Coast Trip, Faith, and Input Forms

This week has been really cool!  We had the best P-Day ever today!  It's Cinco de Mayo today, so we had a party.  

We went down to Lima South (Barranco) with President and his family, and we went to a really high quality ice cream place, with what tasted like Cold-Stone-level ice cream.  

It was super cool, and had freelance French artwork all over the walls!  

Then we went to a place called Burrito Bar.  It had these massive Chipotle-style burritos, which were absolutely delicious!  

And while we were waiting for the burritos, President bought us buffalo wings!  I was thinking of Harrison the whole time!  And then we went with President and his family to the beach! 

It was absolutely amazing!  I haven't seen the ocean in 20 months.  

I had forgotten how beautiful it is, and how alive I feel next to it!  

It was such an amazing experience!  

Going to the coast to me is always a reflective experience, and I felt the Spirit really strongly standing out there and looking at everything.  

It made me realize how powerful God is, and how great our potential is.  

I absolutely loved it!

The attribute of the transfer is Faith, so we've been studying it a lot.  I've been reading through and studying Lectures on Faith, as found on the Joseph Smith Papers website, and it has been super fascinating!  President also approved another book for us to read, called Drawing on the Powers of Heaven.  I haven't read it all, because I don't have a copy, but I did read through and look at all the sources he cites, and he cites a lot of Journal of Discourses, which is on BYU's website.  So I was able to read through some of that, and it's very clear to me that a major part of faith is concentration.  So I'm working on improving that, because I can get really distracted sometimes, and I get really focused, but on the wrong things.  I have loved reading what some of the prophets have said about that!

President is having me work on the input forms some more, and I feel like I am getting real life job experience!  He asked me to add maps functionality to the forms, so I got to research the google maps API, and integrate it with the forms!  I also decided that sharing zip files over and over again was not a good idea going forward, so I created a project on github!  Now I can track all the updates I make and have a central place to distribute the results!  If you're interested, here is the link:  https://github.com/MisionPLE/progreso-new/

I love you all so much!  I promise that as you all keep reading your scriptures daily, you will be able to do anything.  You will feel the Lord in all aspects of your life.  It is absolutely a miracle.  It changes the way you think and act, when you realize that the Lord is there!  It's not, If the Savior Stood Beside Me, He is standing beside you all the time!  It's an incredible thought!

Have a wonderful life!  I'll talk to you next week!

--Dallin

P.S.

Just a word of caution, Drawing on the Powers of Heaven is a great book, but it's not a declaration of doctrine, rather it's a CES teacher summarizing the words of prophets and sharing his experiences.  Also, Journal of Discourses is also not considered a source of doctrine due to the unreliable nature of the transcription, but is very valuable!  We could say that we believe Journal of Discourses as far as it is transcribed correctly :)