life in color

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth..." He created a beautiful world for us. One cannot look upon the Mount Everest or the Grand Canyon or Angel Falls without acknowledging God's hand. However, the world looks a lot different than it did 2000 years ago or even 200 years ago. As the world population grows, the landscape changes. We have become an industrialized society. I watched the documentary Manufactured Landscapes and had my eyes opened to the realities of our world. I am from South Dakota, which has remained very rural, and have never been exposed to such industrialization until I watched this movie. The film follows photographer Ed Burtynsky, as he captures the factories and pollution of China. He has video footage and still images of enormous piles of trash. I saw people digging through it, looking for scrap metal. They mask their faces, as to not breathe in the toxic fumes. The documentary shows the intense smog that fills the air. It sho...

I had been working once again with Daniela, learning about fractions. I was delighted to get to work with her again. We continued to build our relationship from the previous week. She told me about her weekend to Park City, her three brothers, and her parents’ nationality. Just having lost a tooth, she even taught me about the Mexican tooth fairy. She spoke to me in velvet Spanish, showing off her fluency. I highly enjoyed our session together. More kids kept arriving at the South Franklin Community Center. The director asked if I would double up, tutoring two students at once. That is when I met Isabel. She entered the room, dropped her backpack at the door, and started weaving between the tables and chairs, wandering aimlessly. The director tried to introduce us. Isabel stumbled away, shoving her face on the wall. We finally convinced her to sit down next to me. She stared blankly ahead. “What’s your name?”           Silence. “How old are ...

11,000 people. That is almost the size of my entire hometown. 4,400 children. That is five and half times the size of my high school. These figures are the numbers of the Vietnamese who lived in the Whitehead detention camp. Their families immigrated to Hong Kong to escape the Vietnam War. These children spent a majority or the entirety of their lives inside this refugee camp. They were completely robbed of their childhoods, their innocence, their joy. The Salgado photo I chose depicts the horrors of the lives of the children of Whitehead. Barbed wire can be seen on the buildings. Six little faces peek through the bars of their living space--a 4x6 foot cubicle. Caged . One girl is pressed up against the bars—leaving indents in her legs. Crowded . Another girl’s face expresses the emotions of all the refugees. Pure horror. Desperation . As she cries, the viewers of the photograph cry too. Her screams echo through the pages of the book. I can he...

Do you believe in love at first sight? Do you believe that you can care so much about a person before you even know their name? Do you believe that one person can change your life in an instant? Well, I do. It happened on Wednesday, September 18, 2013. I was standing in the activity room at the South Franklin Community Center, and she walked in the room—the most beautiful little girl I have ever seen. I fell in love with her dimples and her Hello Kitty backpack right then and there. Her name was Daniela.   Daniela and I went into the other room where other kids and their tutors sat working. She pulled out her math worksheet, full of problems converting fractions to decimals. Daniela’s pencil flew across the page, as she completed her problems confidently. She did not need my help, so I observed, praising her with each correct answer. After that, we moved onto spelling. Daniela had taken a spelling test previously, and it was my job to help her learn ...

Today in church, a discussion about serving others took place that really related to my writing class' project. As we learn about the issues of the world, we will be inspired to make a difference. We hope that our essays and blog posts will raise awareness and inspire others to do the same. Service can often seem like a difficult task. Some girls came around the dorms collecting items for a food drive. As a poor college student, donating a can of soup felt like giving up a whole feast. One of my classmates blogged about how we even find it burdensome to give our spare change to the Salvation Army bell ringers. Why is this so? Why are we not more willing to serve others? It got me thinking: All blessings come from God. He has given me all I have. How dare I not share? He gave me that can of soup. He gave me those pennies. He gave me my talents. He gave me this time on Earth. It's not my time; it's His time. And I need to use it, along with all my blessings, to bless th...

"By small and simple things are great things brought to pass," (Alma 37:6). This well-known scripture could be quoted by a majority of Latter-day Saint members. This phrase also came to mind while listening to the lecture by Linda Simmons. Linda was your typical wife and mother, with a love for the gospel and for coupons. She discovered a group of widows and single women who knitted and put together hygiene kits for a homeless shelter in Salt Lake City, Utah. Linda quickly joined in the cause, using her coupons to gather supplies for their kits. Her life would never be the same. The group--now called Hearts Knit Together--started small, assembling the kits on Linda's bed. They put together 200 in their first year.  The Hearts Knit Together program grew. As more people discovered their project, donations started streaming in. More volunteers started showing up to help. Thanks to kindhearted people in the community, the group finally could move out of Linda's home a...

"A picture is worth a thousand words." This age-old saying popped into my head while looking at the first pages of Sebastiao Salgado's book Migrations: Humanity in Transition.  Aside from the introduction, the book has only photographs. A pamphlet in the book contains brief captions for each picture, explaining the situation. However, Salgado leaves the photographs to mostly speak for themselves. I gaze into the frozen eyes of the subjects, wanting to know more about them. Who are they? What are their stories? I will never know. The unknown is more haunting than any in-depth explanation Salgado could have given. For Jewish people living in the Soviet Union, life was a nightmare. They received harsh persecution for their religion. Jewish culture was suppressed. Their leaders were unjustly thrown in prison. Millions of innocent Jewish people were slaughtered in Joseph Stalin's purges and in the Holocaust. They could not escape. When the Soviet Union collapsed, million...

I remember shaking his hand and looking into his eyes. I was fascinated but far too young to really understand his story. How he ended up in Mitchell, South Dakota, I don't know. His name was Daniel, and he was a lost boy of Sudan. In 1987, an order went out to kill all male children in Southern Sudan. So they ran. They ran, leaving behind their homes, families, and friends. Their lives would never be the same. They traveled together to Ethiopia and then to Kenya, searching for safety. On their journey, over half of the 25,000 boys died. The rest came to live in refugee camps. For years, they struggled to survive. For years, they worried about their families. For years, they waited for the day they could return to their homeland. But the civil war waged on, taking the lives of over two million people. We were assigned to watch the film  God Grew Tired of Us,  telling the story of three lost boys who eventually came to the United States to escape their many hardships. T...

I received my first journal when I was five years old. My sloppy letters splashed across the first page. My little hands somehow managed to spell out, "I opend Chistmas presents. It was Christmas." These insightful sentences began my journaling career. I wrote about my exciting life: elementary school, Polly Pockets, candy, my pet hamster, and playdates with friends.  I find it extremely entertaining to go back and read what I have previously written. Over the years, my handwriting has drastically improved. It has transformed from big, block letters to horrendous cursive to my handwriting today. It is also eye-opening to see the events of my life--big or small--that have made me into the girl am today. Just as my penmanship has changed, I have changed as a person. From friend fights to field trips, I fully believe that these moments have influenced my life. And they are all documented in the pages of my journals.  I am finally catching up to the 21st centur...