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.

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?

Ooops. Sorry.

This weekend was awesome. One of the most adventurous and exciting I've had in a while. 

Thursday night, as previously mentioned, I went to Phantom of the Opera with one of my favorite people. It was great. Although it wasn't my favorite plot, I had a blast. And the fog was pretty sweet that night as well. 

Friday night I was inducted into the religion of Star Wars. I know, I know, I've been told many times that if I haven't seen Star Wars I'm not a true American. But I finally saw it! The first one that is. Er. Fourth one. Whichever one was made first. And it was great. The movie was made a loooooong time ago ;)

Saturday I went snowboarding! For my first time ever. It was exciting. Quite. Basically it was me trying to ignore every survival instinct in my whole body and have faith that I wasn't going to die when I put my board straight down the mountain. SCARY! I'm such a wimp, but I made myself do it :) Thanks for convincing/teaching/findingasnowboardfor me James! It was great. However, the combination of it being extremely physically exhausting, me having forgotten to really eat anything that day, and the stress of sliding down the mountain with both feet strapped to a board resulted in extreme muscle soreness and shaking. My hands are still shaking today. That makes me just slightly concerned. But it was fun and I'm glad I went.

Today, Sunday, I was able to go to a farewell talk of a good friend. She got her call just a few weeks before I got mine and she goes into the MTC just 3 weeks before I do. She gave a marvelous talk on the importance of families and taking the time and effort to show your love. I really really liked it. However, I almost started hyperventilating as I realized that that would be me in 4 weeks from today. My farewell is February 24th at 9:00 for any of you who want to come. I am not at all prepared for my mission. I am behind inn everything. And I'm slightly stressed. But it's okay. Everything will work out. I just need to get going.

Due to this exciting weekend full of adventures, my Spanish studying really suffered. I didn't do anything. And thus the title of this post. Ooops, sorry school...

The Hobbit

On Monday afternoon I went to see the Hobbit. I saw the other 3 Lord of the Rings last summer. I read the books about 5 years ago. I think I read the Hobbit before that, so the story was somewhat blurry in my memory. 

Overall I liked the movie. It was violent. And made some of it comical, which I don't like. But I just closed my eyes during the scary parts (most of the battle scenes) and that took care of that. I had prepared myself for it to be super long, so I was actually surprised when it was over. I would definitely see the next ones. But mostly I just want to go read the book again! I saw it in 3D and it did give me a headache. Lame. 

I went straight from work, so I couldn't dress up (haha, since I would have otherwise. Not), but I tried to do my hair like Galdriel's :)

And I thought it was hilarious that Mr. Thornton is Thorin Oakenshield. But he's pretty darn attractive in both movies :)

In North and South

In The Hobbit

This week. Please?

So this morning my Bishop told me that my mission paper status has been updated to say "assigned." WAHOOO! FINALLY :) Okay, I've only been waiting for two weeks, but still! So I'm really hoping that that means it is going to come this next Wednesday. It should, but there are always exceptions and some reason I often am the exception. Oh well. I'm trying not to get too excited in case it doesn't actually come, but it's not really working. I'm excited.

If it does come, I'll open it some time around 7:30 (since I have class until 7). And I am still trying to figure out if I want to have people over when I open it, or just do it with family. I think it would end up just family anyways because not many people would drive over to Orem from BYU on a Wednesday evening. Maybe I'll just have some of my best friends and cousins over. I think I'll do that. Maybe all the single BYU cousins and then Britt and Laura. We'll see. I'm still thinking about it. I want it to be a memorable occasion, but I sometimes don't feel super comfortable when there are large crowds of people. And just in case I get called somewhere where I'm not super excited about, I don't want to have that awkward moment when no one knows what to say :) We will see....

Other happenings this week include taking Dad to the ED after he smashed his finger pretty bad. My Dad is amazingly tough. I would have been crying my head off if this happened to me, but he didn't shed one single tear. Don't look too closely, it might make you sick...

I'll spare you the large version of these... Doesn't that look so painful?! He had to get 12 stitches to sew it back up again. Thankfully the bone wasn't impacted.

On Friday night I was able to go to the beginning part of a little Bethlehem play and then Sarah drove me to Brittany's house where we studied psych somewhat, but mostly just watched Emma. Oh, Mr. Knightly, how I love you! :)

"Emma.... "

"Marry me. Marry me my wonderful, darling friend."

I also got to hang out with Rachel for a little that night, and then Saturday night was able to go up to her concert at Temple Square. It was awesome because the Willey's were in it as well :) Thanks Tanner, Josh, Caleb, and Sarah for coming with me!

Something dreadfully lacking from this Thanksgiving break was homework. It was beautiful to not do any, but it is going to make this next week death. Holy smokers. It'll get done, I just may not get much sleep...

Annnnndd....

Car troubles.

This week I learned something new:

Wednesday morning I was driving up with Haley and Jane to get our patient information for clinical. Everything was going smoothly. The traffic had been kind of bad, but it had thinned out. We were almost there and by all appearances I would definitely be able to make it back to Provo for my 11 o'clock class.

Suddenly, just as we were about to get off of I-215, there was a loud bang/pop/explosion noise. My immediate thought was that we had just run over something big and it had damaged the car. But I was being careful and I hadn't seen anything! Smoke billowed up in front of the car and Haley exclaimed "I think we blew a tire." I put on my blinker and pulled over to the side of the free way. It all happened so very fast. We jumped out of the car only to find that all the tires were fine and the smoke was pouring out from under the hood. I was pretty scared. Having heard so many awful, real stories about people being hit on the freeway at clinical, all of us were really nervous to be standing there. I realized my phone was in the car and opened the door to get it. It finally registered that I should probably turn the car off. I did and then got out as quickly as possible. I'm not gonna lie, we were all a little nervous that something was going to explode...

I immediately called my Dad and Jane called her brother who is a mechanic and lives really close. I finally got brave enough to look under the hood and tried to describe to Dad what I saw. It was very apparent that I couldn't be more unfamiliar with a car engine. All three of us were clueless. We could see some wet, dirty fluid everywhere and that's about all we could figure out.

I'm sure we were a rather interesting site-three girls in professional dress, two on the phone, looking under the hood. We were actually all surprised that no one stopped to help what were obviously DIDs (damsels in distress-for those of you who haven't seen Hercules ;).

It was cold, and smoke eventually stopped coming from the car, so we got back in and waited for my Mom to come pick us up. Jane's brother got there first and after examining the car he said that we had thrown a rod. And he showed me the hole in the engine. Which basically means, go buy a new engine.

We eventually got things figured out, got our stuff at the hospital, and got back to Prove. Just one car short.

I am so grateful nothing more serious happened and that we were all safe. It could have been so much worse. It was timed exactly right when there was room on the side of the freeway to pull over (there wasn't any until right then), we had so many people helping us, and we were all safe.

We're now out one car on the lookout for another. I learned that occasionally I don't freak out in a scary situation. And I learned what it means to 'throw a rod.'

That's all :)

WE DID IT!

Saturday morning at 12:58 (after only going to bed at midnight) I awoke to my phone ringing. It was Anna. She had finally just gotten my text about borrowing her camelbak for the hike and was calling to tell me where it was. I guess she figured I'd still be awake. After retrieving the camelbak , I looked at the clock and realized I was supposed to be up in 15 minutes to get ready to leave at 1:30 according to our plan. Wanting as much sleep as I could get, I went back asleep anyway, only to be rudely awakened 15 minutes later. I opened my eyes, looked out my window and realized Taylor wasn't there. I still had a couple minutes to sleep. Pushing snooze, I closed my eyes for 5 more minutes. My alarm rang at 1:20. Looking out the window I noticed he still wasn't there. So I closed my eyes again. Repeat this situation until 2:00. At 2, I began to worry that he either accidentally didn't hear his alarm, or he was so tired on his way over here that he got in a wreck. So to calm the panic that situation caused me, I called him. It woke him up (he didn't feel his alarm) and he said he could be there in 20 minutes. I woke up Rachel and Sarah and we began to get ready for our hike. Taylor arrived, and much later than anticipated we left my house at 3:00 AM.

Here's our group-all ready to hike Timp! 

We made it to the parking lot and started up the trail by 4:00.

We hiked up in the dark for about 2 1/2 hrs. It was beautiful chilly weather, clear air, and silvery night sounds. Here is where we took the first pictures on the hike (when it was finally light enough to see). 

 Add Taylor...

 Just a couple feet further down the road, we discovered these trail companions:

 There was a huge heard of them, but here is just a sample.

  
 We tried to get some mountain goats in the background.

We came around this bend just as the sun was rising. It was a brilliant orange that gave the misty clouds a wonderful hue. Quickly we took a picture. Unfortunately, it was completely invisible in this picture!

 It was really there, see?

Taylor and I tried to get a picture, but we forgot that it was on zoom... 

Redo: 

After 5 hours hiking up we made it to the top. It was a hard hike, but it was breathtaking when we got there! 

 Add Taylor...

 Classic Taylor pose: 

 The lovely Rachel:

WE DID IT! While supporting Ron Paul ;)

And beautiful Sarah.

And yes, we got another one together at the top. Just for the record.

 This was our "we are SO legit!' pose.

After staying at the top to eat breakfast and look at the view for an hour we decided to start down. Unfortunately, about 2 hours previous, when we were already past all vegetation on the way up, I had started needing to use the bathroom. Can I just comment how awful it is to hike down hill (after coming up it for 2 hours needing to go) for 2 hours, on a jolty, scary trail, needing to use the bathroom SO bad? Basically the worst thing ever. As soon as we got back into vegetation, I fixed that problem. haha, I ended up not being the only one who had to go. Everyone but Sarah...

 On the way down we took a detour to a waterfall. It was so beautiful!

 And yes. One together.

Overall, I loved the hike. This to do next time: bring sunscreen! My face is fried! Don't drink too much water after you reach the timberline. Because then there is no where to go.

I loved it. Another goal checked off. Yay for hiking :)

Timp

Tonight I'm hiking this mountain. Isn't she beautiful? 

Kind of ironic that last August I wanted to hike it so badly with Matt and this august I'm hiking it with most of the same people I was going to be with except Matt. And we're hiking it on August 18th. 

I'm slightly worried about my ability to hike it. I've heard that it's really hard. But I am going to teach the Lamanites make it to the top. It will be awesome.