What an eventful week it has been. So, we finally had an Apostle speak last night. Elder Neil L. Anderson spoke to us. It was awesome. It was also Pres. Monson's birthday. He told us when he was with him earlier that day, and told him he would be speaking to us, President Monson said to tell us how much he loves us and thanks us and that he prays for us and sends us his blessing. Elder Anderson had us sing for him and then his talk was mostly about his teachings and his life. It was really cool. But I'll get to that in a minute.

In our District Review after the devotional, this elder in my district, Elder Faught, got up when it was his turn to speak. He stood there for a minute, thinking, and then said: "It's always a blessing to be taught by the feet of an Apostle." Three of us immediately busted up laughing, and he had no idea what was going on. He was so confused and so he went on speaking. Afterwards, we asked him if he knew what he said, and he said: "Yeah, it's always a blessing to be taught at the feet of an Apostle," at which point we explained the important one word difference. He understood, and laughed accordingly.  

There are many things I could share with you that he said, but I've only got fifteen minutes left, so I'll have to only pick a few.

He shared some of his favorite things President Monson has said. One of them was: "The Lord will shape the back to bear the burdens placed upon it."

He said to never ignore a prompting from the spirit so the Lord will know He can trust us. If you are not sure if it is the Holy Ghost or yourself, take a chance on it, and within a couple of days you will know whether it was or not. And then they will come more frequently and you will grow up in the spirit of revelation. It was really awesome and the spirit was so strong.

My most favorite part of his talk was at the end, when he bore testimony that Christ lives. I wrote down the exact wording that he used because it was so powerful to me. He said:

"I testify with absolute certainty that He rose the third day, that there is life after death. I testify that He lives, I witness that He lives. I am His witness."

The spirit bore a powerful witness to me that this was true and that this man is one of His special witnesses for us on the earth today. Not only did the Holy Ghost bear witness of the truth, but also gave me several promptings during the talk.

He said we have the light of revealed truth. Our pain will be swept away because Christ will lift it from us. Our pain will be swept away by peace and relief. He has felt your pain and can and will give you His peace. He lived a perfect life and gave a perfect sacrifice for us. While we cannot fully comprehend the Atonement, we can know that it is real and that it works.

During one of our classes yesterday, I felt prompted to share something that we talked about. We were talking about the power of the spirit in conversion, but our teacher felt prompted to take the lesson in a different direction that he had not planned on. It was something I had never thought about but that made perfect sense to me when I did.

We do not have a monopoly on the spirit. The spirit testifies of truth when it is spoken. You can go to any church and feel the spirit. When people testify of truth, the spirit backs them up. However, when they testify of a false statement or the tampered truth, the spirit will not testify.

For example, if someone testifies of three things:

1. God is our loving Heavenly Father

2. Jesus is the Christ
3. And the Bible is the only book containing the word of God.  The spirit will testify of the first two statements, but will flee when the third is stated, because there are several other books of scripture, especially the Book of Mormon.

The beautiful thing is that we have the complete truth. Other churches have only some of the truth, and can therefore only feel the spirit at times. We complete the truth, not change it.

I hope that made at least a little bit of sense. I'm out of time now, so I'm off to do laundry. Thank you for your support.

Elder Joseph Garrett