Review
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Title: Embark!
Author: John Bytheway
Publisher: Deseret Book
Genre: Youth Motivational Talk
Year Published: 2014
1 Compact Disc
ISBN13: 978-1-62972-005-0
Price: $14.99
Reviewed by Elizabeth W. Roach for the Association for Mormon Letters
There are many kinds of speakers, but motivational speakers need to be able not only to inform and entertain but also to move their audiences to act. John Bytheway manages to do all three in EMBARK!, a wonderfully uplifting and engaging talk given to a live audience that focuses on the 2015 Young Men and Young Women theme found in Doctrine and Covenants 4:2.
Starting with what the word embark means and how often it appears in scripture as a framework, Bytheway builds onto the ideas of serving the Lord with all your heart, might, mind, and strength. Using personal stories and examples of others he motivates listeners to identify and keep on the right path. He shares a story of an outstanding pair of friends from Arizona who participate in a race together that shows me that our only limits to great achievements are limits we put on ourselves. Bytheway tells about a close friend who is also a well-known author and speaker. While listening about this friend, I thought I could guess who it might be. Then Bytheway said that someone only had to hear him speak to be uplifted, and if they ever got within range, they had probably been hugged. I had to laugh at that because I actually had had a chance to meet this man at a Time Out For Women in St. Louis after his presentation and our whole group got hugs and photos.
As part of his remarks, Bytheway shares the relative finder website where you can put in your name and find if you are related to various historical figures and what the relationship is. There is also a feature on the website that allows you to start or join a group to see if you are related to people in the group. There is a group for the fireside so I put my name in to find out if I was related to John Bytheway. Guess what, John? You have another cousin! We are 11th cousins, 2 times removed through an English line. I also found I had over a hundred other relatives who had been in the audience at the fireside, many of them third and fourth cousins.
I wondered what being in this fireside would have been like, knowing that there were over a hundred relatives sitting all around me. It would have seemed more like a family get together and less like another meeting. That would have helped me feel more connected and less like a stranger coming alone. This was a family group I just hadn’t gotten acquainted with yet. I think I would approach meeting people around me differently, knowing we already probably shared a connection. As I listened to my newly found cousin Bytheway’s points on how to follow Christ and share His love with others, I started to see how the purpose behind the theme EMBARK! was really just pointing us to a much bigger family reunion with all of our brothers and sisters, no matter if they happen to live in the same house or halfway around the world.
In conclusion, is EMBARK! a good CD? Yes. Can you listen to it several times? Yes, I plan on it. Would the youth find it engaging? Yes. Can you share it with family? Most definitely share it with the relatives, whether you know how you are related or not. But most importantly, make the personal decision to EMBARK!