Guatemala!

Hey guys!

I'm realllllly close to finishing my first year of graduate school (!) so I expect to have a blog post about that coming up but today I'm just going to write a short one about something else.

This afternoon we had our "halfway there" meeting about Guatemala and I have gotten a lot of new information that I'd like to share with you.

First is about Guatemala itself. Why are we going there?

• In the second half of the 20th century, Guatemala suffered from a 36 year civil war resulting in about a quarter million deaths and a million refugees.
• Guatemala is the most populous country in Central America
• But their GDP per capita is less than half of the average for Latin America 
• 50% of the population is under the age of 20
• 55% of the population is under the poverty line
• 40% of children under the age of 5 are chronically malnourished

Where will we be there?

• Membrillal, a small village about 20 km from Guatemala City
• Zapote, a small community about 45 minutes from Guatemala City
• This is the poorest region in Guatemala: 
• over 75% are unemployed
• mostly orphans and widows
• Also apparently it's pretty close to an active volcano? Cool!

Who am I going with?

• The church I attend here, Capital Church
• 26 people
• A leader who has been there twice
• About a dozen high school students
• Roughly a third have been there before
• Only myself and one other girl speak Spanish
• Samantha! We are so excited to be able to serve God together!
• An organization called Hungry For Life
• An international organization committed to spreading the love of Jesus through service
• Established relationships with communities in 8 different countries
• They deal with all the logistics for travel, lodging, food, and emergencies
• 3 leaders from HFL will be with our team

What will I be doing there?

• Well, we won't know for sure until we get there, but HFL currently has 4 projects going in this community that we will likely help with (and Capital has worked on all four of these projects in the past)
• Repairing and rebuilding homes
• Building stoves
• Currently families cook their meals over open flames inside their homes, leading to lots of respiratory problems
• School construction
• The school isn't big enough to hold all of the children in the sponsorship programs
• Church construction
• We will also be visiting the families of the children that Capital sponsors in this region
• Through Angel Tree funds, Capital sponsors four children here
• We will be bringing them gifts and letters from the church and of course spending time with them and showing them we love them!
• The youth are also working on putting together a youth conference to host while we are there, since there are so many kids

And that's about as much as we know so far!

Finally, I'm humbly coming to you with a request for your support in a few ways.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, God was faithful in easing my initial financial doubts about this project in supplying me with an amazing nannying job at the end of last semester. However, in March, the family I was working for decided that they needed someone to be there in a more full-time capacity. I was really struggling to hold everything together with my school work while nannying only two afternoons a week and so we had to part ways. This left me a few hundred dollars short of what I need to raise for the trip, which was $1900 in total. 

At our meeting today we were informed that the CDC has announced that for the region that we are going to during the time we're going, we should get vaccinated against Typhoid. This vaccination will be another $200.

To be completely honest, I was really hoping to be able to make enough money to pay for this trip on my own, and I am struggling with having to ask for financial support. I am trusting God that this request will not be a burden to you, my friends and family, but rather that some of you will feel that this is an opportunity for you to be a part of this story of God's grace in Guatemala and His stretching of my faith through this trip. I am trusting Him that the rest of you will see this as an opportunity to pray for me and my continued reliance on His sovereign plan. 

If you would like to give a tax deductible donation to my trip, you can follow this link (Member-Barriuso)

https://www.eservicepayments.com/cgi-bin/Vanco_ver3.vps?appver3=Fi1giPL8kwX_Oe1AO50jRpzhFTvQ2zG4U-wpFyK0ornHO3iVYxvvxhHjRfLOeq662EvVVAEjqawDomKT1pbouXYQuOs6HyesYPrP_mwLwtc=

The next way you can support me is to continue to pray for me in a few ways:

• For faith that God will provide the funds
• For opportunities to practice Spanish
• To get to know my teammates better, and maybe make a friend
• For diligence in preparing my heart 
• For motivation to prepare my body

And finally, it is also apparently kind of common (?) to get pretty sick from the Typhoid vaccine, and this is something I am really nervous about. I would appreciate prayers that my body handles the vaccine well.

Thank you for reading all of this (it wasn't so short after all) and thank you for your prayerful consideration of support. I love you all so much and wish I could give you a big squeeze!

xoxo,

Taylor Anne

Winter Break!

Hey there!

This is the last weekend of my winter break between semesters, so despite the fact that I don't feel like there's a lot to update about, I figured it's time to document that time has passed and I'm still here!

Here I am!

First, what's on my mind right this minute is that I have discovered the absolute best radio station ever. It plays music from the 70s to today which makes for great variety! Besides the time span, it also plays country, pop, alternative, and as of today I have discovered even Christian music! It's like listening to someone's iPod.

So, I know you're all holding your breath to know.... I survived my first semester of grad school! They aren't kicking me out yet so woohooooo! Also I realized that if I'm here for 5 years-- and undergrad took 4-- then now that I'm done with my first semester I'm officially halfway through college. Now that's something to celebrate!

The next biggest news is probably that I will be going to Guatemala this summer for 10 days! This fall when Capital (the church I attend here) did its missions focus, I really felt that God was calling me to continue to stretch my faith and further my reliance on Him by applying for a mission trip. I prayed about it for about a month and realized that my doubts were really just excuses so I decided to apply for the Guatemala trip (so I can hopefully use my Spanish!) and I just found out last week that my application has officially been accepted! [Huge thanks to Rachel and Anne Marie for writing me reference letters!] In Guatemala we will be building stoves, homes, and working on an ongoing project that is building a church in the village of Membrillal about 20 km outside of Guatemala City.

One of my major concerns when I first started thinking about the trip was the cost of the trip, but God showed me right away that He would be faithful in all things. The very day that I found out the official cost, I got an interview with a family and the next week I started babysitting about 7 hours/week for a 4 year old boy and a 1 year old girl. I've been with them for about a month and a half now and it's been going pretty well. It's nice to have that time set aside when I'm a) making money for Guatemala, but also b) not thinking at all about school, which has turned out to be serious bonus of a blessing!

A few weeks later, my advisor Shannon asked me if I would be a graduate assistant for her as part of a grant she received to improve the Psycholinguistics class she is teaching this spring semester. Accordingly, I have been helping her develop some lab experiments for her class. It's great experience and it is also paid, so I think I will be able to cover the cost of the trip between these two jobs! Praise the Lord for open doors!

Around the same time I started babysitting, I thought it would be a good idea to get involved in the community as well (in addition to choir, of course) so I started volunteering at one of the elementary schools in my neighborhood (yes, there are multiple). Last semester I went in twice each week to read with two third graders who have tough home lives and are performing well below grade level. They are adorable and it has been so much fun! I have to cut down to once/week this semester but I'm glad I can continue working with them and watching their progress.

Speaking of choir, it never stopped being my favorite thing! We had our Christmas concert the day before I left for winter break and lots of people from the community, including the mayor, a UT senator, and a newscaster came out to support us! We're on a two month break now :( but we'll restart in March and I can't wait!

One final thing from last semester: Samantha visited me over Thanksgiving break and we had a wonderful week traveling through states we'd never been to (Idaho! Montana! Wyoming!), visiting my mom's cousins in Bozeman for Thanksgiving, and exploring Salt Lake City together. It renewed my appreciation for this awesome little city and that was really great!

This semester I will be a TA for a course that teaches teachers how to teach English to nonnative speakers. I have no idea what qualifies me to be a TA for a course like that but I'm really looking forward to working with the woman who teaches the class and learning lots about TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). I hope to get a TESOL certificate myself while I'm here.

Over break, if you haven't already heard, I had the fantastic gift of spending ten days with my three favorite people in the whole world!!!!!!

Oh yeah and we were in England.

We had a wonderful time and it was so great to be reunited with my family who I have missed so dearly since moving here.

Speaking of which, Monday is Mom's birthday, so give her a shoutout!

Since I got back to Salt Lake I've read 6 novels. As much as I've enjoyed having time to free read, it's been pretty lonely so I'm about ready to go back to class.

Twist ending!

Very dark

Last time I asked, I got some awesome surprises in the mail so I'm going to do it again. I know-shameless- but fun mail is still my absolute favorite thing!

271 E Street #3

Salt Lake City, UT 84103

Praises:

-For God's continued faithfulness in all things

-That Madeline is coming to visit in three weeks so I have something to look forward in this "dark month" that is January

-That the weather has continued to be pretty warm and I've yet to experience the infamous inversions

-My new friend from church Jenny who has been a HUGE blessing 

-That I was able to spend a glorious week and a half with my beloved family

-All of you!

Prayers:

-That the beginning of this new semester starts off well

-For a good relationship between me and the woman I'm TAing for

-That I make more friends that I can spend time with outside of class

-That God continues to prepare my heart and body for Guatemala

Thank you for loving me!

Hablamos pronto :)

Fall Break!

Hey there!

I've been living in Salt Lake City for just under two months now, so I figured that it was time to start this thing :) Life has been a rollercoaster-- every day unexpected, full of ups and downs, but as Bill Currington would say: God is great, beer is good and people are crazy.

So as of today, here's what's been going on!
(If I end up adding photos, they're all going to be from Google images because I haven't been taking any)

I. School
Let's start out with school because it's mostly what's been going on. This is the U

The hardest thing about going to a new university is trying not to compare it with Iowa State, and realizing that my interaction with the university as a whole is going to be so different than it was the first time around.

I have been very impressed with my department, however. There's food at every event, which rocks. The students are in general very welcoming and open. People are happy to be here, and that's a real blessing! I have three classes, all in this same tiny windowless room, because they range from 5-8 students.

My first class is Second Language Acquisition Theory with Rachel. Rachel is who I hope to be someday. She is kind and warm, but she has very high expectations and is quite intimidating. She told us the first day, "All we have as scholars is our reputation." In her class, we've read dozens of studies and reviews dating back to what was basically the beginning of the development of the Second Language Acquisition field (currently the field I consider "mine")-- just about 50 years ago. It's a young field so we've been chronicling through its evolution, discussing its challenges while putting the methods we read about into practical use through individual data collection and analysis projects. It is an immensely challenging class.

My second class is Syntax with Aniko. Aniko is a Hungarian syntactician from MIT, whose favorite thing to do is to get us to the point where we've just about understood something and then say "But wait!" (hilarious evil laughter) and go into some complicated explanation about something that isn't explained, leaving us with doubts about the validity of each theory we discuss. I'd never had a syntax class before so I was doing a lot of catch up the first few weeks. I am constantly asking questions, trying to understand at least the basics of each topic. Each day, I leave her class completely mentally exhausted, and I usually try to go home to nap before starting homework.

My third class is Phonology with Abby. Abby is also awesome and approachable, but she's very much an A-type personality. Her class is methodical and predictable, and for that I really enjoy it. Phonology is like a puzzle! It's a good break from the mind-bending of the other two.

I also am supposed to be working in the Speech Acquisition Lab, but I just started running subjects this week, so hopefully that will pick up from here on out.

This is our logo. Isn't it cute?

II. Home
I love my apartment :) Here's a snap shot:

It's 400 sqft on the second floor of an old house in a neighborhood called The Greater Avenues. My neighborhood is a great location-right between downtown and the U- and my apartment is perfectly situated right across the street from the major grocery store and the bus stop. I love it! There are four apartments in this house. Downstairs, in one, there's a woman with her six year old son, neither of whom I've seen since I moved in; in the other there are two early-30s men (children) who are nice but kind of make it feel like a frat house. The other upstairs apartment is inhabited by a 27 year old single working professional who has become my closest friend here. She is a fascinating woman who works full time at a law firm to make money but also pursues her passion by freelancing as a science museum exhibit consultant... how cool is that? She is really fun and interesting and a wonderful neighbor.

III. "Free Time" Activities
Finding a church home has not been the smoothest of transitions. I bounced around for the first month and didn't love any of them for various reasons (feeling unwelcome, being too far away, blasé sermons) but I ended up returning to the first one I went to and staying there (for now). Capital, as it's called, is not perfect but the pastor's teachings are both solidly Biblical and personally applicable and God has been using him to speak to me, so I go there on Sundays.

They have a 20s-30s group that meets on Monday nights that I went to for a few weeks but I haven't gone recently because
a) there's no worship
b) it wasn't strictly Biblical, which at first I thought was okay, but they don't even tie it back to anything spiritually relevant
c) Monday is a hard night to work with

So either I need to give it another shot or I need to find another Christian group to get into because the LDS thing is real here in Salt Lake City and it would be great to get into a community of believers!

What I look forward to most in life here in SLC is Thursday nights. That is when I have practice for the Salt Lake Avenues Community Choir. We are getting ready for a Christmas concert in December and it is so fun! It is my favorite two hours of the week. I even have a friend there, a wonderful lady who is incredibly warm and we have a great time. She even brought me cookies this week :)

There's a theater at the U called Kingsbury Hall and it is really cool, and student tickets are really cheap, so my neighbor and I went to a fun show there called Step Afrika! that was like the movie Stomp the Yard. I can't wait to go back!

IV. Salt Lake City
So I know why you're really here is you want to hear about Salt Lake City! The rumors are true: it's gorgeous. I can even see the mountains out the windows of my apartment! I don't have a lot of spare change, so I haven't been exploring eating establishments as much as I wish (you guys know me so well-- people keep asking about my favorite coffee shop ;) ) but there's lots of other things to do!

First of all, and most importantly, SLC kind of sucks at coffee because of the whole LDS thing (they don't believe in it) BUT there's a place on my street called the Jack Mormon Coffee Company (a "Jack Mormon" is a non-practicing LDS haha) and they brew each cup individually and it is SO. GOOD. seriously.

Fun fact, the actor who plays Phil Dunphy on Modern Family is a SLC native and he owns two bars here, which are supposed to be really classy. It's on my list.

MOST importantly and awesomely, the libraries here ROCK and there is one literally three blocks from my house so I'm there quite a bit actually. They have a great selection of movies and for being a small branch, a nice selection of books as well. Since I'm on fall break right now (did I mention that?) I'm allowing myself to read the top book on my list, The Zhivago Affair. It's a new non-fiction book about the scandal of the publication of Dr. Zhivago during the Cold War. It's phenomenal.

Also Utahns are really pretentious about their chocolate, so this market called Caputo's has this insanely expensive chocolate that's only made with whole beans. My neighbor bought me some but I haven't tried it yet. It's supposed to be life changing. We'll see. At Caputo's, though, I did have a Sangria truffle that literally tasted exactly like sangria. If you come visit me, I'll definitely take you :)

Yesterday I wandered around the city for a few hours and I found a really cool grocery store called Harmon's that reminds me of Kowalski's, or maybe Whole Foods. I also discovered an outdoor mall!

That picture really doesn't do justice to how cool it is. There's fountains and places to sit and all kinds of shops, from Gap and Macy's to Tiffany & Co and Porsche Design.

The canyons are about 20 minutes away and are incredibly gorgeous. We went up there this weekend and a moose was running right next to us! There are lots of hiking trails and as you get higher, ski resorts. I wish I had more time (and money for gas) to spend out there because it's really something.

Mom and I did this hike while she was here.

So I think that's basically it for now! If you're interested in becoming pen pals with me, my favorite thing is getting mail :)

Praises!
-God's faithfulness in this transition
-Professors who genuinely care about my education
-Classmates who are interesting and friendly
-An apartment that feels like home
-My amazing support system back home

Prayers
-That this week rejuvenates me and helps me get motivated for the second half of the semester
-That I continue to make friends who I can spend time with outside of school
-That I either get more connected at church or find a new one

Hablamos pronto!

Test Post

This is a test post to see what it's going to look like! 

Exactly one month from today will be my last day in Minnesota... indefinitely! Which is super weird. Yesterday, I had dinner with my sweet friend Christina and she convinced me that it will be a good thing to blog about the beginning of my new adventure as a Utahn. It'll make me feel more connected to home while also ensuring that I'm taking time for reflection as I settle into a very new lifestyle. Lately, thinking about all the things that will be different and new is so exhausting and overwhelming. I'm very fortunate to have so many people encouraging me and reminding me that this is clearly God's plan for me right now. 

A very dear friend sent me this message yesterday:
I pray for you often, thanking God for you and for the way he uses you to love people. I know God has you where he can best use you and I am thankful for that. I pray he would continue to reveal himself and his love for you to you so that you can be confident of his love as you love and serve those around you. I know people are blessed by the way you love them.

I was so grateful for her encouragement and reassurance that God can use me wherever He has me. Then this morning, I was immediately given an opportunity to exercise that gift He has given me by putting me in a situation with someone I don't particularly care for. I was so blessed that I had just received that message from her so that I was able to recognize it as a growth opportunity rather than simply an enormous irritation.

May the Lord continue to bless me with an open mind and open heart as I use this last month at home to prepare for the next steps in my journey!

Fittingly, the verse of the day on YouVersion is Romans 11:33
"Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!" 

¡Hablamos pronto!