12/30/13 | White Christmas (sort of), Back to the Ghetto, Hebrew Israelite's (yuck), and #bikingfordays

This week was fantastic! Skyping my family was the highlight:) Christmas was super weird though, it felt like we were opening presents on a nice summer day, we even roasted marshmallows at the Bishops house that night.  It was basically a Christmas in July party.  But there was a miracle that night, we had a white Christmas. kind of.  It rained all Christmas evening, and we figured that if it were 40 degrees cooler it would be snow, so we took it as a white Christmas:) 

Also there was  huge surprise on Christmas, I had just finished talking with my family and I was minding my own business eating a sandwich at the Bishops and the phone starts ringing.  We look at the area code and it says it's from Philly.  I thought, "Oh no, alyssa is calling me and that's not allowed in this mission."  I kept hearing "Be the exactly obedient missionary" and "100% obedient"  well those thought's didn't work, and then I thought, "What if this isn't even alyssa, what if it's a member that just moved from Philly?"  so after this internal struggle, I answered the phone, and I heard Alyssa's voice.  I said, "Alyssa, this is against my mission rules! I can't talk" She came back rather fast as if she had rehearsed this scene in her mind and said, "well my President said I can, so i'm going to talk to you!"  Well, I decided to obey her mission President, so in a sense I was still being obedient:)

This past week Elder Woodard and I have been biking A LOT! (hence the #bikingfordays in the title)  For example on Tuesday we biked for 10 hours straight , with a little lunch break and 1 lesson within that 10 hours, since our area is huge and Elder Wood used up all the miles on our car.  But biking is fun, so I didn't complain, for the most part:)   Biking makes it more adventurous since you never know when you might crash and get some awesome road rash, or get hit by a car, which happens frequently here, since Flo-rida's don't know how to drive.  so biking is awesome!!!

Last week we decided to go back to knocking in the ghetto, since the middle-class area we were knocking hasn't been delivering.  I love the ghetto!  Ever since we went back, success started to happen.  We found an awesome family of 5 kids ranging from ages 14-23.  We went back to teach them and it was going so well, until this Hebrew Israelite came out of nowhere and crashed the lesson.  (Hebrew Israelite's are crazy, they are racist against whites and absolutely hate Mormonism, and Mormon missionaries.) The guy was the kids dad, and when he saw that 2 white, Mormon missionaries were at his home, well to say the least, he flipped out.  So after getting chewed out, threatened and having our belief's bashed upon for 30 minutes, this other guy came out of no where and started fighting with the first guy. Elder Woodard and I took this as our que to get out of there.  After we left we just kind of laughed at the whole situation since it was ridiculous, and super unexpected. 

Since we have been biking so much we see a lot of people on the streets.  Elder Woodard and I committed to talk to EVERYONE we rode past.  So we did and the miracles started coming in.  In one night we got 3 referrals for the Spanish Elder's and 1 appt. for us.  The Lord blesses those who open their mouths.  We are teaching, or trying to teach, this guy named, lets say Tanner.  We saw tanner riding his bike past us and we hurried and stopped him and said a prayer with him right there, he was super receptive to the Spirit and wanted to be baptized and know more, unfortunately we found out later as we tried to visit with him that his dad is Hebrew Israelite.  Oh well, Tanner will receive the Gospel at some point:)  

Well, that's about all that happened this week, since we biked every where we didn't get to see a whole lot of people since our area is huge, but it was still a very good week and we have been blessed a lot this week. Oh yeah I just remembered.  The Creole missionaries who live with us were walking down the street the other night and this guy approached them and said that he was prompted to talk to the 2 guys in white shirts. So he did and he told them that he wanted to be baptized and he would do whatever was necessary to do it.  It's a blessing for us because he doesn't speak Creole so they had to hand him over to us:)   I believe in miracles!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

12/23/13 | Christmas in July, Biking & Sweating in December

What a week!  It was definitely one of those weeks when the Lord wants to try your faith.  First off, I got a new companion, Elder Woodard, who is amazing!!  We get along super well and have a lot of faith in the area.  But it seemed like everything we did was wrong.  All of our appointments the last 4 days fell through and we harvested for 2-3 hours everyday and didn't get one return appointment.  Yesterday after we had been harvesting for 2 hours without being able to say 1 prayer, we knelt in the grass and had an introspection.  We couldn't find anything that was majorly wrong, just some minor disobedience things which we fixed.  After praying and repenting of the disobedience things, we felt much better and thought that, that was the reason we weren't having success.  Yet as we harvested for another hour, we were able to say 4 prayers with people, but we only got 1 return appointment.  Which that was a HUGE upgrade from previously, yet it's not very good.  We decided that the Lord was trying our faith, and there's a scripture in Ether that came to our minds that says something like, after the trial of our faith, miracles happen.  Something like that.  So this week we have a large amount of faith knowing that we've been through the trial of our faith and the blessing will come this Christmas week!

I still can't believe Christmas is in 2 days.  It blows my mind!  Just on Saturday, Elder Woodard and I biked for miles and were soaked in sweat, which was fun because I love biking, but then I realized it was December 21 and it was 90 degrees.  It messes with my mind so much.  It's like i'm trying to get ready to celebrate Christmas in July!  Being a missionary in Christmas time is definitely a new experience.  You focus more on the birth of our Savior and on getting people baptized.  Not on the presents, which had taken most of my focus for the last 18 years.  It's been a very good experience, I have been studying more on Christ and on His birth, and I appreciate Christmas so much more than before!  And you realize how much you really do love your family, since all of my Christmas'  thus far have been with family. But I love it out here! I decided last week that it was better to be sweaty and hot, than be trudging through snow all winter.  I have a new found love for Florida now, that I never thought I would get:)

We had one amazing miracle occur this week.  We had been harvesting this neighborhood for hours and had 0 success.  We were biking out of the hood and felt like going down a different road than the one we came in on.  As we were biking some lady called after us, so we biked back and started talking to her.  It was a lady I had harvested 2 weeks ago!! In a completely different neighborhood!!  No coincidence there!  We were able to get her number since previously she was supposed to move to Miami, so we didn't get her number.  And we will be in touch with her this week!  Amazing, I believe in miracles!!

Other than that not much happened this week.  Except on Saturday we had  a Christmas party and we dressed up as Shepherds, we looked legit. And on Sunday we sang in Church, which was pretty good, hopefully:)  Well I love you guys a lot and miss you! Have a Merry Christmas!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

12/17/12 | Smash Face, Charm City, and Music leader

Wow, 1 year ago today I was flying to Florida for a bball tournament!  How time flies.  I remember thinking, "Man, I hope I don't go on a mission in Florida, this totally kills the Christmas spirit."  haha, I've changed my mind since then.  And i've been realizing more and more the true meaning of Christmas and the true spirit of Christmas.  Especially after reading Elder Hollands talk in Dec. 2012 Ensign (you should read it) As I've been hearing about the freezing temperatures around the whole U.S. (except this little patch of Heaven)  I've grown to love the warmer winter weather.  I can handle nice 70 degree days in December:)  And I've realized that it's a lot better than having to trudge through snow all day as a missionary, so yes, I am learning to love Florida, slowly but surely!  

I was introduced to a new game called smash face last p-day.  It's basically like dodgeball, but then again, it's nothing like dodgeball.  You partition off half of the gym in the church, and you have a volleyball or a soccer ball and another ball, usually one of those mini basketballs.  You start out by kicking the balls into the air, and then it turns into free-for-all dodgeball.  It's super fun, until the next day when you have bruises and welts all over your body from repeated blows from the soccer ball.  Super fun game, I would recommend that the Priests and Teachers play it, but then again, I don't know how well some of the parents would like their son playing it.  

This past week was interesting,  my comp started getting transfer trunky, and he goes home in 1 transfer, and he had in mind that he would be transferring, so not much got done last week.  But on the upside we ate at some of the best restaurants in southern Florida.  The best one was called Charm City burgers in Deerfield Beach.  It puts 5 guys to shame (sorry Austin and Dad, but it's true:)  A member took us to that one, then thought it was a good idea to drive us by the beach, during Christmas Break, when all the college students are here.  To say the least I had a good time enjoying the distant ocean and the sky, since I avoided the scantily clad women on the beach.  The member was less active so he didn't think that it wasn't the best idea to drive missionaries next to the beach.  

On Sunday our investigator Derek came to church.  He is awesome and most likely not completely sane in the head.  He said some random things, but hey, he is still a child of God and we love him.  I've invited him to be baptized about 6 times or so now, and he still is hesitant, and each time I keep getting bolder, for example, on Sunday he kept saying that he wanted to join the Church.  To join the Church you need to be baptized, which I had explained to him many times before.  After Elder Wood and I taught Gospel Principles (the lesson was on the Life of Christ and it was a really powerful, spiritual lesson)  I went up to Derek and asked, "Derek, do you want to live with God again?" He said "Yes, of course I do."  I said, "To live with God again, we need to be baptized, (then I quoted John 3:5, which says it all).  So Derek, Will you be baptized on Christmas?"  He was still hesitant!  Come on Derek, you just have to say yes! We've taught you everything and the Spirit has testified the truth of it unto you.  But we all have free agency so we will continue working with him and the Spirit will convert him in due time:)  

Also for the last few weeks I have been chosen to lead the music in Priesthood opening exercises, since somehow no one knows how to in the ward.  All that practice since I was 12 has payed off.  It reminds me of old times when Karl and I would lead and play piano almost every Sunday.  So thanks Karl for making me lead while you played, it's really helped me out here:)  

I learned the power of opening your mouth this week.  Last week, we were harvesting this street and we saw a woman, and we both felt prompted to go up and talk to her.  As we approached she (let's call her Monika) acted like she knew us.  We prayed with her and she knew that we were sent down this street for a reason.  She had been planning to go on a walk and she heard a voice telling her to walk down this specific street, then she saw these two lanky, tall white boys and she knew that she needed to talk to us.  the Spirit is amazing!  She accepted to be baptized but unfortunately she has fallen off the map, we have not been able to make contact with Monika for a week now, but we will keep trying!

Second cool experience,  we were trying to meet some investigators but no one was home.  We were walking back to the car fighting off discouraging thoughts and trying to keep our heads up, and I saw a guy sitting on a curb.  My first thought was, "Wow that guy is pretty big, he could break my like a toothpick." I let fear fill my thoughts, and I kept walking.  Then I felt like I got punched in the face, but it was a spiritual punch and next thing I knew I was walking the opposite direction I had been before and I was headed straight for the big man.  I thought, "Well, the Spirit must really want me to talk to this guy, so here goes nothing."  I asked if we could say a prayer with him and he got super excited.  He (lets call him Karl, Karl is pretty popular in this letter;)  So karl starts telling us how bad he needs a prayer in his life and how bad his life has been the last few months.  Karl basically lost everything, his apartment, his church, his girlfriend.  All he had was his family and his car, I don't know how he kept the car when basically everything else he had was gone.  Anyways, we said the prayer with him and he was very thankful and knew that we were sent from Jesus Christ.  He accepted baptism and is super awesome!  Unfortunately again, we haven't been able to get in contact with him again.  He fell off the map too.  But we will find Karl and baptize him!  With the help of the Spirit of course, without the Spirit we cannot do anything as missionaries.  

Oh yeah I almost forgot, we may or may not have accidentally created a poisonous gas in our apartment by mixing cleaning supplies, on accident, while cleaning our apartment a couple of weeks ago.  We all have been getting bad headaches and chills and light headedness, but we thought we were all fighting off a flu of sorts.  But a couple of nights ago we came into our apartment and were overwhelmed by the smell of bleach, we felt like something was wrong so we called Sister Sommerfeldt, the awesome mission nurse, and she said to hurry and open all the windows and let the apartment air out.  So for the last few days we've been sleeping with the windows open and luckily Florida decided to be cool and dry these past few days, which was a miracle, or else our apartment would have become super humid and everything would have molded even faster than it usually does.  And none of us died, so the gas must not have been too poisonous:) but we got it all sorted out so don't worry mom:)  

Well that's about it for this week, one other thing I've learned is the importance of family.  You don't realize how good you have it until it's gone.  Especially around Christmas time when all you really want is to be with family.  But as I heard a quote sometime ago, I'm out here away from my family so that others can be with theirs for eternity.  It's all worth it:)  

Also thank you Uncle Stu for all of the emails and the pics.  I really enjoy getting them each week and I am very thankful for the love, advice and support you've given me:)

Have a Merry Christmas!!!

Love, Elder Spencer Bailey  

This is Nate, my recent convert!  So proud of him, he went to visit his girlfriend and her grandpa unleashed a ton of anti on him, yet he still held true to his beliefs.  Solid!

12/9/13 | Eternal Summer, Lactose-intolerance, and Miracles

I have finally come to the realization that it will always be warm and summer-like in Florida, especially after seeing the license plate that says, "Florida: Land of Eternal Summer"  So if you forget the fact that it's December and Christmas is right around the corner, and think that it is August, than the weather is great! It's a nice 85-90 degrees right now, with a slight ocean breeze, it's pretty nice:)  

Also, I have come to the knowledge of a depressing fact, I am lactose-intolerant, at least I think so, I have been sick the last couple of weeks and I narrowed it down to dairy that might have been making me sick.  So now I get to drink almond milk, yum, it's actually pretty tasty:)  

This past weekend was a miracle weekend! On Friday, Elder wood and I got some bug, so we were feeling really sick.  But we decided to go out and work through it and that if we did the Lord would bless us.  And the Lord did bless us that day, we had 4 excellent lessons, and got 4 New Investigators, and we had 0 previously for the entire week, and our of the 5 Harvest Blessings we left, we got 3 return appointments!  So we were greatly blessed! And the Lord blessed us with the strength to go out and work that day because as soon as we walked in the door of our apartment we had no strength left, we were exhausted, that's when we realized how sick we really were, but we've recovered since so no need to worry about us:)

And on Sunday another miracle occurred.  We were on our way to a lunch appointment and some missionaries called us with a referral for a guy who was in our area. They said to call him up right away because he sounded legit.  So I called him (let's call him Derek) and he answered and was super excited that we had called.  He said he had been watching BYU-TV for a number of years and had watched almost all of the LDS Movies, such as "Emma Smith: My Story", "The Best two Years", "A Good Man" and he's been watching some documentaries on Doctrine and Covenants and he watched a documentary about Brigham Young and said that he was his hero.  My jaw dropped while he was talking, I couldn't believe it!!  Derek also said that he was dying to get his hands on a Book of Mormon so that he could read it, this guy is golden!!!!  Elder wood wasn't sold, he thought it might be a member pulling a prank on us because Derek was too good to be true.  Later that night we went over and he was watching General Conference on BYU-TV! Elder Wood was sold after that.  We taught him the Restoration since he knew a lot of history about the church, but not a whole lot of doctrine.  He was very receptive and can't wait to come to Church on Sunday!  One problem though, he got caught up on baptism when we asked him if he would be baptized.  He had been baptized as a kid, so he was confused on why he needed it again.  We explained the Priesthood again and testified of the importance of baptism and that helped a little, but we will work on him and get him baptized in no time!!!

I learned this week that when the Spirit prompts you to say something, no matter what it my be, just say it.  We were harvesting and found a really cool lady, she had already been baptized and was wondering why she needed to be baptized again, and if her baptism was valid. I was prompted to just open my mouth and start talking and this is what came out, "Well, to be blunt and plain, your baptism really wasn't valid unless done by the proper authority, and this is the only true church and we have that Priesthood authority to baptize you again."  Oh man, I was scared for a second, I thought, "What did I just say?"  then she was silent for a second and then accepted to be baptized again!  The Spirit knows what the person needs to hear, if I would have said that for some of the people we've prayed with I probably would have been punched in the face.  So the Spirit is awesome!

Well that's all the time I have for today! I love you guys and have a great week!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

12/2/13 | What a week

N___ got confirmed yesterday! That was a really cool experience!  The Spirit emanated off of N___ after he was confirmed, it was really cool!

First off, not much happened this week.  It was just "one of those weeks" that happens periodically.  We struggled to find people to teach, and their have been disagreements between my comp and I, so the Spirit hasn't been with us this past week.  This week we are going to white wash our teaching pool and start over and do our best to invite the Spirit into our lives so that we can find people to share the Gospel with.  

On a positive note, Thanksgiving was amazing!!!  It cooled off to a nice 65 degrees and was rainy.  Great weather!!  The Bishop invited over to his home for dinner and it was super good.  The Bishops family has become a family away from home, they have us over every Sunday so that "We can have an edible"non-haitian meal as the Bishops wife would say. So they are very nice people:)"

Also for most of all last week Elder V W (lives in the apt.) and I were sick with some bug we picked up.  I lost all of the hard earned weight I gained at the MTC!  But I'll be able to put it all back on due to the amounts of leftovers we have from Thanksgiving:)  For once we have a surplus of food! It's amazing!!!  

The weather has been awesome this week! It's been super rainy even though rainy season ended a couple weeks ago, and I love rainy weather so it's been good.  Yesterday it rained all day, and it was Sunday so we wear our suits all day.  Turns out suits provide a little water protection. . . until it soaks through the suit and then your'e thoroughly soaked.  But that all adds to the fun moments of being a missionary:)  

Man this week flew by, I even took down notes to remember what happened this week, but not much did happen.  I just remembered this story.  A midst all of this the Lord was still merciful and blessed us with some miracles.  Wednesday  I was on an exchange with Elder T.  We had just tried one of our investigators, and she wasn't home but her sister was, so we said a prayer with her and she was interested in hearing the gospel too! After that, we were walking away and Elder T suggested that we say a prayer of gratitude and thank God for giving us this blessing.  We said the prayer and then went harvesting, which was a really good harvest session.  We harvested for an hour and followed the Spirit on where to go and were able to pray with 9 people! We usually only say about 4-6 prayers in an hour.  That prayer of gratitude really helped.  President Anderson's weekly email was all about saying prayers of gratitude, and that was after this occurred that he sent that.  Thanking our Heavenly Father for the things that we do have and for the blessings he gives us helps us focus on the positives of life and it also allows God to bless us more when we are thankful.  So make this week a week of gratitude!

I love you!! :)

Love Elder Spencer Bailey

11/25/13 | Learning to dunk

N___ got baptized yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Super excited as you can see from my exclamation points! It was amazing! I had the opportunity to baptize him since it is my first, so it was awesome!  There is definitely power in the ordinance of baptism. I give all thanks to God for this baptism, as it was because of Him that we found N___.  It reminds me of Alma 26:12 (look it up, it's really good). And also the scripture in D&C 18:16 came to mind as I was baptizing Nate, (look that up to, it's excellent).  Man what a day yesterday! Also you are probably wondering what I meant by Learning to dunk in the title, out here the Flo-Rida's refer to baptizing as dunking. Odd, but I'll roll with it, it sounds cool:)  

On other news, we basically have almost no one to teach. It's been a rough week of finding people, except that we found someone through media referrals on Saturday. His name is Bobo (and since that is a nickname I'll use it, since I'm still not giving out his real name:) and he is awesome! The thing that he wrote on his Mormon.org application thing is "I love the Lord with all my heart." and he really does!  We taught him the other day and the Spirit was super strong. Bobo is the epitome of ghetto black and we were teaching about the Spirit and he wasn't catching on, so I was prompted to say this, "the spirit is like your conscience but on steroids."  As soon as I said that I was like, "seriously Spencer, that was one of the weirdest analogies you've ever made." while my comp and the 2nd counselor in the bishopric(who came with us) gave me the weirdest look, Bobo said "ahh, now that makes sense!"  Yeah! The Spirit is the best teacher.

Random insert, I think that Satan really knows my weaknesses.  This last week I saw 6 long boarders, and I suddenly started to have withdrawals from long boarding.  I hadn't seen 1 long board the whole time I've been here until last week! It just caused me to unfocus from the work, Satan is evil, and he knows how to distract us.

When you teach doctrine, the Spirit testifies the truth of it unto you.  And it brings personal experiences that you forgot about to share during lessons.  We were teaching N___ the Word of Wisdom last week and I was prompted to share a story about one of my best friends growing up.  We had been really good friends all through junior high and half of high school, we had talked about going on missions and I knew that he had a testimony of the Gospel.  We had shared our testimonies on multiple occasions with each other while on scouting excursions and in fast and testimony meeting. I told N___ that because of drugs he is now in Colorado smoking weed, most likely.  I shared the hurt that it caused me and my other friends and the hurt it still causes us.  N___ saw how my friends decisions had hurt so many people, (and I may or may not have been brushing away a few tears) and after that N___ committed that he would never do drugs, it was really powerful.  Personal experiences can change the whole lesson around.

For some reason this week, we have run across a lot of asians, that for some reason think we speak chinese.  We knocked on an old Chinese woman's door and she started speaking Chinese and I'm used to running into Spanish people so I said, "No hablo espanol." Then she stopped and looked at me for a second, then started speaking Chinese again! What the heck?!? didn't she understand that I dont speak spanish;) so we gave her a Jesus card and she started pointing up to the sky and babbling on in Chinese again, then we waved goodbye and walked off, as she was still trying to talk to us in Chinese, weird experience to say the least.

Now on to the good stuff! N___ has a girlfriend that is a J-dub (or Jehovah Witness) and she wanted to have a friendly chat about religion (yeah right, she set me up for a bible bash).  So I called her up the other night, and she just started going at it, it probably looked pretty funny from my comps point of view, because I was sitting at my desk with the phone a foot away from my ear and you could still hear her perfectly.  She asked me what I believed, so I started bearing my testimony and she interrupted me. Now, I don't like being interrupted, so I said "*insert name here* I'm trying to tell you what I believe in so listen up for a second. How about we make a deal?" she says, "ok", then I say "you let me talk for 1 minute and I'll tell you everything I know about the Gospel, sound fair?" She said "I 'spose so" So I started bearing my testimony again (and I had a timer out) and after 20 seconds she interrupts me again. so I said, " *insert name here* I thought we had a deal! You just broke it! I still have 40 seconds!" she said, "you were timing it?" I said, "of course, so that something like this wouldn't happen." So she reluctantly let me continue, and I bore my testimony for 40 more seconds.  that's a cool thing to do, to share all of your beliefs in a minute, it's a challenge! then she started yelling at me again, so I started writing in my journal as the phone lay on the desk, when it went silent, I picked it back up and said, "awesome, well now that we know more about each others religions, lets call it a night" Then she started yelling again so I just hung up. Shortly after N___ called me up to apologize for his girlfriends reaction, and how he was thinking she wasn't right for him. N___ is super dedicated, he was willing to break up with his girlfriend so that he could become a member of this church, and he did! So it all worked out:)

This is a long letter so I'll wrap up now.  One more quick story. Yesterday I sat through what was probably the best, and most energetic, primary program ever! We had a lot of investigators there and non-members. After a kid would bear their testimony, the investigators and non-members would clap and cheer! It was hilarious and the kids were doing fist pumps and waving at the audience, It was so funny!  Even a midst all this, the Spirit was still really strong and people pointed that out after.  So it was all good!

Well, I love you guys! thanks for your prayers and emails, and letters!  Have a fantastic week!

Love, Elder Spencer Bailey

11/18/13

This week was an interesting week.  First off the 2 potential baptisms we had set up for Sunday fell through.  Nate ended up having to go to Orlando for a family trip and Matt has to have his case brought before the First Presidency, so that could be months before he's baptized.  But on the bright side, Nate is set up for this Sunday to be baptized, and Matt will be baptized in due time, so all is well:)

First cool thing that happened this week was while I was on an exchange with Elder Comstock.  We were teaching a lady the plan of salvation, and her mom had died a few weeks ago.  While teaching, she just started crying and told us that she believed that what we were teaching was true.  She's catholic and the way that her mom died was by suicide, and the Catholic's belief is that if you commit suicide, you automatically go to hell.  So she found great comfort knowing that she would see her mom again and the spirit was super strong in that lesson.  The Spirit is super cool. Without it, lessons are very hollow and nothing gets done.  The Spirit is what converts people to the gospel, all we do is talk a lot:)

And then we had a really interesting harvesting day.  We were in this apartment complex knocking on doors, and this one guy answered and we asked if we could pray with him, he said "no, I worship Satan."  We had never heard that one before,  so my comp and I were caught off guard, and Elder wood replied, "that horrible!"  then the guy slammed the door.  We both started laughing because of Elder woods response:)  Then promptly after that, we were walking down the street, when a guy called after us.  We thought it was security, since we've been kicked out of places before, so we started walking towards whoever was calling us. when we got closer we saw it was a police! Then a police car came screeching around the corner and a another cop showed up.  They asked what we were doing and we said we were just saying prayers with people.  (come to think of it, that was probably one of the weirdest responses the police had heard)  They said, "prayers? like you go around and pray with people?"  I responded, "yep, basically all day everyday."  They thought for a second, and said "wow, we respect that, but did you know it's against the law in Coconut Creek to solicit?"  (turns out we didn't know that law existed until now)  I said, "no sir, we didn't know we couldn't do that, I mean, all we do is say prayers with people."  Then he explained how even though we just say prayers, knocking door to door is still considered soliciting and some ladies thought we were trying to break into their home so they called the cops on us.  So they had to do a background check which took forever.  luckily our records were clean:) In the end I ended up sweet talking our way out of getting fined a ridiculous amount of money! (ive had some practice with BYU police and R.A.'s over the summer)  but overall I think it was the spirit that softened the hearts of the police men, again, all we do is talk a lot:)

I'm sorry this letter is bad, to say the least i'm very tired, so it's hard to remember anything significant this week and to write it down.  I always believed the return missionaries when they said it was exhausting but now I know what it feels like to be exhausted 24/7.  I always thought, "sweet! I'll be getting 8 hours of sleep every night on my mission, thats way more than what I usually get!" haha I forgot to take into consideration the physical work that we put forth.  But it's always good when you lay down at night, and look back at the day and know that you put forth your whole effort and be delightfully exhausted:)  

Well, sorry for the letter, it seems like it's boring and lacking spiritual things.  I will write down cool experience to share in next weeks letter:)

I love all those random people who read this letter;)

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

Elder C & Elder W

11/11/13

You know that you are in a sketchy area when a member calls you asking for directions, and the only way you know how to get around town is by the strip clubs.  There is a major one on almost every corner, so that's how I remember where we are, since there aren't any landmarks around, and that's how we give directions. super sketchy.

Now on to more spiritual stuff:)  The power of prayer is amazing! Especially on the blessing of the food, I always took that for granted until now.  Last weekend we were eating at a members home, and they weren't Haitian. So I was excited that I got a break from Haitian food, and we were having hamburgers so I was super excited!  So the meal began normally, until I took the first bite of my hamburger, and the inside was completely raw.  So gross!  But I thought it would be rude to not eat it, so I said the most powerful, silent, blessing on the food in my whole life.  After that the hamburger tasted amazing, and I thought of the story in Nephi where the Lord made raw meat sweet.  And I didn't get some strange sickness from it so I know that God does answer prayers no matter how simple they are.

I met an awesome guy this week, let's call him Nathan.  We met Nathan while harvesting and his first reaction to us, after answering the door and seeing these 2 tall guys standing there, was jumping back and using some colorful language.  We tend to have that effect on a lot of people.  After we explained that we just wanted to say a prayer with him, he calmed down.  Nathan is the coolest investigator I've had in these short 2 months, (except for the fake one in the MTC) he is so prepared to hear the restored gospel.  He was so excited for church, he woke up at 7 to get ready to be picked up at 9:30, and he also called us to tell us he was ready...at 8:30.  Golden!  He commented more than the members in priesthood meeting! It's amazing!  We are planning on getting him baptized this weekend! I'll keep you posted!

Also I think I mentioned our other solid investigator, lets call him Matt, in the last letter.  He is dry Mormon, meaning he's basically Mormon, but he hasnt been baptized due to legal complexities.  He was supposed to be baptized yesterday but he missed his appointment with the President, so we will have to wait till this Sunday.  We met with him a couple times last week( he is also living at the Bishops home temporarily) and I always learned more from him, then what we were teaching.  We are so used to teaching the basics, that when he brought up scriptures from D&C and was talking about pretty deep doctrine, it blew me away.  We had awesome discussions since he knew as much if not more about the church than Elder Wood and I do.  Golden!

I think that the Lord is really testing my patience and my ability to not argue.  We ran into a Jehovah's Witness on Saturday, and man are they frustrating!  It took so much to hold my tongue and not lash back to his comments.  When people question my beliefs or bash on what I know to be true I get pretty angry, but I always remember how the Savior went about people like this, so I tried my hardest to just nod my head and testify when I could and not argue.  It ended alright.

Last week I followed the advice of my parents and decided to go see a doctor for a cough I've had for about 8 weeks now.  I tried some meds about a month ago, but those just made me stomach sick.  But the doctor gave me some more meds to try since it's not normal to have a cough for this long. But the reason I'm telling this story is she, the doctor, brought up the Temple that is being built, and said how she and the main doctor in the office are so excited to be able to go through it at the open house.  The Temple will be a huge blessing to the people here and it will open the doors to many people.  After the dr's appt. Elder Wood and I drove past the Temple on the way home and it is beautiful!  

Due to popular demand I've decided to tell the semi truck incident from last week (don't worry Mom, I'll make it sound better than it really was)  It was while Elder Taylor and I were on an exchange and we were biking down a narrow street in a neighborhood.  It was all peaceful and then next thing you know there is a huge semi truck right next to us!  Scared me half to death!  It came super close and clipped my shoulder bag (yes a shoulder bag, backpacks aren't allowed)  That's all, at least for the edited version:)

Well thats all the time I have, so I love you all and hope you all have a great week! Also shout out to Monika Cabrera who got her mission call to the land of the spuds, Boise, Idaho! and also to Carly Schiess who got called to the North Pole mission (also known as the Baltic Mission) and to Nathan Quist who got called to the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma mission (sorry nate i couldnt think of anything creative for OKC)

Much love from the ghetto:)

Elder Spencer Bailey

11/5/13

First off I just read Alyssa's letter and I have a couple of words for her, you're lucky! I've been living the opposite of Alyssa, our A/C broke last week for a few days so we were taking cold showers 2-3 times a day to stay cool! And when the A/C brakes it gets really humid inside, so everything we had out got moldy, it was disgusting! 

Well I have an update on the flat tire situation from last week, It turns out that the axle broke when the car fell, when the jack broke.  So we told the mission office and they were going to give us a really old car because of our mistake, then they were like, "We like you guys so we'll give you one of the new 2014 toyota corollas we just got last week."  So I guess good things can happen from stupid mistakes:)  

I can't think of anything crazy happening this last week except for the incident where I almost got hit by a semi, but that story would just scare mom so I'll save it for when I get home:)  And I went on another exchange with Elder T___ (my old comp from the MTC who is really, really short) that was adventurous!  We were harvesting in the super sketchy ghetto that day. Now when Elder T___ and I are together it's a sight to behold, we kinda stick out since he's abnormally short and I'm quite tall.  So people were constantly pointing at us and laughing, which was alright because it opened the way to a lot of conversations, since people wanted to stop and talk to us and ask why I was so tall and why Elder T___ was so short, so we found a lot of cool people that day to come back and teach.  

The Spirit is such a cool influence to have.  We were teaching one of our investigators the Restoration, and all of the sudden in the middle of the lesson, I heard "This isn't what she needs to hear, tie it into the Plan of Salvation" so I did and the lesson went so much better, at the end she said that the message we shared was exactly what she needed to hear that night!  It was awesome!

And on Sunday we were trying to meet an investigator and she wasn't home, so we were walking down the street minding our own business, when I heard someone yelling, "Is that a Bible you're holding?" I shouted back "Yes ma'am" (since thats how you answer back in the ghetto, I guess).  So i ran over to her, and gave her the Bible, she just started bawling, so I stood there awkwardly for a min while she tried to gain her composure.  Then I asked if we could pray with her and the tears started flowing again, I thought "what is wrong with this woman all I did was hand her a Bible" so we said a prayer and she gained enough composure to sort of talk, and explained how she had an "awakening" last Friday and realized that she needed to be saved by Jesus.  And then on Sunday she saw us walking holding a Bible and knew we could help her be saved.  So we committed her to baptism in 2 weeks and said that we could help her prepare!  It was a miracle!  In all honesty it was a tender mercy from God since I don't think Elder wood and I deserved it, we have been having a rocky relationship lately due to the fact that we are both kind of hard-headed, so on Sunday we were not very agreeable, but it shows how merciful God is by sending us this miracle, because after that we got along much better.

Also yesterday we had another awesome experience, we were having a family home evening with a family in the ward and they had there cousin over who is from Croatia and is not a member.  So we taught the Restoration and the cousin was super interested and said that she had seen missionaries all over Croatia for years but had never thought to talk to them before, so she will be in contact with them once she returns in a couple of days.  I also had the opportunity to give her a Priesthood blessing to help her and bless her with safety in her travels. That was a super neat experience because I had never thought that I would teach a lesson and give a blessing to a Croatian!  That was a once in a life-time experience! the Spirit was super strong and she noticed that she felt different after the blessing and the lesson, the Spirit also testified to me that we had just planted that seed of faith in her heart that will be harvested by missionaries in Croatia, and that she will be baptized some day.  So it was a great testimony builder for everyone that was there.

On Halloween last week our ward did a trunk-or-treat, and they wanted us to come to visit with non-members that would show up.  We found that the most effective way was to visit every car and get to know everyone, and by so doing we met alot of non-members who were interested and got some candy:)  It's a win-win situation:)

Well that's all the time I have for today, I love you all and wish you all the best!

Much love from the ghetto missionary,

Elder Spencer Bailey

10/28/13

Alright, first off I'll say that marijuana stinks, and it is all over the place!  You know youve walked into a sketchy neighborhood when you can smell marijuana just from being in the neighborhood.  And it's always awkward when you interrupt someone's drug exchange (happened twice this week). 

I guess I'll start off with a spiritual story.  This past week we met with an investigator, let's call her Betty, so we are teaching Betty and she's understanding and then out of nowhere she pulls out a Bible and starts Bible bashing, up to that point the lesson had gone really well, and I thought, "What the heck! Where did that Bible come from and how did it escalate to this!"  So I started praying before I started arguing (as we saw from the wal-mart bible bashing story, I may have a tendency to argue:)  As I prayed I heard in my head "Be the bold and testifying missionary".  So I stopped Betty and said "Now Betty we could argue all night, or I can just testify and tell you how it is." so I just bore my testimony and the spirit came so strong, I don't even remember what I said. I could feel the Spirit trying so hard to pierce her heart, but I felt the Spirit come right back to me, her heart was hardened.  Even though nothing changed in her countenance, I was affected.  I have never felt the Spirit so strong, it just reminded me that testimony is grown in the sharing of it.  There is power in being bold and testifying.

Also this week I went on an exchange with our DL Elder Comstock (also from Utah)  it was awesome!  I got to experience my first big rainstorm while biking!  Biking in southern florida is adventurous and it is as close to living on the edge that a missionary can get because the drivers here obey no traffic rules, not even stop lights.  Its crazy!  And after it rains you get thoroughly drenched and instead of 100% humidity it is 120% humidity.  One thing I found out is that my hair gets curly poofy when it gets extremely humid like this, so does Elder Comstocks, so we looked extremely weird, since we both had mini affros.  But that exchange really helped me, i was having difficulties with my comp and Elder Comstock really helped me out and things have been running much smoother since then.  He gave me the advice that I can only change myself, I can't change those around me.  So ive been working on that alot and that is what brought more success this weekend, like yesterday we had one of our investigators come to sacrament!  that's only happened once before and that investigator dropped us, so it was awesome to have this investigator show up!

This weekend Elder wood and I were in one of the sketchiest ghettos weve been through (this is where we interrupted the drug exchanges).  Saturday morning we were harvesting this area and came back to the car and there was a nail in the tire, I thought, "Great, we are stuck here in the ghetto, and i'll probably become one of those statistics of missionaries killed in action".  It was a dark thought but it ran through my head, then I remembered that we were missionaries so we would be safe:)  We jacked up the car and took off the bad tire, as we did so the jack buckled and the car slammed to the ground.  Now we were sitting ducks in the ghetto with a bunch of gangs hanging about.  So we called in the Creole elders that we lived with to have them come and bring their jack.  Eventually we figured out how to jack up the car and we put on our spare. only to find out that the spare was flat as well. Eventually we got it all squared away without being shot or kidnapped in the ghetto.

I'll finish off with this story, the other day we went to visit an investigator and her son answered the door.  I immediately liked the kid, he had braces on both ankles and was missing some fingers and he seemed like the nicest little kid.  he was in 4th grade and I was prompted to ask him is he liked reading.  He said he loved it and i was like, "Well, I've got a free book for you!" His eyes lit up and he smiled one of the greatest smiles ive seen.  That made my whole day.  I explained the Book of Mormon and asked him to read it and he said he would.  Hopefully the kid has a pretty good vocab and a good understanding of words:)

I lied I'll finish with this story.  We received one of the best surprises this week.  We were all sitting around talking after planning on Friday night and there was a knock on the door.  We all were scrambling to put shirts on so we didn't answer the door in our garments.  Then I answered the door and there was a papa johns pizza delivery man.  I was like, "What the heck? who ordered pizza?"  Then I looked at the receipt and saw my moms name on it:)  Best surprise ever!!! So thanks mom for being the best missionary mom in the world!!

Well I love all of you who are reading this letter!

Love, 

Elder Spencer Bailey

10/21/13

This week was pretty neat!  Fall is coming so it's been cooling down a lot, it was 85 degrees yesterday!  Fall doesn't even exist in Florida, neither does winter or spring, it's always summer.  We got 4 new investigators this week!! That's 4 more than the whole previous month!!  So things are finally starting to pick up!  We just hope that they will stay solid and be baptized and go into the Temple in the future.  So not a lot happened this week, except that Elder Oaks came!  He is very funny when he isnt in the Conference Center.  His whole talk talked about how we shouldnt wait to get married once we are home from our missions.  Here are a few of his quotes, "the missionaries come home from there mission, and doggonit they don't get married!  They "hang out!", Now if hanging out isnt a sin, its darn near close to being one!"  It was pretty funny.  He talked alot about what to do once we are home from our missions, so it won't really apply to me for 2 years.  But it was still a really good talk.  He also talked a lot about the Temple and how we will see the growth in this area once it is completed this Spring.  He challenged us to teach more about the Temple, since the Temple is the end goal, not just baptism.  "Baptism is just a step to get closer to salvation, the Temple is where we receive salvation" -Paraphrased from Elder Oaks

I also went on an exchange with one of the zone leaders, Elder Samuelian from Alpine Utah.  He knew Alyssa and I knew his sister who is serving in Tallahassee right now.  It was awesome!  he is a Spanish Elder so I got to use a lot of my Spanish.  Oh wait, I don't know any Spanish, so I didn't say a whole lot when we came to the Spanish homes.  But we came across a couple of Haitian homes and next thing I knew I was having conversations in Creole!  That was a blessing because that hasn't happened since, I'm still at the very basic level.  The gift of tongues is real!  Later we went to a Spanish ward correlation, apparently the gift of tongues only works in Creole for me:)  They also had mutual that night and all the youth were saying "Gigante!" which i think means giant.  So I was pretty popular that night, some kid thought I played for Miami Heat, then his friend was like, "There aren't any white guys on the Heat!"  Spanish kids are funny.

Also this week I've been able to use my knowledge of basketball in many ways.  I somehow taught a whole lesson and related it to basketball.  It worked, we were teaching these 2 teenagers who play bball.  I don't know exactly how it all worked but they understood the gospel and are more interested now!  They were just surprised that a white boy knew how to play basketball, that's when i told them to google Lone Peak Basketball, that'll show them a lot of white boys that know how to play ball.

Also ive been teaching kids how to play basketball, that's a great teaching opportunity.  We stop, if we have time, if we see kids playing street ball.  Then we show them how to properly shoot and how to dribble, since a lot of the time they are younger and don't know the fundamentals, then we teach them a little lesson! It's awesome!

Oh man, I had my first Haitian meal this last week.  I couldn't believe what we were fed, the thought ran threw my head that this couldn't happen in America.  But it does!  Like i said in a previous letter, Haitians live as if they are still in Haiti, that also means they still eat like they are in Haiti.  I don't know what we ate, it was tasty, I just know that there was a lot of different parts of different animals in this stew stuff that you put over Haitian rice.  And Haitians use every part of the animal, so all the bones were in it, all the fat, some hair (either it was animal hair or human hair, i don't know) It was interesting.  I think I heard the hostess say that she put in chicken, duck, goat, cow, and some other animal I didn't recognize.  And Haitians get really offended if there is anything left besides the bones.  So we had to suck the bone marrow out and eat all the fat, eww, i wont go into anymore detail.  But in the end it was still a pretty good meal:)

Also this week i've seen a lot of what prophets have foretold, that is the crumbling of the family unit.  Parents are very abusive here and most parents aren't even married.  The woes of serving in the ghetto.  It just breaks my heart to see this everyday, in Utah and growing up I hardly ever saw this.  But now I see it everyday.  So instead of moping about it and doing nothing, i've been studying the "Family: A Proclamation to the World", it has a ton of good stuff in it that I can share in lessons.  Also the Gospel of Jesus Christ is what blesses families. So ive been emphasizing that in the lessons to try to make them wake up and see how important family is.

well my time is up so I gotta go!

Much love from the ghetto:)

Elder Spencer Bailey

A family in Spencer's home ward has a missionary in the same mission (Elder Harral, left). His dentist (second on right) visited Florida last week and was able to hand-deliver these packages! 

10/14/13

Alright, to be honest I don't really remember what went on this week, it flew by!  So i'm sitting at the computer with my journal open trying to remember what happened.  It just hit me that I've been out here in Florida barely longer than I was in the MTC.  That seems like it was forever ago!  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention conference last week. Conference was awesome!!  It takes on a whole new meaning when you're on a mission.  They talked a ton about families and about member missionary work.  Here in the ghetto we see broken families at every door we go to.  Most couples are "co-habitating" which is an abominable practice.  And we see a lot of young single moms with multiple kids.  And the kids in almost all of these families are abused, you can tell if a kid is abused if they try to hide behind you or if they are trying so hard to get your attention.  It breaks my heart because as missionaries the only thing we can do is give them a picture of Jesus and give them a hi-five, we aren't allowed to play games with them or anything like that due to legal issues.  So what I got out of Conference is how me, as a missionary, can spread the message of the importance of whole families, meaning a mother and a father both in the home that are married.  People here don't understand why marriage is so important, so we've had a lot of marriage discussions.  I'm only 18! I don't know hardly anything about marriage except that it's a commandment, so that's what I tell people.  

Second thing from conference is member missionary work.  Elder Wood and I have been trying to visit a member every night and teach them the Restoration, then we leave pamphlets with them and commit them to hand them out to neighbors or co-workers and have them call us if they are interested.  We are trying to get the members to help out a lot more since before this conference, there wasn't a whole lot of support from the members, but now everyone is asking us how they can help, it's awesome!

This week Elder Wood and I gave 53 harvest blessings!  That's a lot of praying with random people!  One cool story happened that I remember of, we were harvesting this apt. building and not one person answered the door, wait nope one white person answered the door and slammed it as soon as he saw we were missionaries.  One thing I learned here, is that white people in Florida are very mean.  I know this is wrong, but every time a white person answers the door, I think " Ah man, Get ready to hear some inappropriate language and get the door slammed in your face"  and I also think, "Not again, why do they have to be white?"  I am practicing on getting these thoughts out of my head and thinking instead, "What can I say that will make this person want to be baptized?"  Sorry back to the story, so basically no one was answering the door.  So I turned to elder wood and said that we should go try somewhere else.  He said that we felt right about it earlier so why not try one more building?  So we trudged on and again not one person was answering their doors, then on the last door we were going to knock, this cool British woman answered the door.  She was very hesitant at first but after I said the prayer, she was just smiling, and said that we were an answer to her prayers, she just didn't recognize that until after the prayer.  So we committed her to baptism, but one problem is that she in in Miami until next week.  So hopefully she will remember the Spirit and when she comes back we can teach her and help her prepare for baptism. 

Also this week I was reading in the Book of Mormon mainly in 1 and 2 Nephi, and i realized it talks a lot about the gathering of the lost tribes of Israel and I realized that, that is going on right now.  With the surge of missionaries and with all the different countries we, missionaries,  are in, the gathering is going on right now!  I thought "How cool is that!  I am apart of the gathering of the lost tribes of Israel"  and it also talked about how the obedient will be blessed and saved and the unrighteous will be destroyed.  It just reminds me as a missionary to be exactly obedient and the blessings will follow.

Random fact of the day: People in Florida are short.  I don't know what it is but I fit in more in Utah, here Elder Wood (6'4) and I (6'6) kinda stick out since the avg height here is (5'5).  And everyone is afraid of us even though we are both tall and skinny!  It's kinda funny though seeing these ghetto guys who are really strong, yet short, tell us that they are afraid of us because we're tall.

Also the biggest accomplishment of the week was I learned how to tell jokes in Creole! They are more like riddles and hey aren't even funny but Haitians have a different sense of humor. For example one of them translated is "Little by little it fills the room" the answer is "lamp". they get the biggest kick out of them.  I don't get it.  I think they are laughing more at the fact that these 2 white guys are trying to speak Creole.  I dont know. 

And I decided to start doing highlights of the week since this email is really long and I dont have much time and I still have some stories, so I'll just make a bullet point list of the highlights.

-I saw 3 iguanas

-received the best packages from the best missionary mom:)

-received letters from my some of my best friends, shout-out to Carly Schiess, Nate Quist and Matt "swag" Pettit

-met my first bible-basher in wal-mart, and since he was talking to Elder Wood and I we both got kicked out since you can't proselyte in wal-mart (even though he started it and we were trying to end the conversation multiple times, and we weren't even proselyting:)

-ate at Chick-fil-a on multiple occasions. . . for free:)  (the benefits of being a missionary)

Well that's all for this week!  Hopefully i'll have more investigators next week so i can share some more missionary stories.  And this Saturday Elder Oaks is coming to speak with the missionaries!  (Take that Alyssa, who has the better mission now?)

Love,

Elder Bailey

10/7/13 | Coconut Creek, FL

This week flew by!  It was a pretty good week.  Although we still don't have any investigators, we are trying to build it up, so we harvest a lot and are still praying to find those who are ready.  Well a lot as happened this week.  First I accidentally got a super short haircut, I'm not familiar with the sized of hair razors, so a 5 sounded pretty good.  Turns out a 5 is really short, so my hair is extremely short now:)  Probably the shortest in my whole life(i'll send a pic later).  We also switched out our Chevy Malibu for a 2011 Toyota Corolla, the creole elders living with us got a 2014 Toyota Corolla!  It's really nice.  On Tuesday we had district training and the Mission President showed up.  We later did role-playing, and Elder Wood and I ended up being assigned to role-play with him, that was terrifying!  But he said we were doing good so that was a relief!  Later that day we went to one of our investigators and we caught her smoking weed, she was super high, so we said we would come by later.  The next lesson we taught was the Word of Wisdom:)  Hopefully she tries to stop her addiction.  

By the way I've never seen so many drugs, we see someone smoking weed everyday and see drug exchanges and such all over.  Those are the perks of serving in the ghetto I guess:)  But the people are very humble and very willing to listen.  They struggle with commitments though, so that's why we don't have many investigators. 

I went on an exchange with my old MTC comp, Elder Taylor on Thurs.  That was fun, but he's changed, in a different way.  He tries to talk like a black man from the ghetto and it just doesn't work since he's white and 5' 2.  He became kinda weird since the MTC.  But it was fun, I got to ride my bike for the first time, which was awesome!  All of his appointments fell through so we decided to Harvest. I offered a prayer and asked God to guide us and direct us to where we could find the elect.  As we started walking down this neighborhood that I had never been in, I felt like I was being gently tugged in the direction I needed to go.  After taking many turns and walking for a while I saw straight ahead of us some women unloading a car full of groceries.  I felt like that was what we were being guided to.  So we offered to help and unloaded the car and after talking for a minute we asked if we could say a prayer with them.  They accepted and while giving the prayer, my thoughts and what I said were coming straight from the Spirit, that has never happened to me before.  The ladies said that, that was what they had been looking for and they said it really put them at peace.  We invited them to be baptized and one accepted and then sent us to her daughters house down the street because she knew her daughter has been looking for a religion like this too.  

We went to the daughters home and she was very excited to see us and was very thankful for the prayer we offered.  She also accepted baptism and a return visit.  What a miracle day!  But that was all while I was on a transfer so I'm unable to follow up with them, but Elder Taylor said he will, so I'm very excited to hear what happens.

That was one of the most successful days I've ever had in the  mission field and I can't even follow-up on those people!  It's frustrating, so I thought maybe it was who I was with that made the difference.  Elder Taylor and I worked hard and it worked out.  Elder Wood is pretty layed back, we work but I know that we can work harder so I think that's one of the reasons why we don't have much success and why I had so much success with Elder Taylor in the hour I Harvested with him.

I can only try harder and keep working and I know the Lord will provide us with success.

Also this week, Elder and Sister Collins, in charge of housing, came by and gave us a new dresser.  Then he asked if the bed was long enough for me.  I told him it was a wee bit short:) thats an under exaggeration. He said that he will buy me an XL bed and whenever i'm transferred he will come pick it up and move it to my new place, so i'll have the bed the whole mission.  Super nice and kind of him, he says he does it for every tall missionary.  super nice!

Well i'm about out of time so I gotta go.  I love you guys! 

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

P.S. I am now able to invite Haitians to baptism in creole, it's a cool language!  

9/30/13 | Week 1 in Florida

I'm officially a Flo-Rida!  Florida's pretty cool i guess.  The humidity is not as bad as i thought it would be though.  And it's not even that hot, that could be because we have a car and nice AC.  But I don't think it's too hot.  

The first day we flew in, had dinner at the mission presidents home, which is really nice, had interviews, some training, then we stayed the night in a hotel.  

Next day had transfer meeting, had some training, testimony meeting, then met our comps.  My companion is Elder Wood from Las Vegas.  He's goes home in January so I'll be his second to last comp.  Im his first trainee and so far its been going pretty good! Instead of tracting here, we do what's called Harvesting, created by Pres. Anderson, which means we knock on people's doors, say that we are representatives of Jesus Christ and He sent us here to give them his peace and blessing!  Everyone loves Jesus here, except the grumpy white people and random asian budhists, so they are more than willing to have us say a prayer with them.  We make the prayers very personal then ask how they feel.  We explain that it's the Holy Ghost that they feel and invite them to be baptized so they can have that feeling always.  Most people have been baptized already so we explain you can be baptized again and we invite them to come to church and see if we can come teach them more.  It just depends on the people whether or not they accept, and how prepared they are.  So far we have been giving a lot of blessings, the most in our district, but we only have 2 new investigators.  Which isn't good, but we are kind of starting this area up, so by next week we should have a lot more.

We live in an apartment, cypress shores apartments, in Coconut Creek FL.  We live with 2 elders that speak creole, which is a very easy language, ive already picked up a little bit of it just from listening. It's a twisted version of French.  Pretty cool though.  Oh yeah, I'm serving in the Ghetto! it's awesome! I finally get to get in touch with my inner-black self.  The only people we teach are Haitian or Black, we've talked to 2 white people, and white people are very mean.  The Haitians and Blacks are very humble, thats why we harvest in the ghetto areas, we live in the nice area, but go to the ghetto areas, so mom you can sleep peacefully now knowing that i'm safe:)  it's so tight, it's like teleporting to a 3rd world country.  The Haitians live as if they are in Haiti so it's like walking down the streets of Haiti.  It's pretty awesome and humbling since we have so much.  

Also about 90% of the missionaries serving here are from Utah, super weird, alot graduated from LP a few years back.  Also an Elder Webb is my zone-leader, he's from the gublers ward, somehow related to them.  And i just remembered.  We stopped to talk to some lady who was smoking something, possibly marijuana.  She wasn't really receptive, but that was alright because Elder Wood and I felt pretty good after that, probably from the smoke.  Well this mission is truly amazing, since pres. Anderson created Harvesting the mission has boomed.  Just yesterday they had to split the ward twice because of the growth.  It's awesome!  I love being able to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, because there are people just waiting to hear it, like this guy named Ontario.  We were walking past him and i just asked, "Hey hows it going? Will you be baptized?"  he said yes, which took me off guard, so we made a follow up visit and saw him last night and I think he will be baptized, we will see.

Well I love you guys! oh yeah, I am the tallest missionary in this mission, and Elder wood is 6 4 so we stick out since all the blacks and haitians are very, very short, its awesome!

Elder Bailey

ps thank uncle stuart for his email and forward this to him.  And thanks randon for the email as well!  I really enjoyed it!  

also don't send packages through UPS or i have to wait until transfer to get it because everything has to be forwarded from the mission home and you cant forward UPS or fedex. so go USPS.

Elder Bailey with President & Sister Anderson

9/23/13 | MTC

Wow! I´m exhausted to say the least!  Who knew that being a zone leader for a week in the MTC could be so hard?  I have spent many nights up till 11:30pm or later figuring out issues with missionaries and talking to the Branch President trying to resolve issues.  Elder B. had appendicitis on Wednesday, so Elder Smith and I were in charge of getting him to and from Main Campus on Thursday and Friday to chill in the sick bay.  Man what a week!  Elder B., we found out has some other medical issues that i wont expound on that affect how he behaves. So I´ve had to resolve physical fights, one including me and Elder B. and one including Elder M. and Elder B., both started by Elder B. and he´s a pretty big guy so it was frightening, but don´t worry, no one was critically or even minorly injured in these fights:).  I think it was the oxicoton he was taking that made him violent.  He has to stay an extra week or two until he is capable to serve.  Elder K. has had suicidal thoughts so ive been helping him to my best ability with the help of counselors and the Branch President.  And he mentally snapped the other day.  He was having conversations with a rubber duck...it freaked us out!  So we scheduled him an appointment with a counselor and they deemed him unfit for service.  So he will be flying home tomorrow.  It´s really sad because he was perfectly healthy one week ago, but the stress and pressures got to him and his mind couldnt handle it anymore.  So they will hopefully resolve these problems and he will be out serving in the next month or so. These are just some of the problems weve dealt with this week, I don´t want to sound like im complaining so I´ll just say that I´m grateful that the Lord gave me strength and knowledge to know how to deal with all these stressful situations.  It´s been a really hard week, but I´ve felt the Lord´s hand in my life that has given me the strength to continue in the work.  

Also there is a cough going around and everyone in my zone has it and we are all flying out tomorrow!  So much for a good first impression to the Mission President:)  We are all hoping that we will wake up better tomorrow morning.  Now on to the good news!  Elder Taylor´s and I committed our progressing investigator, Marcus, to baptism!  And we had TRC for 3 days and taught a guy named Gabriel who is Catholic.  But we taught him by the Spirit and he is now committed to baptism as well!  So a great week!  I have learned how to teach by the Spirit and listen to him and teach the lessons by his influence.  The lessons have been much better since I learned how to do that.  We also got 2 new districts this week into our zone.  They are from all over and seem pretty chill.  Oh yeah! Tomorrowmorning we wake up at 1:30 and catch a train at 2:30 headed for Florida.  It´s going to be a long ride!!  Just kidding, we take the train to the airport and out flights leaves at 6:25 for some location that i don´t remember, then we have a layover for a certain amount of time.  Then we fly from wherever we are to Florida landing approx. around 4:15ish.  I believe we are flying American Airlines.  Im so excited to get out of here and get to work.  I don´t know how missionaries stay here for 9 weeks or longer.  I thought 2 weeks was long!  We have a deep respect for the ones who are foreign speaking and are here for 9 weeks.  Well this is all the time i have this week!  So i´ll write next week whenever my pday is! 

Love

Elder Bailey