Life lately...

This is my life lately according to some snippets of emails to missionaries. No pictures because my camera broke. :(
About two weeks ago,  Stephanie, Sam, Jairen, and I went on a spontaneous camping trip (our second one this year) but this time Tyler helped us out with transportation. and food. and planning. We made delicious hamburgers and Steph and Sam had veggie corndogs. Tyler and Juan (his best friend) left by midnight but me, Steph, Sam, and Jairen slept up there. And I'm normally fine sleeping under the stars, I love it, but Stephanie had told me all these horrible facts about how fast bears can kill you because she's terrified of them. I kept saying "Aw, nah we'll be fine." But all night I was awake just listening for bears haha. oh man. The next day I went to church with Jake cause he lives in Provo now but still goes to the Flonette ward. we had nachos at my house and blasted fun. and then went to  Lilly's birthday party then had to pick up Marco for ward prayer... but he didn't know where he lived (he just moved there) so he kept giving us different street addresses he was walking on and then Jake's car ran out of gas. So we had to wait for his brother to come and fill it up enough for us to get to a gas station. Then we found Marco and went to ward prayer. and then I just had so much fun there socializing and talking to everyone and teasing Cierra and Carlos and then we went to Mariah's house for her birthday and watched x men but I was sooo tired. So finally Jake took me home and we sang to fun. at the tops of our lungs the entire way to Provo.

This last week:

.....I got my passport on Saturday so my papers are going in THIS WEEK! I can't explain to you how excited and nervous I am but I bet you already know since you've been down that road... haha.

So that's my exciting news.

This week has been pretty good. On Monday we had this weird date night thing for FHE where we were assigned to a date. Awkward. I know. But it turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected mainly because we did some pretty funny skits to act out do's and don'ts of dating haha. But my date volunteered for one of the "skits" so me, him, Logan, and Logan's date went into the other room and Bro Yates told us we had to play charades kind of. One at a time. We had to pretend we were trying to get the last bit of peanut butter out of the jar without any kind of utensil. And we had to make it sound like it was delicious. Whoever did it well enough that everyone could guess what we were doing would win. Well I was like "nooooo" but I went second and it was super embarrassing because I was in front of like a billion people with like my hands to my face as if I'm holding a jar, and licking with my tongue and going "mmm yum" or whatever. Everyone was laughing at me. I'm sure you can see where this is going... Apparently my date pretended to stick his finger in the jar. And Logan did pretty much what I did. Anyway after we had all gone, Bro Yates had us come back in and tell everyone what we were doing. They all burst into laughter and Brother Yates told us that he had told them we were going to demonstrate how we personally kiss!!!! Oh my gosh it was so hilarious but so embarrassing!! Super awkward haha. Everyone was high fiving me as I made my way back to my seat and they were like "whoaa Maren likes tongue" oh geez. I about died but also was laughing super hard.

Anyywwayyy. So on Tuesday me and a bunch of friends went to the Fiesta Days festivities and one of my friends (Marinda) sang the national anthem at the rodeo. So that was pretty cool! For some reason I really can't remember what happened on Wednesday haha. Then Thursday my friend, Amber from work came over to sleep over. We watched Lars and the Real Girl and had hamburgers and just chatted. It was fun! But I felt bad I was so tired haha. Friday was Jamie Lyn's birthday so we celebrated that with a fancy dinner and gmaes and then me and some friends went on a night hike to the grotto.

On Saturday my mom and I babysat these two little boys all day and my arms seriously ache from holding the baby. He cried anytime I tried to put him down. Later, I got to hang out with Breanna and Marco. We went to Coldstone and then the park. Breanna and I went into girl talk mode and Marco put up with it well but didn't say much haha. We had fun though.

Sunday, I went to Jamie Lyn's ward in SLC because she was giving a talk in her sacrament meeting. My mom and I went to support her. My dad had to teach Sunday School, poor guy. She gave an AMAZING talk all about love and it was seriously inspiring to me. She thinks I'm just saying that but truly it was. I realized that maybe I've been getting a little too easily irritated with people and I've been scared about losing friends when I go on my mission. But that talk was a great reminder that I need to not focus on myself and how I am not feeling loved or how I need to receive love or whatever. I need to focus on loving those people no matter what! Even if they make choices I disagree with or if they aren't always my friend or if I have to forgive them for things. My burdens will become lighter if I try to make others' burdens lighter. I learn this over and over. I'm sure I've told similar stories before. But it's always such a peaceful feeling when I finally realize I've been focusing on myself too much. Once I shift my focus onto the Lord and loving others, things seem much more bearable. Later, someone on Facebook posted a status about how her life and the gospel is centered on love. And I was like, I need to be that way!! Sometimes it is easy and sometimes I just forget. As I was studying preach my gospel today I found a bunch of scriptures in 1 John all about love and God's love and how we need to love each other. It just really impressed me that the gospel is so centered on love! I think that's amazing! I want to work harder at being loving to EVERYONE. I can actually love people pretty easily that a lot of people don't love. I love the rejects and the socially awkward kids. I like making them feel special and wanted. But sometimes it's harder for me to love the people I know super well who do things to hurt me or the popular kids who don't seem to need me. So I just need to work on that. I'm excited for my mission because I think it will give me a great opportunity for developing Christ-like charity and love. Anyway... this is so long... sometimes I just get chatty.

Maren