One night this week I was just relaxing over at K.C.'s apartment with a couple of his friends and roommates when my phone started ringing. I checked the number and I had no idea who was calling me (it was a 435 number) but I figured I would answer it anyway. The man on the other end turned out to be Brother Kirkman, the 1st counselor in my bishopric. He greeted me warmly and I returned the salutation, mentioning his name so the guys I was with would know who I was speaking with. The moment I said his name though, all their heads turned and stared at me with looks of horror. I just laughed at them completely expecting he was calling about the next upcoming blood drive for the stake. After less than a minute on the phone with him, I understood their looks of horror. I had just been asked to speak in sacrament meeting on Sunday. In past circumstances this had never been a problem for me as they were only youth talks expected to last less than five minutes. I realized then that I was an adult and am expected to give adult length talks. My topic: repentance. My time: ten to thirteen minutes. Can you even imagine how excited I was? If you can't, that is good, because I wasn't excited. In fact, I was simply dreading it.
Well I kept the topic on my mind all week, pondering what I could say, scriptures I could read, and stories I could tell from conference talks. Each night I always had something better I could be doing rather than writing my talk despite knowing the Lord of the Rings marathon was going to occupy my entire Saturday. Friday I finally decided to start on something and looked up different talks and ideas listed on the "Prepare a Talk" feature on www.lds.org. (FYI: this option worked great! I highly suggest it!) The talks were insightful, but I was still not sure what I was going to say for ten whole minutes! Sunday morning rolled around and I still had not written anything concrete down. The night before I had pulled together some scriptures, but did not have any real organization to what I was going to say. Needless to say I did not get very much sleep Saturday night/Sunday morning.
K.C. was great to me this morning and made me breakfast so I could keep writing my talk instead of coming up with something to eat. It was delicious comprising pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, and orange juice. Man, he is an amazing cook! Sacrament meeting came around and I delayed for so long going up and sitting on the stand. Luckily, K.C.'s roommate Dave was also speaking so I had a friend up there to sit with. Abby, Megan, Tessa, Rachel, and K.C. all sat near the back as we always do so I wasn't concerned. Halfway through the prelude music though, they all stood up and moved to the second row. Yah, that isn't intimidating at all. Surprisingly, I was not very nervous as the meeting started, but did not expect that feeling to last. Brother Kirkman was conducting and with it being the beginning of the semester, took up much more time than normal doing various announcements and ward business, which was awesome.
The songs were long, and with the passing of the sacrament, my nervousness did not increase at all. Emily first spoke on faith, and then it was my turn. I got up in front of the microphone and began. The words seemed to just flow from me and I hardly felt scared at all! It was wonderful!! Oddly enough now, I think I would rather give a normal talk instead of a youth one anytime! By the time we sang the intermediate hymn, Dave only had about 5 minutes left to speak which he was perfectly fine with. Anyways.....overall, this was not as bad of an experience as I was expecting. I think the best part of it is the fact that it is OVER!! Woohoo! I'm so excited to be done with that for the year! Woot Woot! And if you care, I just had an outline of my talk and I would be willing to send it to you if you would like. The Church is true!
Many of you know that K.C. and I have been dating for two months now. And most of you were extremely concerned about how fast our relationship had progressed and urged us to step back and not be too hasty. Well I'm here to say that K.C. and I have talked about things and we have decided to take that step back. Before we were open to dating other people if the opportunity arose, but we are very open to that option now. For now and the next long while we are just going to be friends- no kissing, no hand holding, no cuddling, none of that boyfriend/girlfriend stuff. It is going to be hard and such, but not impossible. Things actually have worked out really well the past couple days that we have tried it. We want to make sure that we have a strong foundation based on friendship before we completely commit for life and this seems to be the best way to do it. Both of us are extremely determined to make this work as friends and not simply give up, so believe in us and it will help! Funny thought though that K.C. had: many people have a relationship that is simply "Friends with benefits." K.C. and I are more like "Boyfriend and Girlfriend without benefits." I thought it was funny :D
Ever since the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out on film I have always wanted to have a marathon watching all three extended editions of the movie in one day. Luckily for me, K.C. had the extended editions and also wanted to have a marathon. So last semester we spread the word that sometime in the spring semester we would do it! Yesterday turned out to be that day since we aren't very far in school and figured people wouldn't be too swamped with homework and studying yet and could waste the entire day up in the lounge. Well we started at 10:30 in the morning and dove into the adventure. With hour breaks in between each of the films, we finally finished them all around 12:30. Sadly once I ate lunch, I couldn't keep my eyes open for the first disc of the Two Towers. Determined to better, I sat up for the next disc and stayed awake. The Return of the King was started and I was so excited to watch my favorite movie of the three. Yet again, I got too comfortable and could not stay awake once the second disc was put into the DVD player. K.C. tried his hardest to keep me awake by pulling on my ears and tickling me, but nothing worked. I was out until the movie ended. Now I could say that I finally did the Lord of the Rings marathon challenge, but I simply would not be satisfied with myself, so sometime in the future I will have to pull out those movies again and waste another day all over again. It is worth it though, those movies are amazing!
