My Argentine Friend

I've determined that Argentines have the biggest hearts.

While working at the high school this week, I was in charge of assembling some "easy-to-assemble" cabinets to store some office supplies. As it turns out, these "easy-to-assemble" cabinets were not so easy to assemble. I'm no stranger to putting furniture together from a box, but I was struggling big time!

Well the school hires a janitorial service to come in and clean and it just so happened that as I was worrying about that dang blasted cabinet, the janitors (An Argentine man and his teenage son) were cleaning the school. The man, named Marcelo, came up to me and offered to help. Together, we figured out how to complete the cabinet. It took us almost three hours! I still had one cabinet to go, but Marcelo and his son had to get on to their next cleaning appointment.

Marcelo volunteered to come back the next morning and help me put together the remaining cabinet. I told him I was sure I could find someone else (like the science teacher) to come help me since he lives in Eagle Mountain (about 25 minutes away), but he insisted. I wasn't going to turn down some much needed help, so I agreed.

I brought him some cookies the next day, but I will never cease to be amazed at how charitable that man is. After we put together the second cabinet, he helped me move some furniture and as he left, he gave me his cell phone number and told me to call him if I needed any help moving something heavy or building anything else. What a nice man! And what a true example of Christ!

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

Our Zucchini plant popped out of the ground!

If you look really closely, you can see our green beans sprouting!

Our lovely tomato plants both sport pretty yellow flowers.

The stunning Alicia plucking weeds from the soil.

You know the funny thing about this garden? It's kind of like having a kid. It needs taken care of, and I can take pictures of it as it grows and put those pictures on my blog. Only, I don't have to wake up with it in the middle of the night or change any poopy diapers and I can eat it when it grows up... So maybe it's not all that much like having a baby. But I like it nonetheless.

missions are so bittersweet

Two of my friends, Landon and Spencer entered the MTC today. Landon will be serving in Washington D.C. for the next two years and Spencer will be in Paraguay. While I will miss Spencer because we are friends, I will especially miss Landon. He and I have stayed close since graduating a year ago and it will be hard not being able to pick up the phone and call him or shoot him a text or send him a quick email or instant message. He's one of my very favorites and I will miss him ferociously. On the other hand, I'm so very proud of and happy for him and there is no place else I'd rather him be. Missions are so incredibly important and both Landon and Spencer will do a phenomenal job.

...The Pulper...

I am not a sympathetic puker. I have cleaned countless nasty urinals without so much as gagging. I haven't been car sick since I was little. With a record like this, I thought my stomach was pretty dang tough. Then I met THE PULPER.

I work at the Missionary Training Center cafeteria in the evenings. Usually, I work on "the line" where I serve the missionaries food. On Tuesdays, however, I get the marvelous privilege of working in the dish room. Today was my first Tuesday, and I 'got' to be the scrubber. This is code for the person that sprays and/or scrubs off all the left-over and crusted-over food before the dishes can go into the machine. It didn't sound too bad...

So there I was, getting ready to be the best little scrubber I could be, and then someone turned on THE PULPER. The PULPER is like a giant garbage disposal that can eat whole bread sticks in mere seconds. It swallows pans full of mixed vegetables like I swallow water. It's a monster. And it's so loud a deaf person would have to plug his or her ears just to think. It was my job to spray the dishes, aiming the gunk that came off so it would cascade down a slide of murky water and land in the jaws of the PULPER.

I was scrubbing along when I came upon a meat pan, or a tub which was at least four gallons and had previously been filled with raw hamburger meat. There was still a good inch of raw hamburger blood pooled in the bottom. For those who do not know my opinion of red meat, I'm about to give it to you. I think it's absolutely DISGUSTING. I don't like to eat it, but even less I like to cook it. And I will not touch raw meat or get within three feet of the oozy, bloody juice if I can help it. But here I was, faced with tub after tub of the nasty meat blood.

I decided to suck it up and try to spray out the waste so I could just move on with my job. As the steam from the hot water baked the mingling scents of raw meat blood and barbecue sloppy joes into my clothes, skin and hair, I began to question the abilities of my midsection. My morning meal decided it would try to jump in and go swimming with the already rank concoction. It was all I could do to keep from tossing my cookies into the waiting jaws of THE PULPER. As I threw up a little in my mouth, I accidentally sprayed the meat pan so the water ricocheted off the plastic tub and onto the apron on my front.

By the time my first shift in the dish room was over, I was drenched from the outside with left-over missionary munchies and sweating on the inside because the room could have been no less that thirteen million degrees. To say I was disgusting would have been a phenomenal understatement. I wanted to go home and shower twice.

Our Little Garden!!!

My roommate, Alicia, and I try to eat healthy and doing so on a college budget isn't always a piece of cake... So we decided we wanted to build a garden! After getting the go-ahead from our (very surprised) landlords, we found a little corner of the property to plant a garden! This is what it looked like before:

Our friend Jeff came to help us spade the area and after some hard work and digging up of a wire coat hanger, a sparkly children's bracelet, countless granola bar wrappers, about a million rocks and at least twice as many weeds, our little plot was ready to plant! Alicia had to be at work and Jeff had to run off to Institute, so I was left to plant the garden... I'm so glad I got to do the fun part! Here's how our little garden turned out:
Now the trick is getting everything to grow...

Feeding the Missionaries!!!

I got a job working at the cafeteria in the MTC (Missionary Training Center) and last night was my first day! After hearing the tales of friends that have worked/do work there, I thought to myself that there was no possible way I would see anyone I knew that is currently in the MTC... well I was wrong! I saw Elder (Tyler) Yorgason, Elder (Miles) Poole (it was his first day!), Elder (Andrew) Smith, Elder (Phil) Gulbrandsen (from across the room, so I know he didn't see me) and Sister (Tamari) Miller!!! It was so fun to see all of my friends out on missions getting ready to serve the Lord! The work I do isn't hard, and it seems even easier since I'm serving the missionaries. I think working there even one night strengthened my desire to serve a mission! Only a year a half...

Happy Sunday!

Dino and I have had some great adventures these last couple of weeks! We’ve had a great time and it’s been especially fun to spend some time with Dad the last few days. This week, we got to go to Lagoon, spend the night at the cousin’s house, go to the animal museum, go out to eat with Dad and visit Uncle Roger and his wife. We really had a blast! I’ve enjoyed the week off, but starting next week, I’m working at the MTC, so it’s back to work! Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work I go…

This week, Dino and I decided to hit up a random family ward for church and we had a really good time. I live two blocks away from two different chapels, so we chose a chapel and decided to attend. It was really good! (Dino even said that he wanted to go back to that same ward if he ever comes to visit again!) I’m really glad we chose that ward because the relief society lesson was exactly what I needed! Funny though, I didn’t know I needed that when I walked into the room…

Our lesson was about prayer. We started out talking about Joseph Smith and the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon. Let me explain a little bit about them. Joseph Smith (the man that restored the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1830’s) was translating the Book of Mormon from a set of gold plates he had received. He had been instructed to show no one the plates, so he was bearing a burden on his own. In translating the book, he discovered that three people would be called as special witnesses. At that time, three men (Martin Harris, David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery) prayer to know if they could have the privilege of being those three witnesses. While praying, Martin Harris didn’t feel worthy and withdrew from the party. Eventually all three were granted that privilege.

We used this as a springboard to talk about prayer and how even the greatest of sinners is worthy to come in humility to our Heavenly Father in prayer. It was a touching lesson and I got a lot of good ideas on how to develop my relationship with Heavenly Father and become more sincere in my prayers.

Sunday Dinners and Summer Jobs

Yesterday, Dino and I took a little mini roadtrip. Since my ward doesn't have primary classes (hooray for singles wards), we decided to head up to Saratoga to go to church with the cousins! We walked into Sacrament Meeting a little bit late and decided to sit in the back so as not to disturb the peace. Dino went to classes with his cousin, and I decided to go to Uncle Matt's Primary Class. One of our cute little cousins was in his class, so we had a grand ol' time. Little cousin sat on my lap during sharing time and then it was off to class! Uncle Matt taught a good little lesson and then we colored pictures. It made me miss family wards. Perhaps I'll go to one even though I'm my own family right now...

After church, we went to the cousin's house to have dinner. It was absolutely SCRUMPTIOUS! Much better than the left-over chicken nuggets and french fries we were destined to eat at my house. We had a delicious chicken concoction over rice, fresh fruit, rolls with homemade jelly, and some raspberry jello. Thanks Suzy! You made a marvelous meal.

After dinner, we headed home and we got a phone call from DAD! He was on his way to Utah and we convinced him to go to Lagoon with us tomorrow! (We're still crossing our fingers that we can convince Uncle Mark to come...)

...In other news...
My roommate, Alicia, and I decided to start a business. We still will work our summer jobs, but we had a brilliant idea! We are going to do birthday parties for children! I can decorate cakes, Alicia can make pinatas... We have yet to iron out the kinks, but we are SO excited! If you have any incredimazing ideas for themes we should build parties around, let me know!

But despite our outstanding business idea... I'm still looking for a summer job, so if anyone hears about a full-time well-paying job in Provo for which essentially no skill is required, let me know! Until then, I suppose I'll keep looking...