Years ago I had planned to drive to Rexburg, Idaho, for the inauguration of Joe J. Christensen, a dear friend, as president of Ricks College. Some friends of mine, who were also planning to attend, invited me to fly up with them in a friend’s small plane rather than make the drive by myself.

Even though I’m afraid of small planes, I agreed to go with them because of all the time it would save.

So off we went. It was a four-seater. Dave and the pilot were up front, and Joy and I right behind them. Talking was a challenge because the propeller was so noisy. Mostly I just looked out at the scenery and kept track of where we were.

Some time into the flight, I saw Rexburg and the Ricks College campus. I’d been there enough to recognize it.

The pilot was still shout-talking with Dave, and there was no kind of "initial descent" that I could detect. "Hey!" I hollered. Not loud enough. No response.

"Hey, there’s Rexburg! There’s Ricks!" Joy heard me and shouted at Dave and the pilot.

They didn’t think it could be Rexburg. The pilot shouted back something about his calculations and that we had several more miles to go.

I shouted back, "but there’s Ricks. There’s the stadium right down there!"

The pilot shouted "Are you sure??" Yes, I was sure. I even pointed out the little airport back behind us. I had noticed it as we flew over.

He believed me. He circled, found the air strip, and landed.

I’ve thought a lot about that experience, and about flight plans and staying on course and all. It’s a pretty powerful analogy. A pilot has to submit a flight plan before he or she takes off. Without a plan, how would there be any chance of reaching a destination? Without navigational instruments and communication helps, how would a pilot know for sure if he (or she) were on course? Especially if it were cloudy, or if the plane were over water.

Amelia Earhart made plans to fly completely around the globe in 1937. She had flown across the continent, so she decided to go even further. She left Miami on 01 June 1937. She went across South America, Africa, and Asia. She and her navigator reached New Guinea, and then took off for Howland Island, somewhere out in the Pacific.

On that day, there was rain and fog, and the Coast Guard picked up a frantic message from Ameila: "Cannot hear you ... please take a bearing on us and answer...." There was trouble with the radio. Her final transmission was "Circling ... cannot see island ... Gas is running low .... running north and south...." And then silence. (See David R. Collins, "First Lady of the Sky," The Friend, June 1975, 37)

Somehow the little plane had gotten off course, and was lost along with its two passengers.

Life is like that. There’s a plan — the Great Plan of Happiness — but there is also a lot of opposition (storms, turbulence, darkness, strong head winds and other things) trying to take us off course. We need to make course corrections every bit as much as a pilot in a plane.

Elder L. Tom Perry has flown a lot in his life, and he said he’s been fascinated by looking in the cockpit at all the instruments and controls. He tells of a particular conversation with a pilot:

"I entered into a discussion with one pilot regarding what could happen if he deviated from his flight plan. I proposed deviating just one degree from the charted course. His reply astonished me. He said that for every one-degree variance from the plan, you would miss your charted destination by one mile for every 60 miles you were flying.... On a flight from Salt Lake to Chicago, you would miss the airport and land in Lake Michigan. Going from Salt Lake to New York, you would miss Kennedy Airport and land in the Hudson River. Going to London, you wouldn’t even make England — you would land somewhere in France....

"The pilot explained to me that, obviously, the faster the error is discovered, the easier it is to return to the flight plan.... My visit with the pilot [caused] me to think of how a flight plan parallels the direction we chart for our life’s experience." (L. Tom Perry, "Learning to Serve," Ensign, Aug. 1996, 10)

I think about how much more effective the Holy Ghost is in our lives than any kind of gauges or navigational instruments, or even an air traffic controller. There is really no comparison ... but there is a very good analogy.

Our lives can be aimless without a plan. I guess it’s kind of like what Yogi Berra reportedly said: "You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there." Uh, yes....

Am I on course? Am I headed where I really want to go? Do you find it’s important to think about it — to analyze how your journey is coming?

I think about these things a lot, and I aim to do all I can to have a "happy landing" in the right place.