Tuesday, March 31, 2009

I hate moving...

We are so excited to be living at Stott and Tobi's house; we love having so much space, and the girls love playing and running all over the place. I put their Dora play tent down stairs in one of the rooms, with their Dora Kitchen and the Dora bed inside, and it is so cozy... I would've killed for something like that when I was little! Giada has a nursery, and it looks so cute, and the girls room looks very nice and age appropiate as well. I love being able to change Giada's diaper in the middle of the night without worrying about waking the girls up, and Giada finaly made it out of our bedroom, wich is very nice too. I love the kitchen! I missed it so much! I have been having a lot of fun cooking, I love having the cd player in my room, etc... but the one thing staining all the happiness.... the actual "move" I HATE MOVING!!!!! I feel like I'm never going to finish!!! all the boxes and bags all over the place, and the more I put things away, the more it seams like new boxes and bags just came out of thin air.... I hope the next time we move is to our own house and that we can stay there for at least 20 years.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Once upon a time....

I was in Colombia, and when the hardest, most horrible part of my life was over my mom helped me to come to the US. Since my brothers had been living in Florida for a few years, I went there too. I found a job, and a nice couple rented me a room in their home. I was relatively happy, I went out a lot, dated some guys, and had a lot of fun, but this feeling that I shouldn't be there started growing inside of me. I didn't pay a lot of attention to it, but it started getting stronger and stronger, every time that I went out with a guy, I felt that I was going to be alone forever if I stayed there. Not the nicest feeling to have when you are trying to find your other half...
I started thinking about moving to Idaho, since I knew people there, but every time I prayed about it, I felt that I had to come to Utah. "Utah???" I thought, "there is NO way I'm going to Utah!" I didn't have family here, or friends or anything. So, inside of me I kept making plans to go to Idaho, but I kept feeling that it was not Idaho, but Utah where I was supposed to be.
I decided to ask my oldest brother to pray and fast about it, and I would do the same thing. After we finished I went to visit him, and he told me "you have to go to Utah" I asked him "can you come with me?" and he said "I prayed about that too, I feel that I will go some day, but not now. You have to go alone." Needless to say that I was not only devastated but TERRIFIED! Arround those days a good friend of Danny's (my oldest brother) that he had baptized during his mission called him to tell him that he had moved to Utah and that if he wanted he could go too. My brother told him that he wasn't going to go to Utah soon, but that his "little sister" (he still talks to and about me like I'm 5. I don't mind though, I think it's sweet) was planning on going to Utah, so his friend told him that it was ok, that he was going to buy a condo and that I could go arround February if I wanted to, and that I could stay with them. This was arround August 2003. So I thought "Ok, I have like 6 months to think about it and save some money for the trip and to have once I get there..." I think that the Lord thought: "Ok, now that she's convinced to go to Utah, let's get her there." I lost my job, I broke up with the guy I was dating and the family that I was living with asked me to move out... I can't help but to look back at those days and NOT FEEL MELANCHOLIC AT ALL!
Arround those days I recived my Patriarchal blessing, and the thing that stood out the most at that moment was that I was supposed to live by faith, and that my faith was going to be tested (here I got a little scared) like Abraham's faith had been tested.
One Sunday I went to choir practice and I started talking with a guy, and he told me that he was planning on coming to Utah, and I told him that I was planning on coming to Utah eventually as well, and he said "I can give you a ride if you want, I won't charge you anything" but I told him that I didn't have a place to stay for 6 more months. He said he would ask his sister if I could stay with her, but she asked her husband and he said "NO WAY." Apparently this guy have had some problems with them, and they thought that if I was his friend, that I was going to give them trouble as well. She told him that they should pray about it, and they did, and they felt not only that it was Ok for me to go with them, but that for some reason I was supposed to. So he called me to Florida without even knowing me and told me the whole thing, and that I was more than welcomed in his house. So this is how it all looked to me: I was supposed to drive with this guy for 3 days, to a place I didn't know, with no job possibilities, no family, no friends, without a dime in my pocket (because remember, I lost my job) and to live with this people that I've never met. But after praying about it, I felt that that was what I was supposed to do, and also I had the words of my Patriarchal blessing, so I decided to come.
The Sunday before I left, I asked Danny and my bishop (my other brother was nowhere to be found) to give me a blessing and in that blessing the Bishop told me that it was very important for me to come to Utah, because the man that was going to be my husband was here, that I was going to meet him soon after getting here. So, the friday after that I left Florida, and we got here on monday. That Saturday I asked the couple about the YSA organization in their ward, and they just looked at eachother, and then said "there are not YSA in our ward, just maried couples and old people..." I thought "WHAT??? no YSA in their ward? how I'm I supposed to meet people here then? (and the man who's going to be my husband???)" they saw how sad I was about thet, so they called a friend who attended a singles ward, and they asked her if I could go to church with her, ans she agreed. She lived in Sandy and we were in Sugar House. In Florida's LDS distance that is not that much, if it is not your same ward, is very probable that it is at least your same stake, but here in Utah, that kind of distance means at least 40 stakes in between. So, on that Sunday, the 28th of September of 2003, I went to the Singles ward in Sandy with this friend of the family that I was now living with.
We arrived a little early and she and her roomate started introducing me to the people of this ward. Not too long before that, one of them needed an interview with the first councilor and she introduced me to the guy who scheduled that interview for her. This guy happened to be Dane Sanders, the Assistant Executive Secretary. He was very good with his calling, and part of his calling was to get new people to fill out get to know you forms. He wanted me to fill up one, but I told him that since I didn't belonged to that stake I probably shouldn't, he replayed that I should do it anyway if I was going to attend that ward, and I said that I was just visiting, that I didn't even know if I was going to go to that ward again, and he said "Ok, just put your name and phone number then."
The girl that I went to church with and some of her friends were planning a trip to Temple Square that night, and since I enjoyed talking to Dane so much I decided to invite him. He said his schedule was free, that he would come with us, but after a while I learned that, that night was Jennie's farewell dinner because she and Brock were moving to Georgia... but he came with us anyway. We talked for a long time that night, we sat at the Tabernacle and kept talking while everybody else was taking the tour, and then he gave me a ride home, and we stayed talking for a long time in the car, because the people that I was living with wans't there and I didn't have keyes...
There was going to be an activity on Wednesday, and he asked me if I was going to go, and I said that I wanted to, but that I didn't have how to get there, so he offered me a ride. However, on tuesday he calledme and he said that he was on his way to go see his sister who was moving, and he asked me if he could come and see me before that, and I said yes, so he came, and we went to visit Justin at his office. I know, ???. After that we went to visit Jennie and we helped her pack. The next day he picked me up at about 4 pm and we went to the park and Tracy Aviary, then to the activity, and then we went to the movies, and after that day we spent at least some part of the day together.
Two months after we met he asked me to marry him, and 2 months after that we got married, the 10th of January of 2004. That day before we went to the Temple, Dane asked his dad to give him a blessing, and I asked him for one too, and on that blessing he told me that Dane and I had been brought together by the Lord's hand and that we had made promises to one another in the pre-exsistence, and that those promises where going to become covenants in the Temple of the Lord. When we were in the ceremony, the sealer told us that it was very special for him to be part of this sealing because we had been together in the pre-exsistence, and brought together by the Lord, and he repeated almost word by word the blessing that I had recived earlier that day...
So, that's how our Fairy Tale began. As in every fairy tale, there are rough times, monsters to be conquered, evil people trying to get us apart, but with the Lord's help, and keeping the covenants we made, we know we can also have our "happily ever after."
So, buckle your seat belts and join us in this wonderful travel thru exsistence, the "Sanders Voyage"