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