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
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