My Teaching Philosophy

My professional goal is to change the world in a simple way, one high school student at a time. As an adolescent educator there is a wonderful chance to influence youth, our nation’s future for good. I am ecstatic to begin teaching and share my passion for languages and health. As a health teacher there is a significant opportunity to change health behavior for good and help students to become more confident and aware. Teaching languages to adolescents provides them with a different point of view and helps them to be more tolerant of others. Taking French language classes truly opened up my eyes to the world around me. It helped me to get out of that teenage “spotlight” effect and realize that there is an entire world out there besides my life—a world that is big, beautiful, and diverse. My French classes helped me improve my grades in other classes and created within me a desire to reach out and be more inclusive. I want to provide students with a safe learning environment where they can learn that we are all different and that it isn’t bad to be different. I want to show students the world of possibilities that lie before them. I simply want to be the teacher that every high school student wishes they had; one who is intelligent, enthusiastic, caring, motivational, and unforgettable. Teachers really do make a difference and I want to be that one teacher that we all remember who made a difference in our lives. By teaching children well a legacy of future leaders who can help to stabilize our decaying world is created. Every day we are in need of more and more strong and talented people leading out in our community and I want to help shape our future’s leaders. My teaching philosophy is to teach French and to teach it well. I believe in allowing all children an equal opportunity to succeed in my classroom.

Pumpkin carving

Longboard making adventures

So I got this crazy idea in my institute class to make a longboard. Yup, make as in by scratch. I thought I'd post some photos of the progress. First we glued the boards together

Then we added some curves

Next we cut it out so it looked like a board.

Then we had to sand it and such.

And make the edges smooth.

And then I gave my board a tattoo.

Dear Girls Who Live With Me

A few years ago I ran into a hilarious and rather handsome man Charlie McDowell online. This is the summary of his blog Two annoying girls moved into the apartment above me. I'm forced to hear every dumb thing they say. These are my letters to them. He is quite hilarious, here are some samples: “I heard that only people who went to some school get to vote this year. That doesn’t seem fair.” The Electoral College? “Aww, I just realized iceskating isn’t a part of the Olympics anymore!” Who knows, maybe they’ll bring it back in a couple years. “Isn’t it funny that we’ve both never seen a pickle tree before!?” Well I find it funny, but I think for a different reason. I also have some special girls who moved into the apartment with me. These are some of the dumb things they say. J "Oh my gosh! It's so hot in here....someone turned up the thermometer in my room. It wasn't me." Really?! It wasn't you. Me: "Well then turn it down." J:"But I don't know how." "Turn it to zero." J "Oh." Wow. Who knew life was so complex? "Where did the potatoes go. Ooh, they're all gone." Have you checked the fridge? That is where people put most things so they don't get e.coli. "How many scarves do you think David Archuleta has?" Seriously? "I'm not going to talk to anyone who doesn't vote for Romney." If only the election was 8 weeks sooner. "Sa ha ha, ha ha ha. we are so dumb." That's the most intelligent thing you've said all week. I really wouldn't watch the justin beiber movie and let people see. Daylight savings means you still should be sleeping at 1am not 1pm. At least now I know how you all stay up so late.

How "The Help" Helped Me

This summer I watched a film entitled, “The Help.”

The film is based off of a movie written by Kathyrn Stockett that describes the 1960s Civil Rights movement through the eyes of an aspiring author and the African-American maids that she interviews. The racism “the help” is faced with is shown as they work with white families to raise their children. It was a touching movie to see the relationships and struggles that went on. The message of racial equality is displayed. But what touched me most was what one maid, Aibileen would tell the charming young girl she raised. Every morning she would give her a hug and tell her, “You is kind, you is smart, you is important.” I love this message. It has been a month or two and I still haven’t been able to get it out of my head. It is what I doodle when I’m bored in class, it is what I say when I’m sad. It is what Aibileen, and every other African American wished to hear at that time. It is what I wish to hear every time I wake up. Aibileen didn’t tell her that she was beautiful or some other superficial unimportant quality. She told her: You is kind. Kindness is a quality that has gone missing in our society. Where are the days of chivalry and politeness? Even in the church we are constantly having to be reminded, “Don’t judge. Be kind. Love one another.” It is a quality that is oh so precious, but is found lacking. If we are kind it means a lot. You is smart. In a day where African Americans were thought to be from a sub-race of filthy animals, and when women were not a man’s equal the message “you is smart” resonates strong. Today so many derogatory words float around in our vocabulary- stupid, dumb, retard, dense, slow, brainless, dim-witted. When a child, or anyone for that matter, feels smart they are able to achieve more. You is important. Everyone wants to feel important and needed. Do you feel important? How do you act when you feel important? How do you act when you feel unimportant? It makes a difference, doesn’t it. When I have children I want to make this a daily ritual. Proper English grammar or no, it is imperative to tell those we love that they are kind, smart, and important. These are things that we all need to hear.

Weel 74: Final Days and Final Words

Monday
Monday was a super clean day so therefore we super cleaned. Nothing
like a clean house! I also introduced Sister Clark to statdogs.
Statdogs are the genius that isn't in America. A hot dog in a warm
crunchy cylindrical goodness. No mess with full carb coverage. We
went biking with the gang (the elders, Sintija, and Inguss). We had a
blast! We biked down the beach trail to the giant Liepaja sign where
we were entertained by some rather large swans with half a dozen ugly
swanlings. We all got a kick out of Sintija taking on the parent
ducks and hissing back at them. We were biking to the other side of
Liepaja to see the lake and it started POURING rain.

We continued spending our day with Sintija and had a really neat
lesson with her and Arta. We watched the Restoration film and Arta
has been reading and praying. Arta said the closing prayer and
Sintija was crying afterwards because she was so happy! It was neat.
We continued on with Sintija and Arta and went to have FHE with the
Frolovi family. We read the Proclamation to the World on Families and
then we continued to converse about what they can do to have an
eternal family. Sister Clark and I continued on to inactive Lidija's
house and she gladly let us in. We talked to her about prayer. I
know that prayer is so important in our lives and that it helps us
immensely.

Tuesday
This morning we ran to the church and grabbed some ping pong
equipment. We waved at the web cams that Presidents has set us as
security videos for the parking lot and he teased us about that
afterwards. We ran to the awesome park by the sea and played ping
pong on a circular table that has two nets that cross and make an X.
We also played on the giant ship playground for ages 7-14. We figured
that 23 and 24 was close enough. We leaned of the role of the Spirit
in conversion while gorging ourselves on a dessert called "peaches
down under" which is essentially canned peaches drowned in sour cream
and brown sugar and then heated. We went and got Sister Clark
registered in Liepaja and went by a potential investigator's home but
they weren't there.

We ate nutella and fruit crepes (shout out to France!) which we
learned about transfers. It is a crazy world- Sister Kurr will be
with Rubija, Latvia has only one zone leader, and Elder Burr is coming
to Liepaja!!! I am so excited for him. They are going to have a nerd
fest in Liepaja. Elder Bergason is a math major, Sister Clark a
physics major, and Elder Burr is a genius as well.

We had a fun lesson with the Beldavi's and Eriks was even over and
helped answer lots of questions. He just about broke my heart though,
"Lindstroma, will this be the last time I see you?" We also went by
some other less actives and went contacting in the park. On the way
back from the park we ran into Crazy hyper Sintija and her twin and
mom. Those twins are so darn touchy. We set up a meeting at a later
date.

Sarra and Ieva were at the church when we had Santa's lesson. They
were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO hyper and goofy. They came in and helped with
our lesson and then we had to spin and dance and spin some more.

Wednesday- Last day in Liepaja
Time sure does fly. Today we went running barefoot at the beach and
reports are neither confirmed nor denied if I got my feet wet. After
studies we went and taught Kristine and Janis. Zane randomly peaced
out to the laukos (country) and didn't care to tell us. We had a
great lesson actually about modesty. It was so neat to feel the
complete and total change in their home; obeying God's commands really
does make a huge difference.

We ate gravy toast, packed, went to the Bakery, and visited even more
people! We had a little miracle and found Valda outside of Janis'
house. I am supposed to call her so that she can hear my voice, lol.
We went to the park again and Sister Clark got rhubarb ice cream which
was quite delicious. Aivars was 15 minutes early (go figure) to pick
up our luggage so we waited with him at the bus station for a while.
His muffler is about to fall off and he kept on telling us how he
hoped he'd get it fixed so he could help the new sister with her
luggage. We had an uneventful bus ride and I may have even gotten
some shut eye.

We went to the sisters' apartment in Imanta to stay. They naturally
lived on the 9th floor and the elevator happened to be broken. They
greeted us with Danish dessert, chicken salad, and death log.

Thursday- Last day in Riga
Thursday morning SC and I took a taxi (with the same driver) to the
mission home. SC went to the trainers meeting and I helped Sister
Boswell clean and go berry shopping. We made a birthday cake for one
of the elders and just kind of hung out and waited for other departing
missionaries to come. My exit interview with President Boswell went
well although it was not what I expected. I thought we'd talk a lot
more about my mission and what I did but it was more questions about
future plans and some advice about being a good sweetheart and such.
He was the second witness to the "well done thou good and faithful
servant" feeling that I have had this past week. The Lord has
accepting my efforts as the "mother of Liepaja" as he called me. He
related the counsel he received from President Monson, that if a
missionary is making a difference in an area why would you move them?
I was able to go out with Sister Grinevicute who is from Lithuania.
We went around Old Town Riga. I wanted to go up into this one church
for the panoramic view, but I did not want to spend 8 US dollars for
said panoramic view, so we just walked around a little bit instead.
Sister Boswell fed us funeral potatoes, ham, and green beans as well
as birthday cake with ice cream. We were quite stuffed. We had a
"fireside" after that. The fireside was a lot of President Boswell's
advice for the future. Keep on dressing nicely, you don't have to
look like an apostle ever day, but don't look grungy. Facial hair-
don't have it (darn....). Don't get divorced! Think of finding a job
that will allow you to go to church and participate in callings. Do
something that you enjoy doing. Date members and look for someone
that makes you want to be better when you are with them. Find someone
that YOU want to make happy. Chase after someone but still be chaste.
If you are ever going to have an intimate conversation, have it at
the mall; you can't get in trouble there and absolutely no one will
pay attention to you. What does multiply and replenish the earth mean
to you? Enjoy the dirt poor days. Ask the Lord to send you
Ephramites and raise them in the Lord. Choose your love, love your
choice. You have to work really hard and give 100% to the
relationship. The relationship is 3 things- the marriage, you, and
your spouse; do what is best for two out of three. Give more than you
expect to get. Avoid devisive things in the home. Fight hard and
early against pornography. Date time is sacred time. Pray with your
children for them to get married in the temple.

President Boswell also gave the advice he got from Sister Boswell's
bishop. Sister Boswell had just received her temple recommend and
President Boswell came to pick her up. "I want to talk to you young
man. I have two questions. First, when do you shave?" "In the
morning." "Well, from now on I want you to shave at night, can you do
that?" "Yes sir." "Second question. When do you shower?" "In the
morning." "Will you promise me that you will shower at night from now
on? No one likes to kiss someone with a scruffy face or sleep by a
smelly person." President Boswell swears by this advice.

Friday
On Friday we woke up and had blueberry muffins for breakfast and then
headed out in the cars to the airport. Our extra baggage cost an arm
and a leg- 400$ a piece. The elders (Moffat, Pack, Mills, Froelich,
and Thomas) were very glad to have me along because I "looked like I
knew what I was doing." We went through security about a billion
times that day. Our first flight left at 11:30 am Latvia time and we
arrived in SLC at 9pm Utah time on Friday. We flew from Riga to
Amsterdam and then took a 10 hour flight from Amsterdam to Seattle.
It was really neat to fly over Greenland and see all of the ice and
snow. Delta treated us well with food every two hours or so- peanuts
and pretzels, chicken curry or lasagna, a sandwich and candy, a
calzone and ice cream. I slept for maybe an hour on the 10 hour long
flight. The elders were pretty antsy to get home by the time we got
to Seattle. On the first plane they were all sad to leave Latvia and
by the last plane they couldn't wait to get home.

Mom, dad, and sister-in-law Julie greeted me at the airport. I had a
nice time being released by the Stake President at his home.
It is good to be home; I've been gone a long time and I know that my
missionary service hasn't ended, it has just begun.

Week 73-Final Weekly Email from Mari

Well, this week wins for adventures. Remember how last week Sister Gallacher and Elder Holdaway were in my district? They aren't anymore. Ha ha, yup. I'll just leave you all in suspense for a while.

On Monday Sister Gallacher and I had a busy day. Since we had said goodbye to Elder Holdaway who was going home early to see family we had the day to ourselves. We went to the three main older churches here in Liepaja. We went up to the tower of one of the Lutheran churches which was SO amazing. Gorgeous! Best 50 centimi I have spent in Liepaja. We also went to the museum, which wasn't very neat. They had large collections of old school cameras and radios that Kirstin would have liked though.

We went to meet Andris, a former investigator in the park. His lesson was amazing! He had so many questions and has been thinking about religion a lot. He was such a pleasure to teach because he would always ask questions and tell us when he agreed, disagreed, or didn't understand something. We went over some of both the restoration and the plan of salvation with him. After an hour we said that we needed to go and he was almost offended. "I'm here feeling the Spirit right now learning and you tell me you have to go?" Yup. But that Spirit is testifying that it is true. He agreed with most everything except he believes in reincarnation. We had to scurry off because we had a FHE appointment with the Frolovi. Eriks has been picking up English like crazy. He tried to pray in English, which was an entertaining thing for us to hear. “And I also want to talk about grandma. She be a good good good girl...”

Tuesday we were able to properly meet our new district member and leader, Elder Brighton. He has been serving in Klaipeda, Lithuania and is currently the district leader there as well. District leader of two different districts in two different countries = pretty cool. He is a really humble, hard working, down to earth missionary. His district meeting on Christ-like attributes was very spiritual. I learned that to gain knowledge we not only need to study but to use our faith (apply!) DC 88:118. A great scripture about patience is DC 67:13. After District Meeting we took some of Valda's old magazines from the 50s and 60s to the museum and they readily took them. I had an amazing contacting experience in the evening. I approached a couple who at first didn't want to talk at all. Almost a half of an hour later we finally said our goodbyes but not before the husband told us that now he was “half ready to meet” and that we “planted a seed” and that he has some things “to think about” now. It was so neat to have a person actually say those things. So often as missionaries we don't get to see the fruit of our labor or the seed grow that we planted, but the Lord knows what He is doing and it is all in His hands. We also had an entertaining run-in with Aina (less active) on Tuesday. She told us how she doesn't like the fat cook at her work so when she sees him she mutters scriptures in Hebrew under her breath because they are really powerful. Oh boy.

Wednesday. I love America. I didn't realize how grateful I am for my land of freedom until we were singing songs about America for the Fourth of July. I really do feel so blessed to live in a land where I haven't had my rights and privileges taken away. We have it pretty good. To celebrate we were going to have a picnic but alas, it rained. We had hotdogs and watermelon anyway. I had some computer stuff to do and SG ended up talking to Aivars for almost another two hours because she is trying to help him over his concerns. Mostly they are concerns that he has to get over himself by taking a leap of faith. I was also able to help train new member Zane to work in the Primary since the Primary president is MIA all summer.

Thursday. It is hot. I don't like hot. I would be such a baby somewhere like South America or Africa. Cold is a lot easier to deal with. We ate chocolate chip pancakes before we started our mission-wide fast (worst day EVER for fasting). We helped an inactive couple, the Martinsone move to a new apartment. I was very glad that they only lived on the second floor. We got most of the moving done in about two hours, which I thought was pretty good. The elders only stayed for 45 minutes. They would have stayed a full hour, but the map and the actual streets did not match up. It was a miracle we found their street. So, I had one of my most memorable lessons on Thursday. I don't know if you remember Zenta, but last year with Sister Ferrin she was an investigator. We set up an appointment to meet with her. We were quite surprised to see her 9-year-old disabled grandson butt-naked when we walked in. Did she try to put pants on him? No. He pushed SG around me in a circle while SG was on a computer chair with balloons on it while she pretended to blow a train whistle. Um, can we say really funny and awkward and bless Sister Gallacher's heart for being a good sport. We have another meeting set up and I REALLY hope people will have clothes on again.

At 9pm we were doing our nightly planning and we received a call. “Hey sisters, this is Assistant Kolkto. How are you? What are your plans for tomorrow? Nothing big? Good, because you are going to need to rearrange them. Sister Gallacher, you will be going to Imanta with Sister Hanks, a Russian-speaking sister. Sister Lindstrom, Sister Clark will be joining you in Liepaja tomorrow at 2pm so you don't have to travel anywhere.” What the?!!?!?!?!? Transfers aren't for another week. Speechless would be the appropriate term to describe our response. Totally not expected.

Friday was mostly spent getting all packed up. Aivars Fishmeisters, our eternal investigator in Liepaja is so great. He really is like my grandpa here. He drove our luggage to the bus station and then bought us ice cream (it was another really hot day) while we waited for the Riga sisters to get there. Their bus was 20 minutes late so Sister Kurr almost missed the return bus. She literally walked off the one bus and then got on the next. We broke our fast with baked new baby potatoes, carrots, and chicken (yum!!!) and then went to work. We showed Oskars the spirit-filled church tour and then we went to Marika's. She gave us each two ice creams- yum and we talked to her about prayer.

Saturday was mostly busy work- weekly planning, cleaning the church, working on branch stuff, and of course singing opera with Presidents. We helped the elders teach 18-year-old Viktorija about Jesus Christ. I love the Spirit. Even though I don't know Russian I knew that she was being asked to be baptized and that she had some concerns. I am glad that the elders asked her because if they weren't, I was going to! We also wrote down Zane and Kristine's conversion stories and had an awesome lesson with the Tolmachovi family. All morning study the topic we planned just seemed wrong. I prayed and the idea of giving the church tour (which is essentially the Restoration using the church building) came into my head. While we were in the Sacrament Hall Elina expressed how she had been thinking this week of how she wanted to start meeting with the missionaries and taking the discussions again to relight her testimony and how going through the church like an “investigator” was just that.

Sunday I gave a talk. I at least really enjoyed my talk. It was ten things that I had learned from my service as a missionary that was also advice to the branch. I'm sad more people weren't at church. Zane totally froze up and apparently hadn't prepared the lesson like she said she had, so improvisations had to be made. Primary turned out fine, but Presidents looks pretty stressed that he has no Sunday School teacher for recent converts nor someone to be in Primary. After I spoke in Sacrament he said a few words and got all teary-eyed and thanked people for their service. I like to think he was crying because I'm leaving, lol. He really is one of my good friends.

I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God's kingdom here on earth. I know that the Plan of Salvation is real and that Jesus is the Christ. The Book of Mormon is a testament of Him and of God's unending love for His children.

Thank you everyone for your love, support, and prayers.

See you soon! :)

Love, Sister Mari Lindstrom