I am feeling a bit hyper, thus I might as well type- not sleep

I rediscovered something about myself today. I have memory anxiety. What does this mean? Whenever I learn something that really blows my mind, not just something in class but some real knowledge and truth that I know is going to affect my life each day, I have to save it. In my sister's favorite book, there is a section about saving books. Rather than thinking that we need to keep every book that has ever affected us, we just need to assimilate the life lessons into our life. We don't need the actual writing, just glean the goodness and let it change you.

Love this journal my dear friend Lindy gave me.
designer's site

Lovely theory, but I am not so good at this. Most of the books that really affect me I have had to return to the library. So instead of just letting go and moving on, I hand-write the sections into my journal that I really like.  You know, just in case I need it.
And tonight I needed it. I was talking to a friend about people in our church who struggle with homosexuality. Over the break I read "Goodbye, I love you" by Carol Lynn Pearson. Luckily, I had written down a quote from her book that perfectly explained the point I was trying to make.
But even though I have all this information at my finger-tips (and I have a fairly photographic memory of where it is in the book and next to which sketch...) sometimes it is hard to just say things for myself, because there is always someone you can quote or refer to.
Why am I thinking of all this? Tonight I went to some stake's institute and the speaker is the president of the "More Good" foundation. I am still not exactly sure what they do, but their purpose is to get more positive Mormon exposure online. They help people create LDS themed websites and they post lots of videos on YouTube and if they see anti-Mormon content that breaks copyright laws or twist information, they contact the organizations being violated so they are aware. Then they can get the misperceptions out of cyber-space. Interesting, right? Well he said a lovely thing (he said many lovely things), "We must change perception before you can make the invitation."

This reminded me of my days on Heritage Tours. When you graduate, our high school seminary offered a 3 week bus trip all over the U.S. to church history sites. Everyone in the group was challenged to give someone a Book of Mormon. I was nervous about it all 3 weeks. When you gave a Book of Mormon away then you got to go to the front of the bus and tell everyone about it. I wanted to be that person. Who doesn't love attention?

This is Rachel (and me)
Clearly our best photo

So anyway, one night my friend Rachel and I were chillin' at a hotel in Pittsford, NY.  We got talking to the attendant at the front desk. Let's be honest, he was really cute and we were asking him a bunch of questions and possibly flirting it up. We talked to him for quite awhile and learned a lot about him. I remember that I always tried to steer the conversation to religion or about Mormons. Anyway, we ended up running up to our room to grab a Book of Mormon and we kept trying to give it to him even though he didn't want it. It was bad news. And I felt really disappointed that we were bad missionaries and we wouldn't reach our goal.
Well, I have thought about that night quite a bit and am grateful for the lessons I learned about the way to not preach the gospel. I haven't been too exposed to people of other faiths because I grew up in Utah, but I like this idea of the "More Good" foundation because it is more about just clearing our name and clearing the air rather than forcing someone to take a book and reach the quota for the day. Another thing the foundation president said: "Mormonism can be complex and difficult, what can you do to help people make sense of it?"

So there may be some subtle changes to the blog. Just FYI.