Visual Tiles and Fasting

This week has been a little crazy!  We are implementing a new database system, so we were doing a lot of data collection on Wednesday, and it's a really cool system!  You basically collect all the data you want, and then all that data is represented in tiles, with icons and colors and everything, so that you can get a really fast overview of the state of things all at once!  It's from President's old company called VisualCue, which does the same thing, but for sales reps and such.  It's really cool to see President applying his skillset to his calling to make everything more efficient!  It's the best!  So I've spent a lot of time this week on that.

This Friday though, we had a lesson with a referral, and she was so excited to read the Book of Mormon, it was incredible to see.  She was absolutely enthralled!  She is a referral from the Rebaza Family, who are going in June to Trujillo to be the mission president there, so he's super excited to be able to help with the lessons and the work in general!  It's absolutely the coolest!

I also got to study fasting this week, and it was so fun!  It was interesting to see that the fast offering is an integral part of the fast, and as we really turn away from our selfish desires, our body submits to the spirit, and we are able to do what God would have us do.  It was also interesting to read that after 24 hours, the body changes what it's using for energy, and releases some chemicals that stop the hunger.  So, quite literally, after 24 hours, the body submits, and we emerge masters over our body.  It is then when we can unify our spirit and our body in one purpose, and in so doing, "receive a fullness of joy."  The law of the fast is very powerful!  But it also has to be voluntary.  An imposed fast does absolutely nothing.  Maybe make you skinnier, but that's it!  But when we choose to exercise and feed our spirits by fasting, the blessings listed in Isaiah 58:6-11 are incredible!  The Lord will make us like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.  It's absolutely incredible, and has many promised blessings, but Joseph Fielding Smith warns against excessiveness in his October 1912 address, saying that the "Lord will accept that with is enough, with a good deal more pleasure and satisfaction than that which is too much and unnecessary.”  I know God loves us, and I know that Christ lives, and does everything he can to help us every day, to become one with him and Father.

I love you all!  Have a good week!
--Dallin

P.S. Here are the talks I was reading:
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/04/is-not-this-the-fast-that-i-have-chosen?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/topics/fasting-and-fast-offerings?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/ensign/2009/04/fasting-with-power?lang=eng