There is Sunshine in My Soul!

Spring is finally here and it's beautiful! Everyday I look at the trees and think of the primary song-the flowers really do look like popcorn popping on the trees. For whatever reason though, the beautiful trees with all of their blossoms don't smell so wonderful, unless you like your flowers to smell like dead fish.

And it's finals week, but I'm so excited about spring that I don't care! Actually, this is the best finals week I've ever had. None of my finals are scary or even require tons of cramming, the time to get them done.

Last Thursday, 11 April, I went to a Seder Service on campus, run by Brother Victor Ludlow. It's an amazing experience to learn about the traditions of the Jewish people, and to be able to participate in it. It's even more amazing to participate in it at BYU with others who share the same beliefs. I love hearing about the Passover Service as Brother Ludlow lead the service, and then as he asked us to pause and think about the Last Supper, and when that changed from a regular Passover night to the night that the Savior instituted the sacrament. We also got to meet really interesting people, like our table's "patriarch" that was from Berlin, so he spoke German and English, as well as at least French, and has a working knowledge of Mandarin though he's not fluent. CRAZY! Jeff won the afikomen, and asked for him to put together a couple of German foods like sausages and such so he can try those. The horseradish (bitter herbs) that we ate were rated a 9.5 on a scale of 1 to 10 and it HURTS! It's nasty stuff, and makes me cry and I can feel it burning in my stomach the rest of the night, but I decided that the experience is totally worth it, so I can handle a couple bites of horseradish once a year. We also got to sing a traditional passover song, Who Knows One, a song that builds like the 12 Days of Christmas. It was really fun trying to follow Sister Ludlow as she changed up the speed of the song, and then Jeff started trying to harmonize and was singing above the melody and I was laughing to hard to actually sing. All in all, it was a really fun night.

I'm just really, really happy. The sun is out, flowers are blooming, it's the perfect temperature, I have great friends and school isn't too stressful. And on top of all of that, I get to go home and see my family for a couple weeks, have a great job for while I'm there, and then I get to come back to Provo and spend some time with my friends here while it's still warm!! Life is good :)