Life Block

I’m sure that everyone has heard of the term “Writer’s Block”. Dictionary.com defines it as, “a usually temporary condition in which a writer finds it impossible to proceed with the writing of a novel, play, or other work.”

Because I consider myself more of a songwriter than any other kind of writer, I think “Songwriter’s Block” usually suits me best when inspiration isn’t coming. But today I would like to propose something a little different that I feel is most fitting. I realize that this might come across as really cheesy but I’m just going to come out and say it…I think I am currently suffering from a severe case of “Life Block”.

In other words: I don’t know what the HECK I am doing with myself. Sometimes I want to write music. Sometimes I want to paint. Or reupholster furniture. Or become a photographer. I want to learn Spanish. I want to travel. Sometimes I want to be a social worker. Sometimes I don’t like the idea of that at all.

Let me illustrate just one part of my Life Block. I love babies. They are adorable. Sometimes when I am at the mall I see little babies with big flower headbands and cute, chubby little faces smiling at me over their mother’s shoulder and I want one SO BADLY. My co-worker needed a babysitter last night and I volunteered quite excitedly. He has a four-year-old boy, a two-year-old girl and a baby who is only a couple of months old. The baby was relatively good. She cried a bit and I had to feed her, change her diaper, etc. That wasn’t difficult. What was difficult was holding her while I was helping the others get what they needed, keeping them occupied and the baby happy. The older two had so much energy. While I was there I was picturing myself as their mother. It was an exhausting thought. Suddenly I was grateful that I got to go home to a quiet house and sleep through the night without having to get up to take care of a baby.

My point? Maybe it is this: the grass is always greener on the other side. Or maybe it is simply this: we don’t always know what we want. I usually don’t know what I want.

I gave a lesson in Relief Society a few weeks ago and was able to choose whatever topic I wanted to speak on. I thought of my own life struggles and questions and went from there. I ended up giving a lesson on “Living A Consecrated Life”…which also could have been titled, “How to Survive a Quarter-Life Crisis by Heeding the Lord’s Prophet and Apostles”.

Maybe you have had Life Block too. I keep a quote book. Here are a few life quotes that help me get through moments when I have Life Block:

“With even your strongest faith, God will not always reward you immediately according to your desires. Rather, God will respond with what in His eternal plan is best for you, when it will yield the greatest advantage. Be thankful that sometimes God lets you struggle for a long time before that answer comes. That causes your faith to increase and your character to grow.”

Richard G Scott

“In suffering we may in fact be nearer to God than we’ve ever been in our entire lives.”

Jeffrey R. Holland

“Patience is far more than simply waiting for something to happen-patience requires actively working toward worthwhile goals and not getting discouraged when results don’t appear instantly or without effort.

“There is an important concept here: patience is not passive resignation nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can-working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!”

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

“Ask God to put you just where he wants you, and to tell you what he wants you to do, and feel that you are on hand to do it.”

Brigham Young

“The only way to get through life is to laugh your way trough it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.”

Marjorie Pay Hinckley

“I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not.”

President Thomas S. Monson

“God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted, and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and the glories of creation.”

President Thomas S. Monson

Don’t give up and don’t get discouraged! That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. Sometimes what I want to do is drop everything and move to a foreign country…to stay for a long, long time. If you feel so inclined to make a donation to this noble cause of self-discovery and travel please send a check made out to Emily Peet at 781 North 1050 East, Provo, UT 84606. (Joking of course…or am I?)

Why I love my brother...

(The most recent picture I have of the two of us...eeek)

I love my brother, Aaron, because:

1. He randomly called me up and asked if he could come down to Provo and hang out with me for the weekend. (I said “yes”, of course and he rode from Rexburg to Provo last Friday to stay at my house.

2. After I picked him up, he pulled out his Ukulele in the car and started playing/singing the whole car ride to my house.

3. He has a very witty sense of humor and made me laugh the whole time he was here.

4. He changed my guitar strings for me!

5. It makes me laugh every time that he visits me because my ward ALWAYS thinks that he is my boyfriend. We sat next to one another in sacrament meeting and then after church he told me that in the Priesthood session he stood and introduced himself and a member of the Bishopric said, “Ohhhh…okay we had bets going whether you were her brother or boyfriend.”

There are many more reasons. I will name one more in this blog.

6. After I dropped him off at his friend’s house to go back to Rexburg, I went straight to the Marriott Center for the CES broadcast with Elder M. Russell Ballard. I didn’t have time to meet up with anyone because I had just enough time to get to the Center before it started. So I went in and found a seat in the bleachers behind the choir. I was happy to be there in the presence of an apostle but I started to feel really lonely. I started thinking, “I am here in a room full of people and I came alone? How incredibly lame!” I let loneliness creep in. I tried to shrug it off, then reached into my bag for my pen and pad of paper so that I could take notes. That is when I saw a message written on the first page of my note pad. It said, “Dear Emily, You are awesome. I love you! Sincerely, Aaron Peet”. And I couldn’t help it…I started crying right there in the middle of people that I didn’t even know ( I realize that I am kind of a baby...). I cried because it meant so much to me in that moment. And for that I love my brother! Thank you, Aaron, for your note!

A little bit of self-realization...

Since before I can remember I have had certain dreams. Dreams that may or may not come true for me in my life. A time of grieving has followed that acceptance. And realizing that life will not be everything that I dreamt it would be has been a process.

I have spent an awful lot of time recently in prayer and contemplation of what exactly my life is worth and why exactly I feel so unsatisfied with where I am and what I am doing. I have come to some realizations about myself that I would like to share.

I think I have been spending too much time waiting. Waiting to mold myself around some life that would appear before me. Something perfect. Yes, I think I have been waiting for some perfect plan that I could wrap myself around and therefore become a perfect person. And somehow I have thought that this perfection would come as a product of waiting for a perfect moment.

Looking around me, I see no perfection and I am realizing that there is no perfect plan headed my way. Waiting, therefore, has left me paralyzed to a degree and has prevented me from really living.

I don’t mean to say that my dreams are not good or righteous. I don’t mean to say that it is a bad thing to make goals or decisions about what you want in life. I am saying and beginning to believe that such dreams can become an obstacle. If we obsess over them, worry over them and spend too much of our time dreaming about them, we miss the moment that we are in. And this very moment that we are in is really all that we have. It is all that we have. Without living today it is as if we do not exist. Without living today we would be a memory or a dream but nothing real.

You may have made this discovery long ago. I thought that I knew these things. Only over the past few days have I really felt what this means for me.

There are moments when I want to morn and regret my past or opportunities that are gone. Things that I desperately wish I could take back or things that I wish so badly I had known earlier in my life; mistakes that could have been avoided if I had known. There have been moments when I should have reached out to others but didn’t. There have been moments when I have let real love slip through my fingers.

I often find myself regretful. It is easy to look back and let memories take over, robbing me of joyous experiences that are all around me.

The point of all of this is that I am tired of waiting and I am tired of regretting.

And so, childhood dreams aside. The hope of marriage and children and my own home aside and the possibility that these things may not ever come to me in this life, I have a decision to make. What do I want? What do I want to be and do? Or see or experience? What can the world give me or what can I give it?

I do not yet know the answers to these fabulous questions. What I do know is that I am going to figure out the answers and then I am going to go and do the things that I want to do. That’s right, I’m going to do what I want and grab hold of every bit of joy that I can because that, my friend, is living in the moment. What lies before me is opportunity. A whole wide world of opportunity for me to figure out what I will be.

Instead of expecting to arrive at some destination of perfection, I hope that I will be aware of what is going on around me and understand what part I want to play this world.

Nothing Great

Why hello there! Today I listened to one of my favorite songs...of. all. time. I hadn't listened to it in a few months and almost forgot that it is one of my favorites. I thought I would share the lyrics with you. They are written by a band called Late Tuesday. My cousin Marci introduced me to the band years ago. They are a Christian group from Bellingham, WA. I am in love with the lyrics. If you like them, look up the song on itunes because it's even more powerful with the music. The song is called "Nothing Great".

Nothing Great-Late Tuesday

Same old stuff i have to do

over and over and over again

each day it seems

Nothing great to show off my abilities and my worth

Show me my purpose

in the midst of this routine

Because I am trying to understand why I am here at all

with so many guesses and

too many simple answers

could it be that life is not what I think at all?

It's not the big things

but the ordinary in-between

and

Maybe this is not the time to be waiting for

any better reason to be glad that I'm alive

at all

So help me take this day

each simple thing that I must do to

bring glory to you.

And I could search out a lot of ways

to keep me doing things

an attempt to make my mark

but then maybe I'd miss the mark of your desire for me.

So I will trust in you

and in everything I do

do it

as

for

you.

And I am learning to understand why I am here at all.

There's no need for guesses when

you are the simple answer.

And you show me that life is not what i think at all

it's not the big things but the ordinary in-between

and maybe this is not the time

to be waiting for

any better reason to be glad that I'm alive

at all

so help me take this day

each simple thing that I must do

to bring glory to you.

We can take each day

each simple thing that we must do

to bring glory to you.

So I thought I would write about a bunch of little things that happened this week…nothing big :)

Cupcakes: So once I experimented and mixed pudding in with my cake batter and baked it and it turned out AMAZING. So I decided this week that I would be a good little visiting teacher and bake cupcakes for the girls that I visit. I even bought these cute pink and purple cupcake liners with white polka dots and borrowed the pans from my neighbor. I mixed pudding in with the cake batter and baked the cupcakes and….they sunk in the middle!! It looked like a big crater was in the center of every one of my cupcakes. Well…they tasted great but I was too embarrassed about them to bring them to anyone. So we kept them around and whenever people came over and asked what they were I pretended that they were supposed to be like that and we started calling them "Crater Cakes". Bahaha. I'm a dork.

She & Him Concert: If you haven't heard of the band She & Him, it is comprised of the actress/singer Zooey Deschanel from the movie 500 Days of Summer and the musician M. Ward. They are just fabulous. I went with some good friends and then ran into some familiar faces while I was there. Free concert. It was a hippie fest. I loved it. There were so many great food stands there, really culturally diverse and it was hard to choose because I love trying new types of food. I went with Tibetan food and it was sooooo yummy.

Temple: So one night this week I was sitting outside and realized that a beautiful sunset was about to take place and without really thinking I grabbed my scriptures, jumped into my car and drove to the Provo Temple which is approximately 3 minutes away from my house. (I know, I know, it's amazing to have it so close to me). I just sat on a bench outside and meditated. Ah it was so peaceful and I just love the temple! I wish I could live inside of it. Seriously.

Computer: I bought a Macbook! I have been contemplating this purchase for quite a while now and finally decided that I was just going to do it. It was the most expensive item I have ever purchased, except for my tuition, of course. LIfe is too short not to have some of the things that you want :) And I got a great deal on it at the BYU Bookstore. I can't stop using it!!

Sick: I caught a cold this week which seems to be going around. So on my day off I didn't feel like going anywhere or doing anything. But I didn't' want to just sit around at home. So I deep cleaned my house. I'm talking, scrubbing floors and showers, washing walls, using WD 40 in various places, re arranging furniture and pictures on the walls, pulling out the screw driver to do some repairs, etc. I realized during this excursion that I become attention deficit when I take on a big project. I would start one thing and then when I would get up to get something from another room, I would notice something else that needed to be done. So I would start doing that. And the cycle continued until I was cleaning all of the rooms a little at a time. I'm glad that no one else was here because the process probably would have been annoying. But, it looked way good when I was done! I also discovered that the smell of WD 40 reminds me of my dad :) Being home alone all day was strange, and it got me thinking, "Is it bad to be alone? Would I start to be weird if I was home alone all of the time? What about stay-at-home mothers who only have little babies around who can't talk? Do they start going crazy?". I literally did not have any human contact until my room mate came home at 11pm. I listened to music a lot but I spent quite a bit of time in silence lol. It made me think of the song "It isn't good to be alone, it isn't good. So if you find someone to love you really should…." But I dunno, is too much time alone bad? Just curious what you think.

Work: Most of the time my job just flat-out rocks. Today I got to work at 6 am and woke up the girls (I work in a residential treatment center, in case you didn't know already), the got dressed, grabbed breakfast and then I drove 10 of them in a big white van north to a military camp where we did all kinds of cool things. We broke into teams and had to overcome different obstacles…and then we repelled down a 75 ft wall! I was SO excited to do it. I got harnessed in and then while I walked up the stairs to the top of the wall I got nervous. Then the military guy told me it was my turn and i changed my mind and wanted to go back down the stairs but he grabbed onto my harness and hooked me up to the rope anyway...laughing at me! And he pulled me over to the edge. So i just did it even though I was scared out of my mind.

Well that was my week! It was a good one.

American Idol/Austin, TX

Many of you have been asking about my trip to Austin, TX and my American Idol audition so I decided to blog about it :)

I flew from Salt Lake City into Austin with a lay over in Denver, and took my first taxi from the airport to the North Austin Plaza (it felt wrong to get in the back seat of a car with a male driver that I didn't know at 1am...but he was a talker and I learned all about the years he spent as a bouncer in a bar before he got into the taxi business lol. It was strangely fun to travel by myself...is that weird? I loved being in the airport by myself because I kind of like people watching. And I had lots of time to sit and think and write in my journal. Nowhere I needed to be.

My good friend Mandy Cooper drove down from Dallas to stay with me and go to the audition with me. It was great catching up with her! Her husband, Geoff, came to stay for a few days with us as well and it was great meeting him.

The Audition:
Monday the 9th we went to the Frank Erwin Center and registered for the audition. Some people arrived there at 3am to stand in line! We got there at 9am and walked right up to the counter to get our wristbands and tickets. So our timing was perfect! We had come prepared to wait in line all day but it took, literally, 5 minutes.

We spent Tuesday shopping and having a grand time.

Wednesday the 11th we took our time getting there because we wanted to miss the crowd and were not interested in standing in line (especially because we already had our seat assigned to us). Some people, we found out, had arrived at 11pm the night BEFORE the audition, which was a completely ridiculous thing to do. We got there at 8am and walked right into the building, and right to our seats. No lines. We had fabulous seats, right in the middle, close to the front. They started the process about 10 minutes after we arrived, so again, fabulous timing!

Ryan Seacrest was there and they spent some time filming the crowd...they would tell us to all scream and throw our hands in the air and flash our cameras while they filmed. Then they instructed us to shout phrases in unison like, "Everything's hotter in Texas!", etc. They pulled a couple of people from the crowd who were dressed like cowboys and moved them to the front near the camera.

After they filmed us for a while, they set up 10 booths in the middle of the auditorium. At each booth were 2 judges. They called down one section of the auditorium at a time and lined us up. 4 people lined up in front of each booth at a time. Each of the 4 people sang 10-30 seconds of a song. Then after everyone sang, they would tell you if you made it or not. Then you would exit the auditorium through a "winners" door or a "non winners" door which exited the building.

While waiting in my seat to audition I went in the hall to use the bathroom and...oh my goodness...it was a crazy mess of singing and fixing hair in the hallway. I don't know how anyone even heard themselves singing, it was so loud.

There were several people who wore 'crazy' costumes. And every single one of them made it through the "winner" door lol. There were a lot of very very talented people there so it was really fun to hear all of them sing.

While sitting and waiting to audition I debated with my friend, Mandy, whether I should sing "I can't make you love me" by Bonnie Rait or "Feeling good" by Michael Buble. So I was practicing them for her. While singing "Feeling good" a guy turned to me and said, "That was sexy" haha. So I decided to go with that one.

I did not get to walk through the "winners" door :) But like I said, I don't feel bad about it at all because there were so many talented people there and not all of them made it through. It was a really fun experience though! And I am very glad I did it.

I met a guy at my hotel who did make it through so look for him on tv! His name is Cory Levoy.

I got to spend an extra day in Austin though and did lots of cool stuff: Ate at an outdoor Indian restaurant called the "G'raj Mahal", shopped at some awesome vintage stores and a great music store where I bought two new cds by "Warpaint" and "The XX", saw the movie "Flipped" (quite possibly a new favorite), and watched all the bats come out from under the bridge at dusk.

Anyway...it was a great trip! It made me want to travel more.

Here is a video of one of the new bands that I've discovered: The XX. This song is called Basic Space.

Home for the 4th of July!

I was able to take a trip home to Washington to see a lot of my family! It was a long drive! I drove (4 hours) to Rexburg and picked up my sister, Molly, then we drove another 14 hours from Rexburg to Port Townsend. The drive was actually really fun and it was nice to spend time together.

You know how sometimes while spending a long period of time in a confined space you get really restless and tired, and everything starts to get funny? Well, that happened to us on the way there and again on the way back. When my sister and I get together things can get kind of out-of-control. She is one of the funniest people I have ever met. We actually had to pull over the car because I was laughing so hard that it was dangerous for me to be on the road and we were both about to pee our pants. I've never been so close to actually peeing my pants from laughter (or anything else).

I'm surprised that we survived the drive. Not only were we laughing uncontrollably almost the whole way, but I tried to teach my sister how to drive a manual transmission in hopes that I could get a break from driving here and there. Although she did drive for 2 hours on our way up to WA, I did not get any rest because I was hyper attentive to what she was doing haha. We almost died a couple of times and one attempt to exit the freeway ended in tears. But she practiced while we were home and she is pretty darn good at it now :)

Our family get-togethers are quite an experience. My family is awesome. And very funny to be around. All of my mom's parents and her siblings and their families were there. We are very competitive. We usually play a softball game but this year we played kickball instead. We had our annual egg toss, which my grandpa is in charge of and very passionate about.

We have cool traditions. In 1995 we made a time capsule. We all filled out a piece of paper, answering questions about our likes and dislikes and where we saw ourselves in the future. i think I was 9 at this time. Then we gathered up for Thanksgiving of 2003, opened our time capsule and read our papers out loud to one another. Then we added to the time capsule that year. Well this year we opened it up and read our papers from both years and it was so much fun! In 1995 I was obsessed with American Girl Dolls and that's all that I wrote about.

Whenever I go home I feel like I'm 10 years old and I feel like all of my maturity goes out the window. Sunday morning my sister and I woke up and raced to the bathroom, pushing each other out of the way and I won of course because I'm the older sister. And then we had our classic wrestling match with my cousin, Marci, on my parent's bed. And then we drive through down town Port Townsend with our windows rolled down and blast all of our old music that we used to listen to (mostly country and music we would never pick up now, except for the sake of re-living old memories).

I hadn't been to my home ward since I gave my homecoming talk last June so it was fun to be there and see everyone. Singles wards are fun but people come and go and it's nice to go to my home ward where people stay! It's like seeing family. I was expecting the Bishop to embarrass me in some form or another (he likes to do that). My family walked into church a couple of minutes before the opening song and as soon as I sat down in my seat, my bishop motioned for me to come up on the stand. I figured he was going to ask me to speak (because he has done that to me before at the last minute) but instead he asked me to lead the music haha. I had a lot of family visiting that Sunday so I had lots of people making funny faces at me while I was up there...

I got to spend some quality time with my two younger brothers, Anker and Max. We played music in our "music hut". Anker is amazing at playing the bass guitar and Max is incredible at the drums. It was SO fun. I just sang and played whatever ditty I could on the guitar and they would play right along with it.

I feel like Anker and I really connected. On Sunday, before church, we were sitting on the couch together waiting to leave and he said, "Hey, have you ever thought about how weird eye brows are?" Hahahaha...I said, "What do you mean?" and he continued, "I mean, just look at them. Stare at my eye brows. It's like a patch of fur above our eyes. Why do we have them?"

I also got to see a really cool project that my dad has been working on. For the past couple of months, whenever I would talk to my mom on the phone I would ask her what Dad was up to and she would always say something like, "Oh, he's just out in the garage working on his totem poles." And I would always laugh because it sounded like a crazy thing for my dad to be doing. While I was home I heard the real story about it and it is so awesome! The stake scout troop asked him if he would make them a "gateway" for a trip they are taking at the end of this month. My dad took on the job. Then he found out that they wanted totem poles as a part of their gateway. He had never done any kind of carving before but he still felt good about doing the project. So, he read a bunch of books about carving and Native American artwork and even went to watch some "Master Carvers" do their thing and then he went to work. Someone donated a huge cedar tree which they cut in half and he has been carving two totem poles and they are absolutely beautiful. All of the characters on the totem pole have spiritual meaning behind them. He even made most of the tools he used for the carving. While I was home he started painting them which was fun to watch.

It was just so nice and really refreshing to be with my family because I just love them so much. I also just love the Pacific Northwest, (specifically Northwestern Washington). The trees, the ocean, the sailing, the overcast weather, fresh seafood, the hippies, the art, the music. It's all so wonderful. My skin was sooo hydrated while I was there! Utah is dry. But that's okay because I feel good about living here right now. But one day...one day! I will move back :) Probably.

I don't want to wait until Christmas for my two front teeth...

Yup that's right...I lost em. Both of em this time. Three years ago I lost my left front tooth due to a volleyball incident at BYU-Idaho when my teammate elbowed me in the mouth. It was tragic. I actually had fun acting like a hick though and was able to laugh it off with my friends. I went through cycles of hysterical laughter and sobbing. This is my brother's first reaction to my missing front tooth:



I know you want to see a face shot so here ya go:




Classic.

This time wasn't quite so fun. I was innocently playing a game of Ultimate Frisbee at a Family Home Evening activity when I took a hit in the face!!!!! And it knocked both of my front teeth out! Hahaha...oh my. They took me straight to an emergency dentist and they gave me some ugly, yellow temporary teeth. They look a little like the teeth that you would wear around Halloween time. I haven't taken any pictures and I don't really plan to haha. So you can use your imagination on this one.

My poor smile!

On top of that I scared my roommate, Vanae, when I sent her a text message while she was at work which said that I was headed into the ER. I forgot to tell her why. So when she got off of work she frantically went to the ER looking for me. She never found me cuz I wasn't there. Oops. When I finally was reunited with her I cried like a baby on her shoulder (Thanks Vanae <3 ).

So, my luck hasn't been so great in the 'keeping all my teeth' business...but they are gonna fix me up real good and I might still be cute. :)

'Do It Yourself' Girl...

I've always liked making things. I enjoy pretty much anything to do with the arts. I especially love taking something that most people would throw away and turning it into something beautiful.

My mom introduced me to "garage sailing" when I was little and I would tag along while she and her sisters spent their summer Saturdays 'garage sale hopping'. What can I say? I'm a chip off the ole block and I like to find good deals. More recently, I've become a craigslist addict.

I've recently moved into a cute little yellow house with my friend Vanae and needed to buy some furniture, do some interior designing, etc. So here are a few things that I've done around the house along with some other projects that I've undertaken...

So I bought this mirror at at garage sale for $5 and it had a nasty brown plastic frame that was supposed to look like wood. I spray painted it black. It's so classy :) This is what it looks like on our living room wall...above the SWEET couch that I bought off of craigslist for $20:

I know, I know, it's awesome. Next...

I bought these frames for $0.50 each. They had ugly pictures in them so I took them out and hung them picture-less. Tell me what you think because I like it and I think it's artsy but some people have thought differently...what do you think? tacky? cute? Our wall paper is pretty crazy already so I'm kind of working with what we have here. Ha.

I've made two mosaic mirrors. This is the first one.

And here is the second one...I took old china (most of which I got for free at a yard sale) and smashed it (it was quite fun actually). And then I used tile glue to glue them to the mirror frames then used grout in between the pieces of china. So lovely.

My mom spotted this while we were 'garage sailing' together and bought it for me for like $1 and i spray painted it black. I hang it in a corner on my wall in my room but there was better lighting for me to take a picture of it on the floor :)

My most recently learned skill: Crocheting! The girls at work taught me and I'm making this wicked sweet blanket...it's about halfway finished.

I am also trying out painting. This one i made for my sister, Molly. It's in acrylic on two separate canvas. All of my paintings right now are pretty simple but I like how this one turned out!

This is my most recent project. I bought this antique table from a lady off of craigslist for $3. I like it. It's got character. It definitely needs some fixing up and I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with it. Any ideas?

Well that's it for now! If you have any cool ideas please share!

By Small and Simple Things...

So there are a ton of things on my mind right now! I'm not really sure how this whole "blogging" thing works. Am I supposed to write about everything on my mind? Or should I try to be patient and pace myself and stick to writing one subject at a time? :)

Missionary work is on my mind.

First of all...I've been reading my cousin's (Elder Erick McNerney) emails and they are absolutely inspiring. He is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Baltics. I just keep thinking of my mission and how wonderful it was to be out serving. I hope he doesn't mind that I'm going to quote him right now. I just love the words that he uses here. In his most recent email he said, "Things are going great, and we are working with all patience and love with everyone that has a willingness to hear our message. I've been reflecting on the promises of the Gospel--Salvation and Eternal Life. I've realized while it's something I continue to feel a greater understanding for, it's hard to put it in words. I know that Christ was prepared before the foundation of the world, to save us all from the effects of the fall, and that he submitted to the will of the Father and suffered and died for our sins, and even suffered all things, and was was Resurrected after 3 days. I don't understand how it all happened, or completely why it all happened, except that Our Heavenly Father loves us and has provided wonderful blessings for us (1 Corinthians 2: 9) . It is the plan of our God--our Heavenly Father--and that it the only plan which will bring us Eternal Life. I see more and more, as I study the scriptures, listen to the words of the modern Prophets and Apostles, and Preach the Gospel here in the Baltics, that the Restoration of the Gospel is true, and that the Authority of God must be given by Him...All I know is that I have felt nothing but an increase of Faith, Love and Hope as I have strived to live according to the principles of the Restored Gospel."

What an awesome missionary he must be! I read this and I just get so pumped up! Haha...I love missionary work. It is my favorite thing.

When we share the gospel, we grow and realize so much. I wrote this home from my mission in Tennessee, "In a world full of so much confusion, I am so happy to know that the Lord has restored his gospel to the earth by calling true and living prophets on the earth. I am so glad that he works in an orderly fashion so that we can clearly understand the things that we must do. I know that his church is on the earth and I know that President Thomas S. Monson is his prophet on the earth today. I feel love from him when he speaks and the Holy Ghost bears witness to my soul that the words that he says are from God."

It is such a privilege to be there as someone comes to understand who they are, a child of a loving Heavenly Father and to realize what that means. To me, this video says it all!





I loved waking up every morning, knowing that I was going to do everything I could to be where the Lord needed me that day and to do and say what he wanted me to do and say. I was exhausted but could not have been happier with my life.

I wrote a letter from Tennessee to my ward in Port Townsend, Washington that said this:
"Missionary work is amazing. You can't live the gospel without sharing it with others. If you aren't sharing it then you don't understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. If I could encourage you to do anything, it would be this: Go visit members who haven't been coming to church. Even ones that you don't know. And get to know them. Let them know that they are missed and invite them to church. Offer them a ride. Come to church for everyone else and not for yourself. Don't be afraid to say, 'Hi'. What do yo have to lose? Fear is not of the Lord. Secondly, help the full-time missionaries!!! If any visitors come to church...EVERYONE should attack them with love and friendship so they want to come back! Go with the missionaries to appointments and meet the people they are teaching. Missionaries come and go. So, the members are even more important to missionary work than the missionaries themselves. If there is one thing I've learned since I've been out here, it's how much missionary work I have waiting for me when I get home. There is so much to be done!"

I look at this as an inspired letter to myself. It's so easy to get lost in the business of life and forget how fabulous it is to share the gospel. There are opportunities all around us!

That's all for now :) Sorry to get all preachy on y'all haha but it's what has been on my mind!

Finding Joy in My Journey...

"This is our one and only chance at mortal life—here and now. The longer we live, the greater is our realization that it is brief. Opportunities come, and then they are gone. I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not. I plead with you not to let those most important things pass you by as you plan for that illusive and nonexistent future when you will have time to do all that you want to do. Instead, find joy in the journey—now."
-Thomas S. Monson

When i was serving in the Tennessee Knoxville Mission I was writing a weekly email home to my parents, which was then forwarded to all of my family and friends. Knowing that each email would reach many people who I love, I would do my best to write about and describe all of the wonderful experiences I was having. This weekly email was like a journal for me, full of uplifting things. Somehow, it helped me to "distinguish between what is important and what is not". I noticed the beautiful things around me, and I saw the Lord's hand in my life. I was more focused and dedicated to the work I was doing. My time was never wasted on frivolous things.

Now that I've been home from my mission for nearly a year (yikes!) I catch myself focusing more on the negative aspects of my life rather than all of the wonderful things that really are going on. As much as I hate to admit it...I have also been having a difficult time accomplishing the goals that I've set for myself.

So this blog of mine is an attempt at finding more joy in each day! Like the above quote says, "This is our one and only chance at mortal life." I do not want to waste my time waiting for a future when the time for me to be happy is now! And neither should you :)

This will also be a great way for me to keep in touch with all of you while I am so far away from many people that I love. I'm not sure how often I will be writing on here but I'll shoot for at least once a week!

Love, Emily