Church... and pictures!

I actually made it to church today, for the first time in... a very very long time. It wasn't as bad as I thought it might have been, but I did want to rip my hair out when I found out that the Gospel Doctrine teacher was the same girl who makes me want to gag in Institute on Thursdays. She's one of those people who interrupts the lesson every five minutes to squeal over the semantics of some random word that was used. "I just want everybody to stop and think about, for a minute, just how much it means that Christ would call us his friend, but that is just SO POWERFUL and it just, it means so much to me! I mean, sometimes we get so busy that we don't stop to think about Him, but He is the best friend we could ever have, and the fact that HE considers US to be His friends is just SO amazing.... "

...Yeah. I loathe people like that. Yes, dear. He used the word "friend." That's cute. Shut up and let's move on.

She wasn't as bad as a teacher as she was a classmate simply because she couldn't interrupt the lesson because she was GIVING the lesson. In our lesson, we opened to 3 Nephi 7 and read about how the Nephites put up walls to keep out the Gadianton robbers. And then we spent the entire rest of the lesson talking about how powerful that metaphor is and how we need to build walls to keep out temptation.

What really irks me is that I've had that exact same lesson like thirty-seven times now, and I'm sure everyone else has too. This wasn't Gospel Essentials class--this was the class for people who have been members of this church their whole lives and want to learn "deeper doctrine." THIS ISN'T NEWS, PEOPLE!!! Yes, we KNOW! Bad stuff out, good stuff in! We get it! Stop sobbing about it all lesson and let's learn something we DON'T know! I want to learn about the War in Heaven, or Michael the Archangel, or Giddianhi, or something--ANYTHING!--that I haven't already learned time and time again. I know the basics. I've got them. They've been drilled into my head over and over and over for twenty years. But PLEASE, can we learn facts and forget about the stupid metaphors? Metaphors are not doctrine! They're a literary device used to put physical images to non-physical concepts. They're over-used, and anyway, they only go so far.

Anyway, that aside, church was pretty good. And after church, I got to talk to my friend Terrace about his first experience at church (I assume it's his first time in a Mormon church, anyway, though I could be wrong). Amusingly enough, I learned more from talking with Terrace than I did at church. He asked a lot of very good deep doctrine questions, many of which I didn't know the answer to. (I probably WOULD know the answer if we learned NEW things in church, instead of having the same five lessons over and over... rant rant...) It was really cool, teaching him the stories I've learned. He asked some very good questions that you never get from people who believe it just because the church teaches it and they believe in the church, so there can be no questions.

Of course, I was so late to juggling practice afterwards that I sprinted up for practice just as President Rob finished putting away the last of the equipment. And they did fire-swallowing today, and I missed it. Woe!

President Rob and Natay and I are getting together to watch a movie this Thursday. I'm actually pretty excited about it--this is my first time hanging out with friends that aren't Jack's gang from church. Don't get me wrong--I love Jack's gang, but I don't have all that much in common with them. I get started talking about video games or juggling or D&D and they stare at me like I'm crazy and go, "Uh... yeah... so anyway, I got this new gun that uses whatever kind of bullets and..." (insert a bunch of random numbers and gun jargon here).

Anyway, as for the movie, I have no idea what the movie is, though it's supposed to be a must-see. All I know is, cute guy says "Hey, we should get together and watch this movie" and I say "Ooh, I'm there, dibs on cuddling with the boy!"

By the way, I have some fire-juggling pictures here for you guys. Unfortunately, the flaming devilsticks were out of commission the day we took pictures, but we got plenty with poi and torches! :D They're all time exposures because it was dark, so the people in the pictures are pretty blurry. I'm putting the labels for the pictures underneath, so don't get confused.

This is your Lint Monkey juggling torches. In fact, this is just as I was starting, so the flame was brightest, and it caught the little swing down by my sides I always do when I'm just starting.


This is Abe (left) and President Rob (right) juggling torches.


Lint Monkey doing torches. This one doesn't look quite so cool because it's just before the flames died.


Monica (left) and Lint Monkey (right) with flaming poi. The unofficial title for this picture is "Mine's Bigger Than Yours." Note that we're both doing this one-handed. Two poi, one hand = awesome.


Same as above, but note that the flames in this one are overlapping so perfectly that you can only really see two circles for each of us (one for each poi). That's because we're just so darn cool.


President Rob doing torches. In my opinion, this was probably our best torch-juggling shot.


Lint Monkey doing poi again. In this trick, I swung them to my sides, crossed them over my head, crossed my arms, then swung them down low and jumped over them. It may have cut off the swing over the head, though. Still looks awesome. Shame the flames weren't brighter for this picture.


President Rob's Juggling Crown. (Those are torches he's balancing on his head, by the way.)

If you like these, I have more, but most of them are pretty similar to each other.