Why I'm on a Mission

for p day today we got together with other missionaries and are at a navy museum thing. so im emailing on a boat right now. its not that exciting. its actually a bummer because i have an awesome picture that i want to send but i cant. i'll just do it next week. this week we met with a recent convert that ive told you about before. he's in high school and isnt sure if he wants to go to college in japan or go on a mission or what. so we talked to him about missionary work and told him what a mission is all about. i think about how much i knew about missions when i was his age and i actually didnt know that much. i didnt know how to prepare for a mission in a lot of ways. i thought that way because i didnt know if i was going to be in texas, africa, or korea. but now that i look back on it i realize that that didnt really matter and that there are a lot more ways i could have prepared for a mission. for anyone preparing to go on a mission or even on a mission i would say that the best thing to do is decide if you have desire. decide why you are going on a mission. that is all the Lord requires. He says in D&C 4 that if you have a desire to serve God, ye are called to the work. thats it. he doesnt say if you have a knowledge of the gospel, ye are called to the work. he doesnt say if you get your seminary award and duty to God ye are called to the work. although all of those things are important, the only real requirement is desire. its the same with God's commandments. Why do we keep God's commandments? it shouldnt be because we are scared or because we are afraid of what others think of us when we break them, it should be because we love Heavenly Father and trust his words. God shows us that the we want to keep his commandments and we should have a desire to show our love for God and all that he has given us. we do this by keeping the commandments.
ok im kind of rambling but i've been thinking a lot about this and it has really helped me find out why im here and why im doing what im doing. i love it.

Love,
Elder Wells