time to move, time for change

my apartment is quiet, there are boxes everywhere, and i'm snuggled in bed. today will consist of packing up my life from the past 3 years and i'm not quite ready to face it yet. two of my roommates have already gone home for christmas and the other is at work. so much has happened the past two months and now that it's all really happening, it's a little surreal. major life changes, the decision to serve a mission, and the decision to go home beforehand. the past two weeks have been emotional, stressful, and exhausting but it was a learning experience and am content with how things have turned out. i'm slowly learning that sometimes you just need to rely on Heavenly Father and things will always work out, even if you have no idea how or why.

so here i am, done with finals and wrapping up my life here in provo for the time being. saying goodbye to the people i'm close with has been hard but i know i'm making the right decision and that we'll see eachother again eventually. i'm getting on the plane on saturday and i'm so excited to see my family. i haven't seen my family since july and it's high time i spend some quality time with those guys. not to mention, my family in japan who i will be seeing in exactly a week!! so many exciting things to come in the upcoming weeks. but right now, my closet is staring me down so...

CALLED TO SERVE

Dear Sister Sugihara,

You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Japan Sapporo Mission. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 18 months.

You should report to the Provo Missionary Training Center on Wednesday, April 24, 2012. You will prepare to preach the gospel in the Japanese language.

I'm so incredibly excited and humbled to be embarking on this new adventure. Teaching the people of Sapporo about Jesus Christ will be a wonderful experience. I'm grateful for this opportunity to grow spiritually and do what Heavenly Father would like me to do. If you want to know more about what I will be doing, this has some pretty great information :)

big news + a new chapter in life

I have decided to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It will be 18 months of teaching and sharing with people what our church believes. I submitted my application/mission papers a few days ago and now I'm just waiting to find out where I will be going!

This was no small decision and took months of contemplating and praying. If you remember this post, that's the weekend everything changed. That's when the age requirements changed (for girls, the age requirement changed from 21 to 19) and all of my nicely laid plans for internships went out the window. But even after the announcement, I still wasn't quite ready. It took me a little more time to finally choose and commit to this life changing decision.

I love my life here at BYU but I'm putting it on hold for a while. This semester I really got into my major and fell in love with it all over again. I've made incredible friends and become more established in my job. But as sad as I'll be leaving all of this, there's something bigger out there for me. "Paying it forward" or "giving back" doesn't adequately express it, but that's kind of how I feel. I've been so blessed and have so much to be grateful for, this is my way of expressing it; 18 months is so short in the grand scheme of life. (I know that serving a mission is not meant for everyone so I'm grateful that there are other ways to show gratitude and help people locally).

I'm so incredibly excited for this new chapter in life. I find out where I'm going either next week or the week after and I'm getting more and more anxious! I have a particular country I want to go to but I'll be happy going anywhere. I haven't decided what to do with my blog while I'm gone but until then, thanks for reading :)

this one's for you weekend

i have a rockin' draft from friday about how i spent the week talking to professors and going to info meetings, and how i finally figured out what i wanted to do for the next two years. then on saturday this announcement was made and all my plans became maybes. nothing has been decided yet but i've got a lot to think about.

the rest of my weekend was spent watching this and looking like this.

 i didn't get my homework done and i ate enough to make up for my twenty mile run. but it was a thought-provoking weekend and i learned a lot about what kind of person i need and want to become.

this week is gonna be about big girl decisions, midterms, and trying to wear something other than the flannel i've been wearing every single day too much.

cheers.

ps. on the bright side, i'm a grandma in a skit/test and i get to talk about my favorite cat. it's basically practice for my future.