A Week for Growing

Well, It's been an interesting week! It started out pretty bad, but eventually worked it's way back up. If you want to skip to the fun part, scroll past the first few paragraphs, haha :P

I've had something on my mind for a looooong time, and just haven't had the guts to confront it... I've been pretty darn stupid. I won't go into detail, but basically I did some things last semester with Tanner that I'm not proud of. Anyway, I was reading from "The Miracle of Forgiveness" by Spencer W. Kimball, and I realized that I needed to change... I'd been procrastinating the day of my repentance. After I read until almost 2am, I decided to pray. I haven't prayed in a looong time, because... I knew that Heavenly Father knew what I had done... I just didn't want to talk with Him about it, and I as sure as heck didn't want to ask for any favors!!! Readers...I felt... SOOOO AWFUL. I don't think I've EVER felt that bad. I just laid there on my bed, bawling into my pillow (what do you know, I CAN cry, hahaa ;)). Everything that I had done wrong and hadn't repented for, came back in a flood of memories that I had been trying to suppress. I couldn't go to sleep that night, I maybe got a couple restless hours somewhere in there, but I decided to go talk to my Bishop the next day. I couldn't help but cry while I was confessing to him... It was harder than I thought. It's funny how when you sin, you keep reasoning with yourself that it's not THAT big of a deal... but it is!!! I now know that whenever I see myself starting to do that, I have to stop, backtrack, and figure things out, because that's Satan's doing. Anyway... the Bishop told me to keep reading The Miracle of Forgiveness, read my scriptures everyday, keep fulfilling my calling to the best of my ability, and pray as often as I can... and I've been working on it.

I have a radio that's in the bathroom that is always playing music, but I got home and changed it to the church music station, and it's stayed on that channel ALL WEEK! My roommates have just left it where it is. I also enjoy reading the scriptures more... there's SO much stuff that applies to me (and everyone else too) and I feel like highlighting every verse! I love the scriptures! After that, I decided to go on a run from my place down towards Wal-Mart, but I found a cool bike trail, so took that, which led to an abandoned train on the nearby tracks. Nobody was around, so I climbed up a little ladder on top of one of the train cars (like the cowboys did it) and just sat up there... I prayed again, for about an hour or so... until the Rexburg wind started to get really cold. It was freezing, but I didn't want to leave... for once I was away from the world... couldn't even hear any cars. Then... as I was bowed down, I felt a hand on my back. A warm hand that seemed to sweep away the cold. As tears streamed down from my face, I turned around... no one was there. But I felt our Savior's love. I know he loves me. I know he loves you. It made me want to try to be the best that I can be. Soooo, when I finally got home, I decided that one thing that I could change right then, was my music that I listen to. It has a big impact on my mood, and so I decided to go through all of my songs on iTunes and delete everything that had bad language or that was inappropriate. Guess what?!?! I only have 183 songs left... HA! Time to start collecting music again :P

Moving on to a "lighter" topic (haha), this weekend was a blast!!! Have you ever played Fugitive? Awesome way to blow some time on a Friday night when curfew isn't until 1am!!! Anyway, we got about 35-40 people to meet up at the Stake Center (right next to the Temple) to play. Four of those people had cars. Our mission: To get from the Stake Center to Broulim's as fast as possible without getting caught by the people in the cars. I got caught. Next: To get from Broulim's to Craigo's Pizza. I got caught. Third and final mission: To get from Craigo's back up to the Stake Center. Mind you, it's pitch black, and uphill. I decided to team up with my FHE brothers this time since my roommates proved to not be very fast, or very sneaky the previous two rounds. HAHAHAHAAA :) So, we take the long way to get there... the long LOOOONG way!!! We ran though residential areas (including backyards in order to avoid all possible roads), jumped FOUR chain-link fences, hopped into countless bushes to hide as cars drove by, sprinted from shady spot to shady spot, army crawled across grassy fields, UNTIL 45 minutes later made it. Turns out, it was a good thing I went with the guys... only 8 people made it... to which I was the only girl. But I was exhausted!!! Boys run fast!!! HAhaaaaa :D

I went Mini-golfing on Saturday night, as well as playing some Foosball and Pool. Church was really good too. So there you have it... my week in a nutshell!

(Said like Colonel Klink) Dis-smissed!!! -Carolyn

Catching Up...

Okie Dokie. I'm not sure where to start. Haha... umm, so the week of Finals was interesting! NOT. It sucked, but fortunately, I didn't have a test in like, two of my classes, so that was a party :) My final grades ended up being two A's, two B's, and two C's... not awesome, but better than I expected. So, I left Rexburg on a Thursday morning... I drove down to Provo, and was there until the following Monday. I spent most of my time that weekend with my sister Katie and her kids... that was awesome! We went to a park and also to Thanksgiving Point, where we saw lots and lots of farm animals. Also, I got some instruction from Matt as how to cook more dinner foods... he's taken it upon himself to show me how to cook every time I come to visit, and how to purchase certain foods... I've learned quite a lot!!!

The left one is my mom and Megan checking out the draft horses and all their gear. The right one was taken riiiight after Brax decided to spill all the little food cards all over, haha.
 

 The left one is a pregnant cow named Millie. The right one is Megan and Brax pettin' a little pony.




 


 

After the people working there milked Millie, Tristan wanted to try it out himself.










It gets better though: Wendy's parents bought her a plane ticket to return to Hawaii for school, but she decided that she's not going back to Hawaii... she's going to BYU-I instead. So she had to use this plane ticket before the end of the year, and convinced her parents that she should check out campus here (and maybe just come a week early to hang out with me, haha). Therefore, on monday, I drove back to Idaho Falls to pick wendy up at the airport there, and then we drove back down to North Ogden to stay with her brother, Lane. We stayed with him and his wife for 3 days, then in Sandy with her brother, Mike for 2 days, and finally 2 more days at my Mom's house back in Provo. That was pretty much an awesome week!!! We went to an Airforce Base museum, the Zoo, hiked the "Y", rode some Go-karts, played Miniature Golf, went to Temple Square, played some Arcade Games, went shopping at REAL MALLS, hung out with family, and got LOST ALL OVER UTAH! Hahaha... we had some sketchy vehicles that we drove as well. All I have to say is that I-15 and I have some good and bad memories.

The left one is me letting Wendy get ahead so I could take a picture... really, she had the suckiest car ever, hahaa!!! the right one is Wendy again... goofing off at the Zoo's gift shop.

 



 

The one above is Chan goofing off... looking Asian. The one to the right is the three of us :)














We met up with our friend Chantilli while we were in Utah, so she ended up coming to the zoo with us, and also came to Temple Square. Holy cow, we took a full tour of the Conference Center... it's amazing!!! The sun was setting over the Salt Lake valley while we were on the roof of the conference center, and it was so peaceful. We did a lot of fun things that week, but that was definitely one of my favorites. It's amazing how simple spiritual experiences in your life can really help you to re-focus on what's really important! Oh, to finish that off, we went to IHOP... I don't care if some people think that that place is trashy, that's pretty much my favorite place to eat, haha... among others.

The next Monday was when my mom drove us back up to Rexburg to go back to school, where Wendy stayed at our apartment until Thursday morning, when she had to catch a ride back to the airport. My roommates and I decided to sneak her into this semester's iNight... we sumo wrestled... we tied. Hard to believe, right?!?! Hahaa... i was proud of myself :) We also did a little rock climbing, aaaaand SPEED DATING!!! Yeah, that was a little awkward at times... haha... Wendy did NOT like it. Pansy. :D

Then there's this past week. It hasn't been super eventful, but there's been a few highlights. We went to our ward's opening social... which was going bowling at the REX... AGAIN. Anyway, we met our new FHE brothers, who really are awesome guys. I don't know how we've lucked out for two semesters in a row. We got along so well right off the bat, and we were laughing and having loads of fun, and soon people from other groups came over to our table just to chill. It's cool :) We invited them over to dinner last night... I made fajitas! That's right... I can cook if I try! Aaaanyway, did I tell you guys what classes I'm taking? I can't remember, but I scheduled all of my classes for T,Th... which means I have NO classes on M,W,F. Sweet? Heck Yes! There is one catch though, in order to get all the credits I need, I have to take two online courses. Poopie. OH! I almost forgot to tell you all... I got re-called as a Gospel Doctrine teacher... I wasn't super excited, but I think I'm a little more comfortable with it now. I must be doing something right, because I've had a completely full classroom for several weeks running :) Yesterday, I used a baseball bat and some bubble wrap as part of an object lesson... that was a good time. Oh, and I LOVE STADIUM SINGING... it's gonna be our Sunday tradition... Traditiooooooon! Tradition! Tradition! (That last part was me singing a Fiddler on the Roof song).

 That is all.