Gone to Ghana

Hey all!  For the next nine weeks, I'll be volunteering in Ghana, West Africa.  Keep up with the adventure, if you like.  Goodbye, America.  I'll miss you.

Tribute

"As a covenant-keeping daughter of God, she had prepared all her life for motherhood…
A woman with a mother heart has a testimony of the restored gospel, and she teaches the principles of the gospel without equivocation. She is keeping sacred covenants made in holy temples. Her talents and skills are shared unselfishly. She gains as much education as her circumstances will allow, improving her mind and spirit with the desire to teach what she learns to the generations who follow her…

Oh, that every girl and woman would have a testimony of her potential for eternal motherhood as she keeps her earthly covenants…

She knows that the influence of righteous, conscientious, persistent, daily mothering is far more lasting, far more powerful, far more influential than any earthly position or institution invented by man. She has the vision that, if worthy, she has the potential to be blessed as Rebekah of old to be “the mother of thousands of millions."  

Every girl and woman who makes and keeps sacred covenants can have a mother heart. There is no limit to what a woman with a mother heart can accomplish. Righteous women have changed the course of history and will continue to do so, and their influence will spread and grow exponentially throughout the eternities. How grateful I am to the Lord for trusting women with the divine mission of motherhood."  -Julie B. Beck, ‘Mother Heart’,” Liahona, May 2004, 75–77

Happy Mother's Day to my mom-- a perfect example of a mother heart.  I hope you know how much I love you and appreciate your example and sacrifice.  KYW.

hey hey it's may

guess what? I get to go to Ghana in ten days.  

yep.

Also: 

• tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo
• teaching this week: kindergarten and second grade
• my mom is awesome.  
• The Poisonwood Bible is good
• concert coming up on the 9th!  at Holladay City Hall.  please come! (it's free)
• got another shot today (hepatitis #2)
• Elder Bednar is wise and delivered a purposeful address.  loved discussing it with the Grovers.
• missing my dad. (he's in Texas)
• I love spending time with Kaite. she's going to DC for the whole summer and I will miss her.

May is like the first month of summer, but not quite.

songwriting

SO.....

I'm trying my hand at songwriting.  It is something that I've always aspired to do, but have always struggled with.  My dad, who is the most supportive father ever known to mankind, discovered a local songwriting class and let me sign up for it.  It is fantastic, even relaxing. 

We do these "object writings" every day where one person in the class sends out a word, and everyone responds with a 10-minute write.  It's supposed to be a bit abstract-- mostly just to get the creative juices flowing.  Here are a couple of mine. Could they be songs someday? 

Trees

Shafts of light land on the needlepoint ground where lodge pole pines stick up up up to the sky like pencils.  Perhaps they are skinny legs-- coming of age, layer by layer of rough bark.  They sit with me in blue knit shorts by the lake, and the sun bakes us both into brown.  And I've grown taller, as have they.  I could measure my life by those trees.  Summers where I am dashing down the pier and into the chilly water like a Countrytime Lemonade commercial, or gazing out the window as the squirrels take cover from the rain, or hearing tires crunch on the dirt road as my sister whispers to me, "We're almost there."  It's then that the trees silently stand-- watching, observing, logging my years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes.  Ever pointing upward-- like flagpoles, like toothpicks, like fingers.  And each year I go back to spend some time with them, and find out how we're doing.  

Sidewalk

In this foreign city the streets are narrower.  The sidewalks flow like rivers beside historic buildings where important people once lived, wrote, painted, or created.  They prance through spanning parks where little boys dressed like Christopher Robin bask in their childhood as though it were sunshine.  They dip into the business district where men in chalk blue dress shirts and loud ties smoke their cigarettes next to the sea of motor scooters, glancing at their watches, counting down to their nightly pub visit or cricket game or cozy flat.  The sidewalks lead to towering statues of old, presiding boldly over the city and its pigeons.  They turn into cobblestone squares, littered with musicians playing on makeshift instruments, street performers impressing the tourists, and groups selling food from all cultures prepared before your eyes.  They lead me into libraries and museums where (depending upon my mood) I can see evidence from VanGogh or Paul McCartney or Shakespeare or Jack the Ripper or a million others.  The sidewalks lead me along the riverbanks, across bridges older than my country, through parts of my soul that I didn't know existed.  They lead me away from childish things, toward meaningful relationships and wisdom beyond my years, filling in the gaps.  I want to fold them all up like a clean sheet of paper and stash them away in every pocket I have.  And as I get lost walking these sidewalks, I step off the curb where fat, white letters remind me to LOOK!

April Love List

• blossoms on the trees
• sunny days
• rainy days
• friends returning home
• home
• Lyvie
• camping
• substitute teaching (usually)
• s'mores
• playing games
• reading and finishing books
• peanut butter bars
• campfires
• swimming
• TULIPS
• new books
• going for walks
• watching intense basketball games (go jazz)
• crepes with strawberries
• walking around anthropologie
• art
• my songwriting class
• my mom (HAPPY birthday!)

Lately

• officially graduated from college
• substitute teaching
• tutoring 2 fantastic girls
• accepted an offer to teach third grade at Canyon Rim Academy (hip hip!)
• thrift store shopping for books and classroom stuff
• getting ready for AFRICA-- 24 DAYS
• putting together another concert- May 9th
• camping with the fam over Easter

Lots of very good things.

spring does not get out of order

...but sometimes other things do.  From the brilliant e.e.cummings: 

there are so many tictoc

clocks everywhere telling people

what toctic time it is for

tictic instance five toc minutes toc

past six tic

Spring is not regulated and does 

not get out of order nor do

its hands a little jerking move 

over numbers slowly

we do not

wind it up it has no weights

springs wheels inside of 

its slender self no indeed dear

nothing of the kind.

(So, when kiss Spring comes

we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss

lips because tic clocks toc don't make

a toctic difference

to kisskiss you and to 

kiss me)