I haven't posted in ages, but I decided to go a different route with this blog. Every now and then, I'm going to post about how I feel my Savior's love. This is one feeling that I've been assured of in the past year or so. I know for a fact that I am a daughter of Heavenly Father who LOVES me. I can testify that. And I feel that love through many things.
The House of the Lord in Orlando, FL
I feel my Savior's love when I look at any temple. When I'm inside, I see His love and work being preformed as I am baptized in proxy for my ancestors who did not have the chance to learn the gospel, but are now having that chance in the spirit world. Christ's abounding love floods over me, and I am moved to live His gospel everyday, and be a beacon of that light, the light of Christ. He is my Redeemer, my Savior, my mediator, my light. I want to serve Him.
TOMS shoes gives one pair of shoes to a needy child every pair you buy. These actions can greatly increase the global health and well-being of mankind, seeing that there are millions of people who don't have a pair of shoes and must walk through hazardous circumstances daily. But, this can only happen if a lot of people know about these shoes and this movement. So how do you raise awareness? Well, TOMS believes advertising will do the trick, along with movements that raise awareness of these needy children. One of those movements is called One Day Without Shoes. For one whole day, you simply take off your shoes and experience what these kids go through on a daily basis and to urge other people to become a part of this movement.
Well, here's a brief overview of my adventures with no shoes:
7:00 am Walk into seminary with some disgusted glares
7:45 am Walk into school and stopped by devil woman assistant principal and told to go home or put on shoes
8:00 am Witch lady assistant principal goes to each and every class and tells each and every teacher to write up any students not wearing shoes for defiance
8:45 am Sign a petition to let all willing supporters of One Day Without Shoes actually go without shoes, and proceed to increase my respect for the makers of the petition
9:30 am Sit behind a set of toms, play the toms, wearing a TOMS shirt in band
10:30 am Recruit several people to the cause and join my fellow anti-shoe-ers in enlightening quite a few people, several of which bash us for supporting the cause the way we do
11:00 am Recruit my English teacher to the cause of taking off shoes
12:00 pm Blood-sucking beast assistant principal comes to a compromise of letting us go without shoes only in the auditorium, but not on filthy sidewalks after MANY defiant acts and MANY people arguing with her in the office. She also apologizes for freaking out
12:30 pm Lots of sprinting across the courtyard to avoid getting caught
4:45 pm Continuing to support and stand up for the cause via Facebook
8:00 pm Contemplating this shoe-less day and deciding it was glorious/legendary/rewarding
My very best amigo, Mary Rosalyn, is turning 15! And in tradition, when someone I love has a birthday, here's a list of all the things I like about Mary Rosalyn:
She plays the piano beautifully and with elegance
She has a great relationship with her family members
She has a very good taste in fashion
She loves the outdoors, and all of God's beautiful creations
She has figured out a lot of things that most people have never figured out in their entire lifetime
She is much more deep than the average 15 year old
She is a great Christian
She can whoop some tail in basketball, being an awesome "big girl"
National Geographic is amazing. This month's is super cool, and rather interesting. Me and a friend plan to ditch our careers, forget everyone (only kidding), and carve out a cave in the cliffs below to live in forever. Full article here.
I have a hard time believing this is a real place and this picture is not some wonderful painting, but either way, I'm gonna live there forever once I get married. Yes, family should visit. Often.
I also enjoyed this article. Reindeer really do fly, I'm sure of it.
I know I have really neglected my blog, and my love for blogging. But it happens that I have a super busy life and the limited time I get at home (about 30-60 min not spent sleeping) is reserved for eating, showering, and talking to my family. This is because band is soul-sucking. Anyhoo, I need to catch up either way. So school is pretty great, I'm not learning much though thanks to several terrible teachers hired this year. But I still enjoy my time, I still get to write a lot in English (wrote all about zorbing the other day) and I absolutely love Engineering. For the past week or so we've been drawing and sketching (like isometric and perspective sketching) and I always look forward to that class. Unfortunately, I'm still in dadgum Chorus, but it's getting better, well more like it can be worse. We worked on the song below a little this week, which is strictly acapella .
I've been having an absolutely fantastic time at basketball workouts, we've been playing Ultimate Frisbee, Flag Football, Capture the Flag, Soccer and all kinds of fun stuff for conditioning since we can't really start real practice yet. Ultimate Frisbee is easily the funnest game ever, I would advise everyone to learn how to and go try to play it sometime. It's awesome!
Soon, I will post a video or two of the halftime show, but for now, it's got to get a lot better. We preformed the entire show for the first time last night and it was alright. I really enjoy being on the drum line, and not to be braggy or anything but I play the hardest/loudest and have been told that I have "girl power" with my bass drum. I have also been told that all the other guys on the drum line are weenies. But you didn't hear that from me, this is what I am told. :)
More updates to come soon, Florida State (ranked #5) is playing Oklahoma (#1) today and it's a mega huge game!
I finally finished The Yearling the other day, for my summer reading. It was a really great book, and very interesting if you love the outdoors. One of my plans over the summer was to become more attached to nature, and this definitely helped. It was an amazing book that was based on the beautiful scenery of central Florida and a little boy's views on all parts of life and his journey towards manhood. One of my favorite parts was when Jody and his dad Penny were hunting and happened to be at the perfect time and place to watch the whooping cranes dance right as the sun was going down. It tells about how they caught the beautiful birds doing what's natural to them, and they felt very honored to witness such things. Here's some of my favorite quotes from the book:
"Women ran in breeds, like dogs. Two women could say the same words and the meaning would not be the same, as the bark of two dogs, one menacing and the other friendly." (When Jody was around a very nice lady, very different from his mother.)
"Women were alright when the cooked good things to eat. The rest of the time they did nothing but make trouble." (I totally agree with this, but I wish I could tell Jody that he will quickly get over it, and the girls his age would quickly change to very nice people.)
