to learn about everything, and the chance to become more than they could otherwise be.
I had an interesting idea pop into my head at one point while I was preparing my lesson. It came from two questions in the lesson. These were 'Is it true that all afflictions come from God?' and 'Why do trials make some people bitter and others strong?' I realized that the answer for both of these was centered on our ability to choose. For the first question, I sketched out a diagram that looked something like this:
Wrong----------Right
I
I
I
Us
It's simple, right? The process of us encountering a situation where we must choose either wrong or right. We know that God isn't the source of all affliction because we bring plenty of it onto ourselves when we choose to do the wrong thing. Especially when we know that it was the wrong way.
But what if there is more to it than just right and wrong? The world is not outlined in black and white, wrong vs. right. So, in answer to the second question, what if we run into this exact same fork in the road, but with other situational decisions, though these are decisions that could be life-changing. Is it possible that this chart could be accurately extended? What if it looked like this:
Wrong---------------Right
Dispair I Hope
Distrust I Trust
Entitlement I Gratitude
I
Us
So I knew I was going off the beaten path here a little bit, but I felt really good about it. Um, the bishop was actually the one to sit in on our class, so I was nervous all over the place. I wasn't worried about counting the new number of inactives until like next week, but with the bishop there, I really had to be more careful about what false doctrine I taught.
I made sure to ask the class to correct any inconsistencies or incorrect things in this as I put it up. I was nervous when the bishop raised his hand to speak. But he surprised me. He said that it looked correct, that these were things that we have the power to choose, even though they don't always feel like choices. He said when it came to our relationship with our God, we should try to make these choices more carefully. I breathed a major internal sigh of relief and finished up my lesson a few minutes later with my favorite quote: "If life gets too hard to stand, kneel."
After church, we all headed home and started cooking an early dinner. We were having the sister missionaries over and Katy had bought enough food for us to have a great big dinner of pasta, veggies, and garlic bread. I was on veggie duty!
While I was waiting for the water to warm up, Lydia and Josie were working on the massive loaves of bread. We often get songs from musicals stuck in our heads, which is SUPER dangerous, because they are ridiculously contagious. Someone happened to hum a partial line from Les Mis (I don't remember who fired that first shot), and it quickly evolved into something incredible. Within a few minutes, the chorus rose to a loud duet between Lydia and Joise, though the words to the music was different; while the melodies were perfect, they were singing about the garlic toast that they were making! It was absolutely hilarious to hear them come up with these funny lyrics on the spot! Miya and I joined in soon after, sometimes even getting our statements to rhyme! We carried on this way for probably a good half hour, all about the food we were cooking. Oh heavens, that was the funnest thing I had done in days! I loved it!
After the sisters came by (both from Utah again) and we had dinner, Katy passed around more Millionaire Bars. Oh man, so good! I then packed up a few things and headed out before the rest of the group to the other house. It's amazing how much more cooperative Skype is when you have the whole houses' internet access to yourself :). Granted, it's the pub next door's internet they are using now, but since they aren't limited by data like we are at this house, it's just barely good enough for a Skype call while the bandwidth isn't being taken by anyone else in the house.
Anyway, I got to Skype Ethan for a good long while. The internet kept dropping the call, like a lot, so that was obnoxious, but i was still just happy to talk with him, so it was great that it worked at all.
Once everyone from the other house came back from dinner though, I lost the internet completely, so I headed home. I got back on our awesome, though limited internet and found that Nick was online. I've got to say that having internet in my own home is such a tremendous delight! I chatted with him and Boo for a while, which was super great!
The rest of my family wouldn't be home for another while, and people were putting on a movie there on our kitchen wall (Tom brought a projector), so I decided to let the movie play through before I could call home, since others were using the internet in the kitchen.
We picked out a film called 'Notting Hill' a fun chick flick that was nice, but crazy slow. It was a really cute story though, so I don't regret watching it, it just didn't make its way high up on my favorites list.
Once the movie ended, I was able to call home on Lydia's wifi phone. She had arranged to call home in about a half hour, so I made sure to talk with everyone within that time. It was great to hear from everyone today! Getting the news from Provo and Orem made me super happy! It's also good to hear that everyone is healthy, well, and enjoying their summer days.
After I finished my call, I went upstairs to take a shower and get ready for bed. I was on my way there, when I heard some funny sounds coming from the room next to mine, Theresa's. Abbey, Josie, Theresa, and Lydia were all in there, but they were having the most hilarious conversation with each other in the craziest voices. Really raspy, goobery, hick like voices. I'm delighted to say that I got it all recorded, a video I will cherish forever, just because it makes me laugh so dang hard. Lydia was Josie's daughter, named Butterwings. Josie was just called Mama mostly, because her mama was a beaver, so she just got called 'nghe' growing up. Oh, it was all said with such offhanded sincerity in those ridiculous voices that it was a beautiful sight to behold. I could have listened to them for hours, though they only went on for about one. Really, if you need a dose of happiness, just ask me for the video.
As they finished, Josie said she wanted me to read part of the book she had been working on for years. It was a fan story about Eponine from Les Mis. What I read shocked me. See, Josie has an unusual strength about her, a really special kind that you only get from, well, literally surviving a trauma. This isn't supposed to make sense to you, gentle reader, but it has to be said. She is so bouncy and happy, and absolutely hilarious, but on a rare occasion, she just nonchalantly will mention someone close to her who, well, went through heck (and I mean that in the most biblical sense of the word). I'd say lived though it, but honestly, most of them didn't. Anyway, I won't go into these really heavy stories, but just know that they are surprisingly a big part of this incredible girls history.
So when I read her story about Eponine, I was shocked. It was so dark, so full of terrible detail that it made me cringe. But it was amazing. See, for as heavy and sad as this portion of the story was, it showed a strength that I've only ever read about in textbooks. It was incredible that such a powerful and deep story came from such a bouncy cute girl, but there it was. Crazy huh? Anyway, to any of you future publishers out there, I've got this friend who has got a few good ideas.
With this, I showered and got ready for bed. It was another lovely sunday here in Cardiff; wonderful people, a wonderful ward, a wonderful place. I'm sure glad I get to be here for a little while.
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