That color looks great on you!

"That color is so great on you." "You should wear [color] more often." "I love it when you wear [color]." "[Color] is definitely your color." I hear phrases like these quite frequently. So what color is it that gets this reaction? Blue. Green. Purple. Yellow. Red. Pink. Turquoise. That salmony brick bronze color, whatever it is. You name it. And every time, I smile. Sometimes they say, "You probably get that a lot." And I say, "Yes, yes I do." And then I think, "But not about this color." And people wonder why I can't seem to decide on a favorite color...(it's yellow currently--that's new!) I guess I'm a colorful person. So which color do YOU like on me?

Charity edifieth

I've had so many things I've wanted to post about, but either haven't had the time or haven't made the time, take your pick. I'll still need to tell you about my experiences going out with the sister missionaries, but right now, I want to share something cool I learned as I took some time this afternoon to study my scriptures.
I decided to turn to the Bible Dictionary and read the definition of charity. I then looked up the first scripture listed with it, 1 Cor. 8:1. That's all I got to. I learned a lot from that scripture, or actually two words: charity edifieth.
When I think of being edified, I think of being spiritually filled. But, being linguistically minded, I was interested in learning more about the word. I looked at the footnote, which was an amazing start: builds up, strengthens, establishes, repairs. So charity builds up. Charity strengthens. Charity establishes. Charity repairs. Those are really interesting verbs that I haven't necessarily paired with charity.
It turned to the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) for some more guidance. Edify means to build in its oldest sense, although the religious sense of benefitting us spiritually was also around. But I've never given the term edify that meaning of building, strengthening, supporting, organizing, establishing (all OED definitions). Probably strengthening and supporting would fit my idea of it, but it definitely gave me more insight. And as I looked at all the verbs that go along with edify (and I looked at a lot as I looked at the meanings of each word), every single one fit what Christ has done for us. And charity is his love. Christ builds us up. He strengthens us. He encourages us. He repairs, or heals and saves us. He puts spirit, life, energy, and cheer into us. He establishes us. What does that mean? To render stable or firm, to validate, to confirm, settle what is weak or wavering, to restore to health, to give calmness or steadiness to the mind, to calm anger, to settle doubts, to secure. Does that not describe the role of Christ in our lives?
I really love this idea that not only does Christ do this for us, but we can work with him to do so as we strive to develop charity. We can build up others. We can strengthen others. We can establish others (see above definition again, it's good). We can repair too (favorite definition of that: to change oneself for the better). By developing charity, we can edify. And that is pretty amazing.

Winter Semester 2012 Preview

Howdy folks, well I survived the first two days of school and I'm pretty sure I'll make it through the end of the week without harm. Thought I'd share a bit about each of my classes right quick.

Elang 527: Early Modern English. I'm not really sure how I feel about this one just yet, but I think it'll be okay. We'll be going over a lot of stuff looking at the time period's grammar, spelling, vocabulary, prose style, and more. It might be interesting. This one is still kind of a question mark. I'm going to say I'll enjoy it though. Positive thinking, right?

Spanish 106. I'll survive. I like the teacher so far. He's from Mexico. He speaks very quickly, but I catch enough to understand what his meaning is, even if I don't understand every word. But that's normal in any communication, folks. I have one friend from my old class in there. And a girl that kind of drives me crazy. Woot.

Ling 477: Literacy Development in TESOL. I've had this teacher before. He always wears a bow tie. Always as in every day. I wonder if he wears one to church. I can't imagine him in a normal tie. Yeah, that would be weird. I had him for grammar years ago. Years. He remembered that I'd had him before though. He makes a point of learning everybody's name. He knew almost everybody today from studying our pictures. That's pretty cool. I think this class will be pretty decent. I liked today. We talked about the Aims of BYU. It was kind of neat to have a good discussion on that. Different.

Ling 461: Language Assessment in TESOL. My only female teacher. She seems nice. I'm going to learn about assessments. Particularly writing tests. Should be fine. A lot of the same people in my 477 class...and we were in another TESOL class together last semester. I probably should try harder to learn their names...

Last but not least, Ling 550: Sociolinguistics. The class I was probably looking forward to the most. I've had this teacher before too. Again, many moons ago. He's from Australia and he's hilarious. I think the course material will be good too. The scary part about it is it's a grad level class. There are only about 6 grad students, the rest undergrads, but he said he'll treat it as a grad class. Well that's exciting. Good thing is I have several friends in there already. So that helps. And the teacher's awesome. So it'll be fabulous. This is what he had to say about the bow tie professor: "I always tease Dr. A because he always wears a bow tie, and that's what you have to do with people who wear bow ties." Yup.

So that's the run down. Hopefully I'll have some more good Aussie prof quotes this semester.

Also, I looked into it...I only have about 20 credits left after this semester. I think I'll graduate before the world ends! Yay me!