Personal Progress/ Why I Love These Roommates

Since Sports Camps, my mantra has been, "I Wanna Get better". One of the things i considered doing to improve myself was starting 'Personal Progress' again. 

Personal Progress is a program created for young women aged 12-18 in the mormon church. 

But you don't have to be a teenage mormon girl to do it. 

The program is there to help anyone, but specifically young girls, become independent, self-reliant, confident, and virtuous people. it's a goal-setting program. There are 8 "values" in the program, each of which has 4-6 "experiences" or challenges to complete. they can take a few minutes or a few weeks to complete, and each one is designed to help foster attributes of Jesus Christ. typically, a young woman is encouraged to set goals and work through this program during her teenage years, and at the end, she is blessed with all the values and habits she developed throughout the process. as an outward token of her achievement, she is given a medallion.

anyway.

I felt again last semester, strongly, that i should start the program again, for the fourth time in my life. So i resolved to complete it in 2015, between January 1 and December 31.

I invited my roommates Sophia and Stephanie to bring back a copy of the Personal Progress booklet when they came back for winter semester.

so we all brought one. 

and on the first Sunday of the semester I told Sophia and Steph my full plan. they supported me. So we sat our apartment down and talked. I told them straight out that i had this goal for myself, but that i would love to do it as an apartment. I told them that i wanted to have roommate council every Sunday night, so that we could have a for sure platform to air any concerns or to express thanks. I told them that i wanted to start a new Personal Progress 'experience' every week, and read the scriptures and discuss the questions a few a day throughout the week. I said that i wanted to have a prayer together as an apartment every night after we read. that we'd go in age order (oldest to youngest). I proposed that in council, we go around in reverse age order (youngest to oldest) and say one thing we're grateful for or enjoyed from the week, one thing we think needs to improve in the apartment, and if there's anything we need help with that week. 

and then i took a big breath.

and waited. 

and to my surprise and joy, the incoming three were thrilled to join us!

IT HAS BEEN SUCH AN INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE.

I LOVE THESE GIRLS. 

we do exactly what i hoped we would, and it has knit us closer together than i thought!

We have only missed once, all semester, i'm pretty proud of us. 

that being said, don't think that it's all peaches and cream over here. There are days when we're all super tense and hating each other in our brains. or out loud, haha. 

a couple weeks ago, Satan was working REAL hard against us, and laughing at us bickering with each other.
some nights when i call everyone in for prayer, there's a general unspoken groan, and i feel annoying. But one night in particular, there was seriously tangible enmity when i asked everyone to come into the room. we had a ROUGH council. i struggled to stay impartial and keep us productive. Everyone was heated. Then it was time to pray, and i don't remember whose turn it was, but right before they began, i sped through a quick silent prayer in my heart that we would be able to feel or see or hear or SOMETHING the blessings we've been getting from doing this together. That we'd be able to feel it that night, because we needed a witness that this was profitable. 

whoever's turn it was to pray, prayed. 

and then we all split really fast back to our individual activities. 

after a few minutes, one girl, who was in the shower, came out hurriedly and asked for our attention. she then offered a literal perfect solution to the main problem we'd been discussing at council. 

it was so obvious, but none of us had thought of it. 

and honestly i thikn that if the solution had been offered by anyone but her it would have been swept under the rug. 

but she offered it sincerely, and it was unanimously accepted. 

and you guys, the immediate confirmation from the Spirit was insane. 

it rushed throughout the whole house, and we all just kind of looked around at each other with epiphanied faces.
That roommate left the room, and another roommate and i locked eyes. we were both tearing up. we hugged. and then all of a sudden, like someone was dumping a bucket of photos onto my head and lap, i saw split seconds of all these wonderful happy moments from the semester. tender mercies from God. little tiny blessings that had gone unnoticed. 

fresh tears.

and in the same kind of instantaneous understanding, i knew that all those tiny blessings were the direct result of trying so hard as an apartment to be good and united and productive. 

It's hard to describe what happened next. 

I don't want to compare it to the day of pentecost, hahaha

but everyone started talking all at once. it's like, without even saying it, we knew we were all thinking the same thing. 

we all ended up in my room, on me and stephanie's beds, talking about how many good things have come of our commitment to be uplifted every day as an apartment. the lists kept going, and going, and the tears kept coming, with smiles all around. 

I said, "We just have to remember the way we're all feeling right now. because this is abnormal. this is exceptional, and this is the way it should be. it can be. We're all going to have to keep working hard to be good and come together, but we can do it. Whenever it's hard, it's just because stupid dang Satan knows that we have such potential to be great friends, so of course he's going to enhance the bad things. he doesn't want us to get along. We just have to push through it. we're gonna make it, because we're gonna remember what our hearts feel like right this second."

i still so believe that.

This content feeling in my heart is very welcome. i don't want it to leave. I know it will stay as long as i'm doing the things that i should. 

I can't say how grateful i am for these girls, who agreed to help me be better. 

I'm thankful for Personal Progress, because it gives us weekly apartment goals, and topics for uplifting, thought provoking discussion.

I love these girls. 

I love Personal Progress.

I'm glad to be doing this again. it's for any age.

Temple Walk

So i realized that i never blogged about my temple walk on my old blog

so i'll tell you about it here. :)

I heard a talk by Elaine S Dalton during a session of General Conference in which she told this story. It made me want to do the same thing! Since i'm in the middle of Personal progress, i decided to do a temple walk for one of my Value projects.

I planned the safest route from five miles away from the Fresno Temple at a church building.

I invited all the girls i know in my area, set a date, volunteered some parents to walk with us and were on our way.

 the whole point of the activity was to show our determination to be worthy to be sealed (Married) in the temple and to compare our walk to the temple to the time span of our life. 

We stopped about every mile and I prepared several spiritual thoughts, taken from stories of saints giving up everything just to go to the temple.

When we were around the corner, we all held hands and walked together the rest of the way.

the feeling was incredible. knowing how hard we had worked to get there, and thinking of everyone who has come before us and sacrificed so much to go there.

when we got to the temple, I invited my wonderful friend Amanda Reyes

to speak to us about how she prepared to attend the temple and about her temple marriage.

Then all the other girls and I had a few minutes to read our scriptures, and write in our journals and reflect our feelings toward the temple.

I'm SO grateful for all the girls who joined me on my walk. 

I love them all so much!

I hope their testimony of the Lord's temples was strengthened, because i know mine was. 

I also feel like all of us girls made a silent deal with each other day. We're all going to the temple. We're all gonna make it. We're all going to each other's weddings. We all love each other too much to do anything that would distract from our goal of eternal marriage.

I love to see the temple.

I'm going there someday to feel the Holy spirit, to listen and to pray.

For the temple is a House of God, a place of love and beauty.

"I’ll prepare myself while I am young" this is my sacred duty.

The temple is a holy place where we are sealed together.
As a child of God, I’ve learned this truth:

a Family is forever.