It's almost Thanksgiving!

In light of Thanksgiving, I wanted to share this quote that I love. I've been thinking about gratitude a lot, especially because church today was focused on it and it made me want to be a more grateful person. There is so much in my life to be thankful for, especially my incredible family.

As for updates on my life, I've mostly been busy with school stuff. There have been some fun activities going on in my ward, like hot chocolate parties, making gratitude journals (haha that was a Relief Society activity), Hawaiian haystacks/game night parties, and other random stuff. Life is fun as always here at the Y. I seriously love it here so much. And Monticello is a super fun apartment complex! I'm starting to get sad that the semester is almost over. I'll miss it here.

Also, one of my friends from the 3200 wing of Hinckley Hall got baptized last week! She is an exchange student from China and she is the sweetest thing. Most of the girls in my hall were there, so we took a little reunion picture:

Unfortunately, again, that is the only picture I have taken. I am so bad!

I can't wait to come home to Laramie on Tuesday for Thanksgiving break! After that, I have two weeks of classes and one week of finals, and then I'm home until March. So crazy! I am going to Brazil in 101 days, guys!!

I hope you are all doing well and remembering to be thankful for the beauty in your lives :)

Updates

Sorry I haven't posted in so long! My main updates are from this weekend, though, so I guess you haven't missed much. First of all, I dressed as Belle from Beauty and the Beast for my ward Halloween party on Friday night as well as a trunk-or-treat activity for Primary kids and our stake dance, which were last weekend. Mom, Dad, and Josh arrived in Provo late Friday night and I stayed in the hotel with them. Dad took a picture of me in my costume and Josh, who is such a handsome stud he doesn't even need to dress up :) Look how tall he is! I adore this guy.

On Saturday morning, we ate a delicious breakfast at Kneader's Bakery. At about noon, I met a girl at the Oquirrh Mountain temple. She and I are both part of a sister missionaries group on Facebook, and she volunteered to do free mission pictures for anyone. I thought it would be fun, so she took pictures of me. Unfortunately, there were literally 80 mph winds all day, and so my hair was somewhat unmanageable. But here is one of the pictures of me with my Portuguese Book of Mormon :) 

The reason Mom, Dad, and Josh came to visit me for the weekend was so that Mom and Dad could go through the temple with me. We went to the Bountiful temple, and Grandma and Grandpa were able to join us as well.

It was a wonderful weekend and I was so grateful to be with Mom, Dad, and Josh!

I GOT MY MISSION CALL

Dear Sister Weatherford:

You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Brazil Natal Mission. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 18 months.

You should report to the Brazil Missionary Training Center on Wednesday, March 4, 2015. You will prepare to preach the gospel in the Portuguese language.

I'M GOING TO BRAZIL! I'M GOING TO SPEAK FRICKIN PORTUGUESE!!

I opened my call late on Thursday night. It was honestly probably sitting in my mailbox since Wednesday, and I didn't even know it. I am so mad at myself! But I am truly so excited and humbled by this opportunity. I will miss you all very much, but I am grateful that I get to serve a mission. I cannot wait to go to Brazil. :)

Mission Papers Submitted! :)

Unfortunately, this is going to be a boring post, since I have not busted out my camera and taken a single picture since my last post. Sorry! But I still wanted to update anyone who actually reads this on what's new in my life.

The biggest update is that I submitted my mission papers a week ago today! I'm not sure how long it will be until I get my call. It's usually 2 or 3 weeks, but with General Conference going on, I anticipate that mine could take even longer. We will see. You can be sure that I will post when it comes, because I am super excited! :)

In other news, my classes are going well and my ward is great. In Monticello, they do this thing called "dinner groups" where you are put in a group of 12 people (if you want to -- it's not required haha) and you take turns cooking dinner for the whole group. It goes from Monday to Thursday every week, which means that you only have to cook dinner once every 3 weeks. On the other days, dinner is provided for you by another member of the group. It is a lot of fun, though it is difficult to come up with dinner ideas that can accommodate so many people and feed hungry college students!

I got to go see The Maze Runner with Amelia and Meredith on Friday night, which was a lot of fun. However, we were all less than satisfied with the movie. The book is so amazing, and the movie made too many changes to the plot and focused too much on the action. And since I am so protective of and passionate about the book, I wasn't completely thrilled. It was still enjoyable though, and we had a great girls' night out.

I think that's about all that's new for me, so I hope you are all doing well and know how much I love you!

First post of the semester

I'm finally back to blogging! Of course, by now, everyone has probably stopped reading my blog. Oh well.

However, after spending a wonderful summer in Laramie, I am now back in Provo and have finished one week of school! I'm taking Missionary Preparation, Basic Vocal Skills, World Civilization from 1500, Foundations of Education, Foundations of Multicultural Education, and Foundations of Literacy Development. I think all of my classes will be good, but then again, it is pretty early to tell for sure.

I really like my apartment. Amelia, Meredith, and I live together, and a fourth girl just moved in last night. It is a very charming little place, and it's actually been fun to be able to make food for myself instead of just eating at a cafeteria. Here are some pictures of it!

On Friday, Ben came to visit me. He arrived at around 8:30, and we went to get some authentic tacos al pastor and then went to a Comedy Sportz improv comedy show. The next day, I met him in Salt Lake, where he was staying in a hotel with his brother. We walked around, looking for a place to eat and watching all of the people who came for Comiccon. Then we drove to Provo, where we spent a while having fun at the nickel arcade, called Nickel City. After that, we stopped by my apartment, and then hiked Bridal Veil Falls. It was only a 1/2 mile hike round trip and it was beautiful! We took many "selfies" while we were there. :)

Afterwards, we cooked ourselves some delicious enchiladas and then bought 12 Krispy Kreme donuts and ate them in a beautiful park nearby. This morning, we both went to my new ward together, which was a first for both of us. People seem very nice and I'm excited to get to know everybody better. After church, we ate lunch and then he headed back to Laramie. It was a very fun weekend and I'm grateful he made the drive to Provo so we could spend time together.

I hope everyone had a wonderful week!

Finals Have Started and a Great Easter Sunday

Happy Easter! This past week has been really good. My last day of classes was on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were reading days, and finals started on Friday! I went to several reviews during reading days and spent most of my days studying, though I did get to take some breaks to hang out with Grant and do stuff with Amelia and Meredith.

On Friday morning, I took my Book of Mormon final. It was really easy and only took me about 15 minutes! That afternoon, I took my Physical Science final at the Smith Fieldhouse. It was not quite as easy...but it went really well. On Saturday morning, I took the Spanish 321 final, which went well. So three of my four finals (not including a Writing presentation) are successfully done! My last one is World Civilizations to 1500 and it is going to be a frickin' beast. I'm waiting to take that until Wednesday so I can study my brains out until then. And on Tuesday, I am turning in a paper for Writing and giving a group presentation. Finals are over on Wednesday, so I'll start packing and cleaning, and I will be back in Laramie on Saturday, April 26!

Today was such a great Easter Sunday. Church was incredible and I felt so uplifted by the testimonies and messages that were shared today. I'm grateful for the chance we have to remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the message of hope that it brings. I really like this video by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and think it has a great message for this Easter Sunday: https://www.lds.org/pages/mormon-messages?lang=eng#none-were-with-him
Here's a picture of us after church:

 Amber, me, Amelia, Meredith, and Natalie:

Also, Meredith, Amelia, and I decided to go for a walk after church because it is such a beautiful day. We walked down to the duck pond on campus by way of a gorgeous and charming stone pathway with a stream running by, small waterfalls, and beautiful flowers everywhere! I fell in love with it, and luckily, it is very close to where we'll be living in the fall. At the duck pond, we saw awkward mating turtles that we decided were breaking the Honor Code. But we also saw the most adorable baby ducklings ever! It was such a fun and relaxing walk. :)

I hope everyone is having a beautiful Easter! :)

Update -- sorry I'm such a slacker

I'm sorry I haven't written in so long! It's been a crazy and busy couple of weeks and I haven't taken any pictures, so I'm just going to briefly sum up recent events.

Last weekend, I met Mom, Dad, and Josh in Salt Lake, where we went to the Saturday afternoon session of conference together in the Conference Center. We had a great dinner together and then Mom and I had a girls' shopping spree while the boys went to the Priesthood session. Afterwards, we had pie at Village Inn. I said goodbye to them and drove to Murray (only about 15 minutes away) to stay at Grant's sister's house with him. We spent the night there and then watched both sessions of conference on Sunday with his sister Monica, her husband Thomas, his brother Brian and his wife Aubree. Thomas and Monica made us a delicious breakfast and dinner, and we had a good time with them. We headed back to Provo around 6:00 pm.

Other than that, things have been fairly normal in terms of classes and everything. My last day of classes is on Tuesday, and then I have Wednesday and Thursday off as "reading days." Final exams start on Friday and go until Wednesday, April 23. I'm planning on driving back to Laramie on Saturday, April 26 or maybe sooner, depending on how things work out.

I can't believe my freshman year is almost over! It has gone by so fast. It has been an amazing experience for me overall and I feel like I've grown a lot in so many ways. I'm very grateful that I decided to come to BYU; even though it was hard for me to move away from my family, it was definitely the right decision and Provo is the place I need to be. I am so thankful for the people I've met here and the friends I've made. However, I am also super excited to be coming home to Laramie for the summer, to spend time with the people I love most. :)