i love sundays. and my roommates :)

so today was a great sabbath day. all the talks and lessons at church were so great and it just brought the spirit into my day and made me feel so calm. i was really stressed before church because i taught relief society today. the lesson ended up going well, better than i thought it would, because of the great comments from the wonderful girls in my ward. and mostly because of the spirit.

my lesson was on agency: our freedom to choose. i love the topic of agency, it is such an amazing blessing to us. our Heavenly Father loves us so much that He won't force us to choose what is right; He loves us so much to want us to make our own decisions. we are free to choose our actions but we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions, however. i know that the commandments are to make us free, not to be a burden or to restrict us. when we choose to keep the commandments, we are then free to do so many other things that negative choices may have prevented us from doing. for example:
"if there is a sign that says 'no swimming, whirlpool' we might think that this is a restriction. but we still have many choices: we are free to swim somewhere else, we are free to walk along the beach, we are free to go home. but once the whirlpool has us in its grasp and we are pulled under, we have very few choices. we can try to escape, or we can call for help, but we may drown" (gospel principles, lesson 4).
i have a personal testimony that obedience brings blessings. i have seen it in my own life and in the lives of others. it is truly an amazing principle and as we are obedient to some commandments our desire to please God only increases as we recieve blessings and feel good for our righteous actions. :)

after church, my fabulous roommates and i FINALLY took roommate pictures! (we've been meaning to since the beginning of january). here are a few of my favorites:







i feel so blessed to have these crazy girls as my roommates. they're the best. <3