July 31, 2017

We had some wonderful experiences that probably won't come across as amazing in email form but just know that through the Spirit my testimony has grown this week. I have strengthened it and I love that I can continue to have spiritually defining moments every day. In my life I don't want to start stories about a significant spiritual experience with "a couple years ago..." I want it to always be something I am experiencing, I want to say "so earlier this week..." That was my goal this week.

So Tuesday I was on exchanges with the wonderful Elder Parker from.... West Valley City! We were working in Eastgate, where I served last transfer. Turns out he only lives maybe half a mile from where I lived the last 15 years! But you know Utah, that was a completely different stake haha. So I loved my day with him. We had so much fun, but the best part was when we decided in the middle of walking to say a prayer. In that prayer we pled with Heavenly Father and told him we have talked to everyone today, we didn't walk past a single person. We have been praying and we want to find people to teach who have been looking for this Gospel! Please lead us to them! And as soon as we said "amen" Elder Parker said I know where we need to go. They had received a referral that they forgot about several weeks ago but as we know the comforter will "bring all things to your remembrance." So we started walking there, we knocked on the door and..... nobody was home. But 3 feet away we knocked on the neighbor's door and there we met Andre. He came out and talked to us, then he invited us in and talked to us.  We shared some of our message and found a time we could come back to share the powerful message of the Restoration with him and his wife.  That was a clear answer to our prayer and Elder Parker told me they went back and taught both of them and they were just as welcoming. I know I won't see them all the way through, but that isn't the point I don't think. I think that for me it was enough to follow the prompting to stop and pray and for Elder Parker to follow the prompting to go there. That is how I know that Heavenly Father knows me and loves me, that is how I know that Christ lives, that is how I know that he answers my prayers. It happens. And it doesn't happen in the past tense. It happens whenever I listen. Now.

This is probably the most joyful thing in the world, I can't think of anything that brings greater happiness and fulfillment than hearing a prompting and then acting on it and finding out you are an answer to somebody else's prayer.

Elder Howland