I've heard principles of the gospel compared to a lot of things. A LOT of things. Including this guy:
It was terrible really. My friend Nate needed to get to Arizona, but only for a week and so he needed a way to get back to Texas and Margie said 'Hey, I have an aunt in Arizona, I'll take him and hang out with her until he's done.' And then I said 'Hey, I feel like I should be on this road trip as well.' So somehow the road trip to get Nate to Arizona turned into Margie and I spending a week in L.A. and it was basically the best road trip I've ever been on in my life (we definitely got free parking at a Dodger's game from a parking attendant who looked like Josh Groban and also we won the Wicked Lottery, among many other amazing things). The bottom line is, on the way there, we stopped in Las Cruces, New Mexico for sacrament meeting. That was when a guy compared the gospel to the light side and the dark side of the force in his sacrament meeting talk. It wasn't so much that he was doing that, it was the fact that he had a framed picture of Darth Vader that he held up while he gave his talk. True story. You can ask Margie or Nate. Probably not Nate. I think he slept after the sacrament was passed.
Moving on, I've also heard principles of the gospel compared to jellyfish, salmon, salt water fish, basically a lot of marine type animals. I don't know why. But it's worked splendidly with each analogy. I probably heard my FAVORITE marine animal/gospel related analogy today in sacrament meeting.
The speaker was giving his talk based on Elder Bednar's talk in the last general conference, entitled The Spirit of Revelation. It was fantastic! I feel like I got so much out of it today! I took notes and everything. It's kind of a big deal when I feel so inspired as to take notes on someone's talk. Anyways, he was talking about how he's been watching Shark Week (My brother was/is obsessed with sharks; it took me years to get over my fear of them after watching all of his documentaries. 7 year old little girls probably shouldn't see a shark get gutted and watch all kinds of fun things fall out of its stomach) and he compared receiving personal revelation to one of these:
I got pretty excited when he started this analogy. He said that for years, scientists believed that great whites were basically giant, swimming noses. But after years of research, they realized they are more than just a great sense of smell. They have fantastic vision that enables them to see almost everything at all times, they have very keen hearing capabilities, and their skin also has some special cell that enables them to sense things in the water (i.e. heartbeats and things of that nature.) The speaker went on to say that only when the great white uses all of these capabilities together, do they become fierce predators. Likewise, in order for us to receive personal revelation, we have abilities/tools at our fingertips that we need to use together. You can't say a short, meaningless prayer and then expect the heavens to open up and shine a light down in the direction that you're supposed to go. You need to pray continually and sincerely, study the scriptures, follow Christ's example, and so on and so forth.
You know?
Also, this is part of the handout I gave my Beehives today:
And for anyone who cares, Mike and I were going to the dollar theater for a date last night. But we got about a mile down the road when I got one of my weird, premonition, upset stomach feelings, and I said 'Let's hang out with Pete tonight, rather than leave him home alone.' So we got Pete AND these:
Hey Cupcake!'s cupcakes are SO. GOOD. (If you ever come to Austin, and find yourself imersed into the food world, you will notice that a good deal of the good food is sold out of trailers on the side of the road. Sounds gross, but don't underestimate the deliciousness of an airstream trailer.) I had the one in the middle on the bottom. Strawberry with strawberry cream cheese frosting. True story. I also like the one on the bottom right because it's called the Michael Jackson (It's black. It's white.) So we took these over to Mike's parent's house and hung out and Sarah taught me how to make flowers out of paper and I left it over there or else I would show you my awesome paper flower.
In other news, I feel really good about this upcoming week. Last week, I felt sick a lot and it put a damper on my mood, but this week will be different methinks.
Is it Christmastime yet???