Saturday, October 11, 2014

I Love to See the Temple

I think my blog is in shock! It must think I'm back from the dead. Three and a half years is a long time to abandon someone. (I like to think of my blog as a someone. Actually, just kidding, because that would make me the worst and most neglectful friend to my blog ever.) But at any rate, I am here. Alive, in the flesh, writing a blog post. I even renamed my blog. The "singing senior" was ready for an update! Now it is named after what I SHOULD be doing with my life. I am a freshman at BYU now, not a freshman at Wells High School. And let me tell you! Those two places aren't super alike. My favorite thing is telling people that there were about 25 kids in my graduating class. (I round down just a little. It makes it sound more impressive. . . if having a small graduating class can actually be considered impressive.) But they can't believe it! It's been a big change. And as we all probably know, I'm a really, really emotional person and sometimes I struggle with change. My first two-ish weeks of college were really hard! I cried to my family every day and even though I was making friends, I just missed my family, gosh darn it! I have been frantically trying to make friends and find fun things to do to keep my mind off of my family, and it's working slowly. I really have a ton of amazing friends and I get to do so many great things. I just got back from the temple. It's such a blessing to get to go to the temple whenever I want! I have made it a priority because of something I heard in the Ogden Temple Dedication. I got to watch it at the Marriot Center maybe three weeks ago. But Elder Bednar said that he promised that any struggles, trials, or problems we were going through would be diminished, we'd have the strength to bear them, and we'd have an abundance of peace in our lives if we regularly attended the temple. I thought of my personal struggle with homesickness. As small as it is in the grand scheme of things, it's real to me and I wanted that peace and strength so bad. So I've been trying to attend the temple weekly. I've been twice, and it's wonderful. Because it's the Provo temple I had to wait three hours today just to do two confirmations and three baptisms, but it gave me time to read nearly an entire New Era and five chapters in 2 Nephi, think about my life, pray, and even sleep. (If I don't sleep enough in Stover, I have to sleep somewhere.) It was a great time. But like five girls ahead of me there was one that looked a lot like Liberty. It made me ache a little inside. I sure love Liberty! I'm so proud of how well she's doing at Wells High School and in FFA and Cross Country. She is a success. I miss my whole family, but I need to remember that I'm where I'm supposed to be. Heavenly Father has given me this AMAZING experience that I must not throw away. I can't wait to see what the future has in store for me. I'm glad I have the gospel in my life and can attend the temple with good friends.