Years ago one of my young men’s leaders introduced me to mountain biking and I fell in love. It combined so many of the things that I loved into one activity. I enjoyed riding my bike, and my friends and I wore out a lot of bike tires riding all over the neighborhood. I also loved the mountains. I love the sights, the smells, the views, the fresh air. Combine my love of bike riding with my love of the mountains and I felt like some kind of rocket-propelled bird, flying down the trails with nothing but fresh air in my lungs and a massive smile on my face. Yes, there were crashes but they were relatively minor, and it was worth every bruise and scratch that I came home with.

 

One year for our summer young men’s camp we decided to set up a base camp on some land down by a river. Each day of camp we would set out to do different activities. Mountain biking, canoeing, hiking, it was going to be a great week. The first day was mountain biking. We were going to ride the trail that led up to Wall Lake which begins in Waterton National Park and ends up crossing the border into British Columbia before reaching the Lake. I had heard my leader talk about this trail and how much he enjoyed it, as well as how challenging it could be. So I was excited to put myself to the test.

 

We set out on the trail, and it was just as challenging as he made it sound. The first 1.5 kilometers (just under 1 mile) is all uphill. You climb about 122 meters (about 400 ft) in that distance. It’s not impossible, but it is a painful way to start a ride especially for someone like me who wasn’t accustomed to riding that steep of a trail for that long of a distance. I tried to keep motivated by reminding myself that I wasn’t a quitter. I was determined to ride just as hard as anyone else in the group, including my leaders. And I kept thinking about how much fun it was going to be to come back down on the way back.

 

After that first climb, the trail gets much more comfortable and enjoyable. Eventually, you end up at Wall Lake. It is beautiful. The lake sits in a bowl carved out by glaciers and surrounded by mountains and forest. The water is glacier fed and ice cold, which felt great after a hard ride up the trail. Fish at least a foot long would even swim right past as we cooled off in the water.

 

After spending some time relaxing at the lake, we headed back down the trailhead. The ride down was just as fun and exciting as I had hoped it would be although it didn’t last nearly as long as I wanted. When we reached the trailhead where the truck was waiting to pick us up, we still wanted to keep riding. A group of us decided to ride our bikes back down the road to the townsite which is around a 15km ride, mostly downhill. We set off as young men often do, all trying to outdo each other. Flying down the road and enjoying every minute of it. While we rode, we would calm down occasionally and talk about bikes, other trails, and all sorts of things. Then someone would pass us and off we would go again to answer this new challenger.

 

 

By the time we got closer to the townsite, the group had spread out quite a bit from each other. I was riding down the road at a pretty good speed when I noticed a sign that warned vehicles to slow down to 20km/h because there was a series of bends up ahead. I was alarmed, to put it mildly. I was going much faster than that. So I started to slow down. I came around the first bend, and the road straightened back out for a little bit. I thought to myself, “that was nothing. Why did I even slow down for that?” In fact, I felt foolish for having slowed down so much for the corner. I had been enjoying the speed of the ride up until that point, and I didn’t want it to end, so I sped back up. I stood up on the pedals and pushed as hard as I could to get back up to speed. I was determined that I wouldn’t miss out on enjoying the last few minutes of my ride.

 

As I continued, I came around another gentle curve and laughed to myself as I comfortably made it around the corner even at full speed. I looked up and saw another road sign warning of more curves up ahead and again advising me to reduce my speed to 20 km/h. I almost laughed because it had been so easy to handle the last curves at full speed that this time I didn’t even feel the need to slow down.

 

 

I came around that corner going so quick I couldn’t keep up with my pedals. I was tucked down to reduce drag, and I was flying. Then I saw something up ahead. My adrenalin levels went through the roof, and I felt like everything froze for a split second. My eyes must have gotten about the size of dinner plates. Up ahead the road didn’t just curve, it did a nearly complete 180-degree hairpin turn. By my recollection, I was doing about Mach 5, and there was no way I was going to make that corner.

 

 

Luckily my young men’s leader had taught me how to use my brakes correctly. He showed us a technique where you only use two fingers to pull your front brake, and you use three fingers to pull the back brake so that you didn’t hit the front brakes too hard. Otherwise, your front tire slows down more than you or the rest of the bike, and you and the back part of your bike will pass the front tire as you go flying over it.

 

So there I was, hitting those breaks as hard as I dared and still trying to keep my bike upright. I can still hear the bike tires screeching down the road. It sounded like a car peeling out in the movies. I have done a lot of riding as a kid, but I had never made my tires squeal like that before. While I  was skidding down the road, I tried to reassess my situation. The brakes weren’t enough; I couldn’t make that corner. So I did the only other thing I could think of, I laid the bike down on its side. Now my bike and I are skidding along the pavement, sparks flying, both of us experiencing first hand the stopping power of friction as the road wore away pieces of us.

 

I looked up at the corner again, and I was still going too fast. I was going to skid straight through the hairpin and into the other lane of traffic. I had no idea if another car or truck was coming because I couldn’t see anything through the trees. So in one last desperate attempt, I used my arms and legs to kick and throw the bike away from me hoping that it would take enough of my momentum that I would be able to stop before I became a speed bump for oncoming traffic. Thankfully it worked.

 

I ended up with scratches and scrapes all over the right side of my body, but the worst of it was on the right cheek of my … backside. A spot the size of my outstretched hand had turned into road rash and hamburger. I was so sore and so embarrassed that I just laid there feeling sorry for myself for a bit before I finally got up and limped over to recover the bike. I finished the ride into town and once everyone made it back to town we headed back to camp.

 

The rest of my memories from that camp are about how uncomfortable I was. Sitting around the fire, trying to sit in a canoe, it was all a little less enjoyable when half of my backside was back on that patch of pavement. Even just wearing pants was uncomfortable. I still enjoyed the camp. But I wished I had listened to those signs.

 

At this point, there are so many ways that this story can apply to our lives. If you have been listening with your “spiritual ears” you may have already had impressions of how this applies to you in your circumstance while I was sharing the story, or maybe you were too busy laughing at me. I am going to share one way that it applies to my life right now, and I’ll leave how it applies to your life up to you to ponder.

I have been on a personal quest to better understand and listen to personal revelation. It has been a big focus of my private study and on my mind a lot. Ever since President Nelson said, “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.”

He also gave guidance on how to increase our ability to receive and recognize personal revelation when he said, “Pray in the name of Jesus Christ about your concerns, your fears, your weaknesses—yes, the very longings of your heart. And then listen! Write the thoughts that come to your mind. Record your feelings and follow through with actions that you are prompted to take. As you repeat this process day after day, month after month, year after year, you will ‘grow into the principle of revelation’.”

1. Pray
2. Listen
3. Write the thoughts and feelings that come
4. Follow through and DO IT
5. Repeat for days, then months, then years

So that is my quest. And I will tell you right now it works. It has always worked but I wasn’t always this deliberate about it, and since I wasn’t explicitly looking for it, I haven’t recognized how many of the revelations that did come, were revelations. I still have a long way to go, but each day, and month that passes I am getting better at it.

The revelations that come to me are like the signs on the road. Sometimes they tell me to speed up, sometimes to slow down, turn left, or turn right. Sometimes the signs are big with flashing lights to make sure I didn’t miss them, and sometimes they are subtle and easy to miss if I am not careful.

Sometimes I don’t want to follow a prompting. It might not make sense to me, or it stops or changes something that I was enjoying, or it may just take me out of my comfort zone. There have been times when I start following the prompting at first just like I followed that first road sign, and then … nothing happens. I can’t see why the sign was there, what catastrophe was averted, or what blessing is in my path. So, I start to doubt and question. Maybe I read it wrong, or maybe it was a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t a revelation at all. So I speed back up and go back to what I was doing, only to realize too late what was coming around the next corner.

I’m not talking about some severe tragedy here, or significant sins or transgressions. I am just talking about the little tiny day to day tidbits of guidance. But I know my Father wants me to be on this path. That is perfectly clear to me. He is trying to help me finish this ride as safely as possible, and with as much joy as possible.

The best part of all this though is that he never expected me to be perfect right off the bat. He knew I would make mistakes, and I am pretty sure that I knew that I would make mistakes before I came to this mortal existence. It’s part of the plan. But I can promise that I have a lot more respect for road signs now, and I am learning to better at listening to the still, small, whisperings of the spirit. I am, as President Nelson put it, growing into the principle of revelation. Even if I am just a little bean sprout with only one leaf, it’s still growth.