Welcome to the recent speeches podcast presented by BYU speeches

featuring inspiring new devotional and forums given each week on BYU campus.

Be sure to check out our other podcasts by searching BYU speeches wherever you get your

podcasts or by visiting speeches dot BYU.edu.

Pogasts. This devotional address entitled The Covenantal Journey of Disciples Scholarship was given on July 9th of 2024

by Richard A Gill, then Dean of Undergraduate Education.

A few years back I was having dinner with the family of a graduate student, Klaite Ellis.

His father, Mark, is involved in the Polynesian Voyaging Society and now the Polynesian Cultural Center.

In his work, he and many others employ historically accurate navigational approaches to sail

double-hulled canoes thousands of miles across the Pacific without

Western instrumentation. They use celestial navigation and knowledge of oceanography

and natural history to cross ancient routes

traveled by their ancestors. Mark in a moment of clarity that captured my

imagination summarized the work of navigation.

When he said, on the deck of the canoe,

the navigator daily makes thousands of observations

to make hundreds of choices

to answer two questions at sunrise and sunset. Where are we and what is our

heading? Those same two questions should animate each of us spiritually. We should daily ask, as a disciple and a scholar, what are the

observations and choices that I'm making that tell me where I am and where I am

heading? I have deep admiration for the skill of

ancient and modern Polynesian voyagers. Centuries before Europeans

...