June 27, 2016

Dear Family,

Wow it has been quite a week and I am so grateful for every experience, This was my first week doing things on my own and let me just say, it has been a learning process, I am still in my area and I am driving now.

I have discovered that I don't know my area as much as I thought I did, I have realized that I have relied on previous companions to know what they are doing in planning and companion study, so now that I am doing most of that we are having a heck of a time, during this week I have

Gotten us lost,

spent forever in planning staring blankly at my planner while my companion is looking at me like I should know what I have been doing.

and there have been many awkward moments where we have had to talk to people and I don't know what to say, my companion is looking at me like I should know what I am doing and the person who we are talking to is looking at me to carry on the conversation and I am frantically trying to figure out what to say.

don't even get me started on companion study and the extra hour that I get to train, its  definitely hard to come up with things to talk about, much less train about, because I still feel as if I have been out here for only two months myself. Its hard to believe that six months have flown by. 

I have had many wonderful experiences on my mission and if it is okay I would like to tell of a certain one that happened to me recently, Throughout this week I have been hearing stories of how many people have been having experiences of hearing what the spirit tell them something and also feeling a distinct impression to do something or say something by the spirit and I got selfish and in a hurried prayer I asked why I couldn't get such distinct revelation from the spirit. I felt entitled at that time to more then I had been given, and the next day at church I was sitting in Gospel principles and we were discussing spiritual gifts, the teacher said something about it mid lesson that I felt was an answer to my prayers, he said that everyone has at least one spiritual gift but none of us have all of them. I thought about that and the idea came to my mind that maybe my spiritual gifts are of a different sort, maybe I can't specifically hear words of the spirit or strong spiritual promptings, but I will follow what I know to be good because if I am doing my best to do Gods work then I will be an instrument in his hands regardless of what I may feel, the spirit will still work through me.

I love you all so much and hope that all is well.

Love,

Joshua