Signs

A couple of days ago a bunch of missionaries and I played a game called signs. This game is great and calls for a lot of laughter. To play the game everyone has to come up with their own sign. You want your sign to be something that would be hard to notice for example someone's sign could be shrugging one shoulder; it could be the peace sign, or even scratching your nose. When everyone has their own sign, you all sit in a circle so everyone can see each other and you go around and show everyone your sign. Then one person starts with the sign. To pass the sign you do the persons sign that you want to pass it to, then they do their sign to accept the sign, and you have the sign until they do theirs to accept it. Then the person who just accepted the sign passes it to someone else. One person stands in the middle and they close their eyes and someone starts passing the sign. The sign continues to pass and the person in the middle has to tag who they think has the sign, they are in middle running around until they tag the person with the sign. You can see why you would want you sign to be something hard to notice because then it is harder for the person in the middle to find the sign and tag that person.

When you first start playing the game it's kind of hard to follow the sign because you don't remember everyone’s sign and you lose it a lot. As you play the game longer and longer you get better at following the sign. It’s also tough because if you look away for just a second the sign could get passed and you will have lost it, so you have to pay attention at every moment. But as the game goes on you get better at passing it so sometimes you could pass it even when the person in the middle is facing you. It’s risky when you pass it like that, but if you can do it successfully everyone laughs and the person in the middle gets flustered because they know they just missed it. But even sometimes after you have played for a while you lose the sign every once in a while just because it was a sneaky pass or something like that, then you have to find it again.

Playing this game is kind of like following the spirit. At first it is hard because you can't always recognize it. You don't know everyone’s signs, you will find it but then they pass it and you lose it again. But as you practice you get better at it and you are able to follow it and rarely lose it. You have to be paying attention at all times because you if look away for just a second you will lose it. The same with the spirit, if you do something bad for just one second you will lose it. Then it takes a while for you to get it back. As the game goes on you also get better at passing the sign as well, so eventually you can pass it in front of the person in the middle’s face and make everyone laugh. As you follow the spirit you get used to the voice of the spirit and you get better at acting on the promptings you receive, then like the rest the more you practice it the better you get at it. But just like in the game after you have played for a while and you have gotten pretty good at it you still may lose it. The same with The Spirit you may lose it because it may do a sneaky move or something you weren’t expecting it to do. But because of you practice you are able to find it pretty quickly again and continue following its promptings.

Global Positioning Systems

Everyone these days has a gps; they are so useful and handy. With today’s technology we are able to have them on our phones, but whether it is on your phone or not practically everyone has a gps.

I even have one; I use it almost everyday to get myself around because I am in a new place and my bearings all are messed up. One cool thing about a gps is it has settings you can have it take you to your destination using the route which take the: fastest time, shortest distance, avoid highways, avoid toll roads. There are a lot of settings to please the owner. I put a lot of trust into my gps.

I realized this the other day. We fully rely on the little machine that speaks to us with an Australian accent to guide us to our destination. So far the gps has not led me astray. One thing we know is that these cool little machines will never lead us astray. They will always get us to our desired destination according to the setting we put it on.

I related this to something that everyone has experienced in their life, the Spirit of God, or the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is like our internal gps, it will always guide us to our final destination, living with our families and our Father in Heaven.

Sometimes it may seem odd where our spiritual gps is taking us, but I know that wherever it guides us is for our benefit. If it takes us somewhere challenging it is for us to learn something. We may not know what and we may not figure it out for a while like a couple of years, but it will be for our own good.

We all need to rely on our internal gps everyday, we have to see what turns it needs us to make everyday. I know that as we follow the turns we will come closer to our Savior Jesus Christ and our Loving Father in Heaven.