Do You Know the Words to Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree?

Technically this is Popcorn Popping on the Cherry Tree

Well, do you know the words to Popcorn Popping?  Are you sure?

It is Zone Conference time which mean time to teach the missionaries so they can go out and teach the gospel.  Parts of Zone Conference are boring but must be done, like car inspections, reminders on how to fill out this form or when to call for medical stuff.  Part of it is really intense (or maybe just really tense) like when your mission president reviews the rules and explains that he will not let you ruin another missionary's mission.  If you are unwilling to be a full-time missionary and follow the standards in Preach My Gospel and the Missionary Handbook, then you are not acting as a missionary and it is better that you go home so you are not being held accountable for doing things that are fine in civilian life but not appropriate as a missionary.  Things like watching movies all day or, ditching your companion.  So, really only intense for one or two of them.

Almost all missionaries want to be good missionaries.  They know it is hard work and often discouraging, but they know they have been called of God to do this and they are going to give it their best shot.  Sometimes though, there are things they are doing that they shouldn't or things they are doing that they should.  They just aren't aware of it and would change it if it were brought to their attention.  Hence, the words to Popcorn Popping.  In each of the conferences I (because I have no dignity) invite the missionaries to stand and sing/do the actions to Popcorn Popping. For the non-North American and converts I invite them to behold the wonder of their companions "looking out the window."

I looked out the window and what did I see?  Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.
Spring has brought me such a nice surprise, ______________ popping right before my eyes.

What word goes in that blank?  Is it popcorn? After we sing, I ask that very question.  Some say popcorn and some say blossoms and some simply look around in bewilderment.  There are usually one or two who confidently assert that it is blossoms.  Those that think it is popcorn lose some of their confidence in the face of the confidence of the blossoms group.  But, the majority determine that it is Popcorn.  One even said there was no way to know since no one had a Primary book with them. Apparently he thought I wanted to really know and had no point.  An understandable impulse, but, of course I had my Primary book with me (Ok, it was on my phone). 

When I ask the Blossom crowd how they knew it, the most common answer was not that's how I learned it but, I looked it up.

The point is that sometimes we don't know what we think we know.  We need to look it up.  Just because we have always done it this way doesn't mean that there aren't changes to be made.  For a missionary, maybe you have always done something that isn't quite how you should.  You just didn't know it wasn't popcorn.  We are accountable for keeping the commandments (and in this case mission rules) but we need to know what they are, we need to look them up. 

Do we understand faith or repentance?  Are we sure? Maybe there is more to it than what we thought we learned the last time we sang that song.  Look it up.  Do we know how to love one another and bless each other's lives?  Are we sure? Look it up. 

My grandfather had a saying: Don't drink downstream [from the horses].  I haven't shared that saying with the missionaries yet because after loosing my dignity singing Popcorn Popping, I'm not sure I want to have to want to throw in the image of why you shouldn't drink downstream from the horses (hint: horses are less fastidious about using the facilities than you are). His point was that there are things we need to know, things we need to do, but we need to go the source to find out what those things are.  Scriptures, prophets, prayer, you know the drill. Just because somebody once told you it was popcorn doesn't make it so. 

This pattern is the one that Joseph Smith followed

In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?

 While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

  Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know;

It is the pattern Moroni challenges us to follow.  To find out what is true and what we are to do with that information.

So, now do you know the words to Popcorn Popping? Are you sure? Then if you are so smart, is it me or be?

It wasn't really so, but it seemed to ______, popcorn popping on the apricot tree!

Go look it up.