Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Bret and Katrina















My cousin, Katrina, was married this weekend in the Manti temple to Bret Jenkins from Logan. Katrina wore her Mom's wedding dress, which is very cool. That dress is like 25 years old and it still looks beautiful. The Manti temple was cool too, a little out of the way though, in the middle of no where. I like seeing all the old temples, it makes me think of the pioneers who built them who worked so hard to build them. Congrats to the happy couple!

Merry Christmas!










We had a busy past few weeks with the end of the the semester. Robert got sick during the last week of classes, but we also had fun putting up our Christmas tree. Thanks to Steve who let us borow his tree for this Christmas.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Of the Beginning


By Susan Elizabeth Howe

O Daughters, I will speak
of excellent things. The opening
of my lips shall be from everlasting,
from the begining or ever
the earth was.

When darkness was upon the face
of the void, we were there.
When there were no depths, we
exploded against the bleakness
of density.

We watched the gassy sweep
of the galaxy, loved the forming sun
for its light, for its patience,
the stars for their distance
and immensity.

As Earth swirled in its sphere
we were centripetal. As seas
gathered together, we touched a finger
to the face of the deep.
As clouds meandered

into the sky, our cheeks moistened
in the mist. Bedrock settled
in our beds, and from us
soils learned to nourish.
We saw matter

organized-- hills everlasting, fountains
of the deep. Matter inspirited
as flower, fish, bush, beast,
all bearing egg or seed.
These we gathered,

enfloding spheres of truth within
ourselves, prepared with wisdom,
the wisdom of God, the God of light,
the light of the daughter
and the dawn.

Friday, December 09, 2005

Celebrate!

Yesterday was the last day of class for BYU! While this is exciting it still does not mean the end of schoolwork for the semester. In fact, school willreally go on as it had for me for another week because most of my classes only meet once or twice a week anyways. The past couple of weeks going to class has become more of an annoyance than major work. But, the ray of light is that I have already completed all the work for two classes, so I just have four more to finish up next week. Rejoice!

Thursday, December 01, 2005

The Traje



This summer I lived in a little town in Guatemala called Ixtahuacan. The lifestyle is extremely different than what I enjoy here in the United States. The women spend most of their day in the family compound preparing meals, cleaning, or weaving. It surpised me how much time these activities take. For me, preparing meals and cleaning is something that distracts from my daily tasks, but for them it was their main responsiblity.

When they had time, they would weave. The weaving is so intricate that it took them weeks or months to finish something. The shirt that I am wearing in the picture, a huipile (spanish) or p'ot (K'iche'), took two months for my host sister Maria to complete (she is the one standing next to me in the picture). First she had to buy the threads in the market. Then she strung the white thread out in many parallel lines and connected them to her backstrap loom. Then she put the color thread onto sticks and wove the design line by line.