San Diego!

Hna Santillan, Emily, Oscar, Perrita, & me

Vanessa, Jane, Cesar, me, & Blanca Tacon!

Delicious Mexican meal... YUMMY!

Donaldsons!

We slept in a teepee our last night!

Catching up with Hna Rehm and Hna Kratzer

Look what they're doing to the temple!

Balboa Park... watch out for the man-eating plants!

Coronado Island

Blanca Tacon!

Coronado Island

Mormon Battalion!

Panning for gold

Pictures from the San Diego trip - enjoy! We had SUCH a great time... I miss being there and being a missionary so much! It was great fun to surprise everyone (almost no one knew that we were coming :)...) and really really great to catch up with people. We even got to spend a few hours with the Donaldsons! Yep, it was an incredible weekend (I didn't even mind the 105 degree Calexico weather too much!)

FREE WILLY

Well, we wanted to go fishing but it was already 9:00 at night and we didn't have any equipment... so we decided to go reverse fishing!

Steps to Reverse Fishing:
1. Buy some fish from Walmart
2. Name them (in our case, the boys were named Jose and the girls were named Maria)
3. Eat a blizzard from Dairy Queen
4. Dump the fish into the Dairy Queen cup (after eating the blizzard of course!)
5. Find a suitable pond
6. FREE WILLY!

It is very fun. Note the semi-black eye I have in these pictures - remnant of my attempt to beat somebody's knee up with my face. I wouldn't recommend it - well, unless you want a cool black eye... in which case, go for it!

Life is grrrreat! I am currently letting myself be distracted from studying for my Spanish final that I need to take today around 1:00... but then I will be free and done with the semester and ready to get ready for my trip to San Diego! I can't wait to see all the amazing people that I love! Oh happiness :) We leave tonight for Vegas and in the morning we'll leave from Vegas for San Diego. I'll make sure to take lots of pictures!

Buttprints in the Sand

I may or may not have used this poem to start my Gospel Doctrine lesson yesterday :) Hahaha... it sure was an attention grabber! Enjoy:

Buttprints in the Sand

One night I had a wondrous dream,
One set of footprints there was seen,
The footprints of my precious Lord,
But mine were not along the shore.

But then some stranger prints appeared,
And I asked the Lord, “What have we here?
Those prints are large and round and neat,
But Lord, they are too big for feet.”

“My child,” He said in somber tones,
“For miles I carried you along.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
But you refused and made me wait.”

“You disobeyed, you would not grow,
The walk of faith you would not know,
So I got tired, I got fed up,
And there I dropped you on your butt.”

“Because in life there comes a time,

When one must fight, and one must climb,

When one must rise and take a stand,

Or leave your buttprints in the sand.”

In my preparation for my lesson I looked at a lot of videos on mormon messages - check them out if you get a chance by clicking here

oh yeah...

Oh I forgot to mention yesterday... my new calling is Gospel Doctrine teacher! I am really excited for it :). I also got to give a talk on Sunday about being the covenant people of the Lord. I learned a whole bunch - maybe I'll post my notes on my scripture blog. They probably won't make much sense, but... eh, we'll see. Today was great - I just got done studying for about 4 hours straight some delicious spanish grammar. Jealous? You should be! Spanish rocks! Ok, but studying spanish grammar doesn't. Just rambling now... so I'm going to bed. Goodnight!

photos and update

Just some tidbits from my life over the past few weeks. LIFE IS GREAT! I am so busy but I am so happy :) School is wonderful (grades are good so far!) and I feel like I am learning a lot.... about beating up people (self defense), how to be Chilean (Spanish), and how to be huge (weight lifting). SO FUN. I am having a blast in my new ward and love love my roommates. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment :)

Stake service project to temple square - we helped the horticulturalists

Brian and I went to an awesome show after the service project and he took this cool picture - I love the temple in the background!

He's a monster!

Carlos (an amazing person I taught on my mission) came to visit! We explored Salt Lake for a few hours yesterday.

The State Capital building... and some crazy girl jumping in front of it

Kiara - I love her!!

She makes that capital building look GOOD!

Mormon Battalion memorial

Ana's birthday party! She had sparklers - because she's just that awesome!

this is an effective way to blow up balloons incase you didn't know