What’s in My Travel Bag for my Adventure through Life

Whenever you go on a trip, you pack all the things you think you’ll need while you are away from home. Let me tell you what I have in my travel bag for my earthly travel—away from my real home in heaven.

DESTINATION & GOALS: Before you can begin your travel then, you must decide on a destination—in our case, to return to our Heavenly Father. Not only do you need a final destination, such as “Return to God,” you must also plan for the intermediate points on your way to there, such as our covenants--baptism, confirmation, temple, faithfulness, etc. Our personal plan to Exaltation tells us where to go.

MAP YOUR JOURNEY:  Maps can help us reach our intermediate goals, as well as plan the long range trip. It is important to have a map of where you are going, and how to get there. The scriptures, the prophets, the church, education are our maps.

PREPARATION;  Once you’ve decided where to go and how to get there, preparation is essential. Having a destination, having maps helps us plan each portion of our journey. But we must prepare so we don’t get confused or miss scheduled points along the way.

I like to plan very detailed plans whenever I travel. On a trip to Denmark, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland that Ed & I went on, I had a loose leaf notebook that had pockets. Each day’s agenda had all the tickets, plans, times, reservations and receipts for that day’s activities. It also had a list of other activities we could do in the area if my husband wanted to vary the plans. That way I did not have to search through everything to find all the information I needed for each day.

RESEARCH WHERE YOU WANT TO GO:  Not everyone needs to plan as detailed as I like to—my husband loved to “Travel by the Seat of His Pants,” and decide each day what to do, so whenever we traveled, I had already researched and had information about each area so he could be spontaneous. Education, both temporal and spiritual helps us be prepared for all contingencies along the way. Knowledge helps us meet life’s challenges.

GOALS:  Our life’s plan should be as detailed or loose as we each prefer, but it is important to plan ahead for our goals—to go to college, go on a mission, marry in the temple, retire at age 65, get skills and training to do the work you like, or you’ll discover years later that you missed your opportunities because you were so busy living life that you hadn’t set goals. Dedication and perseverance to achieve our goals are our intermediate smaller stops along our trip. Enduring to the End--Our dedication to them, help us achieve our final destination.

FLASHLIGHT:  I always put a flashlight in my travel bag. The path here on earth is difficult and many signposts are indistinct, or outright false.  At times we may find it difficult to interpret the maps, and the path may become dim, our way unclear. We may become lost and uncertain of the trail. We may reach a dead end or a one-way street when we need to go the other way. A flashlight is for those dark, gloomy times when I can’t see my way, and need the assistance of something more than my mortal eyes. The gospel is my flashlight; it allows me to see the eternal perspective, and not just the few feet (or years) ahead of me that the life often does.

CAMERA & TRAVEL LOG:  Make sure you have a camera and a make a log as you travel, so you can share your journey with others. A personal journal helps us remember our successes and failures, and learn from them.

GPS:  I can’t imagine traveling without a GPS to help me find my way through the maze of this world. The Holy Ghost and our faithfulness to access it is invaluable.

   

   The GPS gives guidance in a calm way, and never gets yells at us or get angry when we go the wrong way.

       When we make a wrong turn, The GPS continues to direct us how to get back on track. It does not nag or blame.

        If we miscalculate and misdirect the GPS, so it keeps reminding us to go the wrong way, it is easy to get irritated and “shut off” the GPS. When the spirit and others we love try to direct us back to the correct path which we’ve strayed from, we often become irritated, and eventually “shut them out.”

      When we turn off the GPS or are in an underground garage where the satellite signal can’t reach us, when we turn it back on, it doesn’t automatically bounce back up immediately. It must find the signal. When we turn off the spirit, we must work hard to regain the signal and get its guidance back.

       I don’t like how the GPS rarely shows us the whole picture of our journey. It will only show us what lies along the way, and to the next marker, whether it is 8 miles or 80 miles further along our trip. The Holy Ghost does not show us the whole plan of our eternal journey, but we see our progress only step by step.

       Lastly, the GPS needs power to help us navigate our personal path through life, just as our spiritual communication needs power—faithfulness, worthiness of the spirit, keeping covenants helps power our spiritual GPS. 

 But despite our wonderful personal GPS, all our plans, goals, education, preparation, maps, we alone determine where we go and where we end up. The GPS (Holy Ghost) can only guide—it cannot control our destination. We are the drivers of our destiny.

Our Adventure to Australia and New Zealand

Part II

In the Country

We arrived in Australia ready to enjoy it fully. Since we were in an English-speaking country, we didn’t have to learn a foreign language, which was very fortunate. However, we still had to cope with some unexpected difficulties.


:) Throw-away Cell Phone: One of the smartest things we did was to purchase a “throw-away” pre-paid cell phone at the Australia airport when we arrived. For $29.00 American money we bought a cheap, but adequate cell phone with $150.00 worth of minutes; for $29.00 more we got another $150.00 more minutes. I immediately texted our phone number to our children so they could contact us in case of an emergency. This phone was good both in Australia and New Zealand and it was cheaper to call the U. S. than to call a local number in Australia. However, calling a local New Zealand phone number (the airlines to confirm our flight) on this Australian phone number ate up almost all our minutes. But the phone was a lifesaver!!!!


:( GPS doesn’t work: Our GPS could never get a satellite so our purchase of the maps was a total waste!!! But it was a good idea that just didn’t work!

:) Electrical Converters: Electricity voltage is not the same anywhere in the world, so you have to have converters to use any electrical items you might have—laptops, curling irons, ipods, etc. Additionally, every electrical outlet is different (to prevent you from plugging your laptop into a 240 watt outlet and zapping your laptop to death). You could rent converters and adapters from the hotel (some charged you for them, while others only asked for a $20.00 deposited that you got back when you returned it).

But they aren’t that expensive, so I purchased both an adapter, and a converter before I left home, and I’m glad I have my own for future travel. My adapter has outlets for anywhere in the world! My converter had two settings—one higher wattage for curling irons that use a lot of electricity and another for lower wattage for most items. Converters and adapters are one thing you CAN’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT!

:( No Free Internet: The biggest surprise was that our hotels did not have free internet! I guess I was surprised because most hotels in the U. S. have it, but the more expensive the hotel, the more they wanted to charge you for it! From $.76 a minute, to $10.00 for an hour, to $30.00 a day, they seemed to think that only businessmen with an unlimited business account needed an internet account. But if you had to fly from city to city or country to country as we did, it was a necessity.

I ended up paying for it occasionally, but most of the time I took my Ipod touch or laptop to McDonald’s where they had free internet to send an occasional email or Facebook message to let our family and friends know we were alive. I certainly would not want to spend more than 30 minutes to an hour on the internet per day on a holiday, but I feel in this day and age, internet access is a reality, and dark, dingy internet cafes don’t cut it. The hotels had “business centers” but they charged a large fee to use them also. I confirmed my flight and then printed the boarding passes at the airport.

:) Prearranged Shuttles: The best thing the tour agent set up for us was to be picked up at the airport by a shuttle bus and taken to our hotel. That was wonderful, and I would always have that whether I booked through a tour agency or not. It made life so much easier not to worry when you got to the airport—just to hop aboard a scheduled airport shuttle.

Only once did the shuttle fail us and it was at 9:30 pm when we flew into Auckland. There were few shuttles or taxis by the time we cleared customs and baggage. The shuttle we finally convinced to take us on the 40-minute drive to town would only accept New Zealand money (or a premium to use American dollars) so we exchanged money at a high exchange, and paid him. It made us realize how glad we were that we didn’t have to do that on a regular basis.

:( Ask Before You Go: We discovered the hard way that you always ask a cab driver how much it will cost to take you somewhere when you give them the address. They don’t have counters that add up the charges as you travel like most cities have; when you arrive at your destination, they tell you the charge--$90.00 in our case.


:) Use the Local Public Transportation: My husband hates public transportation, and I thought he wouldn’t be caught dead on a tram or a bus, but he adapted right away to it. We found that it was far easier, faster (and cheaper) to get along on the trams than any other way. We bought a five-day public transportation pass for $20.00 and then went everywhere on it. In Sydney and Melbourne there were trams through the inner city that were easy to get on and off, so we rode them until we realized we were lost; then we’d hop off, look at our city map and hop another tram going the right way. Our hotels were downtown so in Sydney we could actually walk everywhere, but Ed would get tired and grab a tram.