Family History, Friends, and CHOCOLATE!

The other day I was looking on new.familysearch.com randomly since I hadn't done it in a while and saw that a man recently added some information to a family that I've been researching for the past 5 years or so. I decided to email him and it has truly reignited the spirit of Elijah within me! It feels so good to get excited again about something I love so much! He found some things I never would have found or thought to look for and I count that as a tender mercy when it comes to family history research. It's also fun to have someone to collaborate with and get ideas or second opinions from on a family I'm becoming more and more interested and attached to.

These past few days I have felt great peace from the Lord about going to my new ward and everything that relates to my move. With the help of a great book (Fablehaven, thanks to Stephanie) and family history, and that peace, I haven't felt so lonely and isolated.

Because of all this, I was excited and confident as I went to ward institute tonight. Once again, it was a small group, but I liked it. One guy came in late and after the opening prayer moved to sit next to me because last Sunday I encouraged him to come. It was then that I looked around at the few people there and noticed that there were familiar faces and people that I wanted to be my friends. After institute, we all exchanged phone numbers (at my straightforward request) and talked about how we will transform this ward to be an amazing ward. This ward does need a lot of help. I won't go into details but I can just say that it is a complete opposite of the ward I just left.

While we ate we talked about the upcoming changes to our ward. In the past week it has been made official that this ward (which currently is in a family stake) will be combined with another ward and put into what will be called the YSA Aspen 7th stake (I think it is). There will be four wards in the building we go to and each ward will be fairly large. They said tonight that it is going to happen the last Sunday in May (or earlier). Many people in the ward are not very anxious or excited about this change, but everyone I talk to I try to assure them that it is the best thing that could ever happen to this ward that is nearly dying. Tonight the small group of us formed a "posse" to help liven up the ward and make it a better place to be. A few of us have experienced the college singles ward and stake so we talked about all the possibilities of how to really make it a great ward. We know it will be a rough start, but with us and good leaders, I think we can make it happen.

We thought to start with game nights and movie nights. Spread the word and make it not mandatory to come at a specific time but just to have fun. We thought that once the ward is combined (our ward will keep the leadership it has and the other wards will combine with us) we can try to sit with new people and help them feel welcomed. The thing we talked the most about was FHE groups. Right now the ward does ward FHE with few people coming, but we were talking about making it like the college wards in the new ward with multiple small FHE groups. It will make more callings and probably get more people to come.

I realized as I was talking to them that I was kind of volunteering myself to be the head of this "posse," but I'm okay with that if it means we can all have fun and a better experience in the singles ward. It was fun to talk to them all. It really made me feel like I have friends here now.

I HAVE FRIENDS!!!!!

Yeah, I AM that excited.

The other funny thing is having a couple boys trying to impress me... It's just really funny to me. Maybe because I don't care so much about impressing anyone in particular. I just want to make friends right now. These next few months will be very interesting as lots new people and more changes will be coming into my life. I'm excited!

Oh! And I can't forget to mention the chocolate! One of my new friends' dad makes chocolate as a hobby. I gave my friend Mikey a ride home and he asked if I liked chocolate and asked if wanted to have some of his dad's chocolate that he makes. I walked into the room and the first thing I said was that it smelled sooooo good and that it would be a girl's heaven. It was very yummy! In fact, I'm savoring every... last... bite! MMMmmmmm.....