A Fresh Start

I have had an interesting week! Mainly it involved getting settled with my new spring semester schedule at BYU. This involves quite a few things, namely figuring out my new classes, arranging a new work schedule at Independent Study and getting to know my roommates and ward. I am overall pleased with how the settling process worked out.

First of all, my roommates are great—the best set of roommates I’ve ever had at BYU. I have three roommates, but one of them is gone a lot, so I haven’t gotten to know him too well. But, the times I have talked to him, he has been really cool. There is also Ogden, who is a recently returned missionary who went to Russia for his mission. He is from Las Vegas and this is his first semester at BYU. He is a really nice guy and I have enjoyed getting to know him. He is extremely spiritual and gave a fantastic Sunday school lesson at church yesterday.

Then there is David, who is actually the R.A. for our building. Finding out that one of my roommates was an R.A. concerned me a little, but he has ended up being really awesome. He is engaged to be married soon and is a psychology major like me, although he is trying to decide if he wants to follow that by going to either Law school or Medical school. He has a great sense of humor and constantly is making me laugh. He is also extremely spiritual and has organized a room devotional each night where us roommates get together and say a prayer and have a spiritual thought before going to bed to end the night on a good note. It has been really cool so far, and I have already felt extremely enlightened by it. I gave the devotional once and it was very last minute, but I feel I was inspired as I talked about the struggle I had as a missionary and how the only way I could get through it was with the Lord’s help. After the devotional, David told me that it was exactly what he needed to hear.

A quick funny story that illustrates our funny relationship as roommates happened one night this past week. We were all in the living room talking, and David was talking about building meeting on Sunday. He said, “There is an announcement on the door”, and he opened the door to show us the flyer he had made and a girl was standing there in front of our door about to knock! She was surprised that we answered before she even knocked and we just stared at each other for a while and she said, “Is Nathan here?” and I said, “I’m Nathan.” And she just shook her head and said that I was not the Nathan she was looking for. There apparently is another Nathan across the hall from us. So we just closed the door and all busted up laughing, it was great!

There isn’t much to say about my classes or work this week really. My classes are going to be a bit of a challenge since it is a semester’s worth of work to be done in about half the time. But, as long as I can keep up in the reading, I don’t think it will be that bad. They are interesting classes, although a little controversial. One is about the Psychology of Gender and the other is Developmental Psychology: Childhood which the teacher said would be taught from an evolution background, so that should be interesting.

Friday was an interesting day for me, after work that day, since I don’t have class on Fridays, I decided it would be a good idea to go to the movies. I went and saw Wolverine and had a great time. I don’t think it is one of the best movies ever made, but it was very entertaining and kept my interest the whole time. There were also a lot of great special effects. I really enjoyed the experience. I think I’m going to make a tradition of going to the movies after work on Fridays if there is something worth seeing. I already purchased my tickets to see Star Trek in the IMAX Theater after work this Friday, and I’m really looking forward to that. The creator of Lost and the actor that plays Sylar—how can that be bad?

Also, on Friday night I went to a really fun activity with my ward. It was really the first chance I had to meet my ward and I was really happy. There are a lot of great people in the ward and even some familiar faces from wards past. We had a great steak and potatoes dinner and then played a game called “Do You Love Your Neighbor?” where everybody is in a circle and one person is in the middle and goes up to somebody and asks if they love their neighbor. If they say “yes” the neighbors have to switch and the person asking the question tries to take one of the neighbor’s seats. If they say “no”, they have to say something like, “but I love everybody wearing red” and then everybody wearing red would have to find a new seat and the one who doesn’t is the person asking the question. I usually don’t like games like this because they make me uncomfortable, but I actually had a lot of fun playing this! The funny thing was that people kept saying “but I love everybody wearing green” and I happened to be wearing a green shirt, so I had to move around a lot.

Sunday was a great and eventful day for me. I was pleased to discover that my ward meets at noon, which gives me plenty of time to sleep in. But, once church started, I was busy consistently the whole day. Church was awesome, with a great testimony meeting, which I feel was a great way to get to know many members of the ward. Both of my roommates bore their testimonies. I also got the opportunity to pass the sacrament, which was great since I haven’t done that in a long time. Then, Ogden gave his great Sunday School lesson on keeping the Sabbath day holy. We had a combined Priesthood/Relief Society where the bishop spoke. He said that he was required to talk about two things, and he wrote a dollar sign and the word “sex” on the board. It was a very interesting lesson, one that I hear at least once a semester while at BYU.

After church, I volunteered to collect fast offerings and was partnered up with a member of the ward whose name is Bear. He was really cool and it was nice to make a friend in the ward so quickly besides my roommates. He hasn’t served a mission yet, so he was asking me a lot of questions about what being a missionary is like. After that, David and I cooked chili for the upcoming “Break the Fast” for the ward. Then, we went to our ward prayer which was at 4:30, and then had our Break the Fast dinner immediately after. It was a baked potato bar and everybody brought different desserts. It was really good and the chocolate chip cookies my apartment brought were eaten up fast, they were gone before I even had the chance to grab one!

After that, we had to hurry up and go to the fireside with Elder Bednar. I got a ride from David, and we went to the Marriot Center. It was a great talk about the importance of our bodies and how we should avoid excessive on-line gaming and social networking. It really taught me a lot about how much more important it is to live in the real world than the virtual world that so many young people are getting caught up in. It reminded me of a movie I watched recently called Caprica that takes place in the future where kids have created a virtual world to escape in that lets them do all kinds of bad things, which eventually leads to the downfall of their society.
When I got back we had a building meeting led by our R.A. and only five people showed up, three of us from our apartment. We played “I Never” and had a competition for the best story of the week. I won with the awkward story that I talked about earlier in this blog of David opening the door to show us a flyer and there was a girl standing there about to knock. My prize was Starburst, and I was very happy.

That is pretty much a summary of my past week. I am very excited for this short semester and think that it is going to be a great one. I just need to make sure that I keep a good balance between things so that I don’t get behind in any one particular aspect. I love the start of each semester because it is a chance to re-dedicate myself and to set new goals. I am in that process of setting goals now that I am comfortable with my schedule. I love getting a fresh start.