This is part two of the story of @Thuswesee aka @elkvalleylatterdaysaint. You can also find Todd at @Spiritualcrusade Enjoy!
So I bring us back to where we started. What do we want out of life? What are our goals? How do we get there? How do we be most happy and experience life? Do we just hang out in our rooms playing video games? Is that really why we wanted to come to Earth to receive a mortal body?
Last year in June, I worked some overtime and my boys were giving their mother an especially rough time. They were complaining a lot and we being especially ungrateful, all of which wreaked of first world problems. So I thought a little canoe trip style wilderness camping would help teach them that life could be so much harder and if it were, they were tough and could do hard things. I booked some time off work, we packed our gear for a two-night hiking trip to Elk Lakes. The weather was decent, so we even packed our swimming trunks.
We packed everything tight, let their teachers know they’d miss a few days of school and headed out. When we got to the Elk Lakes Parking, we noticed very few vehicles, but we unloaded our gear, and hiked the 1.5km to the Lower lake. We were planning on using it as a base camp and hike up to the Glacier and Water Fall the next day. Because we were going to be spending a couple nights and we had nothing else going on, the 3 of us did 2 round trips, while I did a third later in the evening. We had everything we could need out there. We swam, we fished a little. We cooked and sat by the fire and as it started to rain, we put our food in the Bear Proof Boxes well away from the Camp ground, I chopped some kindling for the morning fire and tidied up camp and we settled in for the night, playing a few card games before dozing off to the sound of rain on the tent.I woke up several hours later to no rain. But the sound of soft snow hitting the tent. I groaned, knowing this would complicate our hike the next day. I got up, shook the tent off to prevent it from collapsing under the weight of the snow and fell back asleep.
I woke up again a few hours later to the sound of rain again. Big. Heavy. Raindrops. At that point, I was starting to get concerned. Not only was it going to be cold out, but now the snow that had fallen would be slush and we would have little hope of staying dry. Hiking was out of the question. Staying warm and dry was the game now. As I lay there contemplating strategies to stay dry, One of the boys called out and said he needed to use the outhouse and was too scared to go alone. I escorted him, sloshing through 4 inches of slush in the process. After he was done, I sent him back to bed and I set out to make a fire. It was like 5:30 and I figured I could get a good fire going and have breakfast ready for them a few hours later. It was raining hard and most of the wood was saturated. My dry paper and kindling lit right away, but were soon snuffed out by the big drops of rain. There was little I could do to keep that flame glowing. I built a shelter for the fire, but that barely helped. I collected dry brush from under trees, but that would burn up quickly without even so much as drying the slightly bigger wood I had prepared to use next. Finally, I turned to the bug spray and proceeded to use that as a blowtorch. Combining that with the shelter, and the multiple efforts at dry wood, I finally got some coals, which was enough to start some of the bigger logs. This took a solid hour. I decided to give it 30 minutes with no help and see if the fire would last if I brought some of the gear back to the truck. It did. So I built up the fire and headed out with my first load. I managed one complete round trip before I was soaked to the bone. I could not have been more wet. I managed another trip, stoking the fire between loads, before I needed to wake up the boys. I loaded up for a third load while they were waking up, getting dressed and having some breakfast by the fire.When I got back from that third trip, I warned them of the danger we were in, that we were not hiking for fun that day and that the goal would be survival and we’d need to get our gear to the truck and drive home. The best chance for warmth was to get to the truck. They’d need to carry some gear and if they got cold, or the gear got too heavy, there was nothing I could do for them, until we got to the truck. We packed up the remaining gear, said a prayer and snuffed out the fire. The last trip was tough. I was soaked to the absolute bone and frozen. The boys were struggling but being tough about it and we managed to get to the truck. We said a prayer of gratitude and started the long drive home.Was that Elk Lakes Trip a failure? Did we accomplish what I wanted to? My goal was to teach the boys we could do hard things by taking them on a long and arduous hike through difficult and unforgiving terrain. The Lord provided that exact experience, and the boys and me, all learned that we could do hard things, and to lean on the Lord, and not to go camping at the Elk Lakes in June.But, if asked, I wonder if my boys would go again? Owen, would you? (He said yes)
We just learned about Laman, Lemuel, Sam, and Nephi’s attempts to get the Brass Plates? Laman and Lemuel complained about it, but ultimately went. Did we all noticed how they didn’t seem to complain when they were being asked to go retrieve Ishmael and his daughters? Anyway, Nephi had a goal to get the Brass Plates. Plan A was to ask outright. That didn’t work. Plan B was to buy them. That didn’t work either. That’s when Laman and Lemuel were done. They had failed. But did they? What do you guys think? Up to that point in the story? Had Nephi, Sam, Laman and Lemuel in their attempts to retrieve the plates? They didn’t have them yet? I want to share with you a quote. It’s by David O McKay, and it’s in response to one of his most famous quotes. Ronald A Rasband shared this while teaching us in Magrath last year. David O McKay’s most famous quote was, “No other success in life can compensate for failure in the home.” That’s a good quote eh. Powerful stuff. But, several weeks after this quote, while doing a fireside at BYU, President McKay was asked, what constituted failure, and his response was, “When a parent stops trying.” This applies so easily to each of us, just as it applies to Laman, Lemuel, Sam and Nephi, because they didn’t give up. Laman and Lemuel wanted to, but Nephi wouldn’t let them and they didn’t refuse to stay. We know how the story ends, Nephi leans on the Lord, finds Laban drunkenly passed out on the street, argues with the Spirit a little before killing Laban, dressing in his clothes, retrieving the Plates, Scaring the crap out of his Brothers along the way before convincing Zoram to join them on their adventure to the promised land.
This brings me to us. What does all this say about us? We are going to struggle. We are going to be tested. But will we ever fail? Reggie Jackson struck out 2,600 times in baseball, the most in baseball history. But people don’t think about the strikeouts, they think about the home runs.Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed experiments, but the 1,001 was the light bulb.Every failed experiment is one step closer the success. Nephi and his brothers didn’t get the plates after two attempts, but those two attempts taught them what they needed to do. Trust in the Lord. When we were in the Pre-Earth life, we were excited about the opportunities to come to earth. To the exact circumstances we find ourselves in today. We knew we’d fail. But we signed up anyway. When we agreed to come to earth, we decided we would Go. Now that we are here, will we Do? When Nephi struggled in getting the Plates, He Went, and Did. He and Went and did a second time and built a boat. I went and did and had experiences on a canoe trip I wouldn’t have gained any other way. Despite the trials and challenges.My boys and I went and did up to the Elk Lakes and learned we can do hard things.
I want each of you to set an ambitious goal in your life. Maybe it’s to read the Book of Mormon this year, or to make the basketball team, or to serve a mission. Set that goal, and Go and Do and the Lord will teach you, He will Bless you, and you will grow and be made better through your going and doing.
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