J'ai Oublié Presque Tout

I had a pretty cool experience on Sunday. I live in Glenwood now, where a lot of international students live because it's across the street from the ELC. I walked out of my apartment in the afternoon and there were two sister missionaries in the hallway. They asked if I knew anyone who spoke French, and I said I knew a little. "Great, you're an answer to prayer!" they replied enthusiastically, because they were trying to figure out how to teach a Haitian girl, Darlene, that only speaks French. I warned them that I might not really be the answer they were looking for, but agreed to give it a shot.

It turned out that Darlene's cousin was there, who speaks French and English, but I stayed because I was curious to see how everything would play out. Mimi, Darlene's cousin, sat down with us and began telling us story after story of how she had been lied to by missionaries and mistreated by members. As she monologued, I tried to come up with a good response to her anger and stubbornness. One of the sisters finally had a chance to speak up and when she started talking, the Spirit immediately flooded the room. I don't think any response I had thought of would have held a candle to that. Mimi agreed to try reading the Book of Mormon again instead of focusing solely on how members of the Church treated her.

Still, though, Mimi refused to translate anything gospel-related for Darlene, because she "wants her to learn English." This is where the missionaries turned to me... and I wasn't much help. They wanted me to translate directly, and I felt like I couldn't modify anything because Mimi was sitting right there, listening rather smugly. I tried to do my best, racking my brains for words I learned at the TRC once upon a time, but mostly Spanish words came. Finally Mimi stepped in and helped me out a bit... I was grateful. They set up an appointment to come back (this time with a real translator, might I add) and then I had to take off.

So as realistic as the TRC is :) I felt like I got a real taste of missionary work -- the difficulty of trying to help someone who doesn't want to listen, feeling humbled because of my inadequate language skills, noticing how much the Lord's hand is in the work, and finding out how much He blesses us if we simply try.

Booth Boredom

So I use Google Reader fairly religiously to stay updated on all my blog-happy friends' lives. Whoa, is that grammatically correct? What a mouthful... good thing I don't have to say that on the air.
Anyway. I start wondering why people don't update consistently, because then I have less to read when I open up Google Reader. Pretty soon someone usually reminds me that I haven't blogged in a while! Imagine that. The mote's easier to spot than the beam. So, I'm going to repent now and I expect all of you to keep updating your blogs as well. Deal?

Today I've been sitting in the studio all afternoon, here at Classical 89, KBYU-FM, Provo, Salt Lake City and Ogden -- Great Music, Sound Ideas. This week is our spring fund raiser, and we need your support. Have you ever thought about how your life would change if Classical 89 were to go off the air? We're a public radio station, and that means we rely on generous contributions from our listeners. Since we've been telling you this for five days and will repeat ourselves until Saturday, everyone here at Classical 89 has started to dislike fund raising even more than the annoyed listeners. You can turn us off, but we can't not listen to ourselves. Host or not, we all have the angles and pitches memorized, we're tired of the junk food that membership brings for the guest co-hosts, and we're ready to get back to regular programming so that Robyn has more to do than hold up signs for the live hosts and chat on Instant Messenger with someone answering phones at the KMC. Okay, it's really not so bad. :) I just have a hard time sitting in the same chair in the basement of a building in front of a computer for longer than an hour. I think I get that from my dad.

Good news: my chacos got shipped today! I just ordered them last night for $39, which is a steal. I love summer; the hikes, the bike rides, the fireworks, the cool summer nights, all that good stuff. So that's what I have to look forward to as soon as I get out of this studio...

La Lluvia

It's funny how I'm more inclined to blog the day after I've finally posted something.

Today it RAINED!!! I walked to campus at 8:00 this morning, and it was cloudy but balmy. I wore a white shirt and green/tan striped capris... little did I know what nature had planned for later that afternoon...
It's a good thing I ran into my dad in the HFAC a few minutes before I was ready to leave work. He offered to buy me some ice cream at Sugar and Spice, and as we walked over, I commented that it had gotten pretty chilly. We walked around and talked while trying to finish our American-sized child scoops so we could look at the new MacBook Air laptop in the Bookstore (pretty cool, I might add). And then we saw Moose (a.k.a. Andrew Madsen) in the BYUSA office as we walked past, which was great because I had forgotten to visit him earlier like I had been planning.
We looked outside and it was pouring. Utah storms usually blow over in a couple of minutes, so we went downstairs to play some Air Hockey. I was winning at the beginning (he claimed we were neck and neck) but then somehow he pulled ahead. 7 to 5, beat by someone more than half a century old. Pitiful. :)
It was still pouring after our game, so we walked around some more. And we kept walking... and pretty soon we couldn't think of anything else to do except stare out the window and hope that the rain would at least die down. It didn't. Finally he offered to run out to the truck and come pick me up, since he had at least remembered to bring a jacket. What a gentleman.

And now, as I'm posting this, the rain's still coming down just as hard as it was when we were stranded at the WILK. But maybe it'll keep me inside long enough to edit some stuff for Intuition. And as a random end note, I think I'm addicted to parentheses and ellipses... :)

Roger

My brother, who's a year older than I am, gets home from his mission in July (and I get to pick him up -- yes!). When we were little kids, we were inseparable -- I followed him around religiously and he enjoyed taking care of me, especially when I unwittingly served as his minion. He stood up for me and threatened any mean bullies. For the most part, he let me tag along when he played lava monster and X-Men with his friends. Good times.

I'm not sure what happened, but eventually we started getting on each others' nerves and had a difficult time getting along as teenagers. We have different personalities, that's for sure, but I was never able to figure out how to bridge the gap and learn how to be best friends again. I feel like I still haven't figured out exactly what went wrong.

We write each other every week now, as is tradition in my family when a missionary is out, but I'm not sure what kind of influence that's actually had on our relationship. I really hope that when he comes back we'll both have grown up a lot and that we'll be good friends, instead of merely tolerating each other. We may have more reasons to stick together now, since we're the only single kids left in the family and we'll both be attending BYU.

Robert J. Whetten talked about how a good measure of the level of our conversion to the Gospel is how we treat other people. I think I do pretty well for the most part, with Roger being the most telling measure of my conversion. I think that goes for most people: it's natural to be who you truly are around your family. And maybe because we grew up together, my nastiest side showed up when he irritated me. Kind of like C.S. Lewis's rats in the cellar analogy. Sort of. :) My hope is that I learned to eliminate the rats completely, and that they don't reappear once the light turns on when Roger gets back.