Elder Tanner's letter 11/23/2014
This week was the most amazing week of my life... for sure.. I only hope I can type the spirit I felt this week.
I want to tell you the long of it to bring the spirit that I felt a little better.
It started out Thursday, when my companion and I cleaned our apartment VERY well for inspections. It looked really good and the spirit was there. Then, we planned and had a great experience, but didn't set comp goals for things we could work on together. I realized this on Friday morning, so we erased a section of our board we didn't use and put our own goals as well as comp goals and had a very open honest conversation. That afternoon we had planned for 2 hours of "spirit tracting" where we said a prayer to find the elect and went off the feelings we had, so we did.
At the conclusion of the prayer I had a mental picture of a bend in a street 30 mins away from where we were. Not wanting to waste time, I shrugged it off and we tracted the street we were on with no success. That picture came back again, so I decided we'd go. as we came to that particular spot, we saw a man in his garage reading. A little dumbfounded, we went up to him and committed him to read and he said he would and we'd follow up in 2 weeks. We were THRILLED.
We said another prayer, this time another street location popped into my head, also 20 mins away. Remembering the experience we just had we decided to go straight there. There was no one there so we pondered for a moment, until my comp said "lets go into that park" just ahead of us, so we did.
While riding through the park we found a lady who told us "I plan on joining the church, but it's not my time yet." We bore solemn testimonies on faith, and found out she was not in our boundaries, and proceeded to tell her we'd send the correct elders to her and she gladly accepted.
This happened one more time that day, with praying about finding someone else and being led to a house. This guy didn't have time to talk but was excited to talk to us again.
We are just tickled pink about this.
The same kind of thing happened the next day, Saturday. We had planned to see two or three people and they all punched including Bhavish. Undaunted we prayed, got the feeling to turn around.. so we did and sure enough there was a man in his garage that we ended up also committing to read the BOM. after, he told us he had stopping smoking cold turkey, he said he needed to go to a church just not sure where. After that we prayed again and I had the feeling to see Bhavish again. We went over there and she answered! She OPENED up to us about how she feels the importance of church in her life having a new baby and wants Bhavish to be baptized. Pretty amazing.
we realized that these experiences happened because of our repentance, when we found out we had not been being EXACTLY obedient we repented cuz we wanted the spirit with us and our hearts were in it. we knew that following rules and doing everything right would help. we were amazed by the spirit that was with us.
These experiences had prepared our hearts for the best advice I've ever received. Our ward mission leader talked to us for and hour about how "that's the way it is for the rest of your life. If you do all the things your supposed to do you'll be blessed and led by the spirit for the rest of your life. In raising children, in your job, everything. Everything will be overwhelming for the rest of you life, but if your focused on the right things you'll be going the right way cuz the only way to grow is to be willing to continually be put in the refiner's fire."
We are only led when we are exactly obedient and have our hearts in it. Our hearts NEED to be in the gospel for the reason of wanting to change to become like the Savior. Our hearts will be in everything later on (kids jobs etc) if we train them to be so NOW in the gospel. The gospel will allow us to have that.
I have received too many answers to my prayers and too many spiritual experiences to deny what I now know. I don't know it all, but I know that obedience brings miracles. I know that for myself. Living the spirit of the law as well as the letter of the law are both needed. The spirit of the law meaning our hearts are in it too.
I wish I could impart of more of the spirit! but like Nephi, I am weak in writing haha.
I love you all! Hurrah for Israel!!
Elder Judy
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