I'm going to the Philippines!

Dear Sister Lockwood: 

You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  You are assigned to labor in the Philippines Manila mission.  It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 18 months. You should report to the Philippines Missionary Training Center on Friday, July 18, 2014.  You will prepare to preach the gospel in the Tagalog language.

Well, its official!! I am serving a mission in the PHILIPPINES! I cannot even believe it. I'm going to wake up in the morning tomorrow and wonder if I dreamt this whole thing up. All I can say is that I am so humbled, excited, terrified, and blessed.  I love my Heavenly Father so much, and I know that this call came from Him.  I was so shocked when I read the letter, but now I am getting more excited by the second.  I had no idea where the Philippines even was, and I pronounced "Tagalog" as "Tagalong" like the girl scout cookie…hahaha.  But now that I've figured out that the Philippines is off the coast of Asia, and Tagalog is similar to the Spanish language, I'm feeling a little better.  I already feel like I LOVE the people.  Seriously just looking at pictures and hearing about the culture makes me so excited to meet with the people of the Philippines.  There's going to be lots of crazy adventures and new experiences, that's for sure.

I know that God lives and that He loves me and every single person walking this planet.  He has a plan for each of us. I know that it is His plan for me to go to the Philippines and bring people unto His son, Jesus Christ.  I feel so humbled and grateful to be able to represent my Savior as I go across the world to teach His gospel!  

LIFE IS SO GOOD BECAUSE I'M GOING ON A MISSION TO THE PHILIPPINES!

Sunny Days!

Wow, the weather has been absolutely beautiful!  The sun is shining and its nice enough to wear a t-shirt and shorts out!  I am in heaven.  Life is so much better when its nice outside.  Here are a couple of pictures from the time I've been spending outside with my beautiful friends Alex, Kelsea, and Ashleigh!

Life is good when the sun is shining!

We are loved.

After an extremely long weekend of work and feelin pretty low, this was a great reminder for me.  No matter how frustrated or lonely or inadequate I feel, I know that my Heavenly Father and my Savior love me.  Through them, each day can be a new day!  So today, the sun is shining, I don't have to go to work, I have so many awesome people around me, and I am choosing to be happy! 

Today is Monday, but life is good!

In other news, MY MISSION CALL IS COMING THIS WEEK!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day from Provo!  Despite being single on BYU campus, I had a great valentine's day!  I went with a group of friends down to Salt Lake to see the Young Ambassadors.  They're BYU's show choir type of thing, and it was so good!  We ate at Blue Lemon before, and then walked over and saw the show.  The theme was love and I loved it (; Then after we stopped at Crown Burger.  Jessica had to go to the bathroom which was originally why we stopped, but then of course we decided to get ice cream!  Hahaha anyways, Kelsea is my absolutely crazy and hilarious friend, and she was doing this dance thing with her hips just being funny, and we look over and all of the mexican workers are staring at her and laughing and they started clapping!  (hence the picture of the men staring) But it was so funny.  Then we came home and made a heart shaped pizza!  It was so so yummy.  Then after that Cady, Erica, and I made a megabed in our room and had a sleepover.  We can seriously talk forever.. we stayed up until about 4 before we decided to go get some Del Taco.  The next day I slept until about 4 pm so that was good! 

I just feel so incredibly blessed with all of the friends I've made. I laugh and talk and learn more everyday than I ever had.  I am so grateful to be where I am, and I know that it's where I'm supposed to be.

Life is good on Valentine's day with awesome friends!

I hope they call me on a mission!

My mission papers are officially in! I met with the stake president tonight, and he let me press the send button to send them off to the Salt Lake Mission office!  I cannot wait to find out where the Lord has called me to serve!  I've known for a few years now that I wanted to go on a mission, it's just so crazy to me that the time is actually here.  There are so many reasons why I want to go, but the most important reason is because I love my Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ. I want to show them that I love them with all my heart.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is Christ's restored church, and it has brought me so much joy and happiness.  I want to go out and bring other people the same blessings and happiness that I have!  

Life is good when I'm waiting for my mission call!

Dorm Love Week!

Since it seems most of the girls in my hall are single and it's Valentine's week, I decided to officially make it our dorm Love Week! There's no need to be sad that you don't have a boy to love, when you can love all the people around you!  So for each day there's a different challenge of someone new to love.  As President Monson said, "To find real happiness, we must seek for it in a focus outside ourselves."  Feel free to use this free printable in your halls or homes or wherever it works around Valentine's Day or any week of the year!

Life is good when you love others!

It's the weekend!

Having a job and being in college has made me appreciate the weekends so much.  This weekend I slept and relaxed a lot, but last night I went disco skating with some friends!  It was way fun.  I could get dressed up and go dancing every single night of the week and never get tired of it.  Then today I got to skype with my family, which is always so nice.  I miss them SO MUCH. 

Life is good on the weekend!

Beautiful Utah!

These are a couple of pictures that I took in my skiing class this week.  Utah is BEAUTIFUL!  Skiing was freezing but so fun this week.  It's so nice to take a break from campus and escape in the beautiful mountains.  I am so happy it's the weekend and I get to take a break for a couple of days!  Life is so crazy.

Also, my little brother T.J. and his basketball team won the championship game this week!! I am SOO proud of him!  It's really hard for me not being able to see him play.  But when I think about how fast January flew by, I'll be home before I know it!

Life is good when it's Friday.

Assassin day 1.

So one thing I've learned about myself since coming to college.. I am overly competitive. Like way way too competitive. Its awesome because it makes things super fun and intense, but it can be a flaw too sometimes.  Anyways, I have the best ward in the ENTIRE WORLD. And right now we're playing Assassin with basically half of us.  Its a game where you have to go around killing teams with a marker.  Erica and I are a team and we had to hunt down Cady and Hunter.  It was funny because we're all super close friends.  But after a pretty intense day with lots of running and screaming, I got them both out!  I just love BYU.

Life is good when I'm playing assassin with the ward!

Best day EVER!

So I know there's probably some rule somewhere that says you can't blog more than one post a day, but  I am literally the happiest girl right now because MY RELIEF SOCIETY GOT 100% VISITING TEACHING!!!  It sounds so dorky and molly-mormon, but we set a goal as a presidency to get it by the end of the semester and we did it in the first month! I seriously live in the best hall and have the greatest relief society on the whole planet. I've only been President for a month, but the joy and love that I have felt already has been amazing.  HAPPY DAY!

Also, for anyone who is not LDS and reading my blog, Relief Society is what we call the organization of women in our church.  So, here at BYU, my hall is my Relief Society.  I got called to be the Relief Society President just over all the girls in my hall.  And Visiting Teaching is the assignment that we have for all of us to go and see how each other are doing.  So each person has a partner, and they are assigned girls to go visit teach, meaning that they just go and share a message or treat and see if they need anything! And every single girl in my relief society did that! 

Life is good when we do our visiting teaching!!

Nathan hits Provo!

One of my favorite people got to come spend the weekend with me!! For Nate's birthday/Christmas present, he got to fly out to BYU for the weekend and hang out with me and go to the basketball game.  I totally spoiled him on my meal card. All in one day we got creamery ice cream, subway, jamba juice, ate at Legends grill, and got plenty of snacks from the vendies.  We went bowling and walked around campus. Notice I beat him by 1 point in our bowling game (;  Then we went and waited in line about 2 hours early and got sweet seats at the game!  We were in row 6, and rumor has it we made it on ESPN. It was such a great game!  BYU beat Saint Mary's, and it got pretty heated.  

I just love Nathan so much!  He's one of my best friends and it was so great to have him out here for a weekend.  

Life is good when brother's come to visit!