Called To Serve: Texas, Here I Come!!!

Last Wednesday was quite an eventful day for me. To start things off, I woke up with the flu which kept me from going to both work and school. In a weird way, I guess it was a tender mercy from the Lord because that meant that I was able to open my big white envelope that came in the mail from LDS church headquarters a few hours earlier than I would have if I went to work.
Around 2:30 p.m. I was talking to my mom when I looked out the window to see that the mail truck had just pulled up to my house. I went outside to get the mail and low and behold, my mission call was here! When I got inside my house I walked back to my parents' room and said to my mom, "Guess what's here?" and she said, "I could tell by the look on your face when you opened the mailbox your call came!" Mom and I were both so excited. She told me to go back outside so she could get a picture of me taking my call out of the mailbox.

Later that day, my dad called from work and asked my mom if my call had come. When she informed him of the news, dad said he would hurry home from work so I could open my call. He got home around 5:30, which is pretty early for him. As soon as dad walked through the door, he quickly called both of my sisters (we did a conference call) so that they could share the exciting moment with me. Dad was also good not only to take pictures of the event, but also a video of me reading my letter. Don't let the crying fool you, I promise they are good tears and I really am excited to serve a mission!

Just to give you a little background knowledge, at the beginning of the video my brother-in-law guessed that I would go to Mexico. Also, my mom must be inspired because about a week prior to this she guessed I would go to Texas as a Spanish-speaking missionary; way to go, Mom!

Here are some pictures from my special day:

Reading my letter while dad holds the phone up so my sisters can hear everything

Smiling through the good tears

Me and Mom

Dad and Me

Of course I had to get a picture with my little brother!

Mission in the Works

For those of you who aren't already aware, I have been contemplating the idea of serving an LDS mission for almost a year now. I started thinking about it around my 20th birthday last December and have gone back and forth about the decision until last October.

After the Sunday Morning session of General Conference, my sister decided to follow a prompting to give me a call. We had a nice long chat about what was going on with one-another. The question about serving a mission somehow came into play. I cried to her for roughly half an hour because I was having such a hard time with the decision. Being the sweet sister that she is, she listened to all of my concerns (which is hard to do through tears) and offered me some words of comfort. She shared with me some of the talks she heard both Saturday (unfortunately I missed the entire morning session and it was all about missionary work) and Sunday morning. My sister helped me to realize that I have no need to fear because if this is what Heavenly Father wants me to do, He will be there for me 100% of the time. Throughout the course of our conversation, I remembered one of the talks that had been given Sunday morning. I can't remember who said it, but one line that really stuck out to me was, "I can do hard things as long as I have the Lord's help."

Following our conversation, I contemplated everything I have heard from all of my family members, general authorities, and friends about serving missions. Needless to say, I decided to get going on mission papers.

Later on that day my bishop gave me a call to see if I had started on my papers (I had my first interview with him about a month prior to this experience). He helped me get started. I finished all of the paperwork last Sunday. Here is the picture I sent in with my papers:

After ward prayer last Sunday, my bishop pulled me into his office for a final interview with him. He then gave me a call around 10:00 p.m. informing me he was at my stake president's home and the stake president wanted to talk to me. I set up an appointment with him for today.

I had an excellent one hour interview with my stake president this morning. He was so easy to talk to. At the end of our discussion, he told me that my papers should be going up to Salt Lake City this week!

Hopefully my next post will be about my mission call!

Fieldwork

Last week was eventful and exciting for a number of reasons. On Monday, I started my fieldwork (same idea as student teaching, but it's only 3 weeks instead of 10). My partner and I are in a 6th grade classroom at Northridge Elementary and I LOVE every minute of it. The students and my cooperating teacher are absolutely fantastic! It's so fun to see the things that I'm learning in school FINALLY being put to use. This week was basically just observing the students and how the teacher runs the class. We also get to help students with their assignments, take them to recess/P.E., and grade MOUNTAINS of assignments. It has been so fun interacting with the students.

This week will be the real test for me. I am required to teach a minimum a 5 Social Studies lessons, 2 of which must include some form of Creative Arts, and 1 must be a "Technology Rich" lesson. This is all on top of my other homework which includes: journal entries for about 4 of my 6 classes, reading, preparing for two or three presentations, designing an intervention for a student who is either struggling in school or not being challenged enough, interviewing various faculty members at the school, and a 15-20 page Teacher Work Sample. I'm pretty sure there's more, but my brain just doesn't even want to think about it at the moment.

Random Salt Lake Trip

Last Saturday my friend Jess and I decided we wanted to do something fun and new so we decided to take a trip to Salt Lake. First we went to Gardiner Village and walked around a few of their shops. The Halloween decorations were incredible! Unfortunately, everything up there is way expensive so I wasn't able to buy anything.

Our next stop was dinner. As you can see, we ended up going to Sizzler. I spent $15 on a Salad Bar and some delicious Strawberry Lemonade (they put REAL strawberries in it)! It reminded me of when I was little because Grandma and Grandpa Gibson used to come down to my house and take my family to Sizzler for dinner every once in a while. I loved their Soft Serve ice cream!

After dinner we drove to the Draper temple. It is GORGEOUS and it looks a lot like the Mount Timpanogos Temple. We also looked at the new ridiculously HUGE houses that are being built up there. Most of them are designed to look like castles. There was one house that you actually have to drive under an arch to get to the driveway.

Our next stop was the most amazing grocery store I have ever seen- Harmon's. It had two floors, the top one was for eating while the bottom floor was obviously for shopping. They had everything you could ever imagine: nice kitchen supplies, tons of food (of course- it is a grocery store), school supplies, and a machine to measure cholesterol levels (you'll be happy to know that mine was just fine). Oh, and who can forget the amazing bathrooms? They had doors-not stalls, plus they had an automatic soap dispenser (I've never seen one), and the usual automatic faucets and paper towel dispensers. It's okay if you're laughing at me right now for being amused so easily (the rest of my family did), I had TONS of fun!!!

Corn Maze Adventures!

I guess my update is overdue. Although school and work have kept me pretty busy, I have managed to keep my social life up. In fact, not too long ago I was able to go to the Corn Maze in Pleasant Grove with a few friends. Since the maze itself only took us about 15 minutes to finish, we decided to do the other awesome activities there like shooting corn out of some sort of air guns (don't be too surprised to hear that I wasn't even close to hitting the target), feeding animals, going down the most amazing hay slide I have ever been on, taking fun random pictures, and much, much more!










Jumping on a hay trampoline






Going down the most amazing hay slide

Wyoming- Here We Come!

I have a funny story for all of you. Last weekend my friends and I went up to Park City to do some shopping at the outlets. On the way home, we kind of took a little detour (106 miles) and we ended up in Wyoming instead of Orem. We all thought it was really funny, even though there wasn't anywhere to stop and put gas in the car (we had 1/4 tank left). Thankfully we found our way back to Orem.

I Finally Broke Down

I'm taking an AMAZING Instructional Media Class at Utah Valley University. My teacher showed us how to create blogs because we're going to use them to do reflections for the class. I am so excited to learn how to blog!