Le Weekend

Aren't Sundays amazing? Brock is upstairs dozing, I'm sitting at the kitchen table eating chocolate chip cookie dough, and Mojo is sprawled out on top of the couch (right where the sun rays stream through the blinds). In an hour or so we'll head over to Grandma Thomas' house for a yummy Sunday dinner, guitar picking, a card game or two and an episode of "The Amazing Race."

This weekend has been lazy and wonderful. Yesterday we woke up late, cleaned the house, prepared our talks for Sacrament Meeting, and I gave Brock a much-needed haircut. Later that evening, we dropped by the reception of Rachael Rylander--one of the girls Brock grew up with back in HB. Her reception was darling! Honestly, the cutest one I've ever been too. It was held at the Market Street Grill in Park City, and was decorated all in pastel blues, purples, pinks, etc. When you walked in, there was a photo booth for you to take pictures of yourself in, and then it printed out a strip of your photos for the guest book! Speaking of the guest book, all you did was type your name on a piece of parchment using using a baby-blue typewriter! So cute. It was funny seeing all us 21st century folks trying to figure out how to use it (you have to press the buttons HARD!).

In the dining room they had old, classic Louis Armstrong jazz playing, and Rachael's dress--which she designed herself--was a total throwback to the jazz age (yet still looked so modern and chic!). It was absolutely stunning. If I could do my wedding over again, I would copy every single thing Rachael did!

We then zipped up to Salt Lake to hear Mitt Romney speak! We both got signed, first edition copies of his new book, No Apology, as part of the $25 admission price. Pretty awesome...especially if he becomes President!! At the end of his speech they opened it up for Q&A. And let me tell ya, there were some stupid Qs! One guy said something like "Obama promised all this stuff on the campaign trail, like how the healthcare debates would be televised, but that hasn't happened. Are you going to lie, too?" Really? I wanted to ask him why he was wasting everybody's time with that question! Do you honestly think any politician would answer "Yep! I fully plan on lying!" Psch. Dumbzo.

The best question of the night was the last one, from a 12-year boy from Utah. He just asked Mitt Romney straight up if he was going to run for president in 2012! So rad!! It takes a 12-year old with no inhibition to ask that question :) Mitt said that after he's campaigned for people throughout these next November elections, he will sit down with his family at Christmas and talk about it.
Today has been blissful as well. We gave talks in Sacrament Meeting--our first once ever since we moved into the ward three years ago! I spoke about the history of General Conference, and Brock spoke about how we can prepare for it. At 10:45am, right before church, we tried to print out our talks...only to discover that our printer was out of ink! So we frantically called a member of the bishopric, who said to email it to him so he could print it off at the church. Well, guess what? For the first time in ages, our internet decided to go on the fritz! No email!

By this time, I was freaking out. My talk was seven pages of dates and facts about General Conference...there was no way I could have remembered it all off the top of my head. Brock dropped me off at church and ran home to put our talks on a flashdrive...which he then printed off at the church. Finally, after was seemed like ages, he walked into Sacrament Meeting ten minutes late with our talks in hand. Phew!

Both our talks went well. We were worried about not taking up enough time because we were the only two speakers, but we ended up running over! Brock's talk was especially good. He always uses so many scriptures in any talk/lesson he gives, and today was no different. There's no "this is the gospel according to Brock" spiel (we've all heard those talks before....) Instead, it's always like THIS IS THE GOSPEL. LET'S READ IT. LET'S APPLY IT. BAM. I love it! :) Not a lot of people teach like that...it's so refreshing. Tons of people came up to him afterward and were like "Wow! I've never thought of it that way before! What was that scripture again?"

Anyway, we're off to Grandma's for dinner :) I know this was kind of a random, out-of-nowhere blog post (since I hardly ever do it anymore!) but I decided to take advantage of my precious free time and give an update.

Thoughts on Saving the World

My college experience is filled with so many coulda-woulda-shouldas. I wish I'd figured out what I wanted to do with my life sooner, I wish I'd gotten involved in extracurriculars sooner, and I wish I could have minored in international development.

I've found other ways to learn about development though. I'm involved in a club called Students for International Development and I signed up to be on a committee to help coordinate their biggest event of the year--the Hunger Banquet.

The more I learn about development, the more convinced I become that girls are the answer. I've also watched two documentaries lately that I'd recommend to anyone. One is called "Darfur Now" and the other "No End in Sight." These documentaries highlight how complicated development is. The first is about six people around the globe who are working to stop the genocide in Darfur. The second is about the poor policy decisions that led to the current quagmire in Iraq. It makes your heart ache for all the devastation that could have been avoided had people simply had a clue what they were doing. (And it really makes you hate Donald Rumsfeld.)

I guess the point of this post is that I think these past few weeks, I've zeroed in on a life goal: I want to be one of those people in government who knows what they're doing. And I've realized that the worst mistake you can make with regards to development is to think you can help people better than they can help themselves. 

The hitch is this: In order to help people help themselves, you have to speak their language (literally and figuratively). You can't just be a suit-and-tie in D.C. trying to help people you know nothing about, whose culture you've never studied, whose homeland you have never beento, whose language you don't speak.

I've been inspired to devote myself to my studies so I can be of greater help later on. I'm happy that I changed my major to political science, and happy to be learning Arabic. Even though elementary education was a good major, and you can certainly help a lot of people by doing that too, I just feel a greater pull to what I'm doing now.