If I asked you what the most popular event of the year in Utah Valley is, what would you say? Pioneer Day Parade? The popular Rex Lee Run? Just ask any student at BYU and they can tell you - the Festival of Colors in Spanish Fork. In just a few short years this has become Utah Valley's most anticipated and popular annual event - especially for BYU students and the local hippie population. Every year thousands travel to Spanish Fork to attend the Holi Festival of Colors at the Krishna temple in Spanish Fork.
This festival being directly related to one celebrated in Trinidad and Guyana (called Pagwa), I couldn't pass it up. So Saturday afternoon we loaded up the car, and headed down to see what it's all about. The traffic to get into the even was backed up all the way onto the freeway exit, but eventually we made it. We braved our way into the crowd, went to pick up some bags of colored chalk at the temple (more on that later), but all the chalk had already been distributed so we had to go find some friends in the crowd to borrow from.
The festival follows a popular Indian traditional story in which an evil witch named Holika tried to burn an innocent child but was burned herself when the child called upon God to save him by chanting "Hare Rama Hare Rama Hare." To commemorate this event, a huge pire is built with an effigy of the witch Holika, and as the crowd chants along, the pire is lit - symbolizing a triumph of good over evil. As the fire burns the crowd celebrates by throwing the 25,000 bags of colored chalk (just flour in our case)that were distributed in the air, or at each other, creating a huge clowd of dust, and covering everyone completely in colors - hence the festival name.
(click above to see video - the last 15 seconds of this is the main part. Of course I had to shut off my camera before too many colors started coming.)
And after that it turns into a hippie-fest chant-a-long dance.
Wow, it's been a while. So I'll give an update on my life.
First of all, my life has gotten so much busier over the past couple weeks. I started working at a place called Qualtrics Labs in north Provo. They provide online survey software to over half of the nation's top business schools and to about 15% of the Fortune 500 (I added a simple 1 question poll at the end to try it out). I am part of tech support, so I will be answering phone calls and emails from professors and market researchers across the country who have questions about the system. Plus I might get to do some training here and there, showing people how to use the software. I really like this job because for the first time I have a job where I can actually be creative and make a difference.
But, I'm still at the bookstore as well, so my hours have jumped up from about 16 to 24 a week. Good thing I like being busy and stressed. Golf class also started this past week. My Thursdays consist of cooking from 9 to 12, work from 12 to 3, golf from 4 to 6 and public speeking from 6:30 to 9. Nothing especially hard, but a full day nonetheless.
On top of all that, I've started a mentoring program where we go out once a week and spend time with a local kid. It is so much fun. Our child is really cool. So far we've gone bowling and kite flying. Next week I think we'll probably go ice skating or roller skating.
It feels so nice to have a constant flow of daily activities and hobbies now. I remember in high school I never really had any (except computer games? but that doesn't count). I am reading a book called How to Win at College which basically tells you how to approach college so that you have a killer resume that will get you any job you want at the end. One of it's tips is to always be working on a "grand project". I thought about that, and I realized I have a whole string of them - learning to golf, learning to cook, improving my handwriting, learning Spanish, working out, becoming a great guitar player, etc. Maybe that's why life feels so much fuller now. I never wonder what to do next, because if I do run out of homework (which is a rarity these days) I always have something fun (and productive?) to fall back on.
Being home from my mission has been really hard and frustrating because for the first time in my life there is no set structure or timeline to follow. On top of that I feel like a completely different person now - my outlook on life, my interests, even my personality to some extent. Combine those two, and everyday events suddenly become an adventure as I try to figure out how the "new me" should deal with them. So all of the sudden life has become completely unpredictable. But yesterday I was pondering and it occured to me, this is how its supposed to be. On the mission we would always tell people to take steps of faith, and now for the first time in my life I, too, have to learn to walk by faith.
I started studying 1 Nephi today because I think that of all people, Lehi must have learned what it means to walk by faith. I am so impressed that in every chapter there are admonitions and promises that if we will be faithful and keep the commandments we will be led to a land of promise.
I think usually the Lord lets us know the end result and sometimes he illuminates pieces of the path in front of us, but for the most part he asks us to just faithfully step into the darkness. I love the song Lead Kindly Light with the words "keep thou my feet, I do not ask to see the distant scene, one step enough for me." I am grateful that the Lord places so much trust in us. I am comforted to know that we too have a land of promise in store for us if we will follow the Lord in faith.
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