Maze

I had a really neat experience this past weekend that I want to blog about, more for myself so that I remember it, but feel free to read on.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to a baptism of a girl who was getting baptized into my ward. It was a really neat experience, and to make it better she asked me if I would give a talk on the Holy Ghost. Of course I said yes, however, she asked me Friday if I would give the talk and the baptism was Saturday. I was a little nervous with giving this talk and wasn't quite sure what I was going to say. I had been thinking about it all day and didn't have much going through my head. Most of the baptisms that I have attended are for 8 year olds and I didn't want this talk to come across to this girl who is 21 that I was talking to a child.

Well I went about my day with this in the back of my mind. I had been planing on going to a bbq and then to the corn maze with a bunch of friends, so I went even though I knew I needed to get this talk written, oh and I had a lesson to plan for Sunday. (yes I am a procrastinator I have known about the lesson for a month) So off to the bbq I went, once there I wasn't sure if I was going to go to the corn maze, but I did and boy am I glad I went. While I was going through the maze I had HUGE inspiration for my talk. It was amazing! So I want to write down how I used my maze experience for my talk...

I started off by talking about he differences between the Power of the Holy Ghost, and the Gift of the Holy Ghost. For those of you who don't know the difference I will quickly explain. The Power of the Holy Ghost is the witness of the truthfulness of the Gospel to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that one receives while investigating the church. The Gift of the Holy Ghost is what you receive after you have been baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by the laying on of hands by the proper Priesthood authority, which gives you the Holy Ghost as your constant companion throughout your life to help you and guide you as long as we are keeping the commandments and living how God has asked us to live. So keeping this is mind I am going to tell my experience of the maze and how this applies.

Me and my friends walked up to the begining of the maze and there were 2 seperate entrances. Once was a maze where you could walk through and come to certain "check points" where you would be asked a question, and upon answering the question properly would guide you through the maze to the end. The other entrance on the other hand you were left to your own instincts and guessing skills as to which path to take. So of course looking at the 2 options me and my friends chose the path of guessing. Well I will tell you I have been to a few corn mazes in my life and this one was SO hard. We were lost forever. There were so many dead ends and loops that lead you in circles. At one point one of my friends ran a head and came back and yelled hey guys this is the path you want to be on, so we would head that direction. Well at the end of the maze there was a large tower that if you stood on the top you could look down and see the proper path to come down. As we made our way through this maze we were starting to get to the point that we could see the tower but weren't quite sure how to get to it. So we continued on. There was one point where we were close enough to talk to the guide standing on the tower and we thought we had picked the wrong path to go down so we had started to turn around when tower guy yelled down to us, "are you sure you want to go that way?" which got us thinking, mmm maybe...so we turned around and starated back to where we came from and he gave us a little bit of guidance as to where to go. Well we finally made it to the tower and most of the people we had gone with were already at the tower and were helping guide us where we needed to go.

Now you might think, how does this relate to the Holy Ghost. Well let me explain. For me the side of the maze that I went through is like going through life with only having the Power of the Holy Ghost. We wander through life with no direction and no help, but ever once in a while we get a little help by the Holy Ghost saying, "ya hey come this way, this path will lead you to where you need to be, which is having the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in your life, which will lead you to true happiness. And we may follow that prompting for a while and then forget about it because it can't be with us all the time, but then some time goes by and we may be looking into the church again and maybe start turning away from it again, but we have the Power of the Holy Ghost saying, "are you sure you want to turn away from this?" and in the end if we make it to the tower, we have listened and have made the choice of baptism.

Now on the flip side of things I liken the other side of the maze to those of us who have been baptized as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and those check points in the maze are the Holy Ghost guiding and directing us down the proper path and helping us along in life. Now sometimes as baptized members we may find ourselves in the other maze walking aimlessly along not knowing what to do because we have lost sight of the Holy Ghost, but thankfully there is what we call repentance and through this we are able to have the Holy Ghost as our constant companion back in our life taking us back to the maze with help and check points.

I have such a strong testimony of the Gospel and I know that the Holy Ghost helps and guides me in my life. I am so thankful for this blessing in my life. I am also thankful that I was asked to give this talk at the baptism because if I hadn't I wouldn't have ever had the neat experience that I did through this maze. It brought a whole new outlook on the Holy Ghost into my life.

- Kinsey