Receiving Warnings From the Holy Ghost
This article is going to be slightly out of the norm, but I don’t know what else to write about this week and I feel like sharing this.
This last Tuesday I got up early and went for a hike up a nearby canyon to photograph a herd of moose I had discovered on a previous hike. This experience is a manifestation of the protection we can experience when we listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Also, check out these other posts of videos about hearing the spirit:
Elder M. Russell Ballard
Elder Gerrit W. Gong
Elder Gary E. Stephens
Elder David A. Bednar
I’m going to make this easy on myself and pull this experience directly from my journal.
My Moose Experience
At one point I was standing at the water’s edge when the smaller bull moose came running down towards where I was set up with my camera. I had nowhere to go. I could move towards the moose to dodge around to the other side of a clump of bushes that were to the left of me. I could have moved to my right along the shoreline, but I didn’t feel comfortable being there because that left me in the wide open where I would have nothing to hide behind.
My other and best option was back and to the left behind the clump of bushes and up a small hill to a ridge. That would have afforded me a little coverage behind the bushes before I was back in pretty much the same path of the moose. I’ve heard, but I don’t know if it’s true, that moose will charge people into water and hold them under the water with their antlers. I decided to dash to the side up the small hill. I don’t think the moose really saw me standing by the water because he stopped when I made my dash. Moose don’t have good vision.
The moose continued to the waterside and stopped where I had been standing. I felt safe photographing on the top of the hill to shoot down on the moose because the moose was on the opposite side of the bushes.
After a minute or so I began to feel unsafe where I was standing and felt prompted to move. There was a couple on the ridge close to me and as I left I told a couple that I felt like it was unsafe to be standing there, but the couple remained.
I moved up the ridge where I could still see all of the moose and to get some more photos. The moose by where I had been standing was eating the bushes and slowly worked his way through them.
Suddenly the moose started running right at the couple who were standing on the trail about 10 feet away. The couple ran down the other side of the hill but the moose kept chasing them until the people ran off the trail and the moose kept running along the trail. Had I stayed where I was I would have been right in the moose’s path like the couple was, but I would have been extremely too close for comfort and I would have been backed into a corner of trees if the moose decided to change directions.
After a couple of minutes of standing on the ridge, I felt prompted to move again and so I moved back down closer to the water. I know it was a spiritual prompting. Soon after I moved the second larger bull moose and two cows started running and ran over the hill exactly where I had been standing.
Since I’ve probably done a poor job explaining where things happened I’ll draw a poor picture to diagram it.
I’m represented by the orange arrows.
Moose 1 is represented by blue arrows.
The 3 moose are represented by the green arrow.
Image Credit: Dallas Golden/Google Maps
Incidentally, here is a good article to read about being attacked by a moose should you ever find yourself in that predicament. I’ve hiked within 10-15 feet of a cow moose who just sat there munching on the bushes idly watching us pass, but it could have turned bad very quickly.