With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

"With great power comes great responsibility"This morning in my scripture study, I was reading when Alma warns the people of Ammonihah that they  need to repent or else God will "utterly destroy [them] from off the face of the earth; yea and visit [them] in his anger" (Alma 9:12). Alma also explains to them that even though the Lamanites were a wicked people at that same time, the Lord would look more favorably upon the Lamanites than upon the people of Ammonihah on the day of judgement because the Lamanites were following incorrect traditions that had been handed down to them, whereas the people of Ammonihah knew better. The people of Ammonihah were a "highly favored people of the Lord... above every other nation, kindred, tongue or people" (Alma 9:20)Now it's kinda cheesy but when I read this I thought about the movie Spiderman, when Uncle Ben is in the car talking to Peter and tells him "these are the years when a man changes into the man he is going to become for the rest of his life; just be careful who you change into" and then he later says "with great power comes great responsibility". It is true that this average boy, Peter Parker, ends up getting bit by a spider that turns him  into Spiderman and now he suddenly is blessed with all this power; along with that, he has responsibility to protect not only himself, but others as well. His uncle so lovingly tries to tell him and warn him and yet Peter gets defensive and leaves upset. Are there times in our lives where our parents, or teachers, or church leaders have given loving counsel and yet we get upset of by it? I know I have a few times in my life. What does that say about our character when we do that? Food for thought. We need to realize that they are doing it out of love, just like Alma when he is speaking to these people. Alma wants them to succeed and he knows that they have been given such power because they know right from wrong and because of that, they have great responsibility to live righteously.
D&C 82:3 "unto whom much is given much is required".... at times it can feel like the demands placed upon us seem heavy and almost too much to bear, but Sister Sheri Dew said "shouldn't we expect the journey towards eternal glory to stretch us? ...The Lord's standard of behavior will always be more demanding than the world's, but then the Lord's rewards are infinitely more glorious-including true joy, peace and salvation" ("We Are Women of God", 1999)As we continue to go on with our lives, we need to remember that we have a lot of responsibility put on us because of the amazing power the Lord has given us.

Come Ye Out from the Wicked

Today I was reading in Alma in the Book of Mormon and there was a verse that stood out to me...
Alma 5:57:
And now I say unto you, all you that are desirous to follow the voice of the good shepherd, come ye out from the wicked, and be ye separate, and touch not their unclean things;

Elder David R Stone of the Seventy gave the talk Zion in the Middle of Babylon which talked about the construction of the Manhattan New York Temple and how it provided an example of how to remove oneself from the influence of the world.

"Too many of the people of the world have come to resemble the Babylon of old by walking in their own ways and following a god 'whose image is in the likeness of the world' [D&C 1:16].

"One of the greatest challenges we will face is to be able to live in that world but somehow not be of the world. We have to create Zion in the midst of Babylon...

"My involvment with the building of the Manhattan Temple gave me the opportunity to be in the temple quite often prior to the dedication. It was wonderful to sit in the celestial room and be there in perfect silence, without a single sound to be heard coming from the busy New York streets outside. How was it possible that the temple could be so reverently silent when the hustle and bustle of the metropolis was just a few feet away?

"The answer was in the constuction of the temple. The temple was bulit within the walls of an existing building, and the inner walls of the temple were connected to the outer walls at only a very fewjunction points. That is how the temple (Zion) limited the effects of Babylon, or the world outside.
"There may be a lesson here for us. We can create the real Zion among us by limiting the extent to which Babylon will influence our lives...
"Wherever we are, whatever city we may live in, we can build our own Zion by the principles of the celestial kingdom and ever seek to become the pure in heart...
"We do not need to become as puppets in the hands of the culture of the place and time. We can be courageous and can walk in the Lord's path and follow His footsteps" (General Conference 2006)

The Manhattan temple is one of my favorite temples. I love how it is right in the middle of New York City, right amongst the hustle and bustle. The temple is so small that when we would go do temple trips, we couldn't go down with the entire youth, just a small group would go. 

I love this picture. It shows all the craziness going on downtown, cars driving, traffic starting to build up, but once you get inside those Temple walls, it really is peaceful. I really enjoyed how Elder Stone uses the Manhattan Temple as an example of 'coming out from the wicked' because you really are removing yourself from wicked when you enter.
I love the 2002 youth theme- Stand Ye in Holy Places which comes from D&C 87:8. I remember this theme really well, maybe because it was when I was a little baby beehive, or maybe because it is very short and powerful. Stand Ye in Holy Places. A simple commandment with such a great reward attached if we follow it. If we can 'come out from the wicked' and 'stand in holy places', Satan will have much less control over us and we will be so much closer to the Lord.

Alma 5:57: And now I say unto you, all you that are desirous to follow the voice of the good shepherd, come ye out from the wicked, and be ye separate, and touch not their unclean things;

One thing I want to do in my life is to follow this scripture, to really separate myself from wicked by avoiding R rated movies and inappropriate music, to not gossip or talk about people behind their backs, and avoiding slothfulness. I know by doing so, I am showing the Lord that I am desirous to follow him and he will bless me because of my obedience.

Here are some more beautiful pictures of the Manhattan temple:

Love this picture.

I downloaded Picasa from Google. It is a free photo editor so I used it to brightened up the pictures that I took with my iphone the other day... im so proud at how this one turned out!

Fifteen Minutes.

I always stress and complain to myself that I just do not have enough hours in the day to get everything done that I want to get done. I just have this never ending growing list of things I need to do/improve on that it can really be overwhelming sometimes! I really want to devote at least a half hour of time each morning to quality scripture time and not have that little thought in the back of my mind saying you have this and this and this and this and this to do today. But if I really sit down and break it down, I have tons of time to do everything I need to do, and most things just take fifteen minutes. Here's a list of things I need to do each morning that should only take me fifteen minutes:

• go for a mile and a half run
• stretch and do my 8 minute abs
• shower/brush teeth/wash face
• blow dry hair
• style hair & do make-up
• cook a meal
• eat and make a list of goals for that day
• walk to school

total:  2 hours.

Festival of Colors!

Today was one of my favorite things to do in the spring... Festival of Colors! It is a Hindu celebration to welcome in the new Spring season called Holi or Festival of Colors. It's a day of singing and dancing and of course, throwing dyed corn starch at each other. This was my third year getting to go.

Here is me two years ago from the first time i went:

I drove and got lost (not surprising) and it didn't help that it took me 1 hour and 45 mintues to get there because traffic was so bad, so many people were trying to get down there that their were accidents all down the interstate.... by the time we pulled up to the Hindu Temple, we saw a huge pink cloud go up into the air. We had missed it. All that driving for nothing. Even all the colours were sold out so we couldn't even have our own celebration!

Last Year:

We made it in time! We got right down in the middle of it.

This year:

Was so fun. Dan, Jana, her friend and I all went down together. We got lost but in the end we found a better way of getting there! As we were driving, a car full of girls drove by (they were exceeding the limit, even the trunk was full of girls)... anyways, jana makes the comment "hey look at all those girls in the car" and Dan responds by saying "yah, you can tell cause it's sinking down low". Can you believe that? Rude.. but funny.

Anyways the car full of girls got their revenge by stealing our parking spot and cutting us off! That was rude. 

Here are some fun pictures for our day!!!:

Andrew and Katherine 

Dan and I showing our true colors!

We walked by a little kid who was standing by the stairs... he had a bad FULL of orange color. Dan threw some of his last color and him and in retaliation this little kid dumped his entire bag on Dan. It was really funny.

A view from the Hindu Temple... so many people there for 11am in the morning!

Hindu Temple

'The Dan Look'

Smile Dan!

Jana and I!!

Cute.

Cuter.

Cutest... aww

Peace.

Dan's teeth were purple

There was a huge air machine that blew us off so we were allowed into the Hindu Temple. We had to take off our shoes to enter and my feet got so muddy... i crinnge thinking about it again... i hate walking around barefoot where other people with gross feet have been walking.... anyways Dan felt the need to recreate the painting behind him (actually no, I told him to go pose like that)

I did the same.

Driving home!

Jana.... aww cute hair jana.

My unibrow from the color that washed off after my shower

One last highlight:

Dan slipped walking down the muddy hill and instead of me helping him I stood there laughing... karma later struck when someone bumped me and I slipped down into the mud too. It was too muddy for my flip flops to get a grip and I continued to slide down as Dan picked me up.

Great day and home by 12:30. Festival of Colors... see you next year! hare krishna!

Snow again??

Two days ago I was wearing shorts and playing in the park... yesterday I went running in a long sleeve-t and shorts.... today i woke up, and there was snow on the ground.

i wish i took the picture five minutes before when it was really coming down.

And in case you didn't already know, today is friday, friday got get down on friday, everybody is looking forward to the weekend, weekend, friday friday getting down on friday...

partying partying ya! partying partying ya! fun fun fun fun fun fun !! yesterday was thrusday thrusday, today is friday friday.. .tomorrow is saturday, and sunday comes afterward..

Spring Sunday.

Dan has had this really cool idea for a date where we go out and observe nature and paint what we see... So Saturday night we went to Walmart and got some paint [and a bocce ball set], and yesterday after church we went down to the park and painted!

Dan's Painting

My painting

My Morning Grapefruit

'Fourth of July'

'Kolob'

I know... beautiful! I am looking forward to doing it again. We also went and played bocce ball. It reminded me of shuffle board (which I love to play at home with the family). 

Bocce ball was developed in Italy (makes sense why Dan is so naturally drawn to it... it's in his blood). I won (of course) but Dan put up a good fight. The final score was 12-11. I should have taken some real pictures, I will next time, but here are some I found online... funny thing though, when I typed in 'bocce ball' all that came up was pictures of old people playing hahaha:

(Dan in a few years)

out tossin' the boccia

(me in a few years!)

Dan sent me this picture to cheer me up while I was studying today... believe it or not this is the only picture I have of the two of us:

Today has been a good day too! I woke up early and studied all day and did really well on an anatomy test (finally!) I did have to wait in the testing center line for 40 minutes. I always give myself 2 hours to take a test and tonight I pushed it a bit and headed up to campus at 7:30... the line was so long it was out the door and wrapping all around the building! But the extra few minutes standing in line was what I needed to take a last minute glance at my notes.

Cultured.

As I have reached my wise old age of 21, I feel like it's time to appreciate the finer things in life and enjoy/embrace a little culture. Now that I have taken all my science classes, when I hear the world 'culture' I immediately think about a petri dish filled with growing bacteria.... but that is not the type of 'culture' I am actually referring too! (I have turned into such a nerd)
I have taken some really cool classes here at BYU that have helped expand my 'Bougie' attitude to being more cultured. Last year I took Humanities and also French and Italian Cinema and it helped me fall in love with art, music and film.
But as poor college students, it can be hard to get cultural experiences!..... but guess what, it's actually a lot cheaper than you think.

Tuesday Dan and I sat down and had a nice evening together watching this AWESOME documentary called 'Wasteland'. It was about a Brazilian artist named Vik Muniz who wanted to give back to his community through art. He took two years out of his life to go to Brazil and study the people that dig through the landfills to find materials that can be recycled. He took pictures of them and then recreated them using the garbage they dig through everyday and sold them at an art auction in London. I love documentaries, and this one ranks pretty high on my list. (Plus it is currently live stream on Netflix)

Today (Thursday) a group of us took advantage of the art museum here on campus at the MOA. Entrance is free and they had two really cool exhibits. The first one we went to was war art propaganda. There was some really cool prints. I love studying and looking at propaganda. In my film class we talked a lot about how the cinema and art was an excellent tool in persuading people how to think.

The other exhibit that was amazing was Carl Bloch. What a cool experience that was to see his art up close. Amazing pictures. So beautiful. He was an artist known for his Christian art in the late 1800s. His paintings of the Savoir are absolutely astonishing. You would be amazed at the number of Church publications that use his paintings. My favorite painting they had displayed was 'Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda'.

Such a beautiful picture with a lot of symbolism behind it. One thing that I read at the exhibit is that lots of Church members are familiar with his work but until they see these paintings in real life, they do not realize their amazing size and detail. This picture above is HUGE. Experiencing his art (or any art for that matter) in real life makes for such a cool experience.

For dessert I made cherry dump cake. Cherry pie filling, sprinkle yellow cake mix on top and some thinly sliced butter. Cook at 350 degrees for an hour.

Tomorrow we are going to the International Cinema here on campus. The movie they are playing is called Mutum and the director is going to be there and available for questions before and after the film! I love watching foreign films... maybe it's the subtitles, maybe it is the different flow of events they present.... but there is something them that mesmerizes me. Price for such an event? Free.

Lastly, we got tickets to Mozart Symphony No. 40 played by the Utah Symphony next Friday. We got some awesome second tier seats ($60 a pop) for only $10 because we are students! I'm sure I will blog all about it next week.

So in conclusion to this very long blog post.... (I think im just making up for being such a slacker the last few weeks) go out and explore. Don't be afraid to mix up your life a little bit. Sitting around and watching TV every night is fun (kinda) but there are so many other things out there that can help educate you, make you more cultured, more bougie, more interesting! and it doesn't have to cost you a lot.

**thanks Michelle for proof reading my post.