(June 2) Myyyy Liiiife!

¨Así Se Ve Mi Vida¨ basically means ¨This is what my life looks like¨

Only Nicole knows exactly how you´re supposed to say that (¨Myyyy Liiiife!¨), but imagine an attitude of ``Are you fo real?`` and you´d be pretty close.

There´s 10 million words I don´t know, words you would never think to look up, from check mark to oven mitt (which, by the time you´re trying to ask for an oven mitt, you really do need an oven mitt and don´t have time for charades or the Spanish-English dictionary. This can try my patience not one but 4 times in about 40 seconds.

1.       I don´t know the word I need. Again.

2.       I know! I´ll use charades! Just kidding that´s not working.

3.       Uh-oh. My food´s burning.

4.       I know, I´ll use the dictionary! Wait, if my food´s already burning there´s definitely not time for that.

So what to do? I did the best I could. And it made me feel like I woke up on the wrong side of the bed not once but 4 times in the same day. Once, when you use one of the two rags you own and it burns. …And it was the good rag. Again, when you´re eating your burnt eggs. Again, when you see that the skillet used to have a handle and this all could have been prevented. And the fourth time, when trying unsuccessfully to scrub the pan clean of its burnt offering and remembering fondly when PAM was a part of your life.

Basically, totally feelin´ Alexander on his terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

I don´t think I realized how many times a day I use ¨I wonder¨, ¨obsessed with¨, and ¨What´s the deal with ______?¨, all of which I have not yet figured out how tos ay in Spanish. And why is there no such word as ¨brainstorm¨ and ¨that´s your baby¨? These are useful phrases!!!

When you are learning a new language, you get very used to swtching from what you originally wanted to say to a synonym, or a list of words describing the word you don´t know. But when your second, and third, and fourth ideas also fail, oooh sometimes you get so frustrated! Especially when you´re trying to communicate with your companion, because they´re the person closest to you.

On the plus side…

I am in the best church in the world!!!!!! I definitely didn´t understand the significance of the Book of Mormon until I came out here. I didn´t realize how many things I know or understand (prayer, the Atonement, Judgment, what our responsibilities are and what Christ´s responsibilities are when it comes from healing us from sin—including doctrines like repentance, baptism, infant baptism, and way more), exclusively because of the Book of Mormon. And the things I know-understand because of modern prophets (the nature of the Godhead, how to repent, how God wants our families run). I was so used to know these things for church, I never thought about whether they came from the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or from modern-day revelation. But while here I went seeking scriptures in the Bible on these topics and the were nowhere to be found! (Or, in the case of the family, the Bible verses were plain scary.)

It has made me way more grateful for the Church than I even was before. It has made me that much more aware of the perfectness and reality of the church—that is really was restored and is run by Jesus Christ.