Transfer 9 Week 5

So I realized I haven't described my companion very much. She's from Bountiful, Utah. She has a very sarcastic sense of humor. But I have gotten her to giggle lots with me. She's really sweet and tender, but she hides it. She is not touchy feely. Her love language is quality time. But I still put my arm around her during church sometimes because it makes her kinda uncomfortable and I just adore her uncomfortable face. If you leave us alone long enough we get weird, and I'm happy about that. Last night there was a strange exchange between us. I had a sudden urge to smack her, so I smacked her arms, she screamed at me like a chimpanzee, and then in her frenzy she accidentally dropped her pill bottle of anti-biotics for her toe, and so I threw it with all my might in one swift motion while grunting and it fell behind our whiteboard. We laughed forever after that. So she gets the weirdness. But sometimes still looks at me like I'm crazy.
This week was the Phoenix Arizona temple dedication! It was amazing. We saw the first session and my eyes got leaky. I just never realized how much the temple covenants mean to me. It really is a sacred place. I remember being really weird when asked about the temple before my mission, because friends would ask what it was all about and what happened in there, and why they can't go in. And it was weird to try and explain. But it's just so sacred to me now. The feeling there is unlike anything else. I can't wait to go home and go back again.
During the week I was thinking, for some reason, about hair and nails and how I never have time anymore to just do my eyebrows right. We were at a dinner appointment with a family from one of the wards. As I was pondering trivial things a voice came into my head saying:
You're going to have to stop caring so much about yourself and what others think of you.
What? Excuse me?
I thought about that for a while. It's true right now in missionary work, and it's true for the future as well. If I want to do the work the Lord has called me to do right now, I am going to have to just stop caring so much. And I don't mean to imply not caring at all- I cannot go looking like a homeless woman. Buttoo much caring about trivial things, like having time to take a bubble bath and paint my toenails and curl my hair. These things just don't matter. The time to care about those things is behind me and it isn't something I am going to ever fully indulge in again. Now don't you get preachy on me when I get home and start painting my nails again. But, I'm just saying, this is what I imagined: in the future life will be chaos. The future I imagine involves gaining a college education, sticky-faced children, and all the joys of motherhood. The time to care about myself and what others think is behind me. If I am to truly apply myself to all the things I want to accomplish, there must be selflessness. Especially right here, right now, doing the work of the Lord 24/7. I can't be caring so much anymore. I am not a flighty teenager obsessing about eyeshadow colors- though I have the tendency to regress to that level. The point is, I don't want to. I want higher things.
Anyway,
Another deep thought this week was doing VS becoming. On the subject of obedience- many missionaries are obedient to just be obedient. Let me widen that statement: many members of the church are obedient just to be obedient. Oh, how I want to shake them! That's not the point. Where's your motivation? C'mon!
God does not want us simply to be obedient so that the world is in order, everything is in its place, and no one is making a mess.
God wants us to become obedient people. Which is a whole different thing.
I thought of Mommy. My messy room didn't damage her. The fact that you couldn't see the floor made no difference if she just closed the door. But that's not the point. That's not what all the nagging was for. Cleaning my room was not something she wanted me to do just so that the room would be clean (though it was somewhat of a concern); having a consistent habit of keeping my room in order is to help me become a clean person. It is the same with God. He thinks on a larger scale. A mother can think "Oh, golly, I hope my child can manage to keep their future home clean", while their child's perspective is of the here and now. We are the same way. We don't understand what God is wanting us to become through our obedience. That's what it's about. Like Brad Wilcox said: we are not earning heaven, we are learning heaven.

Now we can't comprehend what it is God wants us to become,

but we must be obedient and try always to see what he wants us to become through our obedience. He will make us into so much more than just kids who keep their rooms tidy.


In other news:
I got catholic blessed while tracting,
and I heard a CD I really want:

Penatonix's christmas cd

look into it
please
I love you
I miss you all
xoxoxoxo
Sister Valdez


A truck

A billboard

my eyebrows

temple dedication

and my companion shaving her eyebrows off