Favorite Books and Quotes

First off one of the best works of fiction I've read was Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. "If there is anything more poignant than a body agonising for want of bread, it is a soul which is dying of hunger for light." This book was beautiful to me, I read it for the love of reading. And it was amazing! "It is nothing to die; it is horrible not to live." Jean Valjean, as the protagonist was so Christ-like yet was a criminal. "Laughter is sunshine; it chases winter from the human face."

Romeo and Juliet has been made and remade, it inspired the Twilight franchise, it has breed it's own cliche. But the original Shakespeare play is something everyone should read once.
"Come, gentle night, — come, loving black brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of Heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun."

Next curiously enough is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It was so clever and fun. "It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." I read them for fun and it was nice to read as an adult, you pick up jokes that a kid wouldn't because they are so intellectual.
"'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

'You must be' said the Cat 'or you wouldn't have come here.'"

The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway was beautiful and relaxing in its simplicity. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." I would recommend to read straight away.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte was read around sixteen and was better than watching a million sappy chick flicks. Just read the way Ms. Bronte writes: "Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt? May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love." She acted like you were her best friend reading her story and that is one of the great things about it.

Although sisters, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is a very different writing style, more serious and thus it took me a year- or two to actually finish. the story near the end got depressing so I gave up. Boy was I glad I didn't, the end was tragic, wonderful, and agonizing all at once!
"I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton's attachment more than mine — If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years, as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have; the sea could be as readily contained in that house-trough, as her whole affection be monopolized by him — Tush! He is scarcely a degree nearer than her dog, or her horse — It is not in him to be loved like me, how can she love in him what he has not?"

I read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee in 8th grade and couldn't get why everyone else in the class didn't love and understand it, although more people read the book than normal in the class. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."



Another Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, is almost an Anti-Romeo and Juliet. Love is made fun of and put on display, Lovers are in a forest and the trickster Puck puts love spells on them to hilarious results. We read this in 9th or 10th grade and the WHOLE class loved it, we acted out the parts and laughed so much! As Puck says, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

Fast Sunday

This Sunday I fasted if I should continue on this path and help to follow the Lord to be a missionary. I love how we can pray and fast and get an answer and mine was obvious! I think it'd be easy to say: oh, I'm gonna stop and not go on a mission. Instead my answer was, OF COURSE! I'm grateful and soooo happy the Lord answered me and strengthened me. I want to bear my testimony that if you ask the Lord something earnestly, he WILL answer!

Faith

This may have been another, 'poor me' blog, but I refuse to let people put me down, make me feel less than I am, even mi madre. The hardest part of trying to lose weight temporally and study the scriptures spiritually is the lack of support from anyone, but I can do this on my own....

GREAT! I just realized how depressed that may sound! :P This is titled faith because I know there is a reason I felt the Spirit tell me to go on a mission, and I don't care what others believe, I AM following my heart and Him. All I need is faith that He has a plan for me, that maybe this adversity and toughness is for my good.

When I went to Nauvoo last month, the most beautiful moment was being at the Temple with Uncle Davie, David, Camilla and Hannah from Oregon; Chris from Wyoming; Eddie and Shane from Oklahoma; and Jordan, who went for her first time; Me and Kat; then Grandpa. Doing baptisms for the people waiting on the other side is beautiful and breathtaking, especially when some you do are directly family. It was what gave me my first real testimony at 15-16, and it is what sustains it and strengthens it to this day.

And months go by...

I felt lost and I think I am now found.

'Why would the Lord make this so hard for me?!', I had thought, now it is obvious, before I was going on a mission because the Spirit told me to. Now I want to go on a mission because I want to. Going out with the sister missionaries has changed my perspective and I see a mission as something I could really do and love.

I know it will be hard, and it has been, but after my crying prayer to the Lord a month ago, where I practically said I hated Him for what this mission has put me through, I'm at peace. That prayer, alone in my room around 2am, was all my anguish over my decision to go on a mission, was all my pain of earlier that day when my parents said, point-blank, "if you aren't going on a mission, just tell us."

Everyone asks me, "When are you going? Are your papers in yet?" How can I just say, "No, because I'm still not under the required weight limit." Talk about awkward...

I want to leave now, and my weight IS the only thing keeping me here... I have a physical scheduled for the end of this month, and I'm tempted to do something drastic to lose the weight- but I would never do that to my body, or the Lord.

These were the things I cried to the Lord, that I'm glad I can just get off my chest... I lost 25 lbs. fast, but now I'm just in a slump and annoyed at my weight being the same for so long...

ANYWAY, I am revitilized and ready to lose the required weight to go.

Why the blog?

I was lost a year ago, had no idea what to do with my life, so I prayed. I've been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints all my life, but I've only been a active member since I was around 16. One of the sure things in my life since then was Church. I could go there and feel the love of everyone, even if I felt lost.

While I prayed nothing miraculous happened, no pillar of light like Joseph, or an angel. But something DID happen. I wondered on what to do: college, a job overseas, try to get hitched, or work full-time? I never ever THOUGHT about a mission. But there it was, plain as day, 'go on a mission', but I just grouped the idea with the others, I was certainly NOT the type to talk to strangers about Jesus and God.

A month later, after I failed all my classes in college and my work-study job ended, I was confused. Once again I asked the Lord what to do, this time the Holy Ghost, His nudge was a shove, "Go on a mission." I reasoned with the Lord, then decided, "if you want me to not work overseas, when I see the interview date and place, it will be far away and at a bad time, I won't be able to go, alright?"

A week later I got an e-mail from the overseas job, it was during school, and a few hundred miles away. I sighed, "Fine, no going overseas."

Yup, I'm very stubborn, and the Holy Ghost had to yell-err whisper, for QUITE awhile. Finally a few months ago I decided to go on a mission, told my parents and Bishop a month after that.

The biggest problem is my lack of knowledge and weight, but if the Holy Ghost and Lord wants me to go who am I to say no? Remember 1st Nephi 3:7!