HOME

Last weekend, my little brother Willie returned after serving an honorable full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission.
I can't even tell you how excited I was to have him home.
As we picked him up from the airport and took him home for the first time in two years, I watched him closely, remembering how I felt four months ago. I watched him hug his parents, walk into his childhood home, and be released by the stake president. I cried for him. I also mostly cried for myself, remembering how I felt not that long ago when I went through all that. I think I've come a long ways, but I still remember how there were so many mixed emotions.
But as I watched Willie walk into our house for the first time, I looked up and saw a sign hanging on the family room wall that reads, "HOME". I thought about what he might think about when he looked at that sign. Then I realized that he might not have noticed it at all, and I thought about what it meant to me right then. To me, that sign reminded me that I felt more at home now, with Willie home. Home was now more HOME with him there. I cried again.
I'm getting a little sappy, but it is a true story about my thoughts with him returning. I am just so happy to have one of my best friends home again. Upcoming this weekend our family will be together.
Completing our HOME.

Joy

I am so happy!!!
My big news is that I received a message today from a family that I taught on my mission that they were sealed in the temple! A mom, dad, two little girls and a baby boy. I can't even express everything that I feel about that. I am just so happy that they received ALL of the blessings of the gospel. They did it! Of course, they have a whole life left, but I know that the impact it will have on their children is immeasurable.
The best part is that I know I had almost nothing to do with it. God blessed me to be there to witness the miracle of the father's change of heart and commitment, but He had been working with him all the time. This family was prepared. The spirit touched hearts. He was baptized. And now they are sealed for eternity.
Life is hard and full of so many difficulties, but really God wants us to be happy and have the fullness of blessings. He wants us to have joy. And that is what I am feeling right now. :)

Christmas in June

I know that this is my third post of the day, but I just had to share this with you.
Today I went and saw Monster's University with my roommates (which I loved), and on the way home, my roommate played for me this song.

The worst Christmas song just got even better.


 Be patient. It gets even better.

Listen to This

So I discovered this today and had to share it. It is SO well phrased.
"The Inconvenient Messiah" by Jeffrey R. Holland, BYU Devotional February 15, 1982.
I recommend listening to it rather than reading it because the transcription isn't perfect.

Growth

I think life is amazing. The longer I live, the more I see that God's plan to help us learn--life--is really well designed. It is so real, so hard, but possible. Every experience has built in learning experiences, difficulties, and chances to use our agency. He set everything up so that we could maximize our learning time here.
This week I have been thinking about growth. I only understand it on the level I'm at, but I'm starting to get a picture. When I was a little kid, I never wanted to grow up. Being grown up looked so much more complicated and boring. Growing just looked painful and unrewarding. What I didn't understand is that at that stage in my life, I couldn't even comprehend the joys of memories built up, being able to help people outside of myself, and of work well done.
I'm sure you know this, but little kids brains are still developing. Actually, experts agree that a person's brain is still growing and developing until they are around 25. So I'm not even there yet! (and I'm sure that I will continue learning more perspective with my fully developed brain after that.)
When a kid is still a kid, it is physically impossible for them to truly understand abstract ideas (they don't have deductive reasoning skills, and logical stuff is beyond them). They don't have that part of their brain yet. But the thing is, they don't know that they can't think as well as an adult. They feel like their brain is all there and that there isn't any part of a situation or conflict that they can't understand. They know that there is stuff they don't know, but they feel like they are capable of understanding everything. They aren't.
I feel like that is very similar to our relationship with God. Sometimes I feel like I am able to understand the big picture, that I am able to understand the purpose of life and why things happen. But then I am reminded that "For my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways not my ways, saith the Lord" (Isaiah 55:8). If it all made sense, I would know it wasn't from God because I am not able to think the way He does. It is physically impossible for me to understand everything. My brain is not fully developed--even if I was older than 25, my brain still wouldn't be fully developed. Even if God sat down and explained everything to me in words I understand, I still don't think I would understand it all. I have to wait for resurrection day for a perfect brain, and even then I'm sure there will be a learning curve.
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to understand everything, because we certainly try to teach our children everything that they can grasp. But we shouldn't get frustrated with God when He doesn't make sense in our logic. The "God logic" part of our brains hasn't developed yet. It does make me look forward to learning more and more and someday, in a long time, my understanding will grow to a perfect day.
What I do understand now is that growth is necessary for progression. Growth by definition is change. Therefore, change is required for progression. I just have to be soft enough for God to change me and my perspective and my thinking in the right direction. I also have to be hard enough so that Satan or the World can't change me in the opposite direction.
(I'm not sure that this will make sense to anyone but me, but there you go.)

And the Award Goes To....

Winner of the "I'm seriously using this pick-up line to seriously ask you out" award:
Young man in my physics lab:
"Are you accepting applications for boyfriends?"
In case you are wondering, the answer is yes. Literally. But you will have to print out the application yourself, because I don't want to have to spend money paying for the 10 pages per applicant...
(haha. This is where you laugh. Because I really am not that prideful...)

Written later:
I retract the above statement. The award might actually go to the student who wrote this on his paper as part of his discussion of the lab that he knew I would be grading (I don't even know who he is):
"Also, April, if you can read this or even get this far we should out sometime! You're super cute! Text me! (*insert phone # here*) But anyways, back to physics. If you and me were in a boat together, I would have to jump out and swim because I'd be too heavy, but you hardly displace any water."
You gotta give the guy some points for bravery. Well, both guys. They seem to be nice people, if a bit forward. I don't understand men.

Dating and Vacationing

Hey all!
The subject of today's post: Dating.
Yeah, yeah. I know you are sick of it.
But I have not been allowed to forget about it, so neither will you.
See, since I returned from my mission, there seems to be an invisible-to-me, shiny sticker that says "RM" on my forehead. Guys that don't really even know me are asking me out in droves.
I am not complaining, because on an individual basis, they have been very nice guys and have treated me very well, but it has been a little overwhelming as a freshly (I guess now, not-so-freshly -- three months!) returned missionary. Sometimes I get burned out.
Yesterday, I decided the reason for it is that dating is like going on vacation.
Vacations are nice and exciting, and you get to try new foods and do new things. They are something out of the ordinary, an adventure, something to look forward to.
But what happens when you are going on vacation once a week or maybe twice or three times? Then suddenly, because you are seeing so many places, it is hard to see the good qualities of any of them. It becomes less adventurous and exciting. It becomes ordinary.
I normally don't like analogies, but let's take it to the next step.
See, what is actually going on, is our imaginary vacationer is looking for a place to live. And when she goes vacationing places to see if it is the place she wants to live, then they "wine and dine" her so to say. The town shows her the nice restaurants and art and museums and leaves the factories for another day. Sounds like dating, right?
So if she is going to so many vacation sites so often, she will never know anything but the dancing, and the music, and the fireworks. She will never find out what it would be really like to live there. And pretty soon, all of the restaurants and shopping and beautiful vistas all start looking the same. And she is tired and just wants to eat breakfast in the same place for two days in a row. But now she is stuck and could never pick, because she can't decide between so many options (but not really options, because she didn't really see any of them through her tired eyes), and she doesn't want to decide on a place to live just because she is tired of looking. But really, they are the ones scouting her out, so the options continue to increase. She isn't even house hunting. Houses are hunting her! Okay. Now this is getting confusing and creepy.
So our imaginary vacationer is stuck. Too many options. No options that have actually been explored. And tired eyes and feet and back.
I guess maybe she is just hoping that someday she will accidentally find herself in a place that is home. A place that is sweet and simple and the food is good, but also filling. A place that has a nice folding chair under a tree where she can put up her feet and take a nap and never want to leave. The local business isn't flashy, but it supports families that are really nice and open, and hang their laundry outside. They aren't begging for her attention, but when she is ready to ask them about their lives in this place, they tell her stories that are funny and serious and real. They politely offer her a place and show her how she could fit into this community and tell her that they would love to have her because she smiles easy, tries her hardest, and can get dirt under her fingernails sometimes.
And suddenly she finds it--the perfect house. Not too big, not too small.
With happiness painted all over the walls and growing in the flower boxes.