Start your engines

This week has passed in a whirlwind and I have had good intentions of updating my blog, but best laid plans and all that. The driving crue, of which I am a part, departs in a few hours. I spent the weekend looking at housing in the Portland area. It was a discouraging trip. Before I went up I had looked on various online postings and tried to get some idea of price range and location. I had high hopes of finding housing around the $600 range. It became clear once I was up there however that unless I found someone to live with the price range would leave me with undesirable housing. I was either going to live in a total dump, or live in a just above dump status in a scary neighborhood, or someplace semi decent that was in the $700 range. Needless to say I'm exploring other options.
I have been trying to get up to visit the YSA wards and get a feel for them and meet the housing coordinators and the likes for the past three weeks. The first attempt was a poor choice of weekend and we had some family stuff so I decided to stay and planned to go up next sunday. During the week I got a call from the new relief society presidency and they asked me to teach the lesson for the coming Sunday. I thought ok that still leaves me with two weeks before our beach trip I can just go up next sunday. Yeah....about that. So I get a call the night before the sunday I teach, can I come in and meet with the bishopric they want to extend me a new calling. Side note: our student wards here got a make over about a month ago. Instead of two "student" wards that included marrieds without kids and anyone 18 an up attending school we now have a YSA ward, and it got combined into one ward. ok end of side note!
Anyway I got in and I'm thinking maybe since they asked me to teach I will get called as a teacher. Oh no, the relief society president happened to know I played the piano back in the day...so I got called as the relief society pianist. This took some restraint on my part. My first impulse was to laugh, and in fact that was my brothers first reaction when I told him. Once upon a time I could play most hymns without much difficulty...enter school and work and no piano for me to practice on for the last four years. I had a serious phobia of playing with people singing, in fact I just have a phobia of people. I may come off friendly but deep down I'm still scared of you when I'm talking. I got called as the relief society pianist when I was at Ricks, way back in the day, and then had to play in sacrament a few times. I believe I didn't sleep much the night before I had to play if I remember correctly. Then on my mission I was the only one who could even remotly play the hymns in wards and so the germans didn't care if I botched the chords they just liked having some background music for a change and it bolstered my confidence. See the thing about the church is you are surrounded by talented people and especially going to a church school and having piano majors and super skilled poeple that can play the songs in their sleep it makes you feel stupid when you are asked to play. So post mission I had less fear but I still don't volunteer to play because I know that my skill level isn't as high as others. This was a long tangent..props to you if you are still with me here. The point of this rambling is that I accepted the calling but found it funny. I think the Lord is trying to get me ready for doing things that scare me in the coming months. Kind of warming me up slowly.
So along with the calling to be pianist they snuck in a assignment to give a talk. That's right that would be another week in a row that I couldn't make it to Portland to check out housing! So we are down to the wire here this last week and I was determined. Forget that calling I mentioned, housing was taking priority. I go up and I have the times all checked out of the different YSA wards and I'm psyching myself up to be agressive and overcome this deepdown scared child that is afraid of talking to people....and then this morning I got a call from a friend up there who I had emailed on Saturday....foiled again!!!! There was a regional conference for the YSA wards in Portland. Every single one of them was meeting in Vancoover. I just had to laugh. Oh well my friend was kind enough to help me out with housing info and was going to check to see if anyone was looking for a roommate so one of the main purposes of going up was taken care of. I just didn't get to get a feel for the wards. Sigh...sometimes it just feels like everything is conspiring against me.

I drove back down this afternoon with all Jackie & Zach's gear and the trailor is packed and the dog is freeking out thinking we are leaving him and last minute preperations are in full swing. I don't know if I will have the chance to post while I'm back there because the internet connection is not reliable. I will get emails and internet access on my phone though so keep in touch! I will be checking blogs! I'm excited for this trip and I feel like this is the begining of the big changes ahead.