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Posts Tagged ‘church’

It has been a long long time since I pulled my GPS out of my Swag Box to track down a cache. I’ve just been so busy with other stuff that I just haven’t had a chance to go geocaching. Last week the Scout Master in our ward called me up to ask if I would teach a class about geocaching to the scouts in our Mormon Ward. I said yes and started to rummage through all of my goecaching stuff.

I found a bunch of stuff that I had almost forgotten about including the fact that I still have a Travel Bug out there in the geocaching world. So, I logged into my Geocaching.com account and checked it out. To my amazement, this little travel bug named “Tree chain” had made quite a few trips around this small world of ours. Below is how many miles this little travel bug has logged and below that is a picture of where it has been.

Tracking History (23,462.8 miles)

Travel History

When the Twin Falls Temple was scheduled to be built and dedicated, the youth and the leaders of the Mormon Church in our area were notified that they would be called upon to create a youth celebration where the youth of the temple district would come together and put on a cultural even for the visiting Prophet.  This event was called the Youth Cultural Celebration, or YCC.

At the time, I was the Young Men’s President in our ward, I was the spearhead in our organization to get the youth ready and prepared to participate in this event.  All of our Wednesday night activities were canceled and the YCC practices were put in their place.  Each week we would gather the youth of the stake and practice singing and dancing.  This went on for 6 months.  There were times, I must admit, that the practices seemed to drag on and on.  Finally, the event was upon us and we went to the Twin Falls County Rodeo to put the final touches together.  As we practiced the week before the dedication, it seemed like the groups would never come together and get it right.

The day finally came and the youth of each stake went and performed with excitement and will energy.  The Youth Cultural Celebration was a huge success.  How lucky I was to even be a part of the event.  Now, when I see other YCC’s occur around the world, my eyes tear up with fond memories of how special this time was for me in the dedication of the Twin Falls Temple.

Below is a video I just watched of a YCC put on for the Prophet in Kyiv Ukraine.

A few months ago we were presented a lesson in Elders Quorum that talked about the Gifts of the Spirit.  There was an Ensign article a few years back given by Elder Robert D. Hales that talked about these gifts.  Normally I listen to the lessons if it is something that interests me but I have heard the “Gifts of the Spirit” lesson several times so I as on the verge of tuning out.  For some reason, this time, I decided to focus on the lesson and really try to learn something new.  Sometimes I’ll go the whole hour and really just hash over the same topics that have been presented over and over again.  For example, the gift to ponder, the gift of charity, the gift of tongues, the gift to be calm.  As these gifts of the Spirit were brought up one by one, I paused and pondered one particular gift.  The gift “to believe on other people’s words.”  Hummm, what a lame gift that must be.  Then, it hit me, I have that gift.  I also started to think about how important that gift can be in one’s life.  Some people go though life not believing what they have been taught and have to go out and try all of it for themselves.  That is scary prospect.  Instead of just believing in the word of wisdom, someone without the gift to believe in other peoples words would have to go out and try all of the vices in the world for themselves to see if it truly is bad for them.  I am grateful for the gift to believe.