New Green Space on Campus

The college has been working hard the last few months to revamp the green space on campus. We call it the forest. If you go back to my first post when we arrived at the university, you will see pictures of the forest. Gary and I took a walk the other day through the forest. The renovations are not all complete, but it is amazingly beautiful and peaceful. I know we will spend a lot of time just sitting and relaxing here when it is completely done. It will have waterfalls and a small lake, too. Here are the current pictures. Just looking at them gives me peace. Hopefully you will feel the same way.

Some of the pictures are not that good because my phone does not take as good of pictures as Gary's camera. My hands also shake, but you get the idea anyway.

It is right in the middle of campus and we love it!

Youth Conference

I went to Youth Conference during the first weekend in April. Our little branch youth, all two of them, plus myself and my young women counselor went to Beijing. It was a great experience. We stayed in a hotel and did most of the things at the hotel. I was grateful to be able to be a part of it.

The theme was

Serve to Learn

The youth had an amazing time. It was their first time and they were the only Koreans there, the rest were Americans. There are many Americans in Beijing. There is not much more to say, but here are some pictures.

We started with some get to know you games. The young man in the middle is Jame Hwang from my branch. We do not have any foreign youth in our branch, just Koreans.

They had the groups do games with tarps. They had to turn the tarp over without anyone stepping of the tarp, move the tarp from one end of the room to the other with stepping off and shaping your tarp like a heart.

This was my groups heart. I think they did a really good job.

Then we to a school where children who's parents are in prison live. We painted their cultural hall a very beautiful blue. I love painting and so did the youth.

It was a wonderful, fun and spiritual few days.

Remembering How Blessed I Am

I can't believe it has been over a month since Gary or I posted to our blog. Sometimes we get so busy and forget to do many things like blogging and emailing family and friends.

I have been feeling a little strange lately and decided that I needed to take a walk to the beach. I love the beach, but have been so busy that I have not taken the time to go there in the last month or so. We have been doing things on weekends. We went to help some mentally handicapped kids last Saturday, to a friends home a couple of weeks before that. Saturdays seem to be filled and so do weekdays.

The young lady I tutor decided she needed to go to Beijing to study for the TOEFL test, so I would not be tutoring her anymore. This was a blessing. We could not help her anymore and I had been feeling stressed about it. I was doing it for two hours every afternoon and it was taking a toll on me. I really love Amy and had enjoyed helping her, but it got to be too much. I was not able to go anywhere during the week after classes were over because I had tutoring M-F from 1;30 - 3:30. Then is was almost time to get ready for dinner. I had been praying that somehow things would be able to change. The Lord knew I needed the help and touched Amy's heart to make the decision to go to Beijing. 

So today I finally went out to the beach. I took a short walk along the beach and then sat on some rocks and just listened to the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks.

As I was watching and listening to LDS music, I just had an overwhelming feeling of love. I felt so much peace and love! It was what I needed at that moment. It is amazing how the Lord knows exactly what we need to help us get through.

Here are some other pictures of my amazing walk at the beach.

 It's hard to tell but in the middle of this picture under the ledge was a pretty big crab.