Seminary: An Anchor for Your Life I hate mornings. I hate getting up. And I love sleeping in, but I need seminary. I need to be reminded of why I’m here and what’s important, and seminary helps me remember. It’s no mystery why seminary takes place during everyone’s teens. High school is when you make some very significant decisions, decisions about everything: What friends you will have, how to date, whether to work hard and get good grades or slack off and not do so well. Your teen years are also when you start thinking about what’s next: college, mission, or something else. It is one of the most pivotal points in your life. During this time you need to have the spirit with you, and you need to know that Heavenly Father has a plan for you when you are making those life decisions. Seminary is an anchor in your life during turbulent times. What is an anchor? It is something that allows you to remain in a place of safety. I love to go boating with my family, especially tubing behind the boat at high speeds, but I also like to stop in the river and swim. When we stop the boat, if we were to just get out and swim without taking any precautions, we would drift and the boat would drift because of the strong current in the river. Soon we would find that we had drifted so far apart from the boat that there would be no way to get back to it. But we do take precautions. When we swim we first anchor the boat, and not just by tying a rock to a piece of rope and throwing it out into the water, we anchor it with a proper anchor that is big enough and strong enough to the hold the boat. We do not stop at just that though, we also float the tubes out behind us on long ropes so that if the current pulls us away, all we have to do is reach out and grab the rope in order to return to safety. Seminary is an anchor in the turbulent time before becoming an adult; it fills you with a greater knowledge of the gospel, helps you understand where you are with God and how best to live in order to return to him, it teaches you stories you might not have heard before that show great faith and power, and it goes into a depth of detail with the stories that every primary child is taught. The spirit seminary brings is worth the early mornings and it is even worth having to sing every single day—something that is not a particular skill of mine. And what would seminary be without the prayers that begin and end the class, or the devotionals, or scripture mastery? These three things are the ropes in place to protect us. Devotionals are generally a quote or scripture that a fellow seminary student has chosen to present because of its meaning to him or her, and these devotionals can have a special spirit about them because they are a testimony from a peer. Scripture mastery, as well as reading the
scriptures daily, is basically a letter from Heavenly Father that instructs, comforts, and inspires you. Through this constant reading of scriptures and the many recitations it takes to memorize a scripture mastery you can come to understand these words that have been lovingly sent for you. Like the scriptures, it is daily prayer that brings us to God. Unlike with earthly correspondence, which have a tendency to lapse over time, Heavenly Father will always keep sending us these “letters� He has prepared. But how is He to send what you need if you never reply, never tell Him how you are feeling, and never tell Him what is going on in your life? As you are in constant communication with Heavenly Father, you put yourself in a place to receive constant communication from Him. Not only do these anchors and ropes bring strength during my teen years, but they will also keep me safe and happy throughout my college, mission, work, and parenting years ahead. As I move on in my life, mature, and learn more of the gospel, I will always have this basis of what the spirit feels like and what is important to look back on when the current of the world seems to be pulling me away. Read the scriptures, search for something that has meaning for you and think about ways that your experiences can bless others. Pray to your Father in heaven; He loves you, He wants to help you, so let Him. And for those in seminary and those that will be in seminary someday, go. Go to seminary, no matter how early; participate, no matter how tired; sing, no matter if you dislike it. You will be blessed for it, you will be grateful for it. I testify of the blessings from it because of my own personal experiences with seminary.