Fortune Cookie.

So I just got a fortune cookie that said something like "No obstacle will manage to stop you from achieving your objectives this month,"
So in your face world, cause June is MY month.

FAIR: RG

So YFAIR is no longer YFAIR, but FAIR's Rising Generation. I don't have much to say on the change, only that I'm glad that it happened, I just figured you should know.

And I've been given the assignment of being a blogger for the FAIR: RG blog. I'll be posting on Tuesdays, unless something changes, and if (and most probably when) it does I'll tell you.
Here's the blog, hope you read it. I don't have any posts up yet, but I will soon.
http://youth.fairblog.org/

I think this is the coolest thing ever.

Okay, so today is my birthday. Yay me. And you'll never guess what I found out today in church.

Kay, so apparently May 17th 1909 (exactly 100 years ago today) was the day that the LDS church was officially established in my province. Cool hey?

I've been alive all my life and I never knew that my birthday was the birthday of Alberta's Mormonhood. I think this is so cool that you just don't even know. In fact I'm exstatic about it. I'm far more excited about this than I am about my birthday.

However, what I'm not excited about is that apparently, to celebrate this our entire city's Mormon youth are being forced to put together a massive dance performance. I don't know much about it, but it's not happening until next fall. Apparently each ward has been given a style of dance. We got ballroom, which is probably the worst one I could imagine for this other than the tango.

I'm sure I'll get stuck with some 12 year old as my partner, like I always do. That combined with the fact that I'm not that great of a dancer is giving me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomache. My best bet is that they'll pair us up according to height, but even then I'd probably end up with "Bob". The guy I mentioned earlier who's really monotone and who has a thing for our Sunday school teacher.

Oh man. Well, I'll let you know more about that when I learn more about it.

Maybe it'll be okay... maybe not... I dunno. I'm not gunna worry about it until it comes.


...But ballroom? Seriously?

Guess what I did!

Okay, our seminary director guy (I can't remember what the exact title is) gave us a deal about a month ago. He said that if we memorized all 25 of our scripture masteries we could go to a pizza party.

We only had to memorize one at a time and then either get our seminary teacher or one of our legal gaurdians to sign off the card saying that we had memorized the scripture.

I (like pretty much everybody else who was confronted with this deal) just kinda shrugged it off and didn't see much of point in trying. It'd be easier to just go to Little Ceasar's Pizza at lunch and just buy a pizza, so for the first three and a half weeks I didn't do much to memoriz all of the scripture masteries.

Then my friend (my somewhat agressive friend) finished all of hers the day before the dealine and didn't want to go alone so she encouraged/threatened me to get all of mine finished. Then the guy who sits behind me shared his opinion that I wouldn't be able to do it.

Now there are two things you should know about me. #1, I never abandon a friend as long as I can help it and #2, I always do the exact opposite of what everybody thinks I'm going to do (I think it's called teenage rebellion) so I pounded my fist on my desk and said "I'll do it,". I realized that this meant memorizing seventeen scripture masteries in one night, but hey, the sky's the limit right?

So yeah, I pulled it off and I was one of the six or seven people in our entire seminary building to go to that pizza party. Of course two of them didn't show up because they "forgot", but showing up was probably just as vital a step in getting pizza as the memorizing of the scripture masteries.


oh yeah, and another unexpected thing I did recently was screaming in the middle of an important performance on a mini-tour our school band went on this weekend. I think I should probably mention that I was supposed to. It was kind of unexpectedly pounced on me by the conductor. The peice is called 'The Phantom Train" and it's about a train that derailed in 1890 or something, and apparently people still hear the screams of the people who died in the train wreck. So at the part where everybody begins their chromatic decline to symbolize the train going off the tracks somebody was supposed to scream. It wasn't in the music, but about a month earlier our conductor had an epiphany (that word always makes me laugh now because of the Simpson Movie) which instructed him to instruct one of us to scream. Originally it was another flute player and she did it for a couple of performances, but she didn't go on this trip. Everybody had completely forgotten that she wasn't coming and didn't remember her absence until we were playing the peice in front of a guy who was giving us a workshop. During our rests we (the flutes) hurriedly discussed who should do the scream and I ended up agreeing to it. So yeah, I screamed and everybody agreed that I should do it for the performance so I did. Apparently it was better than the original girl's scream. I didn't think so, my voice cracked when I started trailing off at the end (because I was surprisingly nervous) but apparently that made it more realistic.

I think it's the mixture of being a swimmer and a fluotist (flute player) that's built up my lungs to the capacity that allows me to scream louder than what's normal. I don't think anybody in their right mind would try to kidnap me because you could probably hear me scream from several blocks away if I really tried to scream as loud as I could.

Another interesting thing I did (a month ago, but I just remembered it) was that I rode a donkey. It was awesomeness undefinable by the english language, which is part of the reason I'm considering trying to teach myself some latin.

My sister Heidi unexpectedly acquired a donkey and I was the first grown person to ride him. His name is Melvin and he really likes to lick me. Just me. He rarely ever licks anybody else. He also bit me and unexpectedly jumped over a low, broken fence which caused me to fall off. It kinda hurt, but over all I was pleased to say that I had ridden and fell off a donkey.


Scripture masteries - These are scriptures that the General Authorities of the church decided we needed to know, so they put them on little cards and strongly sugested that ever seminary student memorize them.


Rests - (in the musical sense) just means when you're not playing but other people in the band are. If nobody's playing it's called a 'Grand pause', one of the few non-italian terms used in music.

Tectonic Mormon?

What's with the name?

I've wondered that myself. To be honest with you the idea came from the name I came up with for mine and my friend's rock band band name. Rock Band the game, that is. We came up with infinite amounts of band names, most of them were um... to say the least, really stupid. Eventaully it was a decision between two names I came up with; Tectonic Boom and Metallic Aqua. I liked Tectonic Boom WAY better and it's what we ended up going with.

Originally I was going to go with Tectonic Boom for my blog's name, but then I knew I'd have to encorperate my Mormonism into the title, so I did.

As for what It actually means, I've interpretated it. As much as I'd like to think I subconsciously did this, I realize it was just chance.

Tectonic, if you think about it metaphorically instead of it in terms of the movement of the Earth's crust means structural or foundational.

I've always thought of myself kind of like a foundation. I've been told by many, reliable sources and people that I have been blessed with the gift of faith. Although (like everyone else) my testimony dwindles and strengths occasionally, I've always found that, spiritually, my feet have been fastened tightly to cement. Deep down I know that I will always believe in this church, that I will always realize the truth which I have been introduced to. I could fall away from the church and become the least Mormon person in the world, but the entire time I think I'd regret it and know what I was doing, I would merely ignore my knowledge. Never do I think I would ever loose the seed in my heart(check the bottom of the post if you don't get that) even if the plant shrivels up and dies.

Although I have had my doubting thoughts, I've never truly questioned my religion. I don't call this stubborness, in fact I'm very openminded and it's my nature to at least consider every concept that is put in front of me. Despite the fact that I've leggitimate looked at plenty of other beliefs and theories I've consistantly stuck with this one.

I don't know if everybody does this, but I know I do. I can tell what somebody's true, deepest strength is. A lot of the times I can't put this into words as it's always a feeling, like each person has their own individual spirit that I tune into sometimes or something. I've always thought of myself kind of as a blazing fire that's never going to be put out or, better yet a statue digging deep into the ground standing at the ready, constantly prepared take a strong blow.

So considering this, I think the title of tectonic Mormon fits me well. Plate tectonics is something that -although having it's earthquakes and sudden appearing mountains- simply cannot be swayed by human hands.


The seed thing- This is from my favourite scripture, Alma 32, which I've talked about before. It's most commonly known for it's analogy of a seed being faith. If the seed is good then it willbe planted in your heart and if you take care of it, it will grow into a tree.

A Quick Thought on Service.

I might elborate on this later, but right now I'm kind of tired, so I'm just writing this down so I don't forget it.
Haha, I always do this. My room is full of sticky notes and recipe cards with ideas and thoughts (mostly for a story or my book). Also, on my iPod I have infinite amounts of thoughts under the Note "Story".

So I was reading a talk to summarize for my Seminary Make-up and it said something about members helping non-members after a flood.
I have to wonder why it's so much greater for us to help a non-member than it is to help a member. Is it that it takes more charity, a longer arm to reach out to them?
Sadly, I think it's because as members, we constantly help each other. We're there for each other on another level than we could ever be with anybody else and we fail to realize that although it is important to build each other up as a church, it is even more important to make the entire world a better place. This will help spread the message of the Gospel and in general it'll make other people happy. It would be selfish to want to serve another person for any reason other than to help them, to make them happy.
Personally, I think that there's nothing special about a person who helps non-members. There's absolutely no way that it could be so. Why should somebody be considered more of a hero for helping to remove a tree from a Jehovah's Witness's lawn than the Bishop's lawn?
You should not measure your service by how much work you did, but by how much happiness you cause. Service for a member and service for a non-member will always inflict the same amount of gratitude and joy.

Bishop - the leader of a ward.
Ward - a group of people living in the same area that attend the same church building at the same time.

Conference Summaries.

So I've got a confession to make. A couple of months ago I over-slept for two weeks in a row and missed every seminary class in those two weeks. I know, I'm a horrible person.
Well, you need at least an 80% average in attendance, and coupled with a few other days I missed for whatever reason, I have to make up nine days in order to pass this semester of seminary. To make up one day I have to summarize two talks. My teacher suggested the conference talks, so that's what I did. So far I've done the first two talks of the first session on Sunday.
I found that I got more out of the talks while summarizing them than when I originally listened to them. In fact, quite a bit more. I'd suggest that you try this, if you want of course. I know it doesn't sound that exciting, but it's one of those things where by the end of it you're convinced it's the awesomest thing since awesome itself.
So you can read mine if you want. Apparently I did way more than I needed to and my seminary teacher decided to give me two days off for the two talks. So that means that I'll end up doing anywhere from 7-14 talk summaries. After this I think I'll just wait until I've finished all of them, then I'll post them, but here are the two I've finished so far.

http://thewritings.piczo.com/pageone?cr=2&linkvar=000044