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General Conference

Traditionally, New Years is the time we sit down, evaluate our life, and set appropriate goals. However, an even better time for this is coming up in just three weeks - General Conference weekend. For anyone not familiar with this event, General Conference is a semi-annual meeting in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where members from all over the world gather to hear the teachings of our church leaders. We believe these leaders to have the same authority and the same divine commision as the apostles and prophets we read about in the Bible. The teachings we receive during General Conference help us to know how we can face the specific challenges of our day and be better disciples of Jesus Christ.

Because conference is such a special event, I believe it merits extra attention and preparation. Here are some things I've done in the past to prepare for General Conference that I would suggest:

Before Conference:

1. Periodically watch, read, or listen to previous General Conference talks.

2. Come up with a list of life questions with which you need guidance. Without fail, as you sincerely listen to the speakers, you will find the answers you seek.

3. Study the scriptures. I especially recommend Mosiah chapters 2 through 5 in the Book of Mormon. See how King Benjamin's sermon mirrors the General Conference that we have today. Pay attention to how the people receive his teachings as he expounds the doctrines of the fall of man and of the atonement.

During Conference:

1. Go to Conference. If you live close to Salt Lake City, make a point to attend at least one session live at the Conference Center. Having a ticket is helpful but not necessary, as there are always extra seats to go around. I believe watching it live at Temple Square serves helps us remember what a monumental occasion it is.

2. If you can't go to Conference, still take the day off, dress in your Sunday best, and watch it at home. Be sure to remove all distractions, and avoid trying to multitask during conference.

3. Take notes. Even if a particular talk does not apply to you directly, writing helps you to stay focused. Last year I bought a Moleskine diary solely to hold Conference

notes. Any notebook will do, but if you are like me, investing more in a nice one will help you to value it more.

After Conference:

1. Sunday afternoon, find a quiet place to go ponder and review your notes. From your notes, make a list of the key ideas and quotes that you felt were most important for you.

2. From your summarized notes, create Conference Goals - specific goals for improvement based on what you felt and learned at conference.

3. Print your goals, stick them on your wall by your desk, and refer to them often throughout the coming months.

Hearing from living prophets and apostles is such an incredible privilege. On October 3rd and 4th I hope you will all take the time to "go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths" Isaiah 2:3

Full conference coverage can be found here: http://www.lds.org/conference/languages/0,6353,310-1,00.html

Have a great week - I'll post another update on my life soon.

Summer Happenings

...and just like that, summer's over. I don't know if I'm ready to move on yet - I feel like I haven't given myself a proper summer vacation since I've been working so much. Can't complain though when my daily schedule consists of consulting with clients at companies like Bain, Ameriprise, eBay and GM just to name a few, and also helping professors from across the globe at campuses such as the University of Adelaide (Australia), the Nanyang Technological University (Hong Kong), Harvard, and Berkeley. It is a breath of fresh air compared to a regular college job.

Here's some summer highlights -

July:

The Timpanogos Trip - Part 2

Earlier we had tried hiking Timp, but there was still too much snow. This time though, we were successful! I really like Timp. On a regular mountain, you get to the top, enjoy the view and then you just come back down. But on Timp, you get to the top, you enjoy the view... and then you slide down a glacier! Seriously that was more fun than any ride I've ever been on. I wish I could have done it more than once, but that would have meant another hour hiking back to the top.

resting at the top

the mighty glacier - watch out for rocks!

August:

More of the same stuff. The only August pictures I have are from a

bonfire in which three of us at Qualtrics happened to wear our company t-shirts.

I've been struggling to make time to get my business going. I have registered my business name with the state of Utah, but that's about as far as I've gotten. We also moved this last week. I felt bad for our new roomates when, after being there just one night we had a spontaneous pizza dinner with probably about 15 people there. I love the new complex so far. Our apartment feels more like a home than a dorm. We have a downstairs with the kitchen and living room, and then bedrooms upstairs. Unlike Glenwood, there are no holes in the wall or beds supported on cinder blocks, and the manager is the nicest person you will ever meet. Still though, I feel like my heart's back at the Glenwood. My roomates and I have been back there nearly every night this week. I'm sure we'll grow to love the new ward though.

So with all that said, here's my personal development goals for the new semester:

1. Communication - be a more interesting person to talk to

2. Organization - keep my room clean and my books and notes organized (I'm really bad at this)

3. Time management - limit my 'screen time' at the computer to only necessary tasks

Ask me how I'm doing next time we talk!

20somethingspotential

Part creative writing practice (can I become a decent writer?)

Part marketing experiment (can someone really draw a following and make money online?)

Part service project (can I help people live better?)

It's A 20-something's guide to living up to your potential, my new blog. It is a chronicle of my quest to set and reach goals and live up to my potential. I hope to also provide practical ideas based on my experiences along the way on having more meaningful relationships with those around us.

Phantom of the Glenwood

Here's the finished product of our video for the ward film festival. For full screen, click on the arrows next to the vimeo logo.

Pizza

I've been trying my hand at pizza for the last week or two, and have found some interesting recipes. One of my favorites is the deep dish pizza (but I'm probably biased since this is my own recipe.)

Ingredients:

1 ¼ cup warm water

1 tablespoon yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

½ teaspoon salt

3-3 ½ cups flour

¼ cup butter or margarine, melted

2 cans tomato paste

1 can whole plum tomatoes

1 package Jimmy Dean Italian Sausage (be sure to get this exact kind - it is seasoned perfectly)

pepperonis (optional)

Mozzerella cheese - at least 1 cube fresh and 1 cup grated (the more the better - you can do all grated if you want to simplify things)

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

minced garlic

minced onion

basil

oregano

salt

pepper

Dough:

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water.

2. Add sugar, salt and 2 ½ cups flour. Mix to form dough.

3. If more flour is needed, add up to 1 cup more. Mix about 3 minutes.

4. Let dough rest for 10 minutes.

Sauce:

1. Cook sausage and drain grease

2. While sausage is cooking, in a seperate pan simmer finely minced garlic and onion in olive oil for a few minutes

3. Add 1 can plum whole tomatoes (drained), 2 cans tomato paste, and one paste-can of water. stir until well mixed. You will probably want to mash the tomatoes a little (but not too much).

4. Add the sausage (and pepperonis if you want) to the sauce. The sauce should have a very thick, chunky consistency - if it is thin, you will have a very messy pizza.

5. Add basil, oregano, salt and pepper to taste.

Assemble:

1. Spray a springform pan liberally with oil. Roll out dough and place it in the pan (so it covers the bottom and comes up the sides). The dough on the sides will be drooping down, but once you pour in the sauce this won't be a problem.

2. Cover the crust with thin slices of mozzerella.

3. Pour in the chunky sauce / sausage mixture.

4. Sprinkle additional mozzerella and shredded parmesan cheese on top.

5. Bake in preheated oven (probably around 425 - I can't recall) until the crust is golden brown.

Hope you like it. For more great pizza, you can try these amazing California Pizza Kitchen recipes:

Rosemary Chicken and Potato

http://www.recipesource.com/main-dishes/pizza/rosemary-chicken-potato1.html

BBQ Chicken

http://www.recipezaar.com/BBQ-Chicken-Pizza-California-Pizza-Kitchen-Style-155744

Glendog Millionaire

For FHE we were supposed to make a movie for the ward Film Festival. Our assignment was "Phantom of the Glenwood: The Musical", but we didn't know what to do with it, so we did what anyone who's seen Slumdog Millionaire would do - an ending credits bollywood dance.

Life Happenings

Life is good. I realize I haven't written in a while. Somehow I've managed to be extra busy even during the summer. Probably because I've been working till six every day, but it could also be the institute, FHE, mexican mustache parties, sailing, birthday parties, spanish practice, thursday bonfires, etc. Yeah, Glenwood is really fun during the summer. Our ward feels so much closer now that we all have time to do stuff together.

Last week I finally got the Fluenz software and started learning Spanish. I love it so far - esta muy bueno. Luis, my Mexican roomate is helping me too. My favorite exercise is the one where I'm supposed to carry on a conversation with the computer - I find it really amusing. Speaking of Spanish, somehow I've found myself trying my hand at Latin dancing (really poorly though!) lately. I think dancing is way fun, although I definitely need more practice.


I've been playing around with the idea of starting a business this coming semester. I'm not sure if there's really demand for it, or if it would be profitable, so I've created a feasibility study to test the waters (it helps to work for a market research firm at times like this). You can learn more about the business by previewing my study below. Just make sure you say "Yes I agree" to the confidentiality agreement, and say yes when asked if you have cleaning checks - otherwise you will get kicked out of the survey early.

click for Business Feasibility Study

I'm going to send this survey out over facebook to get a feel for the demand, and then I'll decide if I feel like going through with it.

After this last general conference, I made some goals of where I wanted to be spiritually in my life by the end of the summer. Honestly though, I kind of forgot about them until the other day when I was flipping through my general conference journal and stumbled upon them. I was so astounded to see how the experiences and opportunities I have had since then seem to have been directly catered towards me making the changes I was seeking. It reminded me of my mission, where I would pray to overcome a weakness, then forget about it until a few weeks later, when I would realize that all along the Lord had been there helping me along. I love the opportunities for change the Gospel affords us. Can I also just say how much I am enjoying the Book of Mormon? I haven't gone straight through it since my mission - most of my study since then has been topical.  Now though, I have started at the beginning and I am plowing through.  The people in the Book of Mormon are such amazing examples. I love how all of their experiences can be related to our lives.

Holi Festival of Colors

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.

From Holi Festival of Colors 2009

(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.



And there's crowd-surfing and crazy people.



But in the end we had a great time.

Life Update

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.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Good Times

Life is great.  I'm really having fun with my new roomates and friends at Glenwood.  We've started a tradition of inviting different girls over for Sunday dinner to get to know them.  Last week was Mexican week, and this week was French themed (well, it was soup themed, but we thought that was too boring.)  We keep being pleasantly surprised how amazing the food turns out each week (since these are things we've never made before), and also how fun the girls are (since we try to invite apartments that we don't really know).  Each week seems to get better.  And, I feel like I know half the ward already, so that's another bonus.

So, this week I've got a lot on my plate.  Well, that is except for a date.  I don't know what I'm doing for a date this week.   But other than that, I've got a ton of accounting studying to do, plus other stuff.  Really, compared to accounting, my other classes are a piece of cake.  Speaking of cake, there's not much I enjoy more than leaving my accounting class, where we talk about debits and credits and financial statements, and heading over to cooking, where we have serious discussions about making sure your meal has a variety of color, texture, and temperature.   For a college course, cooking feels like such a joke, but I love it.  I also have a speech to give this week for public speaking.  We are doing recitations this week - choosing a piece of prose, and reciting it using a variety of tone, volume, pitch, etc.                                             

I'm considering participating in a program called Conexiones - where you have a Latino family in the area, and you and a partner go and read with them each week to promote literacy.  I think it would be a fun way to learn Spanish since that's something I really want to do, but I don't know if I have the time for it.      

Back at the Y

Life is looking up for me.  I recently moved to Glenwood, and I love the place so far.  Well, not the apartment itself - it's pretty ghetto, but the people.  Here's a few of the things I've done in the last week:

-Met a ton of people - I have a goal to be one of those people who always remembers people's names the first time, and then doesn't forget them.  Switching wards is great practice for that.  The people I've met are great so far.

-Had a bonfire -  I took an old pallet from work (with permission of course) and we went in the canyon for a big apartment group date.  I'd never done a winter bonfire before.  It's actually pretty fun.  I think the snow and freezing cold makes it better.

-Watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - an excellent french film that I would recommend to anyone.  It is based on a true story of a man who suffered a massive stroke and is resigned to complete paralysis except for the ability to blink one eye.  Very eyeopening in understanding those with disabilities.  I also saw The Emperor's New Groove this week, and it was seriously the funniest cartoon I've ever seen.

-Had Chinese dinner night - we had an apartment of girls over on Sunday for a chinese dinner, and it actually turned out great, considering we didn't know any of them, and none of us had ever cooked chinese.  This sunday is Mexican night.

-Got my new laptop (finally!) - I was such a wreck without it, but now it's here.  I like the upgraded network card that lets me surf the internet and download at literally 10 times the speed of my old wireless card.  Plus the webcam is pretty cool.  I'll be practicing and reviewing my speeches for public speaking with it.  Here's what I look like now, while I'm typing this.

-Went to amazing devotionals - I really appreciated seeing President Monson on Sunday, and Elder Holland on Tuesday.  I think their talks were a great strength to me.  I'm so grateful to be here at BYU at this time in my life.  There's so much to do, and so little time to waste!

OK, I'd better go now, I have class in just a few minutes.  Have a great week!