I changed my blog. That shouldn't be too shocking though, because almost everything about my life has changed these days. But after a year and half of weekly blogging, I wanted to write about my post mission life. Partially so everyone could keep reading about my life, partially to keep a record of my experiences. Things aren't as exciting outside of the mission. Life goes on at a slower pace and things have more of a predictable rhythm.
This was a good week. I moved back to Provo two weeks ago. Man. It was hard hard HARD to leave my family again. Y'all. Those people mean the whole entire world to me. But it's good to be back. I went back to work right away. We had 54 hours of training. (yep, count 'em) It was a wonderful reminder of how much I LOVE my job. Seriously, I have the best job in the world. It is such a wonderful experience to focus on meeting the needs of others. There are all kinds of parallels between mentoring and mission life, and that's great.
After all that training, I went to NSO (New Student Orientation). I met all of my students and learned all the things I had forgotten about BYU. That's been a strange thing for me, actually - realizing how much about college and work I have completely and totally forgotten. I crammed so much gospel knowledge in my brain that there just wasn't room for anything else, I guess. It's almost worst than being a freshman because everyone expects me to know what is going on and I've pretty much forgotten everything I know. Anyways, sorry about the tangent...NSO. It was good. I wrote down some deep thoughts. One of my favorite things was a quote from Karl G. Maeser that is on the wall in the Education in Zion exhibit on campus (this exhibit talks about the history of religious education in the Church and at BYU). The quote said, "Precisely as you partake of the Spirit, so will you progress in your studies."
This has given me a lot to think about. I've been making vision and goals and plans for my semester, and thinking about the things that really matter. Largely I've been thinking that I should be much more focused on learning than on grades. I love the idea that they presented while we were in the exhibit - education is for eternity. What an amazing idea! I mean it's the truth, right? The Lord encourages us to seek learning out of the best books (D&C 109:7).
Classes start on Tuesday. I'm slowly remembering the parts of college life that are less than glamorous, aka studying, tests, homework. I hope I'm ready for all of this again. Sometimes I still wonder why it wasn't a better idea to take a semester off and spend time with my family. But I prayed about it a lot and this is where Heavenly Father needs me to be.
Church was good today. One of the speakers in sacrament meeting talked about covenants. She talked about how we have to be changed to be in the presence of God, and then noted that covenants are the steps we take to change ourselves to be prepared to be in the presence of God. She encouraged each of us to spend time each day thinking about how we can more fully live our covenants. That's an interesting thought. How do my covenants change me? Well they should make me something different. They should make me like my Father in Heaven. There's this quote from John Taylor that I keep in my journal. He says, "When men say unto us, you are not like us, we reply - we do not want to be. We want to be like the Lord."
Ashlie and I went to the temple yesterday. Beautiful. Just beautiful. I love the temple. It always makes me think of my mission. It's so wonderful to just sit and feel the Spirit and remember what really matters. I'm so grateful I got to be a missionary. So grateful. Those experiences will forever change my life.
That's all.
