Life as a missionary

Something i reremembered about the spirit we have as a missionary.... so yesterday i went to the temple in the morning and had a neat experience. Every temple worker made reference to my brazil pin and talked a lil to me about my mission. Alot of them thought i had recently returned(prolly cuz i shaved my head this week and i look even younger then usual). So as i reflected upon this i remembered the day me and Andrew returned from our missions and we met with Pres. Gifford and he talked to us and had us remove our nametags.... yes... thats all he did...asked us to take our nametags off. He related to us that we are never released from that calling... and most importantly that we can keep that close companionship of the spirit with us even after the mission if we work on it. Of course we all know how hard that is to do! With dating, school, work, church callings etc... seems like we have no time to do the little things, such as daily prayer and scripture study that give us that strong companionship of the Holy Ghost which accompanied us during the mission, and whom we looked to for answers and daily guidance.
Well though it is hard, it is possible! I know as we have daily scripture study and take time to say our daily prayers that the spirit will be with us. Now another thing i've learned is that it is not enough to just have the spirit to be with us. We not only need to have the spirit with us, but we need to be willing to be guided by the spirit in all that we do. Doing those things that bring the spirit only give us rights to his constant companionship. We must then be ready to follow the promptings of the spirit. We sometimes think that since we are doing the right things, that our actions and decisions will be in accordance with what our Heavenly Father would have us to do. But i've seen it even in my own life, where i would do what i wanted to do and i neglected the spirit, thinking that what i wanted to do must have been right because i was doing those things that gave me the right to the spirits companionship.

In summary... i have learned that we must:
1) do the small things necessary to have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost
2) look for and listen to the promptings of the spirit
3) Follow them