A beautiful place

Hello again! It's been a while. Tooooo long for me. So lets get going again, sound good?

Last Saturday was my birthday! I got to do a lot of fun things and had a great day. One of the places I went was sprinkles cupcakes. Yum!

Then I remembered how close the San Diego temple was to sprinkles and decided to go to the temple grounds. While I was there I had my brother take some pictures outside with me. I'm so glad I did. Because the temple means SO much to me. I love the peace and joy I feel when I go to the temple. I love the wonderful feelings I get there. It is amazing how even outside on the temple grounds how you feel. My favorite primary song has always been: "I love to see the temple. "

(Picture by me)

"I love to see the temple".

1. I love to see the temple.

I’m going there someday

To feel the Holy Spirit,

To listen and to pray.

For the temple is a house of God,

A place of love and beauty.

I’ll prepare myself while I am young;

This is my sacred duty.

2. I love to see the temple.

I’ll go inside someday.

I’ll cov’nant with my Father;

I’ll promise to obey.

For the temple is a holy place

Where we are sealed together.

As a child of God, I’ve learned this truth:

A fam’ly is forever.

This song means even more to me now that I have been able to go to the temple. And I can not wait for that wonderful day when I can be married and sealed in the temple to my eternal family. I am so grateful that I am sealed to my own family!

It was a beautiful Saturday and I'm so glad I had that chance. It was a perfect thing to do on my birthday!

Click HERE to read a poem I wrote about the temple a few years ago.

Canada, eh?

Aaron received his Mission call this afternoon!

He is going to....

The Canada Toronto mission!

But that's not all..... He'll be speaking Korean!

He will leave for the MTC in October.

We are excited for him!

EFY

Last week I had the chance to go to EFY. I went to EFY in Utah at BYU. I got to sleep, eat and live on campus for a week. Nothing like going to college there,but it was still fun to do. I roomed with my cousin Emma and we had a fun time. It was such a spiritual week but also really fun because you got to meet so many amazing people. I took SO many pictures and am posting a lot of them because my blog is a journal to me.

Me
Our room wasn't quite to clean...
So, time for a little story. Me and Emma were down a hallway looking for out dorm room. A girl pops her head out of the door and I see her and I'm like "Lexi is that you?" and the girl is like "Marianne?". Well Lexi and me are 2nd cousins and turns out she was on my floor! She wasn't it my company but it was fun to see her. And yes we were surprised!

Well that wasn't the end of surprises! After we got to our dorms we got to meet our girls group. Everyone was nice and we got to know each other. (Below is our girls group).

After that we got to meet our company. (2 girl groups + a guy group).
This is our whole group on the last day. (Including some random kids that obviously wanted to be in our picture.)

Well when we met our whole company I found TWO more 2nd cousins! (I already knew my 2nd cousins but didn't know they were coming). It was so funny, so surprising and crazy.

Me & Marin (2nd cousins)
Me & Sofia (2nd cousins)
It doesn't even end there!! Below is a picture of Kylie. I met her and me & Emma were talking to her about Texas. (That's were she's from). After having one conversation we figured out we were related by marriage. We were all stunned and were laughing! It's amazing how we got into the same group.

Okay I'm done with my stories of relieves. :) Moving on.

We had an amazing couple, Brother and Sister Murphy that got to speak to us everyday. They gave the most inspiring talks and got to know you personally. They were awesome!

This is Madi. She was my counselor! I liked her and she was fun.

This is Becky, the other girl counselor. She was way more fun than Mandi, so I'm glad she was there. So each morning after our group devotional (Witch was WAY to early) we would have a company devotional and then our personal scripture study.
I read my scriptures here one day. It was so pretty!
One morning we woke up to a sky filled with hot air balloons!
Two girls from my ward were at EFY in a different session but we were able to meet up with them a few times and we went and got Ice cream with a girl who was in our ward but is now up there at BYU for college. It was really great to get to do that. :)
Yes the ice cream was great too!

Me
Most of our company at lunch time

One of my other friends Larkin was at EFY too! (But in a different session). It was still fun though because we go to got to some classes together, eat dinner together one night and she came over to our dorms while me and Emma packed all our stuff up. :)
Me and Taylor. We became really good friends!
Me and Emma
And these two. Identical twins. I'll be honest I still can't tell you witch one is witch!
Maddy, Sarah, And Emily. Maddy and Sarah are from Vista!
Tye and Preston. They were best friends and did everything together!
Nolen eating a hamburger.
Mallory and Kate. I got to know Mallory really good.
The other Girls group. My Camera died right as we were taking pictures of our group.
A picture I took while we were walking up to dinner.


There was only one night that I didn't like. Game night. Outside. In the pouring rain. With shorts and T shirts. With lightning and thunder. So fun. BUT we made it! Until they let us all go back to our dorms because there was so much rain and lighting. (All of us below at game night before it started raining bad.)


Our company got to be with each other almost every moment of the day and it was really fun. By the last day everyone was really good friends with everyone. Our group was really close and we had so much fun together. At lunch we would eat and play games together and even during our free time we did stuff together too.

Getting ready to jump...
Playing games.

I am so glad I go to go to EFY! It was an amazing experience for me and I want to go again for sure! Of course I didn't post all the pictures or write out other fun things we did but this was part of my experience at EFY!

My word for 2011 (You'll love it!)

This morning as we were reading the scriptures together I was thinking a lot about my word for this year, 2011. We were reading in Alma and all these words from the verses we had been reading kept popping up in my mind for my word. I was excited!

Then we read a verse that stood out to me SO clearly and SO strong and I knew at once what my word should be. Let me share that verse with you. It is now one of my favorite scripture verses and I hope that when you read it it will be one of your new favorites too!

Alma 26:35 - "Now have we not reason to rejoice? Yea, I say unto you, there never were men that had so great reason to rejoice as we, since the world began; yea, and my joy is carried away, even unto boasting in my God; for he has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding; he comprehendeth all things, and he is a merciful Being, even unto salvation, to those who will repent and believe on his name."

I just connect with that verse so well. Why shouldn't we rejoice?
So if you guessed right... my word for 2011 is......


Rejoice


For me personally this is something that I need to do in my life every day. To simply rejoice! There are SO many things to rejoice about. And today even though I have been upset and annoyed
at times I have been doing my best to rejoice. And guess what? I'm already noticing a difference. I read my scriptures, got my school work done quicker than normal, I was just Happier. All because I know I have reason to rejoice.

There are so many things to rejoice about! I rejoice in the knowledge of the Gospel and that I have a savior who loves me. I rejoice that I know I'm a daughter of God. I rejoice in knowing that I always have another beautiful day ahead of me to try to do better and work things out. I rejoice that I have a wonderful family and friends. I rejoice in my talents and the things I love to do.

And right now I rejoice because I know that my beautiful Grandma Anne who everyday I miss so much, think about her and wonder what she is doing, is on the other side doing wonderful service to others AND I rejoice that I will will be able to see her again, hug her again, laugh with her again, talk to her again, and live with her, my family and my savior again. Someday that wonderful time will come. That is something I think we should all truly rejoice about, to know that we can live with our families again someday.

So today my chalange for you is this, to try and rejoice in the wonderful simple things. Try it! Yes, there are many challanges, hard times, dissipointments and sorrow in the world. BUT There is so much to smile about laugh about, be gratful for, love, look back and remember and rejocie about!

So insted of being like this today or tomorrow....

Try insted to be like this. And Rejoice.

10 things on the 10th

1. I have SOOO much to blog about!! Well kind of... I just have to blog about our visit to the northern rim of the grand canyon (Amazing!) and out trip to Utah, but I have a ton of pictures!!

2. For now here is a picture of some flowers I took at the grand canyon. I liked how it turned out!


3. Since I posted a pic from the grand cayon here is one from Utah! Here is my cousin's son Max. I love this kid!! He is so funny and he is a poser. (I also went to an awesome cupcake shop you all know I love.... but more on that later!)


4. A few weeks ago I started Seminary! I thought it would be super hard for me because I really don't like waking up in the morning till 9:00. Really! But so far it has been fine as long as I go to bed earlier than I used to. I have a awesome teacher and all of the freshmen girls in my ward are in my class!

5. On Thursday I started all my classes at the school I go to called MSA. I am taking two classes there. The 1st one is called "Pryrimd project". It's all about Math & science, patterns wondering about things (and learning about them) and then finding the answers. My 2nd class is called "Classical acting". If you have taken two years of Shakespeare you can be in this class. It's about acting, Shakespeare works and other classics. (I am taking other classes too, but the ones I'm taking at MSA started on Thursday. )


6. I am really ready for fall so I can do more baking and crafts! I have ideas from other blogs so I am going to make a list of great treats and crafts to make. Here's an Idea I love. Isn't that so easy but cute?!

7. Okay kind of boring but.... This is my Flicker page if you want to see my pictures. It doesn't have annything new on it but it will maybe this weekend!

8. So we went to the beach like twice this summer (Sad I know, but we forgot and there wasn't great weather for the beach. We'll be sure to go this month!) but one of the times I went I got this sunset shot I liked!


9. I want to get back to blogging regularly. Like once a week at least. It could be pictures or just writing. I just put it off a lot of times! I want to post a lot so someday I can make a blog book from all my pictures!

10. Okay I saved this for last! This great lady we know does musicals for groups of friends that want to do a play. She hasn't done one in a long time but she decided to and today were the auditions. (Everyone gets a part). Oh and the play she picked was "The wizard of Oz". The 2 people I wanted to be in the play was Glinda the good witch and The wicked witch". She kept the group super small so we could all have more parts and more lines.

I was picked for.....
Miss gulch (The mean lady)..........

AND the wicked Witch!
I have never had a super mean/bad part in a play before so it should be fun! I am working on my voices and my evil cackle! :)

Easter tomb

This year for the first time we tried making a salt dough tomb representing the tomb where Christ was laid and then rose again. We got the idea from some friends and you can see theirs from last year here then the one they made this year here.

From the top ours looked like this. It was fun to find Moss, Flowers, rocks and other plants to go in the garden. We found a lot of it in our cousin's back yard!


Then we placed a piece of dough (representing Jesus's body) wrapped with something white around it (we used paper towel), then we put it in the tomb and rolled the stone in place.

I don't have a picture but then on Easter morning we found the stone rolled away and the wrappings left. He is risen!

Grateful for today

I love Sundays. Everything about them. Relaxing, & getting to go to church and filling up my day with the best possible things I get t to learn. The gospel. Today I am just grateful. I had a great Sunday and I just want to share with you some of the things I am grateful and about.

1. To start us off I am so grateful we had a BEAUTIFUL day today! Yeah! It was warm - but not hot. I love those days! They are soooo nice. :-)

2. I am so grateful for all my wonderful leaders and teachers! I have a great Sunday school teacher and Awesome YW teachers & leaders! Thanks especially to my Beehive leaders Sis Mendanhall & Sis Ashcraft! Sis Mendanhall gives such great lessons (Thanks!) & Sis Ashcraft helps a lot with mutual and keeping the Beehive pres organized! (Thank you!)

3. In our ward we have the BEST YW! They are all such good friends, are so nice, fun to be with, stand up for their beliefs and you feel so loved by them! We are all friends and I am so grateful for them!

4. I am gratful for a great ward choir. For our chorister and our pianist who prepare and our ready to help sing praises. I'm thankful for their time and effort. Our choir is small and were working towrds gaining some more people so if you'd like to join us go ahead. :-)

5. And Last I am SO very grateful for this one person who I would be nothing without. My Savior, lord, Jehovah,The lamb of god, My Brother Jesus Christ.
(An original painting in the conference center)
I also want to share this scripture I found last night that was marked in my scriptures as a was preparing for a spiritual thought for me Beehive Pres Meeting this morning. I am too very grateful for this scripture.

Abraham Chapter 3
Verse 22 Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones;

Ok think about that- We in the latter days are the Noble and great ones god saw before the
world was created! We need to live up to that and be called as the "great and noble ones".

Verse 23 And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham (I like to personalize the scriptures so I put my name Marianne in insted of Abraham. You can do that too.) , thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.

Again WE are the ones who god saw, who were good and said "These I will make my rulers". And he tells Abraham he is one of them.

I hope you have learned at least one thing from my post and Is there anything you are especially grateful for today?

A wonderful experience

Today was out stake conference. But not any old normal stake conference. We had a special visitor today. Our special visitor was one of the 12 apostles! L. Tom Perry came to our stake conference and spoke to us this morning!

It was such a special experience and I don't want to ever forget about the time Elder Perry came to our stake conference. Our conference stated at 10:00 but we got there at 8:00 to get a soft seat. We got of of the last few soft seats! Just a little after 8:00 when we got there people were already sitting in the back of the church. And I was so Glad we got there when we did!

L. Tom Perry was our last speaker (Save the best for last!) we also had a mission president and his wife and our temple president. L . tom perry talked about the importance of missionary work. He then Invited the mission president to come stand next to him. Elder perry said " Now do you have Testimony of missionary work? The mission pres said "Yes I do" and L. tom perry then he stepped away from pulpit and said "OK." And then the mission pres shared his testimony. Elder perry surprised ALL of us! He even surprised the mission pres! Then he talked about the temple and asked the Temple Pres to come join him. Guess what? Same thing as Mission pres. He asked him if he had a testimony and the the temple pres bore his testimony. He then told us how he had been a Stake presided and then how he was called as one of the 12 apostles. He then told about all the Prophets (that had been the prophet since he was a 12 apostle and how he gets to work with them and how wonderful they are.)

All through his talk he said funny things and made us laugh. He had a wonderful smile that I think that even on the WORST days would all make us happy. Just him being there, his presence I had the spirt with me and was happy. There is not really a way I can describe his smile expat what I told you. His smile just lighted up everything!. Maybe a good way to describe it is you could see love he had for everyone in his smile. He also had a wonderful sense of humor and I liked his talk the best! The picture of him I put up does not really even show how wonderful his smile really is. You just have to see him in person.

And then at the end of conference RIGHT after the prayer a line gathered to go go shake his hand. I got in that line quickly I didn't have to wait to long. I got to shake his hand and He was so friendly and asked me how I was doing. It was so cool just to be able to shake his hand, a apostle of god. Evan told him he enjoyed his talk and Elder perry said "I'm glad you liked it!". And he said to Aaron " Hello future missionary!" And Aaron said "I'm preparing!". Like I said he said everything with a smile and I loved his sense of humor! It was such a good experience and I'm so glad L. Tom Perry could come!

A very special place

Yesterday I got to go someplace very special.
Although I had to wake up at 5:30 got dressed in nice clothes, waited in a parking lot very cold for about 10 min and then drove about 1/2 an hour to get to this place it was all worth it. Any guesses Where I got to go?? I got to go Here.

I got to go to the temple! Are YW & YM (Young women & Young men) went to the temple to do Temple baptisms. Some things that made it even more special were : We had a couple who were new converts who got to go to the first time with us, A lady in our ward put in a BUNCH of names and we got to do them, We saw a man who was getting baptized for his Brother, When we were baptized we each got to do 15 names, And we saw a man who was Spanish and got baptized in Spanish! There is also something that people say that when you are in the baptismal font to look up at the chandelier. Well I have forgot to do so both times and this time is was so happy I remember! It was pretty!

If you have ever got to go do temple baptisms before you know it is really neat. A few years ago our stake president asked all the primary children to write him a letter explaining and telling him why they loved the temple. I wrote a letter and then shared two poems I had wrote. I would like to share them with you too!


I want to go to the temple
By Marianne Hartzell

The temple is a place of god.
Of beauty and power that is so strong.
My heart is full with songs of joy,
I want to go to the temple some day.
And when I go that glorious day,
I'm not sure what I'll say.
My heart will be filled with strength and beauty,
And I will no longer need to worry.
I want to go to the temple some day,
And see it's beautiful glory.

In the temple I can be married and sealed to my family.
I will go to the temple some day,
And when I do I will feel it's power and glory shine upon me.
I want to go to the temple right now,
But... I guess I'll have to wait a while.
And on that day when I am there,
I will look in your eyes and say,
I told you that you would come some day.
I kept that promise sure and safe.

Here is my other poem too.
The Book of Mormon
By Marianne Hartzell
The book of Mormon is very true.
It's clear as water that is blue.
The book of Mormon is like a kite,
It soars high with strength and might.
The book of Mormon I KNOW is true.
And heavenly father knows that too.
So is you read it day and night,
you will be happy all your life.
Heavenly father loves me & you,
And he wants us to believe it and understand it too.
Id we read it we will know,
All the things we need to follow!

I hope you all had a great Saturday!