But where is Jesus?

People sometimes look at our plan of happiness graphic and ask, "But where is Christ? Jesus is the only way to God!" 

It's a great question, and they're absolutely right. Jesus taught, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the father but by me."

In no way is this simple drawing meant to remove Christ from our journey. In fact Christ is central to God's great plan of happiness. Everything about the plan of salvation would be null and void without the essential role Jesus plays in it.

Maybe the best answer is that the graphic is not so much a description of how to return to God, but a map of places and events all God's children will pass through on the way back to God's presence.

Jesus is in every step of the plan:

• In the great council in heaven before the earth was created, Jesus volunteered to be the savior of mankind. “Thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever."
• Just like each of us, Jesus was born into the world and received a body of flesh and blood. 
• Jesus lived life on earth and experienced temptation, hunger, fatigue, happiness, pain and more, just as we do. He lived an unblemished life, and most importantly he endured the atonement, taking upon himself the sins, suffering and pains of the world.
• Christ died on the cross – willingly gave up his mortal life – so that we might live.
• Between the time of his death and resurrection, Jesus visited the spirit world where organized the church so that his gospel could be preached to those who had not accepted him during their mortal lives.
• Christ's glorious resurrection made it possible for all mortals to be raised from the dead.
• When each of us faces final judgement, we will stand at the pleasing bar of Christ with a perfect recollection of all our life's deeds and the intentions of our hearts. 
• At that point, we will know with certainty how much of Christ's influence we are comfortable with as we are assigned to an eternal degree of glory.

Even in outer darkness where the influence of Jesus will never be felt, those sons of perdition are consigned to eternal damnation because they rejected Christ.  

So, where is Jesus in the plan of happiness? He is everywhere! He was there before we came to earth and he will be there at the very end.

It is also comforting to know that he is here with us now. Not only does he personally lead the church through living prophets and apostles, he has a profound influence on the lives of those individuals who earnestly seek him and allow him into their lives through prayer, repentance and obedience to his commandments. 

Surely, this is the way to happiness.

Board Game Bash

We, the owners of LDS Happiness, would like to take this moment to share a little more about ourselves. Although we have a Pinterest Board that shares quite a bit about us, there is one aspect of this earth-life we particularly enjoy that isn't terribly prominent on our board. While do we enjoy finding new and simple ways of sharing the gospel, we also spend far more time than we like to admit playing board games, or tabletop games in general. 

This obsession reached a new high this last weekend when we attended the annual Board Game Bash in Austin, Texas. It was a truly humbling experience. We thought we knew board gaming until we attended this gaming convention. We saw board games that we've never even thought could exist: Board games that take hours just to set up, games that take up 8 or 9 tables, games whose pieces are so delicate it makes you nervous just to watch, and everything in between. And, this isn't even a big convention, or so we're told. 

However, amidst all this, there were two things that stuck out to us more than just the variety of games we witnessed. We saw a variety of people too. They all loved games, this we all held in common. And do you know what else? We never saw a single person tuned out from the world, distracted by the ever-present cell phone. This was amazing. Over 300 people, and everyone had better things to do than see what they had missed on social media. No one ever put a game on hold because something 'better' came up on his screen. Even when people seemingly had nothing to do, their phone was in their pocket!

The other thing that astonished us was how much mutual respect there was for everyone, and everything. For example, the convention had a library of games to choose from. Nobody was there, standing guard, to check games in or out. It was simply, 'if you take it, bring it back' - no questions asked. The same went for your individual games; if you left them on a table while you went to lunch...then they'd be there when you returned. 

As we pondered what we had witnessed during our return trip home, we concluded we liked what we saw. We liked it very much. Nowadays you hear so much of how you must watch your back at all times and how everyone is growing more and more disconnected as a result of social media. We didn't see any of that in Austin at this convention. We saw social interaction and not social disconnect; we saw warm smiles instead of cold hearts. We saw games bring people together, and it was fantastic!

Here are some photos we took of the event.

What's your favorite board game? Leave a comment below and let us know!

Here's some photos taken of the event, and published here by Board Game Bash!

Now with Sound

It's been a while since we've given an update, but we do have one and more to come in the next few weeks. We'd like to announce that thanks to the generous help of Andrew Campbell our Plan of Salvation video now has some nice music to go along with the motions. Check it out below or at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmGMVZ6hWR0