Transfer update: I'm staying and Elder Whitney is going. I'm so excited to stay because this is the best place to serve! But I'm sad Elder Whitney is going because we became super good friends so it was just like we were hanging out everyday preaching the gospel, not something I would usually do while hanging out. Also random story, I'm at Church a couple of Sundays ago and we start talking to this guy and he has the coolest accent and while I'm talking with him, I think "wow, this guy sounds exactly like Bro. Howden". Then we ask each other where we are from and he says "Oh, I have some family living in Highland." I said "woah, are they the Howdens?!?" He said yes, so I was talking to Bro. Howdens older Brother from Arizona who was vacationing in Florida. Small world, but it gets even smaller. Last Sunday we are sitting in Church again (it's a reoccurring event) and Bro Howden gets up to the pulpit and bears his testimony and also mentions that he moved into the ward! what?!? I'm pretty sure Bro. Howden (the one in Utah) sent him here to spy on me.
Also another small world connection, I started talking with a random ward member and found out that he is friends with the Toolsons (his name is Brad Westover) and came to the bball tournament in Ft. Myers last December, so we probably saw each other, small world keeps getting smaller.
Haha, we tried to street contact at the mall the other day to try new ways to find and let's just say that isn't one of the things we got trained on. It was bad. So we kept to knocking doors, and went back to the drawing board.
One of those miracles is that we were going to follow up with a former investigator that we found in the area book. As we were going we felt prompted to talk to this guy in front of his house. He wasn't interested and it actually wasn't his house but he said to come by later to talk to the owners of the house because they would be interested. We came back later and they weren't home but their nephew, who lives there, answered the door and it was a kid we had played street ball with 2 weeks ago! He said he wanted to learn more and grow closer to God but he couldn't talk right then so we came backSaturday night with a member who talked with him for about 30 minutes about basketball and gained his trust and friendship and we invited him to church and he said he would. He came to church on Sunday and said he loved it and said he "felt safe". We invited him to be baptized on March 16th and he said that he would! He is a super amazing guy and we found him because the Lord led us to his home. Let's call this investigator Lebron from here on out.
We had the weirdest Monday yesterday. Started off with us tracking down a less-active since they tend to be elusive and of course as luck would have it, he moved. so we were biking back and helped an old lady bring her trashcans in and found out that she used to be a member. So we talked and she showed us her garden and gave us some odd fruit off of some bush, don't know if it was edible or not, but I'm still alive so that's a good sign. After that we helped a guy back into his driveway and started talking to him and eventually agreed to disagree. But he thanked us for our service and asked if we were thirsty and gave us these 2 drinks he had just barely bought from the store. Then he asked if we were hungry and he gave us each a chicken sandwich he had just bought from El Pollo Tropical. He said for some reason he had bought 3 instead of 1. And we were doing him a favor by taking those off his hands because he wasn't the slimmest man around. So we got a free meal from some random guy. score! Then we went to Lebron's middle school basketball game to watch him play. Oh man, they take middle school basketball seriously out here. It was like we were at a high school basketball state championship game. It was awesome and Lebron is pretty good, and you'll be seeing some pics of him in a couple of weeks when he is baptized.
This past week I have been working on surrendering my will to God's will. I didn't realize how hard it would be. I've been practicing putting off all of my wants, dreams, wishes and desires and turning myself over to God to allow him to mold me into what he wants me to be. That is why we have had so little success number wise this past transfer is because we weren't turning ourselves over to God. We were humbled a lot but the Lord takes us low so he can bring us higher. Once we realized that and tried our best to surrender our wills we started seeing success. We found many people all of the sudden and received referrals left and right (one of which is a big shot music producer on Singer Island). So the Lord has been blessing us as we've tried our best to do his will and put off what we want. It has been a great learning and growing experience.
Well I love you guys and hope that you have a great week! P.S. Happy Birthday to Dad and Alyssa! I am sending you some stuff but they may be late since I can't mail until tomorrow, but don't think that I forgot about you!
Love,
Elder Spencer Bailey
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