Dedicated to glorious, delicious food!

I had the chance to eat a lot of variety of food on my mission and apparently I took a decent amount of pictures in the process... well have to start somewhere right? 

Cake we made to celebrate Swedish National Day (the 6th of June).  We had a ward activity in Trollhättan and everyone was asked to make a cake (and there was a specific request for the missionaries to make an American cake) so we went with this one.

Depending on who you ask, it's the Skor/Heath/Daim cake, the Better than Anything, the Better than Holding Hand or the Better than Sex cake (I always got the most reactions from the last name haha--mainly because no one ever expects me to call it, missionary or not).  

For those of you who have never tried such a cake before it's absolute deliciousness.  

1) First make a chocolate cake (homemade or from a box if you're in a pinch) 

2) once you take it out of the oven (immediately afterwards) stab a bunch of holes into the cake with a knife  

3) then poor sweetened condensed milk and caramel (kola) ice-cream topping onto the cake (sometimes I mix the two thoroughly together before I poor this onto the cake) and 

4) then I sprinkle a layer of crushed Skor/ Heath/Daim pieces.  

5) After the cake cools completely, I put on a layer of whipped cream (I prefer to make it myself) and then sprinkle on more the the candy pieces and some caramel(kola) swirls.  I personally like to keep it refrigerated. 

Kebab pizza!  My first really good experience with kebab (from a decent place).  This is from a missionary classic in Göteborg, Mossens.  For those Americans, yes those are fries on that pizza and it's served with typical kebab sauce.  And that is an Exotic Flavored Fanta (my favorite Fanta flavor that is unfortunately not available in the U. S. A.)  The elder sitting across from me had already finished his pizza before I ever really finished a slice haha

Turkish food in Örebro!  From an investigator family and this lady is probably the best cook I've met in my life.  So delicious!  We could never leave their home without feeling loved.

Another Turkish dish!  This was deceivingly filling... don't let it pretend to be otherwise

Chicken Kebab pizza with Adam!  It was enormous!  So huge (we had three people eating this pizza and we still had about half of it in leftovers haha).  Thanks Adam for inviting Camille and I to dinner at Monza's (Monza became very acquainted with the missionaries during my time there)!

African food!  The top is Cameroonian (fish and yams) and the one to the right is Sierra Leonean (chicken and rice and I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the green elements of the meal).  

Cake!  (Didn't she do a great job?)

Kebab tallrik in Malmö.... I tended to prefer eating kebab as a tallrik over having it as a pizza - meaning they would just give you the meat, fries, and sauce on a plate (that you could choose to eat with bread) instead of having it all on a pizza.

Delicious Persian food!  I realized on my mission that I love, love Persian food.  It is so delicious.. and yes those are peppers you see there (I do like myself a bit of spice).  And I think probably one of the few times I've ever drank Mountain Dew  (I'll admit seeing all of this soda in these pictures is really funny for me, since I've completely stopped drinking soda since I came home - haven't had any since oktober 2014 haha... so that would be about four months now haha).

A delicious Budapest cake made by a woman living near us when I served in Kungsbacka.

Okay so the following pictures.... When I was in Kungsbacka, we were the Sister Training Leaders for the western part of the mission and we were often talking with our Zone leaders... the Zone Leaders were the Västra Frölunda contact on our phone.  So they showed us how they made tacos, so we took of picture of how we made tacos. Swedish tacos are not complete without cucumber, let me tell you.  You also can see my love of peppers ago with that bowl full of sliced peppers haha.  They were delicious!  And we decided that we won... haha

Danish kebab from when we went to the temple in Copenhagen!

And lastly, from our 4th of July Celebration in Jönköping where the Americans and the Brits got together to celebrate the holiday! It was so fun! (And I am so glad that the Americans barely won the trivia contest...we went to a sudden death round... or else we would have had to leave in shame).

This is just a tiny sample of the food I experienced (didn't even get any really good shots of typical Swedish food... maybe that's something I can change when I head to Sweden in May). 

Validation

 Honestly, the first thought that comes to mind when I hear the word validation is “free parking!”  And while free parking is always a wonderful thing to receive, it’s not all that this word means. 

Here are a few “official” definitions I found (thank you dictionary.com!):

1.     to make valid; substantiate; confirm

2.     to give legal force to; legalize

3.     to give official sanction, confirmation, or approval to, as elected officials, election procedures, documents, etc.:

Synonyms: authenticate, verify, prove; Antonyms: disprove

So what got me thinking about the word validation?  This wonderful short film (if you haven't seen it, it is 16 minutes well spent in my book!):

My "mission mom," Syster Newell, is the one that first introduced me to this clip (Zone Conferences were the best!) and I am so glad that she shared this with the mission.   

We all search for that validation in our lives.  We all want to feel like we have worth and that we are valid.  In my experience this is the often the main motivation between people's actions

Thinking back on relationships (romantic or friendship based) - we always want to feel like our feelings and actions are valid and often we would seek validation from the other person in the relationship.  So this would be why I would want a boyfriend to tell me that he cared for me and show that he cared.  This would be why I would want to spend time with friends that actually wanted to spend time with me.  You want to be with people that make you feel good.  It's simple human nature!

Now what does this mean for me?

The main thing is that I need to ask myself, "Am I helping others feel valid?"  Especially those that I care about.  And to do this I need to love.  Love others and to importantly start with myself.  Change happens from the inside out.  If I want to make an lasting difference and it doesn't matter if others see this in me or not, I need to start with myself and work my way outwards.  We all are valid.  We all have worth.  In fact, we have infinite worth.  We have a divine heritage and a divine potential.

We don't actually need to seek validation, because we've already been validated and found valid.  We just need to recognize and remember it for all that it's worth!