Finally. Recognition.

I have been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for basically my entire life. Today I finally, clearly and distinctly felt and recognized the Holy Ghost. This has been something I have struggled with -recognizing and feeling the Holy Ghost- for a long time. It is something that is essential for our learning and as a missionary something that I try to teach people about everyday.
The Holy Ghost speaks to us softly and quietly. He speaks differently to each of us. In the scriptures it tells us many of the 'fruits' of the Spirit. In Galations 5:22-23 it tells us "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,..." Doctrine and Covenants 11:11-13 it tells us it "leadeth to do good", in Helaman 5:30 it is described as "a still small voice of perfect mildness, as if...a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul". The spirit is quiet and yet oh so powerful. It is something that if we aren't paying attention to can very easily go unnoticed.
The job of the Spirit is to teach, protect, guide and comfort (D&C 36:2).
Today I discovered how the spirit talks to me. Unfortunately I recognized it after it was too late to respond. The Holy Ghost speaks to me through simple thoughts that come into my mind. The difficulty is descerning these thoughts from those of the spirit and my own. Someone once told me that if it leads to do good its from the spirit. Today the simplest thought came into my mind to move the phone from my back pack to my desk. Simple. But because of the simplicity I ignored it. The thought came to my mind several times but I continued to put it off. The result: our appointment that we had been anticipating fell through. The individual we were meeting arrived early and saw us in a meeting. They had tried to call but we obviously missed it, so they simply left. When we called them at the scheduled time they were already far from the meeting place and would not be able to make it. Earlier that morning my companion and I had prayed about this individual and felt a warm comforting feeling (the Spirit again) as to how the individual would recieve our lesson and the invitation we had for them later that day. Because of my decision not to follow the simple promptings I had had this individuals progression has been (hopefully temporarily) slowed. I am sad that I had to learn of/recognize the Spirit this way but one thing is for sure, I will never let this happen again and I will act on the promptings I recieve in the future.
We learn from our mistakes, so let us take those mistakes and use them to make us stronger and better than before. I love the Lord. I know that as we continue to follow Him and strive to recognize His promptings through the Holy Ghost and as we act on those promptings He will ever be there leading us along the path leading back to Him. I love Him. I love my Savior Jesus Christ and I absolutely love being a missionary and sharing what I learn with other!
In the name of His son, Jesus Christ, Amen.