It’s About Time

by Larry A. Hiller

Assistant Managing Editor

Not long ago, youth in the Florida Lake City Stake conducted a little experiment in time travel. They sent themselves ahead 10 years.

Can you travel into the future? Absolutely. But first, it helps to understand the revised theory of relativity: (1) Time is elastic. But instead of expanding with age like the elastic in your favorite socks, it shrinks. (2) The more time that passes (in other words, the older you get), the more you become like your relatives.

The first part is easy to demonstrate. The older you get, the less time there seems to be. Think about it. Christmas, your birthday, even the end of the school year—all seem to come around faster as you get older. The second part, becoming more like your relatives—well, don’t let it worry you right now. It doesn’t necessarily mean those strange cousins on your mother’s side.

The Experiment

The project started when the Lake City Stake leadership decided to build a time capsule and invited the stake members to place certain important things in it, such as copies of family histories. For the youth, the invitation included writing their testimonies and some advice to the future generation. The time capsule was then sealed, and it will be opened in 10 years.

Okay, so it’s not time travel in the H. G. Wells sense, where you build a machine that takes you physically backward or forward in time. But think about it. One of the reasons most of us would like to travel in time is to make interesting discoveries. Right? And that’s exactly what happened here. But the discoveries were made in the process of “building the machine.” In other words, those who participated learned some interesting things about themselves as they wrote testimony and advice.

Discovering Testimony

Some of the youth found writing their testimony was difficult. Others found it easier. But all agreed that it was worthwhile.

For Camber Page, 17, of Macclenny, Florida, writing her testimony was a spiritual experience. She’s borne her testimony in church before, but, she says, “I get nervous, and I don’t get to say what I am really feeling.” But when she wrote her testimony, she says, “The Spirit was just coming out of me. I had time to think about it. I was able to write it down without getting up and crying and getting all emotional and shaking. I didn’t know I had believed in so much until I started writing it down. I thought, Gosh, my testimony’s stronger than I thought it was.”

Dustin McRae, 18, of Lake City had a similar experience. “You really don’t know all of your blessings until you start thinking about them and writing them down. It makes more of an impact to see it rather than just think about it. Your testimony is deeper than you realize.”

Nada and Makeda Meeks are converts to the Church. They live just outside Live Oak. Nada, 17, says, “It was a very nice experience to write something down that’s a part of me. It was like seeing my testimony. Most people feel their testimony, and they know they have it, but this is like seeing what you believe.”

Makeda, who is 15, had a little trouble getting started at first. “I haven’t borne my testimony that many times,” she says. She put down the usual things that people say in testimonies, like belief in the prophet. “And I got those things written down, and there weren’t very many words. And I started thinking, and it all started bubbling up. I’ve had so many experiences where God just said ‘I love you.’ I had so much in my mind that what I put down was probably very limited.”

In Valdosta, Georgia, part of the Lake City Stake, young people had similar experiences with writing their testimonies. Joe Stansel, 14, says simply, “I felt good inside that I had the privilege of knowing and being part of the truth.”

Just about everyone who wrote down their testimony reports having the same great experience. Joel Roper, who lives in Stark, Florida, says, “It was like just standing up in sacrament meeting bearing my testimony.” But it went beyond that, even, because, he says, “It was everything that I always thought about saying in testimony meeting but never did because I didn’t want to take up a whole lot of time. I enjoyed writing it down.”

Becoming Your Parents

Writing advice for the future generation turned out to be an eye-opener. For one thing, when you ask those who participated if they found themselves sounding like their parents, many get this almost sheepish grin and say, “Yeah, I guess I did.”

Makeda Meeks says, “It’s like all the things that you’ve heard adults say, and you’re, like, ‘Uh huh.’ But now you’re getting older and it’s, like, ‘Whoa, I should have been doing that years ago.’”

Valdosta’s Angie Walker, 17, found herself getting preachy, but it also gave her a better understanding of her parents. “It kind of put me in their place,” she says. “Giving advice to the future makes you think about where you will be in 10 years. Already the years seem to be going by faster.”

Writing advice for the future really hit home for Jana Spivey, 15, also of Valdosta. She’s the second oldest of six children, and her little sister Casey is 10 years younger. So when the time capsule is opened, Casey will be the age that Jana is now. And Jana found herself saying the same things that her mom says to her today. “And that’s a real eye-opener. Because when your parents tell you, you don’t want to hear it, because you’re upset or whatever. But then, when you’re saying it, you realize that’s really what you’re supposed to be doing. And you start thinking that maybe they were right. But you hate to admit it.”

Back in Macclenney, 15-year-old Jonathan Fish talks about writing advice. “I wrote what I thought the youth in the future could use and what they should strive to do.” He also surprised himself. “I thought I could give some advice just to help them along, but I found myself preaching,” he admits with a laugh. Did he stop and think, Oh, I’m becoming my dad here? Again he laughs. “Yes. It was actually scary at first.”

So there’s the theory again. Over time, you can become like your relatives, especially your parents, and especially in good ways. (As for those cousins, nobody mentioned them, so you’re probably safe.)

The Land That Remembers Time

In north central Florida, like most of the South, there is a strong sense of history. People know who they are and where they came from. They remember and honor good examples from the past. Jason Vonk, 16, of Glen St. Mary, certainly does. His great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side, George Paul Canova, was helping with the missionary work in northern Florida when he was killed by mobbers. “He set an example for the whole Church,” Jason says, “and I’m proud that he was my ancestor.” And when Jason starts talking about his grandfather, Alvin Canova, he really gets warmed up on the subject. In Jason’s eyes “he did nothing wrong at all.” The family has Alvin’s papers, including copies of most of the talks he ever gave. And Jason loves to go through them. For Jason, his grandfathers are still shining examples.

It’s Possible

When that time capsule is opened in Lake City, those who left testimonies and advice will be 10 years older—10 years that went by much faster than the first 10 years of their lives. (Time is elastic.) They will be adults. Some will already be parents—and imitating the best qualities of their own parents. (We become like our relatives.) And their examples will continue for generations.

We are all time travelers.

[photos, illustrations] Photography by Larry A. Hiller. Illustrated by Jon Burton. Electronic composition by Charles M. Baird and Mark G. Budd.

[photos, illustration] In this place the famous Suwanee River flows slowly among trees bearded with moss, and at first glance, time seems to stand still. But for these teens, like young people everywhere, life is moving forward at warp speed. Luckily they’ve found a way not only to keep pace, but to get ahead.

[photos, illustration] The Suwanee’s dark waters, stained by the vegetation they pass through, seem bottomless. As the youth of the Lake City stake prepared to write their testimonies, they discovered that those testimonies were also much deeper and broader than they had supposed.

[photos, illustration] The sense of history is strong here. Every year people gather at the old chapel in Oak Grove to remember their local pioneers and honor a noble past. These teens know that, in no time at all, the present will also be the past. And they want to make sure it will be worth honoring also.