3 Weeks!

I’ve made it 3 weeks here! Sometimes it feels like months and others it feels like only a few days. This morning our friends Nemo and Mamaya were in the same taxi going to Agona with us. We got talking to Nemo about American clothing standards compared to Ghanaian clothes. I asked him he thought my running shorts were too short to wear in public. He said that it doesn’t matter if we think they’re too short or not. In small towns like this people are going to talk no matter what. If you think it’s wrong don’t wear them but it doesn’t matter if anyone else does. Don’t worry about people judging you because people are always going to talk and that’ll never change. So don’t worry about changing for someone else if you’re comfortable with yourself. Seriously the life lessons I learn here are amazing. Church was fantastic. We spent an actual 3 hours because we finally had Relief Society. I spent most of sacrament reading my scriptures and got more caught up. We went back to Mama Doris’ house and had spinach stew over rice. Cassie and I love eating over there because we don’t have to cook it and it’s really yummy food. During lunch we had our meeting. Jackie ran it and it was absolutely amazing. We talked about

-learning to live with uncertainty.

-Progress can be backwards or standing still. Both are still progress as long as you recognize those actions.

-As long as I continue what I’m doing I don’t need to know what my reason for being here is.

-Surrender to having control over things.

We are all struggling over the same feelings of figuring out why we’re here and not doing enough. I read a quote from D. Todd Christofferson and that got us talking about how we want to bring quotes or scriptures that we like to the next meeting. During the meeting Jackie also mentioned not wasting moments thinking about home when you could be occupying your time thinking about something here. I know it seems so simple but when she said don’t waste moments versus don’t waste A single moment; it made it so much more powerful. I thought it was a bad idea to not waste a SINGLE moment thinking about home because they mean so much to me. However, when you do that so often you lose multiple moments thinking about that and soon you’re wasting your whole day with moments like that. I’ve been here three weeks already and only have 10 more left. It’s time to make every moment count. After the meeting we watched Phantom of the Opera. I’ve never watched that movie the whole way through and it’s so good! The music is hauntingly beautiful. Mama had dinner ready for us at 6 and we were still so full from lunch we didn’t eat that much. It was getting dark so we left around 6:30. I had a weird experience in the taxi because I took myself out of the scene for a moment and realized that I was in Africa. I am traveling abroad and experiencing another world of mysteries. It’s crazy that this moment has come true and I’m not soaking up every single minute of it. I realize I need to take a second to myself sometimes and I’ve been a pretty good job at balancing that. I came home and wrote a couple postcards. As I was writing the postcards I realized that I take the fact that I can call my friends and family whenever I want at home for granted. I realized how amazing our world of technology has become. I can tweet, facebook, text, e-mail, call, or skype friends. I don’t hate being totally disconnected because sometimes it’s nice not to have all those distractions. However, if you use the technology in moderation it can be such a blessing.

XOXO Natalie

PS exactly 10 more weeks!