Author: Will

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Going the Extra Mile to be Honest

Walker and I bought groceries today at Costco. We got out to the car to load all the items in the van and the thought came to me to check the receipt for the items on the bottom of the cart. Those items were boxes of milk jugs. Sure enough, none of those items were on the receipt. We then loaded all the paid for items and marched back into the store to pay for the rest. We paid and as we were leaving the store the Holy Ghost witnessed to me with a warm feeling in my heart that what we’d done was right.

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Sabbath Day

Recognizing the Spirit

We arrived at church today as the opening hymn of sacrament meeting was being sung. We slipped into our middle section bench saved early by Walker as we always do. The meeting was nice. I felt and recognized the warm comfort and peace of the Spirit as we sang the hymns and listens to the speakers. I felt the Spirit amplified midway through when a young girl sang a special musical number. It was lovely.

Future of the Young Men’s Program

During the second hour I met with the leaders of the YM, including the bishopric. The discussion was led by our new YM President, Dan Duckworth. It was great. He want to take a new approach to running the young men’s program; more adult leader hands off. It seems like a great idea. He’s definitely the right guy to help lead this kind of change.

The conversation was humbling and revealing for me as it led me to see the errors of my approach over the last year or so working with the Deacons. I’ve not mentored how or let the boys lead like I should. What portion I’ve done, I didn’t let happen long enough for it to be meaningful for the boys. I’ve expected too much in the wrong areas and not enough in others. I wish I knew then what I know now. That’s obviously how we learn in life. I’m sorry that the boys have to suffer as I learn.

Dan presented the YM program in this way:

On the Ecclesiastical side, we need to help the boys learn to exercise their priesthood keys and fulfill their duties now. One eh Development side, we need to provide them opportunities to grow so they become great missionaries, husbands, and fathers in the future. Mentoring on both sides is required along the way.

Ministering

Willy and I went to minister to the Kirby family this afternoon. They are a nice family. I’m excited to get to know them better. Today there seemed to be something in the air, but I couldn’t discern it. We’ll keep trying to get to know them and trust that will lead us to being able to help them more in the future.

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Formula for Receiving Revelation

President Nelson taught:

  1. Find a quiet place where you can regularly go.
  2. Humble yourself before God.
  3. Pour out your heart to your Heavenly Father. Turn to Him for answers and for comfort. Pray in the name of Jesus Christ about your concerns, your fears, your weaknesses—yes, the very longings of your heart.
  4. And then listen!
  5. Write the thoughts that come to your mind. Record your feelings and
  6. Follow through with actions that you are prompted to take. 

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2018/04/revelation-for-the-church-revelation-for-our-lives

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Miracles Tender Mercy

Unbearable Back

My back had been hurting for weeks; 9 weeks actually. The issue has gotten progressive worse and today I found the pain unbearable. I went to Walmart to pick up some things and I started to have a panic attack because I wasn’t sure I could drive myself home. I’ve never felt like that before. It was quite scary. As I was making my way out of the parking lot I remembered that Vitamin B5 was recommended to help with my health problems. I turned around, went back into Walmart, bought the vitamins, and made my way home in excruciating pain. At home I slid out of my truck trying to minimize the negative impact of landing on my feet.

I made it I the house and showed Willy the new plastic line I’d found for the weed wacker. I then shut myself in my room and fell to my knees and begged Heavenly Father to relieve me. I also commanded by the Melchizedek priesthood and in the name of Jesus Christ that any evil spirit or curse or whatever might be causing my pain to be cast out and be replaced with light. That’s what I felt I should do. I then lifted the bedroom and I iced my back immediately as that had numbed me from some of the pain earlier. I then went outside to replace the 4 sprinkler valves in the front yard.

Digging was required, but I couldn’t do it very well. So, I asked Willy to help me. He was awesome. We stumbled a fair bit, but we nailed it. We replaced 4 valves and installed a new manifold so repairs like this will be quick in the future and we don’t have to dig up the lawn. It was tough work, but we persevered. After a while I didn’t realize my back wasn’t hurting. It was great. I still felt some pain at time, but my state of hysteria from before had disappeared. Willy and I worked until 12:30am until our work was done and cleaned up. My back is felling quite good. It’s a miracle from the Lord. I think he’s trying to show me he has power to do his work and work miracles in my life.

A cool side tender mercy came as Willy and I were working. I had to Home Depot to get more fitting as I’d made too many mistakes and ran out. While there I asked about water proof wire nuts and the specialist recommended I save my money. So, I bought less expensive standard nuts, additional fittings, and returned home to finish the job. As Willy and I dug to reveal more pipe that we’d have to cut to fix our last issue, we hit a plastic bag. It was as buried in the dirt and contained about ten waterproof nuts. I assumed they’d been lost and buried years ago when then home was first built. They were just what we needed to make the wiring look nice. I could have completed the work without those special nuts and everything would have worked fine, but the Lord provided them anyway. I think the Lord is showing me that he’s willing to provide more than just the basic needs in life, but also preferences and desires.

Maybe the biggest miracle of all is that when we were done everything worked like we need it to. I couldn’t be happier.

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Miracles

Not Just a Receipt

I took my team out to lunch on Wednesday to celebrate everyone’s great work to develop and deploy on time dashboard filters. I meant to expense the meal, but never got around to it until Friday. Friday morning, I couldn’t find the receipt anywhere. I checked all my clothes pockets, but resigned to the fact I’d have to did the receipt later. That afternoon at the office, I reached into my pocket to pull out my phone. I felt a folded paper there also. I pulled it out to discover the receipt I was looking for. I had checked that pocket earlier; the receipt wasn’t there. I believe the Lord put it there to show me he’s mindful of me.

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Baby Jensen Arrives

Paula started having contractions at 11:30pm on Wednesday night, 18 April 2018. I was fast asleep at that point. At 3 am Paula woke me up and said it was time to go to the hospital.

We arrived at the American Fork hospital at about 3:40 am. Paula was checked and admitted as she was 5 cm dilated. Some antibiotics were administered at 4:10 M because Paula is strep-b positive. Dr. Lamoreaux wanted the medication to take affect so we had to wait at least an hour. At 5:10 am Paula had progressed to 9 cm so the doctor broke her water.

At 5:29 am, baby girl Jensen was born. Paula had to push very hard as the baby was posterior. She was 8 lbs 1 ounce and 19 inches long. She came out screaming and a nice pink color. Paula screened with excitement when she saw our new little is a girl. She is eating well already and doing very well.

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Making a decision.

I received an offer of employment on Monday. I’ve been working hard to learn the will of the Lord concerning this opportunity. After many prayers, fasting, and a temple trip; the confirmation I’ve been anticipating has come. While driving my kids to the store we threw in the movie Leap. As we were driving, the young girl in the movie is at a low point after being sent back to the orphanage and is given this bit of advice by her deceased mother as a voice, “if you never leap, you’ll never fly.” When I heard those encouraging words, an overwhelming feeling from the Spirit came over me and I knew that was the Lord speaking to me.

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Tender Mercy

Triple

The Lord blessed us with 3 tender mercies today:

  1. Paula and I went to the specialist ultrasound this afternoon. The special visit was necessary because the baby’s kidneys were dilated. After the tech and doctor did the scans, they indicated that the baby was fine and the kidneys were within normal size. What a blessing! They did find that the placenta was attached a little off, but it wasn’t a big concern.
  2. We stopped by the lock smith on the way home from the doctor. They didn’t have the piece I needed in stock, but they did find one on a unit they were returning to the manufacturer. They sold it to me.
  3. I spent all day racking my brain over a bug in the code for an Amex dashboard. I had to pause to take the YM & YW to UVU for a special missionary activity. I returned home and almost immediately found the big and fixed it. I believe the Lord blessed me for serving.
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Journal Setup

When most people think of writing a journal, they go buy a physical book from a store. Yeah, I don’t think that way. So, I setup an electronic journal. That was my goal for day one of this endeavor; done.

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Tender Mercy

God Cares About Our Everyday Lives

My team engaged with Adobe Analytics Marketing to create an engaging experience for Summit attendees. It was decided to track arcade basketball hoops (6x), aggregate the statistics for individuals and the collective group, and send emails.

I worked with marketing and a design agency to solidify the concepts for dashboards, emails, and a website. Coming up with the concept was relatively easy compared to implementing it.

With only a week left before Summit, our team was still facing some serious, show-stopper technical challenges:

  1. Badge scanners weren’t working.
  2. No Adobe Campaign instance or someone to implement email designs.
  3. Orange PI mini computers that wouldn’t rotate the screen for our displays.

We were also running out of time to implement the things we already knew how to do:

  • Complete Adobe Campaign triggers.
  • Implement game achievements.
  • Simulate multiple players playing.
  • Create a personalized website for any players.
  • Complete the games screen.
  • Complete the aggregate dashboard screen.
  • No Campaign design and dashboard.
  • No Audience Manager design and dashboard.

With all this still in flight 1 week before Summit, I began to question if we could really get it all figured out and completed. I then started to pray more earnestly. In my heart I knew that Heavenly Father cared about me and my team and our success. I knew that what we were pursuing was good and right. And, therefore, merited a blessing from Heavenly Father. I prayed morning and night. I fasted the Sunday before Summit. Miraculously, the blessings came. On Monday, we figured out the screen rotation on the PI. On Tuesday, we figured out the badge scanners. On Wednesday, our Campaign instance finally got setup and a couple of individuals from Paris surfaced to configure it and implement our emails. Heavenly Father enlightened our minds, led us to answers to figure out what we needed to, and brought people to us that could help do things we couldn’t. We had a very long week and everyone pushed very hard. We finished coding the major pieces of the experience Saturday night at 11:55pm. It felt so good.

At Summit the experience was called Metrics Madness. It was very engaging and extremely successful. The Analytics Marketing team expressed that they had never been a part of something so compelling.