Jer3miah

http://www.jer3miah.com/

I don't have to say anything else. This show is amazing.

And a new episode comes out TOMORROW!!!

good friends are hard to come by

I know this girl named Kylee. And she's pretty much one of my best friends.

When I was getting ready to move to Chicago in the middle of my senior year, she emailed me all the time to get me excited about having to move and leave all my friends. When I first moved in, she took me under her wing and brought me into her circle, introducing me to all of her friends who have become some of my closest friends. And from that point on, we were pretty much inseparable. I joined the choir and we sat next to each other, passing notes back and forth, drawing stupid pictures, trying our best to actually sing and not just talk and laugh the whole time.

November 2006

- - - - -

And now, over 2 years later, she's still one of my best friends. When I came to BYU last year, she came out twice, maybe three times, to visit. And now, we're both at BYU and see each other all the time, taking full advantage of our yozone dates. I couldn't ask for a better friend. She's always there for me when I need her and I know she'll always tell me what I need to hear. We always have a blast together and sometimes embarrass each other more than is necessary (we come saying hi, chat sessions in chipman lobby, glow in the dark polka dot faces) but every outing is definitely worth remembering.

March 2009

March Madness

Ok so a few days ago, my dad forwarded me an email from my uncle who had invited the family to join a bracket group for march madness. Now I had never done this before but I thought it might be fun for once. I like watching basketball, but I don't follow it so I only have a general idea of who is good and who won't make it very far.

So when I went to fill out my bracket, I had about 5 minutes before class started, and just decided to pick teams based on where I had lived in my life or what team sounded like they were more enclined to play basketball than another.

LAME, I know. . .

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I just started pushing buttons. I have Purdue winning the whole thing. I have no clue how well they've been playing so far this year... no clue at all. At the end when I tried to save my bracket, it asked me to put in a tie breaker score or something. Ok, what the heck is that??!?! I have no clue. I couldn't even begin to guess what they were talking about. But they wouldn't let me save it until I put in some sort of number, and I really needed to get to class. Without thinking, I just put in 2... whatever that means. 2!!!

Well, we'll see where this little bracket of mine takes me. I'm bound to lose by the first round or so. I think that my family would agree with me when I say there is no hope for me at all...

Hunger Banquet

On Saturday night, Troy and I went to the Hunger Banquet at BYU. They split everyone up into lower, middle, and upper class based on the color of our tickets. Troy and I were in the middle class. They told us that the middle class makes up 25 % of the world's population. They live on about $900 dollars a year. We watched the upper class eat their 4 course meal, while we were fed a slice of pizza. The lower class got even less than we did - a plate of chips, and a bowl of rice a beans, split between 5 or 6 people.
This experience really took me back to the couple weeks that I spent in Zambia. As I watched the lower class split up their food, it hit me a little too hard. I had spent 2 weeks, watching kids split up the only food that they would get for a couple of days. It was heartbreaking to hear the stories that were told about people who live in these kinds of situations.
Luckily, Troy and I had the option to run through a drive through later on that night. But most people who live like that on a daily basis don't have that choice. Rice and beans might be the only things that some people eat for a couple days at a time.
I feel so blessed to have been born into the life that I have. Why did I get so lucky? And why are there some who have to suffer? Sometimes I think that we have people in all sorts of situations in this life so that we might all be able to learn compassion. Without the poor that I lived with in Zambia, I probably wouldn't have learned to feel this way, or to have the kind of compassion that God wants us all to have, the kind of compassion that I'm still striving to have. All of us are brothers and sisters. I think I need to remember that and start helping them the same way I would help my biological siblings if they needed me.

Agency

I just finished reading a book called, Added Upon by Nephi Anderson for my LDS literature class and was just amazed at how much it got me thinking about so many important doctrines of my church. Anderson takes our LDS beliefs about the pre-existence, earth life, death, resurrection, and the millennium and kind of turns the book into a historical fiction novel. All through the novel, we follow the lives of two characters, and the people that they meet throughout their eternal existence. Homan and Delsa, in the pre-existence, become Rupert and Signe during their mortal lives on earth.

The thing that was most interesting to me was the idea of agency. That was what the war in heaven was mostly about. Would we follow Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, and be guaranteed a painless, sin-free life, having all our choices already made for us, ensuring us all a spot in heaven when life was over? Or would we follow Christ, whose plan was almost the exact opposite? There would be pain, sorrow, and sin. But because of these things, we would also be able to experience and understand complete joy and happiness. We would be able to choose for ourselves. We would make mistakes but then use Christ's atonement to renew our lives and start clean again. Every day we could do this.

In the first section of the book, as we follow the lives of Homan and Delsa in the pre-existence, Homan meets a man named Sardus, who can't decide if he wants to follow Christ's plan or Lucifer's plan. Homan is trying to convince Sardus of the beauty of Christ's plan: to be able to choose for ourselves and become better people through His atonement. Sardus states, "We have the right to think and to act as we please, and I consider Lucifer in the right."

This quote really struck home to me because he is right. We all had the right to follow Christ or to follow Lucifer. Even in the pre-existence, agency was most important to us. Our Heavenly Father gave us the option to choose between the two presented plans. It is ironic to me that Sardus would not listen to his friend, Homan, because he valued his agency and wanted to choose for himself. But Sardus's choice to follow Lucifer would have taken away his right to think and act for himself, something that was obviously important to him.

As I've come to a point in my life where I have to make decisions all on my own, there are times when I wish that someone would just make them for me. If only my patriarchal blessing was a little less vague. If only I knew exactly what my mission was in this life. But I made the choice to be closed off from the world before. I wanted to go through this life, to be tested and strive to become the best person that I can be.

Sometimes I wonder what was going through my head when all of this was unfolding. Was I strongly fighting to defend the Savior's plan? Or was I just one of those who had chosen the Savior but didn't really have a strong opinion about it? I wonder how many of my friends from my pre-earth life chose to follow Lucifer's plan. Was I sad when I realized they would never be able to obtain physical bodies? I wonder if I fought for my friends, if I tried to convince them of the benefits of being able to choose for ourselves. But even if I fought as hard as I could, in the end, we all had our agency and could choose the plan we wanted.

So now, when I wish that Heavenly Father would just tell me exactly what to do, I have to remind myself that I wanted this. And then I have to make the choice and face the consequences, whether they be good or bad.