Hard Week

Hello everyone. I hope all of you loved conference and I hope that all of you had a wonderful past week.

So I'm gonna be bluntly honest with all of you. This past week has been really hard and really rough. I've been really struggling with some people in my apartment not doing their share of cleaning and not doing anything for the benefit of the apartment it just really gets on my nerves because Elder Barron and I (It's mostly me) Who does all the cleaning and then I have no time to study in the evening and I have almost no time to relax in the evening because I'm to busy cleaning because half of my apartment mates are slobs and I swear they have no idea how to clean!!!!!!!!!! Plus I'm just having a really hard time trying to figure out how to recognize when the spirit is with me and when the spirit is trying to talk to me and so on and so forth. So yea it's not been fun.  Also it just feels like I'm being forced into this box of discipleship and perfection and how we can't do all these things when there is absolutely nothing wrong and how it's this and not that and this and this and that but I just need  

Something that was super fun was being able to meet with Brother Neil L. Anderson and Ulisses Soares came to our mission Wednesday and it was super awesome to have them come. They told us some awesome things about us being very valiant and how all of the twelve and the first presidency honor us for our service and coming out to this mission because we could've easily not come and just ducked out and no one would ever know. Which really hit me and it proved to me that my work that I'm doing here is actually appreciated and that all the apostles are aware of us and what we're doing. Brother Soares said some stuff about obtaining Christ like attributes and doing all we can to obtain those, and how having those attributes can help us become better missionaries. I personally love hearing from Brother Soares and was super happy to hear that he was also coming along. Everything that he teaches about feels like it was just for me and it always helps me. (Plus I always take way more notes hearing from him than any of the others. Don't know how that happens but hey.) But I would say that was a super awesome part of last week. Also just having so many amazing people with me have helped me thus far make it through from day to day. I'm doing what I can to stay happy but I'm just going mindlessly it seems but still going 

Spiritual Thought: This is going to be a little hard for me but I will do my very very best here.

So I've been reading in Alma in the war chapters and I've been thinking about a few things that are in there (thanks to an amazing study book that I got for 5 dollars at Deseret Book) But it breaks down the chapter into sections and it talks about the doctrine in those chapters and it really helps especially in the war chapters that people just blaze through when there are things to be learned from those chapters. But in Alma 50 it's right after Captain Moroni and the Nephites just won a big war against the Lamanites. 

1 And now it came to pass that Moroni did not stop making preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites; for he caused that his armies should commence in the commencement of the twentieth year of the reign of the judges, that they should commence in digging up heaps of earth round about all the cities, throughout all the land which was possessed by the Nephites.

In the manual which helps with a more guided study but it helped me come to the realization that they had an awesome victory over the Lamanites but it states in that first verse that "Moroni did not stop making preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites" So in there moments of triumph and in their moments of happiness, they didn't stop making preparations for war and they didn't cease to be ready to defend themselves. Which I related to our day in how that We can't ever stop making preparations to fight satan and the whirlwinds that he throws at us. We have to constantly be ready to defend ourselves against him so that we don't fall into temptation that we are doing our best to fight against. We just had a major triumph over sin and temptation. In those moments we will have the spirit to be with us but in those moments we also have to constantly be on guard and constantly getting closer to the savior and do what we can to fight of Satan and to call upon god when we know that we are going to need his help and after all that we've done he will deliver us from his grasp. The lord would do anything for us if we would just ask him, he doesn't want to see us suffering and he doesn't want to see us falling away. We need to keep that amazing companionship with him and always grow a stronger relationship with The Lord Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father and always strive to have the companionship of the Holy Ghost because if we do so we won't ever fall away and we will always be ready to fight against the blows of Satan. In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

I hope all of you have a great next week, Happy Early Easter!

I love all of you so so much and all that you've done for me.

Stay Beefy, 

Love,

Elder Wyatt Gatlin