monday musing #5

Good Morning!

You may be wondering why I'm up so early. 

Well. There's this great place called Brigham Young University and I happen to work for them and at approximately 10:45 pm the electricity went out. Like even the security lights. It was pitch black! 

All I was doing was re-creating my bulletin board for the 4th of July on the third floor and then BOOM! 

Outta nowhere, darkness. It was terrifying! 

And it stayed that way for dos horas. Every building on campus. My job was crowd control and letting people in the locked doors. It was a great day to be on-duty. Let's just say I'm exhausted, but as precautionary measures, I still have the hall phone so I thought I would send this off before I get some shut eye. 

My spiritual thought this week comes from the Manti Pageant. I traveled down there this weekend and had a blast! Here's some thoughts about it.

It's called the Mormon Miracle Pageant. Why?

Because of Joseph Smith! It's a miracle that he went to the grove and prayed. It was a miracle that God the Father and His Son appeared. And later Moroni. 

It's a miracle that he was able to translate the Book of Mormon by revelation. It's a miracle that the saints were able to survive their trek across the country. 

It's a miracle that we have temples and eternal marriage. 

bee tee dubs. the Manti temple is gorgeous and let's just talk about how the pioneers built it. i n c r e d i b l e. 

Heavenly Father is mindful of us. He loves us and wants us to return to live with Him. He has prepared a way for us to do just that. As so many of the early saints experienced, he sends us trials to help us learn and grow. He has blessed us with the restored gospel. Opposition will always come, but the truth will never fail.

In honor of our country this week, one part that stood out to me in the pageant was a time when Brigham Young was praying. Several different men appeared to him, the last of which was Joseph Smith. He told Brigham that this land is choice above all other lands and that we need to live worthy of that stewardship. 

I thought about how blessed we are to have been born here and for the many great and wonderful things that have happened in our country. Why did the Lord choose this land above all others? What is yet to come that will allow us to see His great purposes? And what are we doing to preserve this land and respect it? What a great responsibility we have! 

#merica #stars&stripes

Make this week the best one yet! What goals are you working on? Anything you need or anything I can help you with? I love y'all more than I love sparklers and pop-its. You must be pretty special :)

con todo mi amor,

Hermana Blackner

Catch the wave

It's SUMMER!!!

And I am so happy to be here in Provo. So many fun memories are ahead! I have the great opportunity to be an RA (resident assistant) again. Only this time, I'm in Helaman Halls which is a new experience for me! Still good, just different. I have an amazing floor of 38 girls who are absolutely adorable and who are either starting BYU for the first time or visiting from other universities. 

I'm super excited to spend more time getting to know them and helping them to have a great summer term. I have had a blast reminiscing this past week on my first summer term at BYU. It completely changed my life and was the foundation of my time here. I made my closest friends and lived every moment to the fullest. It was a party! And I've been catching up with all those friends who have recently come home from their missions. Surprisingly, not a lot has changed. I'm so grateful for these friendships and for these dear friends who are such good examples to me!

So here's the lowdown on my floor. It's been kind of nice to have time to prepare for these girls to come and to think about my theme ahead of time. Refer to last time when I got hired two days before training started haha!

Bienvenidos!

banner that runs down the hallway

here's my cute envelopes for nice notes!

the whole wall! (minus the explanation sheet that goes in the middle)

name tags

quote wall!

Sorry the pictures are all at an angle. There's not enough room in the hallway to get it all in head on haha! It's been an awesome first week and I can't wait for all the adventures that will continue during the rest of the summer.

What waves are you going to ride this summer?

monday musing #4

I had an awesome floor meeting today with my 38 girls that I already love so much! We had a discussion about our theme "Catch the Wave"

I shared a few quotes and asked some questions about it. They were so willing to answer, I just loved it! Seriously, they are the best 17 and 18 year olds ever. Yeah, let's just not talk about how they are my brother's age and just graduated. It's weird. 

But the last quote we talked about was this....

"Life has a way of testing our anchors and tempting us to drift. Nevertheless, if our anchors are correctly placed in the rock of our Redeemer, they will hold—no matter the force of the wind, the strength of the tide, or the height of the waves."   --Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Kind of reminded me of Helaman 5:12. Life throws us all kinds of crazy waves, but as long as we have a firm foundation in our Savior, all will be well! Plus, we have to learn to ride these waves and have lots of fun along the way :) So many good life analogies to the sea #wishiwasamermaid

Anyways, I love you all and miss you dearly. Provo is treating me well though. Maybe one of these days, I'll get around to writing you all letters and giving you the details. I've just been SOOOO busy! It's been a crazy week. 

Ok, I'm really not good at keeping these short. Don't feel obligated to read if you don't have time. Les amo muchisimo!!!!

monday musing #3

So I was studying Moroni 7. When I first think of this chapter, I obviously think about charity. But there's so many hidden gems before you even get to that part! What really stood out to me was verse 19. 

 Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ.

The verses before are talking about the light of Christ and how to judge between good and evil. So in this verse it kind of puts it all together. 

Search diligently in the light of Christ. I loved that! We have to search first and once we find it, once we come to that age of accountability and know the difference between good and evil and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost to help us discern, then there's only good things to come! 

We have to choose to lay hold upon every good thing. It really comes down to our intents and desires. And then we become a child of Christ. 

I was thinking about our covenants. About the promises that we make and the things that Heavenly Father has asked us to do. We chose to come down, we knew the plan, and we obviously wanted to return. So what are we doing each and every day to become a child of Christ? To really feast on all that is good in this world and get rid of distractions? 

Especially after serving a mission I know how important agency is and I've been thinking about the choices that I'm making. There's always something we can improve on and right now I'm really focusing on being more Christlike and choosing the really focus on those "good things" that allow me to progress in this life. I hope you'll join me in this!

monday musing #2

Hello my lovelies!!!

I hope y'all had a wonderful week! I spoke in the YSA ward today. #nopotential 

So I would just like to share a few thoughts from that. 

topic:

H A P P I N E S S

I immediately thought of 2 Nephi 2:25 

Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy. Inform your face! Ü  [emphasis added]

We were created to be happy!

And how do we do that??

Just read 2 Nephi 5.

one. family

two. commandments

three. scriptures

four. temple

five. work

six. prophet

Go find the verses in personal study. It'll be like a scavenger hunt!

"and they lived after the manner of happiness"

I also thought about 

• happiness through trials. We need them to grow so we might as well be grateful for them! And of course rely on the Savior. 
• Service. Develop charity. Become like Christ! Help in the work of salvation!
• happiness in the home. study scriptures. live the gospel. your family is for eternity!

I know it wasn't too specific, but that's the gist of it! I.love.y'all more than I can express. so SO SO proud of each of you and don't forget to be happy! I know that our Father in Heaven wants that for you. There is no greater joy than serving your fellow brothers and sisters.

till next week!

♥ Hermana Blackner

monday musing #1

So for this week, I just read a little book calling Finding Hope by S. Michael Wilcox. 

One chapter was entitled "Camping on the Beach" Sounds pretty awesome, right?

wheellllll....

not so much in the case of the Jaredites. 

"And the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands" (Ether 2:7)

We have to complete the journey! Don't settle for less than the promised land!

Ok. These folks were campin' on that beach for four years! 

Possible Reasons:

1) They had reached a comfort zone that was hard to break out of.

2) Maybe the obstacle was too big so it was just easier to sit.

Either way, they weren't growing or progressing or getting to where they needed to go. The beach is nice right? Why go do the hard stuff? Life is good right now. Or how in the world can we cross these waters?

The answer is simple.

You ask the Lord! For counsel, strength, insight, or wisdom, He's there. You have a great work to do! Sometimes it's easy to be comfortable or to just ignore the problem at hand, but I can promise that when you just rely on the Lord (who is there to help you at ALL times, especially as His servant) that you will be able to come out conqueror. What a beautiful thing prayer is. 

So. Just pray your little hearts out and keep working hard! Remember what your call letter says? More joy and happiness await you as you serve the Lord. 

m o n d a y m u s i n g s

So I made the decision that I wanted to provide all of my wonderful, faithful sister missionary friends with a short spiritual thought each week. Since we are kind of in different worlds right now I didn't want to bother them with my drama from school, work, boys, home, movies, etc.

And this is the best way that I could think of to share my testimony with them and continue to uplift them and strengthen them as they serve the Lord.

Each week I will post them on here as well so that you can get a little taste of what I have learned each week!

I try to keep it short, but sometimes I get a little distracted. The gospel is just too good.