Day 2

Melissa O'Donnal is my hero. I am on the road to serving a mission because of her. During my parents divorce, Olivia's passing and my dad remarrying Melissa was always there! It is hard for a mother to parent her daughter when she is a couple states away. Melissa stepped in and became that mother figure that I so desperately needed. When I wasn't making good decisions she didn't judge me and instead accepted me for me no matter how I was choosing my life. When I needed a place to run to she basically packed my bags for me and took me in as her own. She is the woman I want to be when grow up. She is the most amazing mother, wife and woman. Melissa is my best friend! My road to serving a mission is a result of her constant faith, friendship and example to me.

Day 1

In 30 days my mission papers are going in and I could not be more excited. It's amazing how fast the time has gone and I as a countdown to the day I mail in my paperwork I am going to post everyday until September 29th on how the church or others have lead me onto this path to my mission. Let's get started!

The number one person who inspired me to serve a mission (besides my Savior and God) is my dad! Through out my life he has been an exceptional example of faith and love. No matter what kind of decisions I have made or how badly I have treated him, he has always been there for me. He is the greatest man I know and has this radiating light about him. When I am sad he knows how to make me laugh, when I'm having a hard day he comforts me and I know I can count on him for anything! The other day I was looking at his mission album and it made me that much more excited to follow in his footsteps and be like him! My dad has shown me that no matter the mistakes we make or how hard times can get, if we do our best and have faith, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ will make up the difference. He is my best friend and my hero. I could not ask for a more awesome father! The Lord has truly blessed me!

"Hand of Hope"

I read this and I seriously cried. How many women are told that their baby is just a fetus? How many babies have been killed because abortion is used as birth control due to the lack of responsibility in the world today? How many more? If this is not proof that a baby is a living, breathing human being then I don't know what is! How come a microscopic life form on Mars is considered alive and this baby isn't?! This has nothing to do with religion or morals. This picture and story is 100% science.

"A picture began circulating in November. It should be "The Picture of the Year," or perhaps, "Picture of the Decade." It won't be. In fact, unless you obtained a copy of the U.S. paper which published it, you probably would never have seen it.

The picture is that of a 21-week-old unborn baby named Samuel Alexander Armas, who is being operated on by surgeon named Joseph Bruner. The baby was diagnosed with spina bifida and would not survive if removed from his mother's womb. Little Samuel's mother, Julie Armas, is an obstetrics nurse in Atlanta. She knew of Dr. Bruner's remarkable surgical procedure. Practicing at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, he performs these special operations while the baby is still in the womb.

During the procedure, the doctor removes the uterus via C-section and makes a small incision to operate on the baby. As Dr. Bruner completed the surgery on Samuel, the little guy reached his tiny, but fully developed hand through the incision and firmly grasped the surgeon's finger. Dr. Bruner was reported as saying that when his finger was grasped, it was the most emotional moment of his life, and that for an instant during the procedure he was just frozen, totally immobile.

The photograph captures this amazing event with perfect clarity. The editors titled the picture, "Hand of Hope." The text explaining the picture begins, "The tiny hand of 21-week-old fetus Samuel Alexander Armas emerges from the mother's uterus to grasp the finger of Dr. Joseph Bruner as if thanking the doctor for the gift of life."

Little Samuel's mother said they "wept for days" when they saw the picture. She said, "The photo reminds us pregnancy isn't about disability or an illness, it's about a little person" Samuel was born in perfect health, the operation 100 percent successful."

My Crazy Dream.

So I am the person who has a dream every time I fall asleep. Last night I had one of my more vivid dreams and it seriously felt like it was happening in real life. Maybe I will start blogging my dreams... Any ways here is the story.

The dream starts off where we, my family, are in our house and we hear on the News that people are falling asleep and not waking back up.They don't know the reason for this, all they know is that you need to do everything you can not to fall asleep because you will not wake back up. Then we hear a loud bang outside and the United States Air Force is fighting in the air around us but you can't see what they are shooting at. So we get in our car and start to run. As we are driving around we see people running, exercising and doing everything they can to stay awake. I ask my dad if we can stop by Melissa's to see if they are okay and say goodbye. After arguing about it he says yes but not for very long. We get to Melissa's house, I open the door and see Randy holding Melissa as she is crying. I ask her if the kids are okay and she says that she put them down for a nap before she heard about the "sleeping disease" that's going around. I say I have to go because me and my family are running and asked if they wanted to come with but they refused and said they wanted to spend their last moments in their home with each other.

I get outside and my family is all out of the car and Kendra is saying we should go one way and my dad is saying we should go the opposite direction. Kendra grabs Wyatt and starts walking her way. Dad takes Lilly, me and Jackson and heads the opposite way. Dad heard about this ship that is taking off sailing to a refugee camp where the air was clean and you could sleep. So we start to run toward the ship and get there after days of walking. When we get there and get on the ship we start to hear that it was the aliens that put a pathogen in the air that kills us in our sleep. They knew that humans couldn't survive with out sleep. Just then an alien ship flies over head and bombs the front of the ship. Dad jumps off and tells me to throw Lilly to him. I refuse and have a very difficult time climbing down with Lilly in my hands. I swim trying to hold her above my head so that she doesn't get the salt water in her mouth or eyes. I felt so hopeless! We yell for Jackson to jump and swim to the refugee camp with us but he is too lazy! Every time we yelled at him he would say he was too lazy and that he didn't want to go swimming. The aliens bomb the ship one last time and Jackson is gone. Dad and I had to swim with Lilly all the way to the refugee camp.

When we get there they take our blood so that the device protecting us will let us in so we could sleep. The aliens have the ability to be invisible and so they invented this device that spins super fast around the city and shows the invisible aliens. The only weak spot is the door that looks like the ones at the grocery stores. Some of our alien alliances see an invisible alien and go to kill it. Basically it chopped all their heads off in 10 seconds tops. The leader of the alien invasion had killed a man who wondered beyond the protective device and used his blood to get through the doors. I had Lilly in my hands and started to run again when I woke up. CRAZY RIGHT?!

I'M RANTING!!!

I am warning you in advance that this is a rant and I am very angry hahaha! I am going to tell it like it is so if you don't want to hear the truth then don't read this page. Today I am ranting about people that have made me very angry lately and other things... Enjoy.

1. Judgmental people. HOLY COW. I get it, you're perfect right and you do no wrong? WRONG! There is not one person on this planet that is perfect. Stop expecting perfection from others when you can't offer the same results! Do not judge someone especially when you do not know the whole story.

2. Gossiping people. Oh my goodness. Do not be nice and kind to my face and then talk about me behind my back! Not cool! Why can't people just be real with you and tell you how they feel?! Or what I really hate is when grow women talk about girls in high school like they know everything just because they were already a teenager! No one ever has the same life or experiences and you can never completely understand someone's circumstances because you are not them and did not feel exactly what they felt when they were going through what they did. You never know... Maybe the teenage girl that you are talking trash about just went through her parents divorce and her best friend died and she has no faith left to hold on to? Then to add onto that her dad is getting remarried and having baby with a woman she doesn't even know. All of this happening within 2 years. That could definitely be possibility! Flippin' knock it off!

3. Religious people. When are the members of the church going to realize that they are the main reason why so many become inactive or leave the church!? It's because everywhere they turn they get "Well good luck with that because she is a handful and always gets what she wants" or "Oh my gosh, can you believe that so and so did this" or "I heard that this person did this... I'm not surprised". AGGHHH! Those kind of people drive me insane. Or the "Look at you, you sin. You're going to hell." Yes people sin and sometimes they don't repent of it. So what! That is between them and the Lord. Leave them alone!

4. People who don't mind their own business. 'Nuff said.

5. When people exit through enter door and enter through the exit door! Whether it is at Wal-Mart or Target or the mall. I do not want to run into you when I am trying to get stuff done and am in a hurry. Use the correct door!

6. Racism. This is such a controversial subject and I am going to tell it how it is. IF YOU ARE BLACK AND CALL ME A WHITE CRACKER OR WHITE TRASH THAT IS RACIST! Saying that I don't need scholarships for college because I am white, rich and I can borrow money from daddy is RACIST! Calling each other "nigga" when you are black yourself does not make it ok to call others that! Last time I checked this is the 21st century and just because you are of color and I am not does not mean that you have any right to say something that I can't. Just because you are of color does not mean that you get away with racism. You are just as racist as any other person.

7. When people pat me on the back after I tell them that I hate it. If you know me you know that I hate being touched on the back. If I say, "Hey dude I really don't like my back touched so please next time you can just give me a high five." then freakin listen!

8. When people say that Mormons aren't Christian. WHAT THE HECK. It says it in the name of our church. We are members of the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints and we love our Savior dang it! People spend so much time tearing other religions down when they could be spending that time in other productive ways. Stop being a dweeb and let us worship God how we wish. Mormons have never done anything to deserve the kind of disrespect we receive.

Okay I'm done have a nice day. I am now going to do something productive with my time.

More Pictures!

Lillian Brook Ritter

Update! Lilly is almost 5 months old and has the most sassy personality on the planet! She now growls when she is hungry and laughs at everything I do! She truly is a blessing :)

The Power of Fasting!

The definition of fasting is to abstain from all or some kinds of food or drink, esp. as a religious observance. You give up 2 meals or 24 hours with out food or drink in order to ask for certain blessings. Sister Nichols gave a talk in my ward today about the power of fasting and I had recently had an amazing experience that strengthened my testimony.

All summer long I had been applying for jobs and no one was calling back or hiring me. I fasted every first Sunday of the month. So I moved back home to go to school and tried getting a job in another city. Within 2 weeks I had a job and it was all because of fasting. What did I do different the second time?

1. I had sincerity. When I was fasting before, I would get up and forget to open my fast and when I did I said the prayer in my head. This time I got up, knelt down and said my prayer out loud so I could focus and mean it. I didn't ask Heavenly Father to give me a job, instead I asked Him to help me find a place where it could be most beneficial to the store and to me and my family.

2. Action. After I fasted that Sunday I got up every morning and applied to every place in the city that I possibly could. Instead of saying a prayer and waiting for Heavenly Father to answer it for me, I worked for an answer and acted upon the promptings I got.

3. I prayed everyday. When I knelt down at night I asked if Heavenly Father could help the managers of the places I applied at, see the good in me and call me for an interview. Within a week I got a job!

4. Last, I thanked Heavenly Father for opportunity to work, save for my mission and go to school. I also thanked Him for my dad's job and our success in such harsh economic times. ALWAYS THANK GOD FOR HIS BLESSINGS! He loves hearing that you recognize them and appreciate them!

My testimony has been strengthened so much these past couple of months. I know that if we fast, pray and act upon the promptings we will get our answers when we need them and how we need them! I love my Savior, my Heavenly Father and their gospel. I leave these words with you in Jesus' name, amen.

Live Like His Son

One of my favorite church songs is "He Sent His Son". It always helps me to feel the spirit and brings back to the foundation which the gospel is built upon, Jesus Christ. The last of the song is my favorite part and it says "Have faith. Have hope. Live like His son. Help others on their way." These 4 statements have changed my life!

1. Have faith. In order to live the gospel we must first have faith. This is the hardest principal to achieve and it takes time. No testimony was gained over night with no work. Like we have been told before by prophets of old and new faith is like a little seed. We must nurture it, work hard to maintain it and most importantly never give up on it!

2. Have hope. Life is going to be miserable if we only look at the negative. Yes, the world is so very wicked and it's hard to see the light in such a dark place. THERE IS GOOD IN THE WORLD! Take those little flickers of goodness and expound on them! There is always good when there is the Savior in your life!

3. Live like His Son. Once you have attained faith and hope you must put them into practice by following Christ's commandments. Heavenly Father has so many blessings for you that the heavens cannot contain them! We just have to show Him that we deserve it. Be a follower of Christ.

4. Help other on their way. Now that you have the above help others come unto Christ. It is our responsibility as disciples of Christ to share how much joy the gospel brings into our lives. There are so many ways that you can do missionary work. The best way is to set an example and let your actions teach others the gospel! Feed His sheep!

I know that if we live by this we will be blessed in so many ways! My testimony grows each and everyday and I am so thank for a Heavenly Father that loves me and wants me home. I love my Savior Jesus Christ and that He made it possible for me to be with my family forever with Him and our Heavenly Father. This truly is the true and everlasting gospel! I leave these words with you in Jesus' name, amen.

Super Sibling!

There is nothing more I love in this life than being an older sister! If there is one thing I know I am good at in this life, that is being a sibling! Here are some great tips to strengthen your relationship with your siblings both older and younger. They have worked all my life with my brothers and sisters.

1. FAMILY OVER EVERYTHANG! It does not matter how close you are with your friends or if it is a boy/girl friend, family always comes first. Family is the one thing you are guaranteed in this life and the one to come. Doesn't matter what family you come from, your loyalty should always be to your family. If my boyfriend asked to choose between my family or him. I would choose my family.

2. Once a sibling always a sibling. With my parents remarrying and having babies with their new spouses I have a lot have half and step siblings. WHO CARES! Just because they are from a different parents doesn't mean they aren't your "real" brothers and sisters. Whether by blood or marriage you guys are siblings. So forget the titles and just go with brother and sister! You guys are related by heart now! Nothing else before matters after you become siblings!

3. Always listen and never repeat. Let your siblings know that they can tell you anything with out you tattling on them (except if their life is in danger). Somethings are meant to be kept just between siblings like who their crush is, if they are having trouble with friends or even some advice with some decisions.

4. Give lots of hugs and kisses. This one is pretty self explanatory.

5. Do stuff with them that they enjoy, even if you are not good at it. My little brothers LOVE video games and I am absolutely terrible at them and think they are a waste of time. But, to spend time with them I will always show interest in Wyatt's Pokemon or play Call of Duty even though Jackson has to revive me every 5 seconds. We always end up laughing at how terrible I am and stupid things I do when I play. Any time with your siblings is always the best times.

6. Say I Love You! I always make it point to tell my siblings I love them and that they are my best friends, because they really are! I tell that to Lilly everytime I change her diapers hahaha! Let them know how much they really mean to you!