Teenagers?

Let me take a moment to describe to you how leadership positions are filled within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  We believe in modern-day revelation.  With this belief comes the belief that God calls people to positions where they are needed.  He also calls them to positions where they will be able to learn something and grow.  These callings or revelations often come through the leader of the congregation, or the Bishop.
For just under a year, I have been serving in what we call the primary.  This is where the children under the age of 12 go to have a class with singing, then we break into smaller classes to have a lesson.  I was with with kids who were 5 at the beginning of this year and will be 6 by the end of the year.  That is my favorite age group.  I just love all their personalities and how much willing they are to learn.  I could not have been happier.
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to meet with one of the men who asks people if they will accept callings.  This isn't his only responsibility though, so I thought nothing of it.  I went in and met with him and he asked me if I would be willing to accept a calling that would remove me from my position with my little 5 and 6 year-old buddies and put me with the 12 and 13 year-old girls.
Yeah, but that's not all.
This calling would require me to not only be with them on Sundays, but to also take one evening per week, every week, to spend time with these girls.
Hi, my name is Brigette and I student-teach Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from 7:45 to at least 3:30.  On Tuesdays I am in classes from 8:20-4:30.  I have homework coming out of my ears, and I have a job.  How could I responsibly add another commitment to that?
Well, I prayed about it and I really felt like I needed to accept the calling.  I felt like God really needs me to be with those girls.  Whether it is to help them with something I can offer, or to help me through something they can teach me, I have no idea, but I can officially say that I am terrified, but I know what I need to be doing.  Starting in one week, I will be spending a significant amount of time with a bunch of 12 and 13 year-old girls I have never met before.

Making Time

Have you ever noticed that throughout your life there are some things that you are good at one year then terrible at the next? Well, when I was growing up, I was great at saying my prayers before I went to bed, but I never said them in the morning and I consistently struggled with daily scripture study.

A year ago, I had it all down. I never left my house without saying a prayer. I never went to bed without reading scriptures or some modern-day revelations, and I always said prayers before bed.

Now, I read my scriptures every day, but prayer is harder for me to feel motivated to do. I wonder if it is in part because I know that prayer should be a powerful thing, so I don't want to skim over it, but I am always under such a time crunch (yes, even when I'm going to bed) that I don't want to devote 15-30 minutes to anything that isn't on my to-do list for school. Yes, I realize how ridiculous that sounds. My Father in Heaven has given me everything, yet I can't give Him an honest quarter of an hour? I can't stand that I feel that way, but I do. I feel so rushed to get to my student teaching, then to work, then do homework, then clean my house, then finally collapse into my bed, and repeat it all the next day.

I think I'm going to make an official schedule of things I need to do before going to bed. I'll let you know how that works out, I guess.

Here We Go, Again

I have decided that, for my own sanity, I need to have a place to just write and vent and be me.  This will be that place.  Maybe.  The plan is to write about once a week, but we will see how much time homework allows me to have for myself, especially since I also plan on using daily exercise as a way to release stress and have some "me time."

If you are a person who gets emails about what I blog, please let me know and I will see if I can find where to change that setting, but I haven't been here for several years so it might take some time and random clicking.

Also, I have apparently decided that I will be using APA formatting on the blog from here on out, which means I don't have to indent (if blogs are formatted the same way as discussion boards, that is; if they aren't, then I'm just not indenting for the sake of not indenting).

I now have to go get ready for school tomorrow.  Here goes week six of student teaching.

this is my life

so, i'm speaking in church this sunday.
if you don't come, i'll make you cookies.

also, i was just informed by the piece of paper hanging on grandma and grandpa's fridge, that i'm having an open house on the 27th.

i don't know how i feel about this, for a number of reasons.

1. i'm not a fan of large social gatherings in my honor.
2. i'm not a fan of large social gatherings.
3. it's my last sunday here, and i'd like to spend it with people i really like, doing whatever i darn well please--not being a good hostess.
4. i was informed that this was all happening by a piece of paper that is hanging on the fridge, that turned out to be an email that my mom sent to everyone, so i'm literally the last one to know.
5. i really should get over my hatred of lists with only four things, because i seem to make them more than any other length of list.

besides that...

i participated in my first ever tim tam slam tonight. it was fun. tim tams are delicious, but i'm not really a fan of things that i need to eat fast, so i'm not sure if i'd have my own tim tam slam. i think i'd still go to them, but it's nothing i'd ever initiate.

season five of the office is amazing.

boys are frustrating.

i helped vanessa paint her room. the primer has still not come off of me. favorite david said it's because a wizard sneezed in the primer, so now it's magical.

lissa has changed her favorite color to black, but i'm pretty sure that either cameron or i had dibs on that many years ago.

i have mosquito bites everywhere, and i got them all on one night, when i was talking to daniel, except for 2 of them. the funniest thing is that the 2 i didn't get while i was talking to him, have matches on him: i have one on my left knee, and so does he; i have one on my right hand, and he has one in almost the exact same spot. that's why we're best friends. : )

i'm leaving in two weeks.

crap.

totes crap.

Dear Daniel

296.

Love,
Brigette

just wondering... (pg-13)

If we started calling someone who was being a poop face a “mute donkey” instead of a “dumb ass,” how would people react?

I predict anarchy.

welcome to my brain.

Lighting design in theatre is an amazing thing. The lights can convey as much information and add as much to a play as music can, if done correctly. Different lighting effects can be used to establish the setting, emotion and main points of a scene. They can add humor or point things out to the audience that the average person might not notice without the help of a lighting designer highlighting it.
One of a lighting designer’s jobs is to do just that: highlight. Light is something that people naturally look toward, so by lighting something insignificant, the lighting designer might be able to trick the audience into believing that it is something important (which, admittedly, would be really funny).
Sorry, let’s refocus.
People look to light. When you’re in a house, and only one light is on, that is where you will probably go. We all mock the little bugs that all just go toward the light, even though their lives may be at stake, but, honestly, who hasn’t tried to “get a seven on the sun stare?” We are drawn toward light.
Let’s go metaphoric now.
Why do so many people wander in darkness, when light is what we so clearly desire? Some of them are in darkness because fate dealt them a lousy hand this time around, but some of them are there because they chose to be.
The way I see it, there is little we can do to actually help those who choose to be in darkness. When you’re in a dark room and someone turns on a light, you are probably not very happy with that person. If someone is in darkness in his or her life, and someone tries to force light onto them, there is going to be some bad stuff happening, maybe a shoe-throwing fight or something, I don’t know. Consider, however, just letting your light be it’s natural brightness. You aren’t forcing anyone to stare at it, but they will end up being drawn to it eventually. And if they lose you, they will remember that light, and how much easier it made their lives, and they will eventually seek to find their way out of the darkness. Forcing anything onto anyone will only result in calamity, but by merely being who you are—or better yet: who you hope to become—you will be infinitely helpful in their lives and you can know that you helped them find their own light.
Now, the people who are in darkness just because they know nothing else, that’s a whole different problem. Their eyes have gotten used to the darkness, because there is simply no light around them. They do not know what they’re missing, because they’ve never seen anything besides darkness. Again, we cannot just show up in their lives and force light on them. Their eyes that are so accustomed to the dark will not respond kindly to that. All we can do is hope that a little glimmer of the light that we have will be bright enough that when we pass by them from a distance, they will notice that something is different. We just have to hope that they recognize that they want to reach that light and happiness, and then do everything in their power to reach for it until someone who has it is able to help them establish their own light so that it will be able to grow and light their way and the paths of others’.



I don’t know where exactly this came from. My brain was just thinking about stage lighting and how cool it is that most people look exactly where they're supposed to be looking based on what part of the stage is the most lit. Then this happened. I don’t know if it is coherent, and I haven’t proofread it at all, but I think I need to go to bed, since Ryan is going to be awake soon and he’s going to pester me about being up too late.
Maybe I’ll edit it later. Maybe not. Probably not. We’ll see though. Goodnight!