Everyday Heroes

Today was the Unforum on BYU campus. It wraps up the year. I was a few minutes late, but I fortunately arrived in time to see Vocal Point perform a couple of songs. I think they were the best part of the forum, easily. McKay talked about everyday heroes a little bit and how on The Sing-Off they tried to a light to the world by being themselves, since they couldn't exactly sing hymns to share who they were. As he talked about that, I started thinking about the small acts of heroism I see every day. The everyday heroes that probably don't even know they're being heroes.

The guy who realized I was coming, so went back to the door to open it for me.
The girl who smiles so big and bright every time I see her, which recently has been quite a few times!
The friend who greets me like seeing me is the best thing she's experienced all day.
The amiga who compliments my yellow shirt.
The many who compliment my yellow headband.
The ward member who sang "You are my sunshine" to me the other day.
The classmate who emailed to say what I missed in class.
The teacher who pushes back a due date.
The friend I haven't seen in years who wrote on my Facebook wall.
The person who sent me a quick friendly text.
The classmate who helped me figure out a project idea.
The roommate who gets up in the morning just to give me a ride to work.
The woman who held the elevator a few extra seconds so I could get on.
The mom who sends an Easter basket of goodies.
The dad who calls to say hello.
The Bishop's wife who spent hours preparing food for a ward activity.
The visiting teacher who brings by some cookies.
The friend who offers to teach in Relief Society.
The roommate who let me share her date to the ward dance.
The brothers who let me invade their house all the time.
The friends who give a great hugs.
The classmate who spent extra time on my group project.
The one who listens.
The one who cares.
The one who loves.

Everyday heroes. They're everywhere. Making the world a little brighter.

Ben Carson: THINK BIG

Okay, so a few weeks ago at Spiritual Sunday Cinema, we watched an awesome movie called Gifted Hands. It's about Ben Carson, a world-renowned neurosurgeon, who was at the bottom of his class as a kid. His mom made him turn off the TV and start reading books and writing reports on them every week, and he worked his way up to the top of the class. He also struggled with a temper, but turning to God helped him overcome that too. So he turned from an unmotivated inner-city black kid to this incredible pediatric neurosurgeon, and was the first to ever successfully separate Siamese twins joined at the head, among other things. Really inspiring incredible movie. Well, he came to speak at BYU forum this week. I was so excited. It wasn't broadcasted to other buildings, so I even sacrificed my foot to hike up to the Marriott Center in the snow to see him. Totally worth it. Not only is he incredibly smart, he's very funny, and had some very great points. Rather than go through all my notes, I'll just write briefly about his concluding remarks. He told us to THINK BIG.
T: talent-we all have talents, we all can do something to influence the world for good
H: honesty-we have to be honest
I: insight-we can and must learn from the insights of others
N: nice-He had us all take a pledge of niceness. For one week, we have to be nice to everybody. Put other people first, talk to people on the elevator, don't gossip. Be nice.
K: knowledge-keep learning, if ever there were an example of one who values learning, it's him
B: books-a great way to learn
I: in-depth learning: don't just "cram," really learn and internalize
G: God-we need Him
I absolutely loved this forum. It was the best one I've been to. It really inspired me, and I've been thinking about what I can do to THINK BIG.

Laissez les bon temps rouler

Gee whiz I have a LOT to catch up on. It's been super busy and awesome around here. I don't even know where to start! I guess I'll write about Mardi Gras! So February 21 was Fat Tuesday. I went out with mission friends to Boudreaux's Bistro and had some lovely red beans and rice and beignets that night. That was fun. But the big event of the week for me was on Friday. I threw a huge Mardi Gras party. It took quite a bit of work and I definitely couldn't have done it without my awesome helpers, but "Lucille's Ball" all came together in the end!
Let the good times roll!


Guests had a chance to decorate their own masks. I was pretty impressed with what people came up with. Also, feathers are akin to glitter in terms of messes that last...in case you wondered.


This is the only picture of food I currently have...I think Kenyon may have taken more, but I don't know what. But this is potato salad on top of gumbo on top of rice. The right way to do things. Oh and what food did we have, you may ask? I will tell you: gumbo and rice, jambalaya, potato salad, king cake, brownies, green/purple/gold Jello cookies, red velvet cookie bars, and the most popular item, BEIGNETS! (I didn't make them though...another time perhaps.)


The entertainment I had planned for the night was watching Princess and the Frog. But the unplanned entertainment was also delightful. A couple of guys in my ward brought their trumpets and jazzed things up! It was pretty amazing! I just thought, "Dang, my party just got legit. Live jazz. Yep. My ward is awesome."


And this is a sample of the guests: we had about 60 people come! It was amazing!


Basically, it was a huge success! I'm soooo glad people came and had a good time!

Mr. Collins

In honor of Valentine's Day, I'll tell you my Valentine's story from last year. I had a lovely day. I went to school, I came home, I blogged, I wore pink and my conversation heart pins. Today I wore the same sweater and pins, and some great pink socks with hearts on it, some of which are sparkly. I got lots of compliments on those haha! Anyway, last year, the day was great. And I went to bed and had a good night's sleep. Got up the next morning and thought, "This is going to be a great day!" Then I opened the door to leave. There were some balloons tied to the rail outside our door. I thought, "Oh, who are those for?" Then I saw my name. "What? Who on earth...?" I untied them and turned over the card, "Brooke, I hope you don't mind me borrowing a ward directory to look you up. Happy Valentine's Day! -Mr. Collins" Okay, obviously it didn't say Mr. Collins, but I'm protecting the innocent. Anyhoo, my heart sunk. Now who is this Mr. Collins, you may ask? I'll tell you. One day several weeks before, as I was walking to school, a man started talking to me. When it came time to part ways, he asked for my number. I had never before experienced that, so it caught me really off-guard and so I gave it to him, even though I didn't know if I really wanted to. He didn't call, however. A couple weeks after that I went to church and he was there. I was really confused because I'd never seen him there before. Apparently his brother was in my ward and he came sometimes. My roommate was talking to him and I walked up unawares. So we talked briefly. He called me that week but I didn't answer the unknown number (and he didn't leave a message). The next week was Valentine's Day. On that fateful February 15th he called again. I answered this time and he asked me out, but I was unavailable that night. I was feeling incredibly awkward that he gave me balloons and I wasn't really interested him. The thing is, when I first met him, I thought, "He seems kind of old." A little...uh...research showed me that he was...pretty sure he's ten years my senior. That made me a bit uncomfortable.
We did eventually go on a date. It was fine. He was really quiet. I could barely hear him. I had to keep the conversation going most of the time. It was short, and I was okay with that.
I felt horribly awkward about this experience last year. I was somewhat horrified by it all. Then for a while, it was just a good story. I know Mr. Collins is a good man, and very smart. I truly hope he has found or will find a Charlotte Lucas, well better than a Charlotte really. Somebody who can really love him. Because this Miss Bennet just wasn't feeling it. Mr. Collins, thanks for a good memory and God bless you!

Happy Valentine's Day, folks!

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!