#Instascript

Church yesterday was inspiring. For the third hour of church, (Church is three hours split into three different courses of fun:), I’ve been able to attend Relief Society, another gospel doctrine class which is all the women.

It’s this class where I sit and listen to these spiritual goddesses all around me. I’m completely inspired and humbled by the teacher and women’s comments. I sit quietly sometimes, and try to listen to what the spirit is teaching me. Hard thing to master, and I’m far from there, but it’s an eternal quest to learn how to hear and follow the spirit.

The lesson was on a talk from Ann M. Dibb, called “I know it. I live it. I love it.” You can read it here. Fabulous read. We talked about what ways we could share the gospel with our friends, in simple and non pushy actions. One comment was to not use ‘church slang’ and acronyms in your Facebook status that only LDS members could understand, which made complete sense to me. Instead of ‘ I went to a great fireside this week’, which some people might think ‘roasting marshmallows by a camp fire?’, you could say ‘ Listened to a great church speaker, Sunday devotional’, or something like that, you know?

I remember serving a mission in Florida for the LDS church, and people thought that our Stake Conference was something where we go to eat a lot of steak. See what I mean? So, it’s better when talking about church topics, use simple terms that everyone could understand. 

My friends spoke up about a neat way they are using Instagram for sharing the gospel. On their phones, they will take a screen shot of a passage of sciptures they are reading, or a church talk, and share it, labeling it with the hashtag ‘Instascipt’. I thought to myself, “Not just for missionary purposes, but what a simple way to share a little spiritual sunshine with anyone who needs help to feel closer to the Savior that day.’ They said that anyone is welcome to start sharing their ‘instascript’ pics, and add to the growing collection on Instagram. I quietly thought to myself, “Well, I can do that, and that’s what I’ll start doing.”

I just learned what a hashtag is. It’s basically used in Twitter and Instagram. For Instagram, it’s a way to label your pictures. That way, when people search for something, they can find all the pictures labeled with ‘Instascript’ and other labels. I might start labeling all my food pics I share on there with the hashtag ‘real food’ or something.

So, if you’re on Instagram, or even if you’re not yet, get an Instagram account, and share a picture of something you read in your personal studies. Come join us! Think of it was little drops of goodness, ‘drops of awesome’, and remember that image of a water drop hitting the flat water surface, and the ripples going out to help someone out there.

Here’s my instascript for today. Some beautiful words from Richard G. Scott, a living apostle and very humble man.