Turn Up The Music!

Figure showing approximate location of real vehicle top velocities in the Mach continuum (drawings courtesy of Greenwood kids).

Turn Up The Music! (6 November 2022)

After a three-year hiatus, and since I had some time on an international flight, I decided it was time to post another story, you know, for all my blog fans:).

Elder Richard G. Scott visited the Brazil, Rio North Mission while I was serving there. I was too far from the mission home to attend, but his talk on Revelation really affected our mission. He taught that we should write down, and then do our best to follow the inspiration that comes into our hearts and minds. Soon many of us missionaries were carrying around “cadernos de inspiraçao” (inspiration notebooks) so we would always be prepared to write down and follow through on whatever inspiration God saw fit to send our way. In the words of President Nelson, we should “Hear Him”.

While I am clearly imperfect at Hearing Him, I have been extremely blessed every time I have done so! One example of this was a piece of inspiration that came to me as I was completing my dissertation at Purdue University. I felt that I should take my dissertation and revise it in a more simple form for kids.

Boundary-layer transition schematic.

I traveled frequently during our next assignment at Los Angeles AFB and I often flew to Washington DC. So I started taking advantage of the long flights between LA and DC to work on the project of revising my dissertation into a more kid-friendly version. I got into the routine of taking my laptop on each trip and pulling it out to spend a few of the hours working on the project while listening to music through my headphones connected to the laptop. For me this project was a blessing and I came to enjoy the time during each flight when I could focus on re-writing my dissertation in order to explain principles of aerodynamics in easier to understand ways.

All was going to plan on one of these flights when I noticed that I could not hear the music very well. So I hit the volume increase button on my laptop. The volume increased slightly, but the music still seemed distant, so I increased the volume several more times.

Numerical computations of hypersonic flow past a missile-shaped model.

When this didn’t solve the problem I eventually got a little frustrated and pulled off my headphones to better diagnose the problem. The instant I removed my headphones I was greeted with the music- one of my kids’ favorite Frozen songs- and it was plenty loud!

Apparently I had not pushed the audio cord fully into my computer and the music was coming directly from the computer speakers to the enjoyment of all my seat mates! I was completely embarrassed, quickly pushed in the audio cord (so only I could listen to “Let It Go!”), mumbled an apology to the lady smiling next to me, and resumed my project with slightly rosier cheeks.

Nephi received revelation that he should make a separate set of plates more wholly dedicated to spiritual matters, and was willing to do so even though he didn’t understand why. Nephi recorded, “Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me to make these plates for a wise purpose in him, which purpose I know not.” (1 Nephi 9:6)

Book changing the world by turning hearts to Christ.

We now know that those Small Plates of Nephi covered the same time period as the Book of Lehi. And we can see God’s wisdom in using the Small Plates to replace that piece of Lehi’s history when the manuscript pages containing the early translated pages were lost by Martin Harris.

The writings of the Small Plates of Nephi are included in the first books of the Book of Mormon, which is changing the world by bringing souls to Christ and preparing the world for the second coming of our Savior. My hypersonics book has three stars on Amazon (w/ one rating) and brought in $8 in royalties one month. Those statistics are not everyone’s definition of changing the world, but I will always be grateful I listened to and followed through on that prompting, because that project changed me.

So, if you want to hear “Let It Go”, make sure your connection to the source of music is solid. And more importantly, if you want to hear from God, make sure your connection to Him is solid!

Love you always!

Dad

Cousins visiting Purdue's Mach-6 wind tunnel.