Robert writes home #45 Jan 8, l995

Jan 8, 1995

Dear Mother,

Pete and Megan are back at school now. Pete is at Provo, BYU and Meg is back at Ricks. Charlie and Sam begin school tomorrow. They had three weeks off for Christmas. The school did that because so many Mexican kids go to Mexico for three weeks at Christmas that they lose too much money (their tax allotment is based on daily attendance) So they just postponed and will probably go later in the summer.

We’re having Heidi and Carrie’s farewell next Sunday. They will leave on Jan 21.

We’ve had some good rain lately. This is the first time, for a long time. I’ve seen enough rain to make water stand in the fields. I’ll bet you’re getting the same storm about now.

Hope you’re doing well.

Love,

Robert, Janet and kids

PS here’s another essay:

                At fast mtg. today, I was listening to a testimony in which the speaker said “he knew the gospel was true…maybe not beyond the shadow of a doubt there, but he knew it was true.” It rang a bell with me because most of my life I’ve felt that way and it bothered me when I would hear other people say that they knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. But today it occurred to me that maybe that shadow of a doubt comes from trying to overlay our testimony with logic and reasoning processes. You can’t prove the gospel, or anything else beyond a shadow of a doubt with logic and reasoning… the best you can do is increase the likelihood of a probability with logic. Logic is fallible and vulnerable to a smarter, better arguer. However, the confirmation of the Spirit is not subject logic. When you feel the witness of the Holy Ghost you get a sure knowledge of truth. You know it is true whether you can explain it or make it sound reasonable or not. The problem may be that some of us try to run both processes at the same time and read the results of both together thus getting the doubt that goes with the logic process overlaying the confirmation that comes from the witness of the Spirit. Perhaps if we just realized what we were doing, we could separate the two processes and focus on the spiritual process, realizing that that is the only way to get a sure knowledge.

I use logic and deductive reasoning in the most of my workday decisions but try to pray and be open to the Spirit for final confirmation and inspiration to direct me to do the right thing. I give promptings of the Spirit priority status when there is a conflict between logic and inspiration because I know logic is fallible. The fact that the logic process always involves doubts doesn’t mean those doubts carry over to the sure knowledge of confirmation from the Spirit. The problem is being able to distinguish confirmation of the spirit from the euphoria of wanting something (wishful thinking) or romance.