Weeks Notice

After a few weeks of absence, I'm glad I am back on the blogging world. I've worked some long hours and hit the wall while at it. For those who don't know my day-to-day routine, I haven't stopped working during and between the school year in order to support myself in all my expenses. Naturally, this also means that there would be the eventual fatigue-induced scenarios some time during the year. When that happens, I simply sit back and stop doing things that are not related to work, church, etc. Usually, I recuperate just fine like today.

237 years old!

Since July is a month of celebrations, I took some time to think about what it means to be American and a pioneer in the latter days. In case you are not familiar with Pioneer's Day, it's a state holiday that happens in Utah.

Let's face it, America is not perfect, but it has come a long way to provide the opportunities for social, political, and even economic mobility. Being an American should have been an ideal. It is unfortunate that many harbor the feeling that immigrants are not welcome when their ancestors were immigrants, malicious ones when you look at the treatment of Native Americans, as well.

I'm not going to deny the fact that discrimination still exists. I certainly wouldn't put it down as the first reason why someone has something against me. Your life is a lot more miserable when you constantly believe that every person has some sort of prejudice against you. In fact, you would be the one with bias and intolerance towards others. I would like people to remember that discrimination happens in all countries. No single ethnicity is solely responsible for the hate.

Also, USA can only be as strong as the people who live in it. If you have bad work ethics and low aims in life, when majority of the people think like you, it's over for this mighty nation.

Proud to be an American! Although it still baffles me why we vote in idiots into the office all the time. I believe that's a social-political discussion for another time.

As for being a pioneer, it is not only fitting figuratively for the themes of the month, but also literally in the 21st Century. Much of the world believes that most, if not all, traditional values are now obsolete. There are also many members who find fitting into the world today is a great challenge. They are correct. It is when there are so many pressures to steer us away from values we hold dear.

The point being, our generation is trying to adapt and discover ways to be in the world, but not of it. I can honestly say that I haven't gotten that figured out because I live in the bubble known as Provo. While I dwell on the issue, I will also enjoy the fact that I don't have to deal with the complexity of the real world yet.

While we are on the subject of values and whatnot, I would also like to take detour to talk about the recent changes to missionaries having access to the Internet to spread the word. I was initially skeptical about the idea because we know there will be goofballs that screw up. After all, we are only human and we make mistakes. If anything, I thought it would have been a distraction.

After observing the trend for about two months, I realize it can do much good. I'm not talking solely about the impact on investigators. I've personally found some of the inspirational LDS messages from one of my best friends (yes, she's a missionary) very timely and useful. Then, I realized little things like this can actually allow missionaries to not only preach the gospel, but also strengthen the saints at the same time.

It could also be laziness on my part. The more likely story, however, is how we've been conditioned to filter out "spam" when our friends share something over social networks. I think having the status as a missionary may have a different tone. I'm not sure, I'll let you know when I collect more data.

I was going to talk about Mormons in the media, but this post is getting too long. I'll have to fill you in next time!