June 11th, 2009 Ryan's 3rd Letter-MTC

Hey everyone,

This past week has been really great. So many great things have happened this week. Great teaching lessons, great language learning, etc...but my favorite thing this week was on Tuesday. Tuesday night for our devotional Elder David A. Bednar form the quorum of the 12 apostles came to speak to us. His talk was amazing, and I would like to just share a couple things from that. this was his overal question that was the theme of his talk: "how do i know if it is the holy ghost or me". his answer was really bold and straight forward.."dont worry about it" was his exact response. let me explain by telling you the promise that he left with us before he left. (exact words) "if we will be good boys and girls, keep our covenants, keep our covenants; and as we press forward with faith [in christ], our steps will be guided, our utterances will be inspired, and we cannot go astray". "we will always be in the right place at the right time". he also summed it up by simply stating, "if we are good boys and girls ( he said that a lot it was kind of funny) all of our thoughts will be from the holy ghost". if we strive to follow the gospel and the savior and do everything that we can to follow the commandments and the work our hardest and best with the most diligence, it will be impossible to do anything against the lords will. he shared a lot of personal and powerful experiences about following a simple task that he thought was his mind, and fuond out later that it was from the holy ghost. the spirit of the lord will not come to us when we are idoling our time or sitting there analyzing our thoughts wondering if they are of the lord or just us...and the simple answer, from an apostle of the lord is "quit worrying about it".

i went to the rc again on saturdat, and we got initiated on the caht system. this was really cool because instead of calling people who dont want to talk to you, you are responding to people trying to contact you. what you do is you respond to questions that people have about the church and life in general, and just share the gospel with them. it was awesome. i had the opportunity to talk to this guy, and for some reason i had a hard guy..he started talking about prophets, which wasnt hard, then he started asking harder questions that i didnt want to mess up my answers to...like "what are some 'spicific' revelations given since joseph smith, and if they do how come they didnt specifically predict 9?11 and katrina and stuff"..this was hard but a great experience to learn to work with my companion and most importantly learn to work but listening to the spirit on what to say. it was awesome. when it got hard i just said a silent prayer and i got ideas of what to say, and i was able to tell him what he needed to hear.i have been able to truely develop and gain a testimony of prayer here and that he really does hear us. for example. i was in a lesson with an investigator yesterday, and it was right after gym so we ran there and were 2 min late and didnt have time to plan. it was rough at the beginning. then while i had tyhe investagator read a scripture, i just bowed my head and said a silent quick prayer. the remainder of the lesson was amazing. the spirit was there, my mind was enlightened on what to say, and it was a lot better. i am so grateful for the blessings of the lord in my life, for without him i would not bwe the missionary he wants me to be; but through him i can do whatever he desires. its awesome.

oh dad i didnt get that long letter you sent, so if you still have it send it again. thanks. and also tell people i love it when you send things to my email, but i can only check it on p-day, so dear elder is better. but it you have to, you can send it to my email and ill print it off on thursday mornings.


well i have less time this week becasue i had to do someother stuff.so sorry for the short letter, and so mom and dad i am going to send you a letter today or tomorrow. and i will send some pics and write some more additional stuff.

thanks everybody for you prayers. i hope you all are doing well and god bless. talk to ya next week.


elder chapman