november 20

I am grateful for SPANISH.

Yesterday, Sister Eyring (daughter in law of Henry B. Eyring) gave a faaaaaaaabulous devotional about life in general. It was about the decisions that we are making now and how Heavenly Father is anxious to help us make these decisions. Seriously, this was one of the best devotionals of the semester. Anyways, in her devotional, she talked about deciding a major. I really loved the story that she related, so I'll just post it here.

"Because of his great love for science, Henry Eyring [Henry B. Eyring's father] encouraged each of his sons to major in physics as preparation for a career in science. It was while Hal was studying physics at the University of Utah that an exchange with his father marked one of those defining influences. He asked his father for help with a complex mathematical problem. “My father was at a blackboard we kept in the basement,” Elder Eyring recalls. “Suddenly he stopped. ‘Hal,’ he said, ‘we were working this same kind of problem a week ago. You don’t seem to understand it any better now than you did then. Haven’t you been working on it?’”

A little chagrined, Hal admitted he had not. “You don’t understand,” his father went on. “When you walk down the street, when you’re in the shower, when you don’t have to be thinking about anything else, isn’t this what you think about?”

“When I told him no,” Elder Eyring concludes, “my father paused. It was really a very tender and poignant moment, because I knew how much he loved me and how much he wanted me to be a scientist. Then he said, ‘Hal, I think you’d better get out of physics. You ought to find something that you love so much that when you don’t have to think about anything, that’s what you think about.’”

I have found this in Spanish. I think about Spanish constantly. When I am sleeping, I try to translate my thoughts into Spanish. When I pray, I usually end in, "En el nombre de tu hijo Jesucristo, Amen." I work really hard to get good grades in my Spanish class. I am way super excited to go to Chile so that I can be immersed in the language (almost as much as I am to be a missionary). I am so grateful that I have found my passion and that it is something that I can actually do. Love it!