the sister reunited

few people are so lucky as i am... to have sisters by blood and sisters by choice! well, i have a sister that is about nothing like me, and still we haven't fought since the sixth grade. at least not that i can remember. when i moved from oregon to utah before my junior year of high school, she bought us a notebook that we sent back and forth writing about our lives and families. then when i moved back to oregon for my senior year i lived with her amazing family. i love this girl with all my heart, and am SO SO SO glad she is a flight attendant so she has lay-overs in salt lake city! yay for spending the evening with my madisn lyn cheek in her red lion hotel room! here are some pics that captured the night.

what can i say, she was reallllllly reallllllly glad to see me- we hadn't seen each other in over four years, but time never makes a difference in sisterly bonds. when i walked in her room she jumped up and down and hugged me and wouldn't let me go. i love it like i love her!

at the end of the night, she said she wasn't kicking me out, just putting my shoes right by my purse and leaving! i didn't want to say goodbye, but it was amazing to spend a night catching up with my sister and feeling like it hdan't been more than 4 days! love you madison lyn!

my first wedding!

okay, so it wasn't MY wedding per say, but it was the first wedding i attended in the temple- so it was definitely memorable! Pri and Su had invited me down to St. George about 3 times and i always said no, until they said it was for Juliana Cavalcante's wedding- a girl from a city i served in on my mission- then i e-mailed my professor, got a presentation changed since i was gonna miss class, and headed out for this beauuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful destination!!! the wedding was amazing! the ceremony so simple, the promises so celestial! i thought to myself: man, i want one of these one day! any takers?!?!? hahahahaha

we got to sao jorge a lil early, so we had time to kill and buns burning from sitting in the car, so we decided to walk around the outlet stores, and look at the trouble that got us into! su and pri really showed off their maturity when they grabbed these swords and starting fighting!

all that sword fighting got us hungry so we stopped off at mongolian grill for some lunch! this place is sooooooooo so so so good. you get to fill up a bowl with whatever ingredients you want- veggies, meat, noodles, and then season it with your own sauce creation and then watch it grilled in front of your eyes. yummers! we were all pleased! in this picture is Suellen, another girl from Sao Paulo who is studying out here at BYU.

so it was the hottest recorded day in Utah this year, so needless to say we were melting. i just feel bad for the bride and groom- look at them in the background with all those clothes on! yiiiiiiiiiiikes.

at the reception i ran into my friend and CTM (MTC in sampa) companion Sister Sara Faust. We live 40 minutes from each other, and saw one another for the first time in almost three months in st. george of all places! but she looks GREAT and it was SO SO SO good to see her! gotta love the wedding/mission reunions!

at the end of the trip we spent the night in Mesquite at Su's mission president's home- such a loving family! they welcomed us into their home with open arms, the wife, Sister Mack, lent us marvelous one-piece swimsuits to wear in the pool (i've never felt sexier!) and fed us til it hurt! we woke up early saturday morning to drive back and get to life's responsibilities, and i remembered why i love the winter when i walked outside at 4:30 in the morning and it was HOT! what? are you kidding? that made the drive home without AC even that much more enjoyable. YIKES! let's just say a shower was the first item of business upon arriving home!

Happy Fourth Already!

So i think its time i gave the fourth of july some blog-time! i have been super blog-lame lately, and now i will make it up to you, i promise! so on the fourth i met up with my girls and we watched the fireworks looking up from our backs. It was quite the show i must admit. One of my friends said something on her blog that resonated with me and I haven't stopped thinking about it- she said she feels patriotism somewhat like she feels the spirit. I thought it was an appropriate analogy. I feel patriotism where gratitude and pride collide, where hope and optimism and a sense of belonging reside. It's where the true you feels what it should. I will always be grateful to call this country home, a place where the history is traced with the hand of the Lord in its creation and preservation. It breeds a sense of duty, of honor, and mostly of humble thankfulness. It touches me to say, in light of all the great men and women who made this possible, that i am AMERICAN!

the show

after the show

Broseph

This is a shout out to a great friend who can always make me laugh! This beautiful young fellow is my brother Taylor, and though we look nothing alike, we have walked similar paths our whole lives... that is until the Lord decided to trust Tay with a burden I would be too weak to bear. I love him and respect him more than ever, and know that the miracle is coming! Don't we look great in our new gap shirts that cost less then $15? okay- well he was the big spender ringing in at $13 and i bargained for this $2 number. both well worn if i do say so myself!

So for one of my classes this semester, Comms 412- Public Policy- we are doing a mock negotiation about banning plastic bags. Now, those of you who know my green roots seeped in a northwestern upbringing know that i jumped at the chance to ban the (plastic) bag for the CLEARLY more environmental paper option.... and then i started studying! I always thought there was a correct answer to the question "paper or plastic" and now i'm not so sure. isn't there a better alternative?

YES! goooooooooooooooooooo reusable. here are 25 reasons to use reusable grocery bags!

25 reasons to go reusable

· 1 A plastic shopping bag can take anywhere from 15 to 1000 years to decompose. In a compressed landfill, deprived of atmosphere to help them biodegrade, paper bags don't fare much better.

· 2 Plastic bags don't biodegrade, but are at risk for photo degradation, light exposure dissolving them into toxic polymer particles. Most often, when this happens, it happens in the ocean.

· 3 The cost to recycle plastic bags so outweighs their value that most recycling facilities will not take them, leading more and more to just be thrown out with the rest of the trash.

· 4 According to the Wall Street Journal, only 1% of plastic bags are recycled world-wide; the rest are left to live on indefinitely in landfills.

· 5 The United States alone uses approximately 100 billion new plastic bags per year - the average person goes through between 350 and 500.

· 6 Thanks to their light weight, plastic bags are the debris most likely to fly away from landfills, settling instead in trees, storm drains, beaches, and the ocean.

· 7 Public agencies in California alone spend over $300 million on coastal litter clean-up per year.

· 8 Plastic bags make up over 10% of washed-up debris polluting the US coastline.

· 9 According to the British Antarctic Survey, discarded plastic bags have been found as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as The Falkland Islands.

· 10 An estimated one million birds and 100,000 turtles and other sea animals die of starvation each year after ingesting discarded plastic bags which block their digestive tracks.

· 11 Made from petroleum products and natural gas, plastic bags utilize nonrenewable resources, ultimately helping to drive up fuel prices.

· 12 It takes 12 million barrels of oil to produce the amount of plastic bags the US uses per year.

· 13 Think paper bags are better? The United States cuts down 14 million trees per year simply to supply the demand for paper shopping bags.

· 14 It requires 13% more energy to produce one single paper bag than to produce two plastic bags.

· 15 Made with chemicals processed at high temperatures, paper bag production releases many toxins into the atmosphere at much the same rate as plastic production.

· 16 Paper bags weigh nearly ten times their counterparts in plastic, requiring more fuel to ship them out to stores.

· 17 Despite their high recyclability factor, research shows that only 20% of paper bags end up recycled while the rest share a fate with their plastic brethrens.

· 18 In landfills, paper bags produce over twice as much atmospheric waste as plastic, making them questionable at best as the superior choice for the environment.

· 19 Ireland, the first European country to impose a tax on them, has decreased plastic shopping bag consumption by 90% since 2002, reducing overall plastic bag usage by 1.08 billion.

· 20 In the past five years, over a dozen countries have banned or put a tax on disposable bags.

· 21 Reusable bags come in all sorts of smart and stylish shapes and prints, making your shopping trips a little less routine and a little more fun.

· 22 Some grocery stores even offer discounts for customers who bring their own bags - now that's incentive!

· 23 In New York City, one less grocery bag per person would reduce waste by 5 million pounds and save $250,000 in disposal costs.

· 24 The average reusable bag has the lifespan of over seven hundred disposable plastic bags.

· 25 Over a lifetime, use of reusable bags by just one person would save over 22,000 plastic bags. Isn't that even better incentive?

Last week, on June 26th 2008 I loved the opportunity I had to go to the wedding reception of my mission president's daughter Leda. I did my best to turn the wedding into a mission reunion, and these four elders were all I could talk into going, but it was worth every minute. Sister Wilkins got permission to fly in for the wedding and when she saw us in line she began jumping up and down with eyes full of tears saying, "my missionaries are here, my missionaries are here!" It was a great reunion! The only time Leda went teaching in the three months she spent visiting the mission was with my companion, sister, best friend, soul mate Sister Freitas and me. She taught without fear and bore testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ in what seemed fluent Portuguese for those precious moments. I loved her enthusiasm. I was a sheer pleasure and joy to walk alongside her in the streets of Caraguatatuba Brasil.
I am also proud to have played a part a very important first for Leda.... no not the first day as a married woman, but rather the first time she indulged in the sheer bliss that is acai! When we met back up with President and Sister Wilkins after teaching, she sweetly asked for her reward of acai, and Sister Wilkins responded with an easy yes! And as President says, "hmmmmm, acai tem gosto de chocolate!"
Because of said teaching experience, Leda calls me and Sister Freitas her trainers. On my last night on the mission me and Sister Faust were getting ready for bed in President's apt. and Sister Wilkins was talking to Leda on the phone doing some wedding planning. When I heard that phone on the other end of the phone I asked Sister Wilkins to tell Leda I said hi, to which Leda responded to Dave (the lucky groom pictured here) "my trainer is there, Dave, my trainer is there!" Let me tell you what, it isn't hard to train a Wilkins! Love you both!