Getting Answers

Dear Mom and Dad,

-I got a box!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Those BYU Lax shorts have so much swag....I haven't said swag in about a year. 

-A Mitt Romney signed picture??? I was so so excited!! Thank you thank you! 

-The shirts fit well and I got the pants hemmed. The belt also fits well.

-I will hopefully be sending some letters off today that I wrote A MONTH AGO but I still haven't found a post office. I should be sending letters off to Pat Maxwell and some others.

- If LeBron is going to win a championship, I'm glad I don't have to watch!

Well, hello to the Yost beach trip! I'm sad I can't be there, it sounds like you all are having a blast! Some of my best memories have come from those beach trips! Hopefully I'll get to get out to another one!

We had a good but busy week, with a Zone Conference. Zone Conferences in our mission actually have three zones meeting together. I was asked to conduct which was a bit nerve racking. A big focus of our Zone Conference was families. Our mission has a goal of 200 "Completed Families" in 2012, which just means that everyone in the family has been baptized. A lot of families here are not completed, so our goal is to complete them so the families can go to the temple to be sealed. Our half way point in the year is at the end of the month, and right now we have 93 completed families, so we're on track. We're really trying to complete families here, but the challenge is always one person that doesn't want to listen or  lives far away. We did meet a new couple yesterday at church. They hope to get married in the next few weeks, the Sister is a Less-Active and the brother's family is in our branch and are all active. Hopefully they'll be our first completed family here!

We have a baptism this Saturday morning for the young man that's on the railroad cart  in the picture I sent. He's 19 and is getting married in January to a member. This week we had 8 investigators at church which was awesome. The couple that had the baby is hoping to come to church on July 8th when they can bring the baby. We're trying to get them to get a move on their marriage papers!

I think last week I talked about the Less-Active with the daughter that's had some brain damage. Well, it's truly a miracle, but her daughter is dramatically improving. We were able to teach her a few times and had much better visits with her. Before when she saw the picture that's on the front of Preach My Gospel where Jesus is getting baptized and she thought that John the Baptist was trying to cut his hand off and that there was blood in the water! No wonder she wasn't too excited about baptism! However she's truly been a miracle and after they came to church, she's been doing so much better.

I had a really cool experience this week with receiving personal revelation. The past few weeks I've really been praying hard to know

the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and that Jesus is the Christ. I wanted so bad to receive a strong witness of their truthfulness. I thought that if I studied, pondered, and prayed, I would receive a very strong witness. I then read a story about Elder Christofferson in the Liahona (the international version of the LDS church’s magazine, Ensign). When he was younger, he worked in the Hill Cumorah Pageant, and one evening he went alone to the Sacred Grove to pray. He said he prayed for an hour, waiting to receive a powerful experience to know the truthfulness of the Restoration. He left feeling disappointed, and wondering how in the Sacred Grove of all places, he hadn't felt anything. He said it wasn't until a few months later, when he was reading the Book of Mormon in his room at home that he received a powerful manifestation of the truthfulness. Elder Christofferson said that we cannot choose the when,where, and how of revelation. If the Lord had answered that prayer in the Sacred Grove, he might have thought that whenever and wherever he could call down strong spiritual manifestations. However, the Lord knew what was best for him.

I know that God answers prayers. There is a constant channel of communication, and oftentimes we miss the sweetest and most tender promptings of the Spirit as we look only for great marvelous experiences. As we search, pray, and ponder, the Spirit will always bear witness of the truth, all we have to do is be humble enough to listen, and continue in faith. We'll learn line upon line, and precept upon precept, until we can say as Peter did in his bold declaration, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God."And Jesus answered and said unto him, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto these, but my Father which is in heaven."

Love, Elder Yost