I'm back!

Hello!!

I've finally started blogging again :)

But I started a new blog. It is right here (beksandi.blogspot.com).

See ya over there :)

Bekah

Until then.

Dearest blog,

This will be my last post on you for quite some time. I'm going to miss you. But this adventure I am about to embark on will be so very worth it. I wanted to write down some of my thoughts after this very eventful day.

My heart is so full. Today has been such a blessing. I gave my farewell talk this morning in my home ward. What amazing people are in that ward. I love them so much. I felt so humbled as I was greeted and congratulated by so many amazing family, friends, and even people that I didn't know well but knew my family. I was humbled by the support I was shown today. I was humbled by the compliments I received and by the expectations people have for me.

As I think about serving a mission I have so very many emotions.

My stress levels are pretty dang high because of my finals tomorrow and the fact that I have so very many more things to get done before I leave. So much shopping left to do. An immunization to get. A drs appointment to go to. Classes to pass. Packing up all the stuff I am leaving behind. Packing up all the stuff I am taking. Okay, I have to stop now.

I am so very excited to be a missionary. I can't wait until I have a name tag. With the sole purpose of bringing others to Christ. What better calling can you have than that? I have been blessed with little glimpses of how amazing it will be and it has made me so very excited. There is so much joy that comes with serving the Lord.

I am so nervous to leave the life I have known to embark on something that is going to be so very difficult. I have not prepared as I should have and I feel bad about that. I'm nervous about being able to accomplish the things I need to do, of being able to have the ability to keep going even when things are hard. I'm nervous about being able to get along with my companions, of feeling like I am living up to what is required of me, and of being humble enough to be led by the Lord.

My heart aches when I think about the people I am leaving behind. Good heavens. It currently makes me sick to my stomach to think about leaving them. I have been blessed with the best family on the planet. Sorry to everyone else. I have been blessed with the most amazing friends who love me and strengthen me and put up with all my ridiculousness on a continual basis. I have been blessed with a new reason for happiness which makes it even harder to leave. I am going to miss so many important things.

I am humbled as I think of the trust that God is putting in me as I embark on this work of saving souls. Who am I to be getting such a wonderful job? But I am so grateful for the knowledge I have that the Lord qualifies those He calls. Otherwise we would never send out such young, inexperienced, rather unprepared young men and women to share the most important message known to man.

Life is so very beautiful. God is so good. I am constantly reminded of the blessing it is to know that God knows everything, that He knows me, and that He is creating the best happily ever after just for me. My life has not gone as planned. But that is because my plan is so imperfect.

I know that this Gospel of Jesus Christ is true. I know that our Savior, Jesus Christ lives. I know that my Father in Heaven loves me more than I can hope to comprehend. I know that this adventure will teach me things that I need to know to be the woman I need to be. So wish me luck as I head off to do the most scary, the most exciting, and the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life.

With love,
Rebek

p.s. My mission blog is at this address: ahakeber.blogspot.com

Lately...

I don't like the depressing title of my last post staying at the top for so long. So here's an update of some of the things I have been doing the past few days.

Skirt making: 

I can't take this on my mission, but I had the fabric, and I really like maxi skirts, so I made it anyways. It was fun. It didn't turn out quite how I wanted but it worked.

Sister bonding time ;) 

 This was during a Sunday evening family planning session. We obviously love those :)

Country dancing with these fabulous people: 

James, Me, Whitney, and Peter

We went two nights in a row and it was awesome :) We learned several dips, and I kind of forgot about the drs orders about not bending over. Being upside down and flipped around isn't that bad for me, right? Whoops! 

Pretending to be an elivish princess aka bow and arrow shooting with Trijsten:

 This was my second time and it was super fun. Even more fun than the first time. I think I want a bow :) I think the guy at the archery place thought me and Trijsten were married because he kept trying to convince Trijsten to buy me a bow haha.

 Having farewells at work: 

 I have worked at this job for 3.5 years. Crazy, huh? My coworkers were planning on giving me a gift at the last monthly luncheon I was going to be at, but because BYU thinks they can just change Tuesday into Monday I had class and wasn't able to go :/ However, they saved me a delicious plate of food, made me that lovely sign, and left me this gift on my desk. It is a pink, beautiful, leather journal. And each of them wrote a page in it. It was so sweet. These people have pretty much watched me grow up during my college years. Watched me go through my first relationship, get accepted into the nursing program, break off an engagement, waffle between life plans, and everything else you do during college. I am going to miss them.

 Studying Spanish! 

I haven't studied nearly as much as I should. And I have tons more to do before I take my finals on Monday (yikes!) but tonight Amelia helped me figure this much out. Pretty much saved my life. If I can memorize these tenses and verb endings I am definitely going to have a much greater chance of passing this class...


I've been doing lots more stuff. Like shopping for and buying luggage, a cute raincoat, and many clothes, having pizza making parties, doing lovely nasal rinses everyday (sorry that one's gross), spending time talking with friends, and experiencing a very broad spectrum of emotions. It has been an adventure. And the next few days will be as well. More Spanish studying tomorrow, lunch with Brittany (I love her!), dinner at Brick Oven and shooting with James (I'm super excited), farewell talk writing, more shopping, cleaning and dejunking and packing up all my stuff, giving a farewell talk, saying painful goodbyes, taking finals (ugh), reading Preach my Gospel and Scriptures, probably some crying, and getting set apart as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I am so excited to serve. I can't wait to wear a name tag. It's going to be hard. And things might happen while I'm gone that I will miss. And I still cannot grasp at all the fact that I'm going to be gone for the next 18 months. But it is going to be fabulous.

Misery

Last night was completely miserable. I think the narcotics are finally wearing off. They shouldn't last that long, but I don't think I have a better explanation for my bad memory yesterday and the absence of pain until last night.

I went to bed with a headache and it just got worse during the night. I woke up multiple times hardly able to breathe and a perfectly dry mouth. It was so awful.

But thank goodness the night is over and it's now more funny than miserable. When I wake up in the middle of the night like that I get so dramatic and emotional. Last night, every time I woke up, I just kept thinking to myself-I need a husband to come make me feel better. Or just to hold my hand. Or get me some water. Or maybe just cuddle with me.

And I was totally serious.

I think once I'm married I'm going to have a big, painful dose of reality when my husband doesn't stay up with me all night when I'm sick :)

13 days. Oh, and happy Valentine's Day!

Guess what?

I go into the MTC in 13 days. It's pretty crazy. This day is kind of ironic, you know. I called off my wedding 13 days before it was supposed to happen. Of course this isn't anything like it except that they both are major, life changing, possible eternally significant decisions. And knowing that it's 13 days away makes it seem so crazily close.

I'm not ready! Still. I sure do hope I learn a lot from these Spanish and BoM classes because otherwise I don't know if the time they take from preparing for my mish is worth it. (Not like I don't waste time on fb or blogging or anything...)

I need to come up with a plan of what I'm going to buy and when.

Top priorities currently as as follows (this is only a shopping list. There are other preparations far more important):

-SHOES! I need some really good, comfortable, durable shoes.

-A rain coat: I don't really have one of these. I only have super heavy duty coats and then a few really light jackets. So I need a raincoat that can be somewhat warm but not really warm.

-Scripture bag. This one is rather important because I believe I will be using it from day one for all my important things that I need with me all the time.

-Footies. Most of the shoes I'm bringing need nylons or footies. And the more I wear nylons the more I don't like them. So I want some good quality (not the kind that fall apart and don't even stay on your feet) ones.

-Hygiene stuff. I think I should take enough of this for at least a transfer so I don't have to be worrying about getting to the store right when I get there.

-The missionary library.

-Music. I think I will die without music. I'm not allowed to bring an Mp3 player so I need to get some CDs, a CD player, and some speakers.

-I need to get my second Hep A shot. I am such a procrastinator on this one.

-And a few more outfits. I'm going to get bored of my clothes really fast seeing as I wear them almost every day already for work. Not that you need the best, most chic clothes for a mission, but I would still like to be cute. I also need to take in my shabby apple dress (Thanks to Kerri I was able to buy a super cute one) and finish my skirts.

-I need a first aid kit and things like batteries for my camera, pictures of my fam, pedigree chart, etc. But those aren't as important because they are not necessities.

-Oh, and i still need to look at luggage one more time. Glorious.

And I think that's all. Then there is the whole other part of preparation. My Dad thinks I should give up media already to start breaking it in, but I'm of a different opinion. I need to get it all in before I leave :) And I still need to finish PMG. It is so good but it takes me so long to read! And you can never read your scriptures too much.

So wish me luck as I try to catch up on Spanish, do all this shopping (oh yeah, did I mention that I really don't like shopping?), and prepare as best as I can in the next 13 days. It's gonna fly by.

That one time I had surgery.

So yesterday I had surgery. It was definitely an adventure. It was so weird to be on the other side of the picture this time :) I have seen many many surgeries and watched people get intubated and put to sleep, and then watched the surgeon work on them. He makes a big bloody mess, and then they clean up the patient and send them into the PACU. I had seen all this happen multiple times. 

So when they wheeled me into the OR I was kinda weirded out. I knew what was going to happen and I was scared of the intubation part. That is totally the worst. I was also dreading coming out of anesthesia. But thanks to all the prayers offered in my behalf, the blessing Dad gave me, and the skill of the medical team it wasn't bad at all. 

I was super loopy when I woke up. I think I asked my nurse the same thinks like 8 times. But I'm not sure because I can't really remember much of that. I was super happy when I woke up. It was like euphoric. I was thinking to myself "of course I can go back to school and work tomorrow. What was the doctor thinking?" 

I left the PACU and they wheeled me back to my little room where Mom was waiting. I was just talking and feeling fine until 20 minutes after I left the recovery room. And then it all the sudden hit. I was nauseated, I had a headache, I could tell my BP was super low and I just felt miserable. I was completely out of it. My blood pressure dropped to the low 80's over the low 50's which isn't that great/ I was pasty white (even more white than usual if you can imagine that... ;) and my nurse thought I was going to faint. 

But they gave me 2 L of fluid to help get my pressures up. I think the low blood pressure was caused both by blood loss and because I have never had narcotics before so my body wasn't quite used to those...

But after a few hours I started to feel better again. 

This is pretty close to when I almost fainted:

And this is me with my "mustache" bandage. 

The nurse told me that now I know what it feels like to be a man... 

Thankfully I'm doing a ton better today. I still think I want to go to work if I can convince Dad to let me :) 

And through this whole experience I have been so grateful for the amazing friends that I have. When Brittany found out I was having surgery she immediately called me and asked what was up. Rachel, James, Anna, Caleb, Whitney, and Spencer were all praying for me. And James and Rachel got up super early to send me a good luck text. It was so sweet. And then Brittany came over last night and brought me ice cream and just talked. And then Caleb, James, Whitney, and Peter came over to watch Star Wars with me. And they brought me my favorite candy-Reese's peanut butter cups. Best candy ever invented :) I felt so blessed. Thanks guys! 

And of course my parents were completely wonderful. These are the flowers Dad bought for me before I came home:

So now I just need heal quickly so I can pass my Spanish class and train my student replacement at my job.  1 week and 6 days guys! 

Interesting Development.

So remember that one time when I went to the jaw specialist back in August of last year? It was to make sure that I could get my wisdom teeth out fine. I ended up finding out several things:

1-I didn't need my wisdom teeth out before I left on my mission

2- I had something called ligamentous laxity. Which is basically really weak ligaments. My jaw bones were fine. But I still needed to go see a jaw physical therapist.

3-my right maxillary sinus was completely clogged.

I was surprised at the last point but I didn't do anything about it. Dr. Guinn recommended that I see an ENT, but when I went to get my pre mission physical I told the NP that I saw but she didn't seem to care much about it. She said that unless it was symptomatic I didn't need to do anything about it. So I didn't.

However, in January I got a super terrible sinus infection. I was in so very much pain. My upper right molars hurt like heck, I could hardly walk because every time I took a step it felt like someone was pounding on my head, and leaning over was death. I was frustrated. I had just started block classes and couldn't afford to get sick. I prayed and prayed that it would go away. I couldn't do school in that much pain. Eventually the pain went away but I still felt that I needed to get it checked.

But I procrastinated until yesterday. I set up an apt with an ENT and went in to see him. After an eternal wait in the waiting room (where a kind, somewhat odd old man gave me a valentine) I met with the Doctor and showed him my previous x-ray. He was concerned. He told me that they would take another x-ray right then and hopefully it had improved and I would be fine to leave on my mission. However, the x-ray did not show any improvement. It was still just as bad (if not worse) than it was in August. He came in and sat down and said "this is quite a problem. Although you are not currently experiencing any symptoms, over time-probably a couple years-your sinus could cave in on itself. This would change your facial structure and your eye could sink back into your socket. I would recommend getting surgery to open the drainage passage and clear out the fluid or tissue that is clogging it up."

Um, WHAT?! That was just a little to take in all at once. I thought I asked lots of good questions and tried to hurry and think about it and I decided that I might as well go through with it now so I can leave on my mission in time. So I said yes.

And now I'm scheduled for surgery tomorrow. I'll find out the time today. Thankfully it is a Same Day Surgery so I should be able to be in and out in 3-4 hours and then hopefully fine by next week. I just pray that there aren't any complications!

Exciting, huh?