My Mormon Moments With the Book of Mormon: Nephi's Leading by Following

      Alright so as I have mentioned before I am taking Book of Mormon at Brigham Young University. It is a required class to graduate for my friends who didn't know! Even if it wasn't I'd still want to take it just saying. As a part of our weekly assignments we as a class have been asked to share what we learned with friends or family, so I thought I'd make a blog post of it this week and we will see how it goes. I will post links and try my best to explain what is going on for my friends who are not familiar with the book.
      In 1 Nephi 4:34 Nephi, an ancient North American Prophet, faithfully admonishes, “Surely the Lord hath commanded us to do this thing; and shall we not be diligent in keeping the commandments of the Lord.” Within the last four chapters Nephi has told his murmurous brothers (Nephi has two older brothers who were complaining about going back to get their records from a leader in their town after Nephi's family had fled the city in hopes of escaping from it to save their father's life) this same thing like 2 other times (the older brothers never wanted to do anything outside their comfort zone and Nephi was the only one to man up). It amazes me how persistent Nephi was in being a leader despite opposition from his family, even his older brothers who should have been examples for him. He does  not give into their petty complainants because he sees the bigger picture and knows the Lord will help him accomplish hard things. What a leader! It is just like in our day God has asked us to keep his commandments, and it takes faith a diligence to stay with it. It also reminds me of a program I was listening to and I think it was one of the apostles talking about the mission age change (the age for mormon missionaries was changed in October so girls could serve at 19 and boys at 18, which is intense considering these young adults give up family and media to serve the Lord for 18 to 24 months) and pretty much what he said was “the new announcement is something tremendous to ask of youth at even a younger age, but the Lord has given the commandment and we as church leaders expect them to rise up and we know they can do it.” I love the expectation our Heavenly Father gives us and the unfailing love and faith he has for us! He knows we as his little children can do hard things especially with Him there to help us. This is a comfort to me knowing as long as I am keeping the commandments and trying hard to draw closer to God, he will take care of me as I am away from home, young, and clueless. Nephi still leaves me in awe because he was all the above and didn't have his family support him and obviously had way more faith.

Nephi and his older brothers (Nephi is the one who looks like a leader)

Hello College!

      It is Monday and also the first day of classes at Brigham Young University for summer term. Somehow I have found myself here at this university. I don't know where to start, but I guess I'll start out explaining how I came to go to summer school. When I was accepted to BYU I was just admitted to Fall semester, but after thinking about it I decided it would be better for me to get out here earlier to establish myself with a job and take some "easy" classes before like 4,000 other freshmen show up and this campus explodes with chaos. All I did was email BYU and they quickly accepted me. That is how I got here.

     The last couple days though have been busy and filled with many firsts: my first apartment, classes, job training, and student ID. 

Honestly my thoughts and feelings about this tremendous change right now are:

1. I LOVE the mountains in Utah paired with non humid weather and the perfect temperature are ideal for walking around. 

2. Living on my own is pretty sweet, but I still love my home and town where I was raised and am super grateful for the spectacular childhood I have had, so in that sense I will always miss those memories and friends.

3. Going to church without air conditioning for three hours and then staying for another 2 hour meeting makes you feel sick and hungry.

4. I LOVE that I am enrolled in two religion classes. One is for The Book of Mormon  and the other is a survey of world religions. It is so wonderful to learn about these things that mean so much to me on a whole new level.

5. BYU is huge and it is crazy to think how many people do so many diverse things here.

6. I live right next to some of the new missionary housing and it was so cool yesterday to watch missionaries come home from the broadcast yesterday (for those who don't know the church broadcasted a seminar yesterday all about missionary work from the Marriott Center at BYU).

7. I miss Dad unclogging the shower (our shower doesn't drain well and I am actually going to have to put forth effort to call maintence because I cannot figure it out!)

     I also want to give a shout out to my friend Colby for kindly reminding me to just keep blogging, because I seriously lack confidence in writing and that made my day.

     Ok, one other story about today. My last class of the day was Zumba, so after spending all day on campus I got to this class. I thought that I had Zumba-ed before so it would be a nice little fun class. Yeah no. I was whipped by the end of it and problem wasn't even doing it right. Afterwards I was so tired and thirsty and had to walk like 30 mins to get home. I got semi lost on the way home and that was no fun. By the time I reached my apartment I wanted water and water and food. I thought the apartment would be open and it wasn't, so I took my backpack off in search of the keys and thankfully someone opened the door for me. AHHHHHH  it felt soooo soooooo good to be home. 

     Tomorrow I go to my first day of work serving food at the missionary training center. It will be an early morning, like by early 4 am. WHAT!? I know, but at least I'll have the rest of the day to read and rest. 

    

BYU baby! 

My sweet sister Abbee took this. I think it is on BYU campus  like within the last couple weeks.