Travel Plans!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello family,

How are you all? It sounds like everyone is doing pretty well from the letters. Mom congratulations on the marathon, that is incredible! That is pure will power and determination to be able to do that without the proper training. It’s amazing how hard you can push yourself when you have the will of the mind overpowering the body! So you took Brooklyn’s stiches out while she was asleep? That is fairly impressive, how many did she have? I remember getting those a couple times it feels super weird, doesn’t hurt but she probably would have been freaked out. How is Mary? I didn’t hear from her this week.

So on Friday of last week we went to get the mail and all of our travel plans were in there!!! I am so stoked to get out of here! Probably the best day of the MTC so far. (Not that it’s not a good place with an amazing spirit but I’m done) Anyway so we report at the travel office at 5 AM Monday morning. Our flight leaves from Salt Lake to Dallas/Ft. Worth TX at 8:20 Utah time, we arrive at 12 Texas time. It is American Airlines flight # 2012 (kind of weird). From Texas we have a flight to Leon/Guanajuato it leaves at 120 Texas time and arrives at 340 Leon time. The flight is American airlines flight # 3211 (I’m not quite sure how all the time zones work). VERY IMPORTANT: I believe we will arrive at the airport at around 6, and be checked in and good to go between 630 and 7. I am hoping to call home from 630 to about 8. I have a calling card with 500 minutes but it subtracts like 130 minutes per call, so PLEASE try and pick up on the first one. You should send me a dear elder or email with which phone you would like me to call. Then again sometime between 12 and 1 I should be able to make a quick call home from Texas, although it’s not a huge layover so I don’t know how much time I have. Let me know which phone to call then too. I am not sure what will happen after that, I have heard I am able to send a quick email that I got there and that’s about all I know.

I think I will be able to email home again on Saturday, which is the day we are packing, doing laundry and prepping to leave. So if you have any questions I should be able to answer them on Saturday.

So those are my travel plans. It has been really hard for everyone in the district to focus because we know it’s coming up soon. But we have done a pretty good job, and learned a lot this last week or so. One thing I forgot to mention is we all fly into Dallas together but then 3 of us go to Leon and 3 of them will wait another half hour and fly to Monterey.

So this week I have been learning a lot about the Holy Ghost and how it works. We have kind of been studying it a little bit and I have had a few pretty cool experiences with it. I would like to share just one that happened when we were teaching in the TRC. I don’t know if I have mentioned the TRC before but basically once a week they have members come in who know Spanish and we go teach them either two 20 minute lessons or one 40 minute lesson. This last week was our last time so it was a 40 minute lesson. We taught a sister who had just returned from a mission a couple of months ago, she served in Guatemala. I love TRC because we get to interact with people and actually possibly help a real person instead of fake investigators. But I didn’t know what we could possible teach this return missionary. But we started teaching; the lesson was on receiving revelation through prayer. As we were teaching I just had the story pop into my mind about when I made the decision to switch schools from pine view to desert hills my senior year. I didn’t think much of it and shared it the best I could in Spanish. Basically I prayed and prayed and prayed but I never received an answer. Finally I prayed one night and told Heavenly Father I was going to submit the paperwork. I did and continued to pray, no answer. The answer came later, after I had been accepted and actually signed the paperwork to move schools.  I continued praying and didn’t feel it was wrong, but I just didn’t get the reassurance I wanted. After everything was finalized and I was really rather nervous about switching schools, I finally got my answer. I supposed to do that, I felt peace and I knew everything would be okay and I would be happy there. And I loved it. So we finished the lesson and left. The people we teach usually write up a little note on how we did and give it to our teacher. This sister did just that. It surprised me when I looked at it, she said that she was really touched by that story and that was something that she really needed to hear. At the time I told it I had no idea that that was a spiritual prompting, but I know realize it was. I have had a couple other similar experiences like that lately.

I know that if we are living right and have the companionship of the Holy Ghost it will guide us; any good thought or feeling we have is from the Holy Ghost. If we choose to follow those thoughts and feelings we can be an instrument in the Lord’s hand. God loves us and other and because of that he has given us the Holy Ghost that we might be able to feel of his love and his love for others. I have done a lot of scripture and other study on this lately and it’s all great stuff. But what I would challenge all of you to do is going onto lds.org and finding the Mormon messages. David A Bednar just put up a three part video on the Holy Ghost, how it works and how to recognize it. Then ponder it, and look for the Holy Ghost in your life, as you follow the prompting that relationship of trust will grow between you and the Holy Ghost and you will be able to feel its influence more fully in your lives. I know this to be true.

I love you all!

Elder Utley