Highlights

Well, I'm going to continue with the highlight reel of the last few weeks, starting on September 24th (since that's where the previous post ended) and going until hopefully today October 19th. Anyway, If you're curious what I've been up to for the month before this post make sure to check out the two posts before it since I also published those today... which I guess I could have waited... but I really wanted to get them out there and not have to worry about it.

Anyway, the first highlight from this time period is the afternoon of Saturday September 29th. I went on a mini-date with one of my friends to get some frozen yogurt, which tastes surprisingly like soft-serve ice cream... especially if you put some toppings on it like m&ms and chocolate chips. I had cake batter flavor... which was pretty darn delicious... and well worth the $3 or so that I paid to get some for the both of us. Anyway, I only consider it a mini date because  it lasted about an hour and pretty much consisted of walking to get the yogurt (and talking on the way), getting and eating the yogurt, and walking back home (and talking all the while about various things). I promised her I would take her on a real date soon enough... and the plan is for it to be tomorrow. I kinda hope she doesn't read this until then... but it doesn't really matter if she knows what I'm planning or not. It's an afternoon date - We're starting at like 12:30pm, and we're gonna go on a picnic type of thing with some hopefully tasty rolls (cinnamon and regular), pulled chicken (I would do pork but I don't have any...) to go on the rolls, baby carrots, and some Guarana Antartica to drink.

Then we're gonna go watch a movie at the dollar theater, Ice Age: Continental Drift to be precise (one of the few movies she hasn't seen that is currently in the dollar theater). After the movie, we're gonna go walk up to campus and see if the roof of the JFSB is open and if so go on it and chat for a bit. I'll of course have some cookies and cinnamon rolls still for us to snack on, and some bottles of water as well. We'll head back home after that since she has some activity to go to that evening. [There will soon enough be a post about how the date actually goes and what we actually end up doing... you'll see it soon enough :P ]

The next highlight I've had was pretty much an entire week long... It was midterms week! I ended up doing pretty well on all of my midterms (I at least didn't fail any of them...) and considering I had tests in 5/6 classes in one week... that's not too shabby. During the week I usually relieved my stress by baking... so I made about 4 batches of cookies that week for various reasons :P

Another Highlight was on October 7th, 2012... which was a very great day. My friend happened to have an extra ticket to the last session of conference and asked me to go... of course I said yes without a second thought. So I finished work the night before, and got about 4 hours of sleep in order to wake up early enough in order to be ready to go at 8:30am for the entire day. So I got ready, and we drove up to Salt Lake City incredibly early in the morning... there was like no traffic because it was Sunday and it was pretty early. Once we got up there we ended up watching the first session in the North Visitor's Center on Temple Square in a sweet auditorium. It was incredibly awesome to be in a room full of people all eagerly listening to the words of our church leaders, and it was a great session. After that session we headed back to the car to eat the lunch we had packed, and then headed up to the conference center. We got to our seats about an hour and fifteen minutes prior to the session starting, so I read some chapters in the New Testament and looked around the conference center. It is a sweet place! Everything is super beautiful and well crafted even down to the seats being incredibly comfortable and actually spaced enough apart to not be painful to sit in. Once the Prophet walked in everyone stood  at the same time, it was a sweet thing to be a part of. Then the actual session was incredibly spiritual and awesome. Overall, it was an experience that I'll definitely remember for quite a while.

My next highlight I'm gonna type about is my friend Mike opening his mission call. It was incredibly awesome to be there for someone to open it (it was the first one of my friends I was actually able to go to the opening of his call). So his family was about 15 minutes late, and the entire time there was an air of nervous energy throughout the room as everyone talked about random things. Once he actually opened the call, there was a great spirit of confirmation that it was indeed a call from the Lord. It was pretty awesome.

That's all the highlights up until now... If you want a more detailed listing of my dealings... well too bad :P Unless you're part of my family, then feel free to call me :D

'Til Next Time!
Jordan Nielson

Awesome church experiences, Incredible Date, and more!

Well, I'm still eons behind where I would like to be for today... considering it's already October 19th and I'm only up to about September 9th... So, In order to catch up I'm just going to go through my calender for the last month and a half and hit the highlights. I'm just gonna go in chronological order, not in order of highlightness - so don't think just because something is first or last it was better than something else... just when it happened! Also, I'm not going to post anymore insights from my D&C class... I figure I'll just post them on a separate page on this and throw a link up to it once I get it done (which shouldn't be hard since I already have all of them typed out... just want to put there here). Let us begin!

First on the list of highlights happened on September 12th, sometime in the afternoon. My good friend Lydia and I went on an adventure to Buy-Low (kinda like publix but less awesome) to acquire some limes to try making these smoothies that she found a recipe for. It turned out the smoothie was basically lime juice, vanilla ice cream, and ice, and for those who are huge fans of lime you could also put half a lime in the bottom of the cup. They were actually quite tasty, and that's all for that highlight.

Next on the ever-increasing list is stake conference, which happened that weekend (September 15th and 16th). It started out with the adult session at 2pm on Saturday, which was down at the UVU institute building, and was pretty awesome! The highlight from that was definitely my stake president calling his wife up to the podium to speak with him while they talked to us about marriage. It was kind of entertaining, because I had never seen a church speaker call someone from the audience to join them at the podium so it was certainly an experience. Of course, I also have some spiritually centered notes on what was said, but I don't really feel like posting those up here... If you want them email me? Anyway, later that night I of course had work (since it was a saturday) until midnight. I only bring that up because stake priesthood was at 7am on Sunday morning. Yes. 7AM. Like earlier than I usually wake up 7AM. So I got up at that insane time (5:30am) after going to bed shortly after midnight and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT! From the notes I have, the feelings I remember, and the fact that I was able to get to regional conference early enough to get a boss seat, it was way worth getting up that early. Later that day (not really... pretty much right after it) there was a regional conference for all of Utah Valley. It was totally incredible, as the concluding (kind of like a keynote) speaker was Elder Dallin H. Oaks (of the 12) who I got to be IN THE SAME ROOM AS. It totally blew my mind. I had never considered being within 200 feet of an apostle, let alone being able to hear him speak! So regional conference was totally awesome, there were a couple great speakers in addition to Elder Oaks, which made it even better! Topics that were spoken about included temples, family history, who   we are (children of God), integrity, optimism, founding ourselves upon Christ, missionary work (even in an area where the majority of people are members), marriage, being single in a regular ward, the direction finders (liahonas) we have, the basic principles of the gospel (article of faith #4), and even planning! Elder Oaks made a comment to the effect of "I cannot remember a conference where it was so inspired, varied, and important." My favorite part of the conference was definitely when Elder Oaks made an analogy relating being single in a conventional ward to a new member of a stargazing club. He pointed out that single members lack a spouse, much like new members of the club lack jackets - and so life is uncomfortable and awkward for the person who can't relate to the things being discussed and you end up a bit cold.

The next highlight, interesting enough, was later that day at the Wyview Office Desk Attendant Potluck we had. I was able to make dessert which ended up being a cake (which I foolishly didn't take a picture of) that had different sections of different kinds. It included plain vanilla, marble, funfetti, and funfetti marble. Anyway, my incredible co-workers made awesome stuff as well including Chicken Black Bean Salsa, Sitcky Rice, Some kind of fancy crockpot thing that you put on rice and tasted delicious, corn, orange salad, and some regular green salad. It was a super fun thing to be able to go to, and it ended up that not much cake was eaten because of the volume of other delicious food that was there to be had.

The next semi-highlight was forum on Tuesday. It wasn't a devotional, mainly because the topic wasn't spiritual at all, but it was still incredibly awesome and informative. The speaker was a judge on the circuit for D.C. and he discussed "The Hard Work of Understanding the Constitution" which I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on how difficult it was to really get what the constitution says. But, he made me realize it was even harder than my old Young Men's President (who was totally awesome) had beat into my skull.

The next highlight spanned a couple days, and was the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Career Fair. A couple days before the fair I went to get my volunteer's vest, but they weren't available yet. So, I asked the person organizing it if I would be able to help her at all in preparation for it, and I ended up being allowed to move boxes of gifts for recruiters for her. This was a super awesome chance I got, and I only got it because I took the initiative (and I still believe I was prompted by the spirit to ask) I got the chance to volunteer a ton of hours for the career fair, including the 3.5 I spent moving boxes the day before the actual fair. The day of the fair I was able to volunteer for a grand total of about 7 hours spanning random time intervals (interspersed with classes) from 7am until about 4pm. It was super awesome to be able to see all those companies out there, and it really opened my eyes to how many options there were for people that excel in their major regardless of what it is.

Anyway, the next highlight came a little while later on the 21st of September. It was my first date of fall semester, and it was pretty awesome. The Tuesday before, I had asked one of my co-worker's roommates out as part of a challenge given to me by on the RAs. So, I baked her some cookies (sugar cookies to be precise) and walked over to her apartment and asked her. Anyway, then came Friday and I decided to bake a pizza for our date. I must admit... it was pretty tasty, and I actually took a picture of it! After we ate a bit, we walked up to the Planetarium on campus for the planetarium show. It was pretty sweet, and reminded me of how much I enjoy looking at the stars and trying to figure out how on earth they came up with those constellations. After the show, we walked back to my apartment and ate a delicious giant cookie/brownie thing (also have a picture of that). That was pretty much the end of the date... or at least it was for all y'all.

      

My next highlight, and final one for this post (which I just realized is actually kind of long...) was the Brigham City Temple Dedication Broadcast. It was super awesome to be a part of, and I can't wait until I actually find a way to get to a dedication in person (that's on my bucket list). So there were a few things that happened that were incredible to be a part of... but a tad sacred to just post on a blog for anyone to read that happens upon it.

'Til I finish the next post,
Jordan Nielson

Falling behind

So in my last post I got to Saturday September 1st, which means I'm still a good month and a half or so behind... so this might end up being a marathon post since I don't really have much else to do tonight that absolutely needs to be done.

Anyway, it's Sunday September 2nd, 2012, which was a very interesting day for a few reasons. To start off, it was Fast Sunday, which meant that I didn't want to eat anything in the morning, or for lunch, so it was good that a few interesting things happened that day. To start off my day I woke up super late... like 20 minutes after church starts late. Luckily, there's four wards in my church building, so I was able to make it to Sunday School and Priesthood for my ward, then attend another ward's sacrament meeting. Anyway, after I finished sitting through one and a half testimony meetings, and the Sunday School and Priesthood meetings, I went home and it was about 3pm before I finally was done with church meetings, largely due to the fact that I was ridiculously tired the night before. So I took a nap, went to ward prayer, and then headed to bed since I had work in the morning.

So it's now Monday morning, and it is a reasonably good Monday for two reasons. First, we don't have class since it's labor day. Then second, I was able to cover one of my co-worker's shifts that morning and got to experience opening the office for the first time. Sadly, after work the day headed downhill pretty fast. I took a nap, and really didn't do very much else of note that day, aside from homework, but it was still nice to not have class.

Then came Tuesday, which was a slightly more exciting day. For one, I actually had classes today which is almost always a good thing, especially since it was the second week of classes and therefore most of them were pretty set in who would be there. Since most classes were set, we got groups in my Chemical Engineering class, which was pretty awesome since my group is made up of 7 super awesome people who all live in Wyview. Later that day we got to get together, back at Wyview  in order to complete our group assignment that was to be due on Thursday. Anyway, because I have to do it for class anyway, I kinda like putting cool insights I had from D&C on here, if nothing else because I really like that class and find it incredibly interesting. So, for today (the 4th of September) my insight was regarding how our church is a church that believes and does miracles, every day, and that whenever I put off a chance to exercise my priesthood authority and power, that's basically me living below the potential I have to be the best I can be. So that's the D&C related thought for today, it is related to sections 2, 3, 7, and 10 so if you're curious read up on them :D

Moving on, Tuesday night wasn't too exciting - just went to work and entertained questions while working on homework - and as typical of nights I work went to bed sometime after midnight. Then came Wednesday, which was a reasonably good day. From what I can remember there was nothing exceedingly terrible that happened, and I got an excuse to make a cake. The excuse was that it was the birthday of one of the hall advisors, and it just so happened to be the one who was my hall advisor for summer term. So I made a super tasty chocolate chocolate chip cookie cake (picture below this paragraph). But, sadly for those of us trying to surprise her, she wasn't home until waaay late that night (like 11:30pm), so we just had to leave the stuff outside her door and didn't actually get to see her reaction to it :(

After Wednesday of course comes Thursday, which was a pretty routine day so far as I can recall. Nothing really extraordinary happened, but I did have d&c again and therefore have another insight to share. Anyway, after Thursday came Friday which wasn't too busy except for a chance to make some lasagna (which is like my favorite food). Of course I've also been having to work on an ever-increasing list of homework that needs to be done each day, as my classes finally get in a rhythm  with what work they expect to be done. So it is finally the weekend again, which is always wonderful as that usually means I can do pretty much whatever since I don't have homework due during this time. So I ended up skyping my wonderful aunt for a little while, working a bit, and going to church.

Sunday was an especially exciting day as it was the birthday of my boss at work so a few Resident Assistants and I decorated the office for her to see on Monday. I also got to go ward prayer, which was interesting as we filled out spotlight forms. Another cool thing that happened was I got a calling - from over the pulpit (kind of) - to be an assistant ward clerk. So I got to spend some time learning all that cool stuff, and got set apart which was a really awesome experience. So I'm not really going in order for this day, but there was also a super awesome CES devotional given by Elder Holland that day and I got to make some Chicken Parmigiana for some of my friends right before it. And... since I'm still over a month behind, I'm gonna throw this post up and then write a new one!

Til I finish the next post,
Jordan Nielson