Una manzana

Today I ate an apple. That probably doesn't sound very exciting. But it was! This is why:

1. I actually only ate half an apple.

2. This apple was offered to me by a classmate.

3. He offered it to me in Spanish.

4. By that I mean he spoke Spanish, although we were in Spanish class too.

5. He divided that apple in half personally before offering me half.

6. He divided it by ripping it apart with his bare hands.

7. Yeah.

It was cool. And it tasted good too.

A Tender Mercy

I thought I'd just share a very simple tender mercy of the Lord today. I'm using just the initial of the sister's name in this story. I decided to go the temple this afternoon. I went, and I had the thought "T works at the temple on Saturdays." T is a sister in my ward, and more specifically, in my Relief Society. I didn't really think I'd see her, but I knew she was there. I did initiatory, so there were three temple workers involved in that. After I finished the first round, the shift changed and so I had new workers. Sure enough, T appeared among them. I was a little surprised that it would work out that way, but at the same time, I wasn't at all. I felt like the Lord had blessed me with that, but I couldn't quite pin why it was important to me. It really wasn't a huge thing. But as I thought about why it meant something to me, I had the thought that God knows me and everything about me, and just as He knows me, He knows each and every one of the sisters in my Relief Society. And if He can do something as simple as put T in the same part of the temple as me, He can and will help me to know what I need to know and do what I need to do to serve His daughters. I hope that makes sense. I'm still having a hard time putting it into words, but very simply put, God loves us and He knows us. His hand is in our lives. I originally planned to go to the temple Friday night, then Saturday morning, then Saturday night, then ended up going Saturday afternoon. Just the right time. Everything will work out. God is good.

Homework.

Yesterday I had a pretty fun assignment to copy a user interface as nearly as possible, with buttons and stuff...the buttons don't actually have to work, but make it look real. I think I did a decent job. I think I took this screen pic before I made some final changes, but still it gives a good idea. Mine is on top and the real thing is on the bottom. Not too shabby.

Okay, well enough fun and games. Off to read 200 pages of Woman's Exponent. I'm sure I'll be writing more on that later. Hint: it'll probably have to do with polygamy. Yeah. You're excited now, aren't you?

I Need a Little Study Break

Having spent the better part of the last two hours looking through articles in The Deseret News from 1880-1881, I need a break. Might as well blog, right? I know a few of my faithful readers have been waiting...

I've been pretty busy since school started. Besides the obvious responsibilities that come with school, I have a new calling. Let me tell you a funny story.

I went to church the Sunday before school started, and was asked if I could meet with the Bishop. Sure! So I waited after church until it was my time. While waiting, a friend started speculating what I was going to be called as. We had a Relief Society president already, so she guessed 1st Counselor. I hadn't really considered that, but it was possible. So I went in to meet with the Bishop. He started by asking what my semester was going to be like. So I told him. After he got the information he asked for, he sat back, paused, and then asked, "How much of a challenge are you up for?" I thought, You already have a RS president. What could be more challenging than that? He continued to tell me that he felt that the Lord wanted me to be...a Relief Society president. Um...what? You already have one. She was called last week. Turns out, we're having two Elders Quorums and two Relief Societies in our ward. And I accepted the call to serve as president of RS group 2.

As you might imagine, I was slightly stunned. The ward clerk, a friend of mine, laughed at me a little when I came out. He was rather amused by the situation. Can't blame him. So that's the big adventure I've begun this semester as well. And I love it so far. I've made a significant effort to meet everybody in my Relief Society (and a whole lot of other people as well) and I almost know everybody's names. It's really exciting, because often I have a hard time with names...or rather remembering faces to attach the names to. So God is good. He qualifies those He calls, even making it possible to remember names and faces. He gives us what we need. It would have been so easy for me to become very self-absorbed this semester, just doing my homework and becoming a hermit. But now I can't, and I love that. I will be so much happier this way. It's great. Life is great. I love it.

And perhaps in the future I'll share the gems I'm finding in my Deseret News research. Because they're great too.

un semestre nuevo

I feel like I have a ton to write, but some of it I'm not at liberty to discuss just yet. Soon though. For now, I'll give you the run down of my schedule this semester. I work Monday through Friday from 8 to about noon. It's kind of nice to start the day with something familiar. Except yesterday was kind of crazy. I had a special project to do for one of the full time employees, which wasn't that complicated really, but it took a few tries to get it right. Then I do receiving logs twice each morning, and they index themselves into the database, and we just check them to make sure they're accurate. Well the setting that lets them index themselves wouldn't work, so I just had to scan them into an inbasket and leave it at that. I thought we'd have to index them by hand. I didn't have time to try though. Turns out that doing it by hand wouldn't work either and my coworker had to have the IS people look at it and see if they couldn't fix it. I hope they did, otherwise this next week will be super crazy too.

On MWF, I have Methods and Strategies in TESOL. Basically we learn how to teach English as a second language. My teacher is from New Zealand, so I love her. She's funny and I enjoy listening to her voice. Haha. So I think that class will be good. We're starting off with a group project. Hopefully that goes well.

On Monday, I have Judaism and the Gospel. It seems like it will be an interesting class. It's kind of nice to have just once a week (and because Labor Day is next week, I don't have it again for a while). I'll certainly still have to work hard in it, and there's quite a bit of reading, but it sounds interesting at least.

On TTh, I have my advanced writing GE, which is writing about religion. If I have to write academically, it might as well be about religion. There is too much reading in my opinion. I'm not an English major. Blech.

I also have a class that is basically computer programming. I didn't quite get that from the description of the class, so it was kind of a shock and scare, but I actually find it quite interesting. It might turn out to be a fave. We'll see. I got to use pseudocode to make a program for a robot to do certain stuff and it was really fun to think through and get it to work. I was so excited, and it looked like I was playing a game. (See picture above.)

Every day at 4 I have Spanish. It's killer to have it so late in the day, but it's okay. I know a couple people in the class–one from my old class, and one from my ward, and I've made another friend, so that helps. I wasn't sure about my teacher at first. She didn't smile at all the first day. That was worrisome. But she seems like she'll be alright. Sure, probably not as good as my last teacher, but it'll be hard to measure up to him. He really changed my view and attitude about learning Spanish. See this post. It actually doesn't talk about him as much as it should. He was great.

So this is a crazy semester. But it's going to be great. I'm determined. If I can stay on top of everything (there's the challenge), I think I'll enjoy it and learn a lot. If I can't stay on top of the readings especially, well...it'll be interesting. Several of my teachers do quizzes. I kind of hate that. Oh well.

Here's to a great semester...and I'll tell you soon what other awesome stuff I've got coming my way. It'll be crazy!