My Music

www.myspace.com/torriegan

That is the link to my music site. I finally recorded all of my decent songs and put them on a website. Check it out :)

Lent

So... I have recenlty been missing my time in Massachusetts wich has made me think about the people, traditions, and other things that make it unique. One of the big parts of Massachusetts culture is Catholic culture. While I don't exactly agree with Catholics I think that pretty much all of the ceremonies in the catholic church can be taken as great things. So this year, in order to get into the correct spirit for the Easter season, I will be celebrating Lent.

When researching about Lent I discovered that it is basically 40 days where you give up something. It starts on Ash Wednesday (tomorrow) and ends on Maunday Thursday. They do this in rememberance of Jesus' temptation in the desert. While I don't quite get the whole Catholic thing behind it, I know that there are a couple of things that God has been trying to teach me lately and I think that practicing Lent might just help.

1. Self Control
I have no idea why but I have NEVER really grasped the idea of self control. I never realized that I can make choices and control my actions. But God has been teaching me that I can have my own standards and not just go with the flow because it's fun. While it might be dumb to practice it with something like giving up sugar... I know that the skills I learn during these next 40 days will transfer over into important areas of my life.

2. Taking time to seek God
I have a tendency to be VERY gung ho for ministry. If I hear an oppurtunity I take it. I don't think about finances, resources, or anything else, I just want to serve. This has left me signed up for 3 missions trips, 2 camp ministries, and a summer in Ephriam which I don't think I will be able to have the money for ANY of these options. But God is teaching me that His timing is right and His plans are right. Just because I can go to Africa doesn't mean I should. Having to trust God for my rock in not having sugar I am hoping will teach me patience and how to sit back and understand his plan.

So yes. If you see me eating sugar before easter PLEASE slap it out of my hands. Because I am opening my life and letting God in and somthing is going to happen.

Sometimes I just miss Massachusetts

While watching an episode of 30 Rock that was set in Boston I realized.... I miss it.

The Irish Catholic population
The accent
The people who say what they think no matter how offensive
The tendency for slight violence

It's just part of who I am. I miss it

I love... because God made

I love loud music because the idea that God could bring all those sounds together blows my mind.

I love looking out at the stars on a clear night because it reminds me of how small I am compared to God.

I love dancing around my apartment because it's a great expression of joy.

I love blowing the tops off of dandelions because I knowthat I am spreading the seeds of more beautiful flowers somewhere else.

I love getting flowers because knowing that someone sees beauty and thinks of me.

I love giving flowers because I know I made someone happy.

I love a good cup of coffee because it tastes wonderful

I love driving nowhere because I get too see so many wonderful things I would have never thought to see.

I love penguins because.... God made them SO CUTE!!! :D

I love just sitting around and talking about life with no agenda because then you can be silly and real.

I love laughing at the dumbest stuff because it reminds me of the simple things.

I love when it takes me a long time to get a joke because i get to enjoy the joke longer than everyone else.

I love the pictures covering my walls becaus they remind me of amazing times with friends

I love when people smile big goofy smiles because I know that for a minute they are truly happy.

I love when a child sees you and runs up to hug your legs because no one is ever that excited to see someone.

I love building blanket forts because it reminds me that you never have to grow up.

I love veggie tales because well... who doesn't.

I love the feeling of holding a guitar because it still amazes me that such beautiful sounds can come out of a box with strings.

I love wearing dresses because they make me feel pretty.

I love listening to audio books with people because then I can enjoy the book with someone else.

I love stopping and praying for the little things no matter who is around because I think that having an open access to God with the people you are with is the most amazing thing ever.

I love smelling good because I love smelling the yummy things God made.

I love when the sun is shining because it's warm and brings light to God's creation.

I love sitting on the green grass in the sunshine even though I am allergic because I feel like I am really a part of creation.

I love sharing silly memories because life is not all serious.

I love when people text me for no reason at all because I know they were thinking of me.

I love wearing things people got me just to make them smile because I love knowing I made someone's day.

I love swinging at the park because feeling the wind rush through your hair and feeling like you are on top of the world is a priceless feeling.

I love walking through a park with a friend because I can just enjoy two of God's best creations.

I love walking barefoot on the beach at night because feelign the cool sand on my feet and seeing the lights of the boarwalk is amazing.

I love the views you see when you walk through a canyon because knowing that God created them for me is such an amazing demonstration of love.

I love driving through Fairview Canyon just to see the beauty because it looks like the place they drive in the movie "Cars".

I love going for a sunday drive because it reminds me of a time when gas money wasn't the most important thing.

I love singing because God has blessed me with a voice that people actually like :)

I love making music with people I love because seeing everyone so enthralled in God's glorious symphony is amazing.

I love seeing someone grasp God's love for the first time because I can see them emerging from darkness to light.

I love when people try to hug me even when I pull away because they care enough to keep trying.

I love when the sun comes through my blinds because it lights up everything around it.

I love the blocks of wood that two little kids colored for me for my birthday because they cared enough to try thier hardest to make me a gift that they put effort and love into.

I love doing something I woudn't normally do (like a puzzle) with friends because I get to put aside myself to have fun with others.

I love when friends ask me to do something because I know they were thinking of me.

I love fireworks because whoever thought of packaging bombs just to be pretty was brilliant.

I love sheilding children's ears when fireworks go off because knowing that I am protecting someone is amazing.

I love pretend swing dancing with my brother because no matter how old we both get we'll always have that.

I love silly youtube videos because people aren't afraid to make fools of themselves.

I love concerts full of people praising God because it is the most amazing thing.

I love buying yummy ice cream for no reason because my roomate and I just want some.

And I love sitting on my bed, eating chocolate covered coffee beans, dancing to Stellar Kart's "Activate" thinking about how much God must have loved me to put all these things and people I love in my life.

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Music and Lyrics

Hello Friends :)
While I know that only two people read this I thought that this would be a good place for me to expound on my current status. I have been writing songs ever since I was little. When I was little they were super cheesy (ask my mom about me coming downstairs super exicted about a song I had written), when I was a young teenager they were dark and depressed, and as I got older they have matured with me. When I became a christian I stopped writing songs for awhile. Four years or so actually. I didn't have a need anymore. But God has brought me back to them. It's a way for me to express what God is doing in my life. So I have five finished songs that I want to complile together into an album of sorts.

But here is my problem, just because God is prompting me to write them and share them doesn't mean they are any good. I need a chance to play them for people. I need a chance for you to hear and give me honest feedback. Because God may just be having me write them for Him. So if any of you know of an oppurtunity to play, record, or even just want to listen to any (or all) of my five song set, I would really appreciate it.

But I hope that... just maybe... God has a plan for this

Haven

Today was so productive it felt like two days

7am - wake up
8am - Bible Study
9am - Get key from Deanna
9:30am - Make copies of keys
10am - Clean Church
11:30am- Shower
12:00pm- Lunch with Deanna
2:00pm - Work Cafe, make valenitnes, and come up with valentine drinks
8:00pm - Clean cafe
9:00pm - Watch movie.

Ah... Family Dynamics

Now to anyone who actually reads my blog... which I found out the other day MAY just consist of atleast three people so I guess one of you might stumble across this.... Hi. You are probally getting sick of my massive amounts of free time (in which I should be doing school work) in which I write blogs. And honestly... I kind of don't care if you read this. God has been working in my life a lot lately. This is college. A huge time of growing and a huge time of change. So I have a lot to write about and work through. You are welcome to join me, and you are even more welcome to start writing your own blog so I can read more blogs to fill up the spare time when I am NOT doing school work like I should. Anyway....!

Family Dynamics. Everyone has them. And they are all different. On one of the rare days when I was doing my school work (which I need to start setting aside atleast and hour a day to work on, that's atleast 12 minutes per class) I found out that you can map family styles by just watching thier interaction. Each family has thier own style and flavor and after about 17 or 18 years, you have pretty much got it down. You know how things work.

The problem is, how your things work is COMPLETELY different than how the girl down the street's family works. Some of you may have expeirienced this when you slept over a friends house. Some families are just REALLY WEIRD. Now here comes the fun part. You turn 18, graduate high school, and move out. (in whatever order you please) Whether you go to college, work, or just bum somewhere, there is a pretty decent chance you WON'T be living on your own or even with family for a fairly decent amount of time.

So what is societies answer to this? Let's put them all in huge apartment buildings. You end up with 3-15 18-25 year old girls sharing an apartment or a few small rooms. Not only did you just stick the most unstable people group together in one place but you throw in PMSing and relationship issues and WOW... things get crazy.

But I think that the hardest thing to deal with is... family dynamics. We have a lot of things that make us who we are. What we consider to be rude, what we consider to be mean, what is appropriate, etc. etc. etc. And this is all stuff we learned from our family. For example, in my family it is very common for us all (my 13 year old brother included) to sit and watch That 70s Show. In some families anything more than "Little House on the Prairie" would be considered inappropriate. And then there are the families who have been watching rated R movies since thier kids were five. Throw these kids together with one TV and it is a catastrophie wating to occur. This occurs with interpersonal things too.

In my house you knew that if you said something particularly mean, even in jest... you'd get slapped and no one would think it was very funny. However an occasional swear word (while looked down upon) meant nothing. However I have an apartment mate who grew up in a family where the whole point was to annoy to the point of slapping, and it was family entertainment. However swearing...was something not allowed. Can you see the problem waiting to happen? Roomate annoys too much, gets slapped (atleast we both agree on that), and I swear. In both our eyes we have done nothing wrong but in each others we just broke the sacred rule.

So yeah... learning how to deal with that is tough. Still learning. But sometimes God blesses you with a family that doesn't live that far away, even if you only see them once or twice a month, or even if it's once or twice a year. And sometimes God gives you friends who maybe you don't live with, but who let you be you and are ok with it.

Learning, observing, etc.
(Speaking of learning... just learned that etcetera was etc, NOT ect.... that's why my spell check has been saying I was doing it wrong for years...)

New Englander

Today I realized some simple things that are never going to leave me.

1. No matter what happens, the best sports teams will always be the Red Sox, the Patriots, and the Celtics... and I hate basketball.

2. Being tough will always be an admirable quality, even to a fault.

3. If you begin to talk badly about my family, I am going to stick up for them. I don't care what you say about me, but don't start about them.

4. Snow is always a part of life. And I'm going to brag about how much more snow I can handle than you.

5. Pride is always going to play a certain part in things. Not bad pride but more like honor. I can admit to faults but inner character and family loyalty will always be important.

6. Swearing to get a point across (when used sparingly and appropriatly) is completly ok.

7. I don't do part time friends. If you are really my friend, this is going to be long term. I don't do casual relationships.

8. I feel what I feel and sometimes I get angry, but I don't do passive aggressive. I'll either get over it or get in your face.

These are just a few of the things I can think of. You see, New England left a huge mark on me. It's a mark you would never notice until you moved somewhere else. And some people might say that these are stubborn bad qualities but I don't think so. I am still just a simple girl who loves God. I want to serve with all my capactiy. But I am also a girl with character and some things make me who I am today. And people who are worth my time and energy are going to look past my pros and my cons and see a friend, and I'll do the same thing. Because it's where we're from, where we've been, what we've done, and what we've been through that make us who we are, and I wouldn't give anything to be generic. Cause God didnt' make me that way.

Becoming an Ephriamite

Ah... It feels so good to be feeling up to write in my happy light blog again. Nothing too serious, just happy and random :) I haven't felt like this pretty much since high school. I miss sitting with 10 or more of your best friends every day. Getting to see them every day, everyone just being together and having random fun. Going to the park, nightgames, ect. I just miss it. Not that college isn't fun but there is no place for you and all your friends to be stuck together, to just escape together, and I find myself stuck in a cafe or my room most of the time and miss just doing things with friends for the heck of it... anyway... I regress.

Oh yeah: DISCLAIMER: This is all my opinion. Not exactly fact.

Back to the point of my blog. Becoming and Ephriamite. For those of you who have litterally NO IDEA what that is, it is simply someone who lives in Ephraim, Utah. In my case it is someone who lives in Ephriam, Utah and regualarly attends Ephriam Church of the Bible. For any of my friends who are not properly educated on the policies and procedures of the Utah countryside, ATLEAST 90% of Utah is LDS. (That is Latter Day Saints, aka Mormon) which means that finding a Bible Church is fairly hard. All born again believers in Sanpete County (which is a VERY large area, over an hour in driving length from end to end) pretty much flock ot this one church. However this church pretty much has three factions. The ever popular Ephriamites, The fabulous people from Manti, and the outliers. The outliers are from various places; Mount Pleasant, Fairview, Fountain Green, Chester, ect... But they are all twenty minutes or more away from the church.

Anyway, Ephriamites make up the majority of the church (I would dare to say 60-70%). And honestly have a slightly different culture than the other groups. While the Manti group is fairly close, the outliers are well just that, outliers. Now I am not saying that we are not one amazing united body in Christ because we are! I love Ephriam Church of the Bible with all of my heart and we are an amazing body in Christ. These are just some things that the chick who is madly in love with anthropology has noticed.

Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself. Honestly I haven't even started the story yet, you just needed to understand my backstory first. (Sorry, but this is going to be a long blog, go make yourself a sandwhich, grab your favorite beverage and come on back, i'll be waiting) So to start this story I need to go back to good old 2007. This is the year I moved to Utah. If you had told me back in January 2007 that I was going to be an Ephriamite I would have looked at you like you had three heads and though you were in some weird sort of a cult. I was just a cute 14 year old girl living in Leicester, MA. Now if any of you know the culture of Massachusetts you know that while we were not near as farm town as Charlton, or as rough and tough as Worcester, we had pretty great elements of both and we definitly had an edge. I lived my life, about a two minute drive, 15 minute walk from my church; Greenville Baptist Church. It was wonderful. In the spring I would walk to youth group, my friends went and it was a weird, but functional family.

During the summer of 2007 I was ripped from everything I ever knew into the foreign land of Utah. I moved into a tiny town called Fairview (which is about a 30 minute drive from Ephraim Church of the Bible, making us one of the furthest outliers) where I was greeted by about 800 sheep walking down the town's MAIN road. It was the smallest thing I had ever seen. You could walk from end to end in less than a halfhour. And you could see the other end of the town when you looked out your front door. Regardless of what you think... talk about a HUGE change.

But I grew to love this cute little town and it's unique offcolor flavor. Anyone who has lived in Sanpete County can tell you that each town has a different mood and flavor. Being the total Anthropolgy geek (why I am not going to school for this!?!) I will explain it to you. Ephriam basically is the hub of Sanpete County. Mainly, because it has the only Wal-Mart for over 50 miles. Oh yeah, it also has the only decent community college in Utah, named: Snow College. They have pretty much the biggest population of the county and act like it. If we pretend that Sanpete County was a stereotypical high school this would be where the smart, preppy, popular kids would be. Wholesome, loved by all, ect. Now little Fairview where my Utah self is from is for all the loner kids who don't quite fit in. I would go as far as to say all the druggies (another town has that claim to fame) it has those who are slightly off color, those who aren't afraid to speak their mind. This also has a lot of the really cool kids like the drama geek or those who just don't blend in. They don't judge, but they don't fit.

So this is where I am. An outlier. A bit unique, but that's ok because I never really did fit in anywhere. I still don't. I would drive to Ephriam atleast 4 times a week to participate in church events. But I was still an outlier. And while the Ephriamites still love you when you are an outlier, there is a lot more out of sight out of mind things going on. And I was ok with this. I never thought I would become and Ephriamite, but as I have said MANY times, NEVER say NEVER.

Now within this group of Ephriamites there is a very special group. I call them collegites. They are part of a fabulous and wonderful college ministry to Snow College. While often persecuted, they don't let anything stop them and are one of the most loving groups, that is when you are a part of them. The collegites have a tendency to be very secluded. (and while this is changing in recent years, it is still the overall tone) The illusive collegite can be found almost always at 96 E Center St. in Ephraim, UT. At the BEST COFFEE HOUSE EVER... the Solid Rock Cafe. They are a wonderful group of people but tend to forget about you if you are not in thier group. It's a group that takes quite awhile to fit in with because they are simply so tight knit. And if you had told me even a year ago that I was not only going to be an Ephriamite, but at Collegite, I would have laughed in your face.

However, after I graduated high school I spent a semester searching and was drawn back by God to become not only an Ephriamite but a Collegite. I now currently live in the Solid Rock Cafe with the other Collegites and honestly loving it. But I will always be an outlier in my heart. And I honestly had no idea that the culture shock from outlier ville to Ephriamite was so different, but it is.

I thought this might just be me but I was talking to a friend who recently made the change from outlier to ephriamite as well and she sees the big change as well. The outliers had a very independant but tight knit group. Anyone could come, anyone could leave, and we cared about you but no one really relied on anyone. We knew you were always there to help, but we mostly did things on our own. Ephriamites are intertwined with every part of thier beings to thier particular subgroup. Every aspect of life is based on that subgroup, such as the collegites.

SO yeah, these are just my observations on my journey to become a Collegite. I would like to end by saying in NO WAY do I condem any of you no matter what group you are in. All anthropological groups are equal and no one has any better way of functioning than another. I love each of you, but sometimes I just don't fit. While I am now a collegite I just don't fit. I don't really fit as an Ephriamite. But I have never really been one for fitting in. We are all one body in Christ, and that can break the greatest bonds.