1/13/14 | Cold weather...what?, the effects of Benadryl on an already exhausted missionary

This week was crazy! It got down to 50 degrees on Wednesday and got up to the low 70's the rest of the week! I heard that this week it's supposed to drop into the 30's-40's!!!  We don't have any warm clothing, so Elder Woodard and I made a run to the thrift shop and bought sweaters and ties, which were only 99 cents:) I never thought I would have to wear warm clothing for 2 years!  

The biggest thing I learned this week was that there is power in bearing testimony, not only for the person listening but for the person bearing it.  We street contacted this lady the other night and talked for about 30 min, well she talked on and on, we just listened:)  We realized that she was trying to make us not believe in our beliefs.  haha, nice try lady.  It's not that easy to sway a missionary in their beliefs.  The conversation was going no where, she was just showing how our doctrine was "not correct".  We decided to just bear simple testimony, and WHAM, the Spirit hit so hard, we could see that she felt it super strong and she didn't know what to say, she was stunned.  So we handed her a picture of Jesus and said "have a good night!" and she just smiled and said "night!" and walked off.  The Spirit is so awesome:)

That family that we have been teaching didn't show up for Church yesterday, but we will keep on working with them since they are progressing.  We taught them the Law of Chastity the other night...that was interesting since none of them follow it.  We told them what it was, and the first thing they said was, "haha, well it's too late for that, we already broke the Law of Chastity!"  They all felt guilty for breaking it so we explained the power of repentance and how you can be forgiven of your mistakes and sins and the feelings of guilt can be washed away.  It was an amazing moment, they were dead silent.  Then one of them spoke up and said, "can I really be forgiven for my sins?"  We testified that she could and she was so happy and relieved!  So we will keep on working with them and baptize them!

Earlier this week I got a gnarly spider bite, it was legit.  My whole knee swelled up and it wouldn't bend properly, so Sis. Sommerfeldt told me to take a lot of Benadryl...  that stuff almost knocked me out!  To counteract that we went and bought a big Dr. Pepper (don't worry caffeine is allowed on my mission, since Pres. Anderson likes Dr. Pepper so he allows it:)  The caffeine didn't do anything to counteract it except make me even more tired later in the day.  That was probably the most tired I've been in my whole life, thankfullly the Spirit made me awake and alert during lessons and then I would crash right after, so it was an interesting day:)

I also learned why diligence is so important.  The other night we had 20 minutes left to work before we had to get home.  We debated whether or not we should head home or try one more investigator.  We both felt impressed to try this investigator we had in mind.  The investigator was home and it turned out that his older sister, and two cousins who live there were home too!  We found a family that we didn't even know about!  We taught them a super quick and powerful lesson on the Book of Mormon, and the Spirit told me to invite them to be baptized.  They said yes! It was an amazing miracle because we went out and finished strong to the end of the day!  

So that was my week in a nutshell, weeks fly past so fast now! I just realized I've been out for 4 months and it has flown by! Everyone says after 6 months it starts going fast, but it's already going!  Florida is crazy, and the people are even more so, but it is an awesome place to work in, especially the ghetto:)  

Love, 

Elder Spencer Bailey