Books of 2014!

In the spirit of tradition, here's a partial list of the books I read in 2014.  Of course this is just starting from 24 juli 2014 but hey, it's a start.

1. Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
3. The Selection by Kiera Cass (reread in preparation for the following)
4. 3 novellas - "The Prince" and "The Guard" and "The Queen" by Kiera Cass
5. The Elite by Kiera Cass

6. The One by Kiera Cass
7. City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare
8. United We Spy by Ally Carter
9. The Bitter Kingdom by Rae Carson
10. The Girl of Fire and Thorns Stories by Rae Carson

11. Second Chances by Melanie Jacobson
12. The House of Hades by Rick Riordan
13. Unpleasant Grove by Sheralyn Pratt (reread)
14. The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen (reread)
15. Twilight The Graphic Novels Volume 1 and 2 by Stephenie Meyer and Young Kim (reread)

16. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
17. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
18. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
19. Billy Budd by Herman Milville
20. Star of Deliverance by Mandy Madson Voisin

21. The Legend of Zelda - Hyrule Historia
22. The Art of Frozen by Charles Solomon
23. The Art of How to Train Your Dragon by Tracey Miller-Zarneke
24. Grave Mercy by Robin La Fevers (reread)
25. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (reread)

I actually lost track after this point... haha... but hey.. a new start for the new year!

Books that I started:

Runaway King
Les Miserables

The Power of Music!

I love music!  I think pretty much everyone knows this (or at least knows that I play the piano) but music plays a big role in my life.

In the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about the different songs that have held some sort of significant hold for me since I've been back from my mission.  I often will have a song that is like my theme song for several weeks (meaning that I get obsessive and pretty much listen to it on repeat), but each one plays a role for a reason.  This will give a sampling of the music that I listen to (I do listen to a wide variety and this doesn't even really go into all of that--I realize that I've been in more of a pop kick lately haha)

The first three all have direct ties to Sweden... surprise!

Be Still My Soul (In You I Rest) by Kari Jobe - this was introduced to me by Thomas Morley while I was in Kungbacka and it was the theme song of the end of my mission.  I ended up performing it as a musical number with one of my companions (she sang while I played piano) during our last week in the area and just before I moved to my final area of my mission.

Happy - Pharrell Williams - definitely described my mood during pretty much all of August.  Getting into a relationship and having fun with everything... I was just exuberantly happy with everything (even being exhausted with starting law school immediately with ongoing jet lag).  This song played a role in several of my last few zone conferences (Sister Newell's videos were the best) and it will always remind me of my time as a missionary because of it.

Hey Brother - Avicii (Sorry Rikki - Ik!) Another song I heard a ton in Sweden~ and I mean everywhere, on the train, on the bus, anywhere that played music in public.  It just connects to Sweden with me and I thought it was somewhat catchy.  Perhaps it just reminded me of my Cascada days?? Who knows.

Gone, Gone, Gone - Phillip Phillips.  I have always loved this song and it's my favorite (so far) by Phillip Phillips.

Cups (When I'm Gone) - Anna Kendrick - I liked this song long before I ever saw the movie Pitch Perfect (which I have seen now... just saying).

Thinking Out Loud - Ed Sheeran - the timing of this was just good... I became aware of it when I was in a relationship that started when I was 23... and it kind of just went from there.

Brave - Sara Bareilles - I have two versions of this song, the original, and an a cappella version by BYU's Vocal Point.  Being brave enough to say those things you want to say (the important things especially) was something that I took to heart.

Human - Christina Perri

Say Something - A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera

Keep On - Junior Doctor - this is probably the least known song on this list but it was definitely fitting!  (I also like Uh-Oh - which is the song that you're probably most familiar with)

Here I am Alive - Yellowcard.  I've been a fan of Yellowcard for ages...and I still need to get the most recent release, but this song... I guess the line that stands out the most "I made mistake, I know, I know, but here I am alive"

On Top of the World - Imagine Dragons.  This song describes overall how my life has been since I've been home.  I've had some deep lows, for sure, but I've also been incredibly happy.  This song took over as my ring tone even... and I had Spinning by Jack's Mannequin as my ring tone for about 3 years, so that's saying something.  Plus the music video is cool just because I know so many people in it!

I realize that the songs I like to listen to are directly correlated to what's going on in my life at the moment.  Always makes me wonder what would be included in the soundtrack of my life and whether any of these songs would make the final cut for the movie.

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!  

Örebro Part IV - weather changes

Just a brief one to show the same woods in summer, fall and winter!  7 months in one city can let you see it in a different light =) (I've even included the same little pond)

Örebro Part III

I feel like this picture describes our relationship rather well... we had a lot of goofy times together! 

Camille (Syster Hauglid) and I became companions on the 21st of August and we stayed companions until the end of December.  A running theme of our companionship was that we always felt that one of us would be transferred at every single opportunity and it just never happened haha.  I quite enjoyed our time together (and made one of my best friends for life!) during those four months.

We first welcomed the new elders into the area...(we had an interesting relationship with the elders... but we definitely loved those two haha) Muirbrook and Lundquist (Lundquist was fresh from the MTC)

Our first weekend together ended up being my birthday (we ended up celebrating Camille's birthday during our time together as well).  As well as both of our 9 month marks!  

So... we had a rather interesting start to our companionship, because two weeks in... on the 3rd of September, we were swinging by some people that used to investigate the church and we came acroos a set of stairs that were in the arrangement of the following diagram I just drew:

Notice that there is something rather odd about that last step?  Well... I didn't notice that.  At first glance it just appears to be a normal step, but as we know first appearances can be rather deceiving.  And this resulted:

 
It was quite the nice sprained ankle... let's just say that it hurt a little bit.  And I couldn't really walk on it.  I was on crutches for awhile... but thankfully we had some amazing ward members that took care of us in my moment of clumsiness.  It took us about 3 to 4 times as long to walk anywhere during this time... and I was more than a little loopy from all of the pain killers that I had to take.  Let's just say that Camille got to know me extremely well, extremely fast haha.

We had the opportunity to see many wonderful people be baptized in the ward during our time together (especially between the two companionships) and I loved seeing the changes that people made in their lives.  It was funny that two baptisms that we had with a couple weeks of each other had the completely opposite experience (one was majorly stressful to plan and the other was the smoothest baptism I had on my entire mission).  Actually the picture below was taken on the second one (I wish I didn't cause half of Camille's face to be in shadow.. but oh well *shrugs*):

District picture: Elders Lundquist, Packer, Johnson, Muirbrook, me and Camille

 Here's a video that highlights the awesomeness of our elders:

We discovered the wonders of speed-walking during October General Conference:

We had various members in the area that were telling us that we should have a prank war between us and the elders.  Camille and I knew that if we did such a thing we would not be the victors in the end... retaliation would be harsh.  But we still wanted to do something so we came up with the most wonderful idea.  We bought 16 KEX bars, two random kid toothbrushes, random Book of Mormon figures, ribbons and somewhere between 50 and 100 notes with random inside jokes.  We decided to eat at the restaurant near the elders apartment and then drop the lot in the elders mailbox... well we totally ran into the elders at the restaurant (and covering the fact that we were there to surprise them... haha).  But they didn't catch on to us and we were able to drop everything in. Definitely a productive use of a p-day. I say that we won the "prank" war in the end =)

Örebro Part II

There are so many things that I can post about Örebro that I know that I'm going to just spread out over several entries...  First, from Zone Conference in August 2013!  This was right before the big transfer I mentioned last time... So here are the Örebro sisters!

Me, Syster Gambles, Syster Hauglid (my future companion... we just didn't know that yet!) and Syster Miller!  We all had our golden nuggets which represented various people that we were working with.  We needed to "summon those nuggets" and take care of them to the fullest and help them to the the fullest!  Beautiful Uppsala!

ZONE PICTURE!!!!  Elders Packer, and Tietjen, Syster Hauglid, Elder Hanson, me, Syster Gambles, Syster Allen, Elder Keele, Elder Larson, (Elder Hitch and Nieminen in front), Elder Floyd, Elder Pehrson, Syster Anderson, Elder Ogaard, Syster Miller and Syster Davis (Elder Davis was taking the picture).  Taking care of those nuggets!  "Summon the freaking nugget!" haha

One last district picture:

Elder Nieminen and Elder Larson (our zone leaders and actually not a part of the district, but came for district meeting).  Syster Hauglid, me, Syster Miller and Syster Gambles.  In front: Elder Packer and Elder Tietjen

An experience that let me know that those scenes in romantic comedies can actually happen and that sometimes... well I should just explain.  It was the third of August, 2013.  "Today was hot! Over 30 degrees Celsius (which is only about 90 degrees for those of us here in the States and is nothing to what I experience in Fresno every summer... but it seemed hot haha), which is high for Sweden especially considering just how humid it gets here.  We started the day by meeting Moses at the church to show him where football is and he brought 2 friends with him!  Football was fun, but most definitely ridiculously hot--I drank both of the water bottles I had brought with me.  (apparently the heat really made an impression on me that day haha).

"The other main event of the day was when we went to go see E.  We left a little early and waited a little bit at the train station before we started walking to his friend's apartment.  When it was 20 minutes after when we were supposed to meet with him and we hadn't heard back from him yet, we sent him a text and he responded back letting us know that he had missed his connecting bus and  was running significantly late.  We ended up backtracking and meeting him halfway between his friend's place and resecentrum (the central bus station).

"We talked to him for a little bit, trying to figure how he was doing because we knew that he been in the hospital the last few days, though we had no idea why--still don't know for that matter.  We tried to answer his questions about baptism for kids and the sacrament and how it was different from communion.  As we were finishing our lesson (we were outside sitting on a couple of benches on a dock by the river that runs through the center of town) it started to rain... well sprinkle.  I hurried to say a 30 second prayer and by the time I said amen it was pouring.  And I mean POURING!!!!  We all started running down the street.

"Are you taking the bus?  " ...We don't know.. uh bye!!!" (Very articulate when we are sprinting through the pouring rain haha).  Syster Gambles and I quickly realized we had missed the nearest bus by 4 minutes and that the next one wouldn't be coming for nearly an hour so we decided to walk home in the POURING RAIN because we were already all the way soaked through (because OF COURSE we didn't have ANY jackets or umbrellas... or thought to plan ahead or anything).  It poured for about 15 minutes before it lessened to a more normal rain.  We did arrive back at our apartment about 45 minutes after we started.  There was lots of thunder and lightning involved... and we decided to make cookies to celebrate surviving the journey."

But really when you least expect it, it can start pouring rain without any notice whatsoever.  We decided it could have a been a good scene in a romantic comedy--if we weren't missionaries and if we were with love interests.  It made for a very memorable lesson nonetheless.

Pre-drenching haha..

My little interpretation of us walking through the rain

To round off this entry: Adam's baptism!

I'm sad to say that I don't really have any pictures of me and Adam on that day (I was busy playing piano during the group photos) but it was really just one of those feel-good, Spirit filled baptisms.  I remember being so happy for him and feeling that he was so ready to take this step.  The primary song, When I Am Baptized, always comes to mind when I think of this day: 

I like to look for rainbows whenever there is rain

And ponder on the beauty of an earth made clean again.

I want my life to be as clean as earth right after rain.

I want to be the best I can and live with God again.

I know that when I am baptized my wrongs are washed away,

And I can be forgiven and improve myself each day.

I want my life to be as clean as earth right after rain.

I want to be the best I can and live with God again

~Nita Dale Milner

You can listen to this song here: