Since the new year, I've started doing 15 minutes of exercise in the morning before work. I found a really awesome routine on Pinterest. It means I have to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier, but I've been doing it! It helps that I don't have much a social life. ;) I feel more energized during the day and it feels great! I hope to keep it up. It is helping me with stress relief, too. :)
Right before work started up again, I went snowshoeing with my friend Tyler. It was awesome! I'd never been snowshoeing before and now I can't wait to go again!
At then end of the year, I was released from being in the RS presidency and now I am on the family history committee. I'm glad to be back into family history. I'm planning to help a couple people in the ward get started on family history as well as continue working on my own. In fact, tomorrow I have work off, so I'm going up to Salt Lake to meet with a distant cousin about a family I researched a lot this summer. Many little miracles led me to finding this LDS cousin, so I'm excited to share my information with him.
This coming week I'm auditioning for the Nauvoo Pageant core cast. I am very excited! For the past two summers I wasn't able to be a part of it, but this year I felt good about applying for family cast and auditioning for core cast. I auditioned a couple of years ago, so I know a little of what to expect, which helps a lot. I have to sing a song and with others act out a simple scene, usually just saying one line. I've been thinking a lot about it and really hope that I somehow will be a part of it this summer. I would be a missionary again! I was reading in Preach My Gospel under "My Purpose" and it made me have a greater desire to have this opportunity to serve and take part in the hastening of the work in a different way. I can't put my feelings into words, but I know that the Lord is preparing me for the audition and I pray that I will be humble enough to accept His will, even if it is that I do not participate in the pageant this summer.
The thing I've thought about the most is how being a part of the core cast of the pageant isn't about the position, but about humility. It's about being a light to others, sharing the gospel through example and testimony and who I am as a person. It will require relying heavily on the Lord for the strength to do all that is required of me, especially with lack of sleep and the excessive heat I would experience. Not to mention having to learn lines and act and sing on stage!! I had to work VERY hard to do the ward roadshow last year, so I know for this I would have to work 200% harder. I know that for this though, I would have even more of the Lord's help and support and miracles would happen. It's just like a mission, but the language and mode of teaching is different. I hope to find out if I am in the core cast sooner than later so I can make goals/plans of the summer to be excited about. I also applied for the family cast, which if I don't get into the core cast, but do get into the family cast, I will have to figure out how I will pay for everything. I know miracles will happen there, too. I also know that the Lord will inspire the committee to know if I am to be involved in anything of the pageant this year. I just have to trust that the Lord will do what's best for me.
