6/23/14 | Buckets of Rain

Family!

It's been another fantastic week in little Haiti!  We have seen so many blessings and miracles happen.  

First miracle was that we got fed by Haitians 2 days in a row and both times they made grio and bannann peze!  That was amazing. But the biggest miracle/blessing that happened this week was being able to go to the Temple on Friday.  It was an amazing experience and a blessing to be able to feel the Spirit so strongly and to remember the covenants made in the Temple. We got to talk with Pres and Sis Anderson afterwards, they leave this week and we get a new president (President Richardson) this weekend.  He's from St. George. 

Other than that, we have been blessed to find a lot of people this week.  We got 18 new investigators again.  We really worked on applying the principle of "find when you teach, teach when you find" and we have been greatly blessed to find so many amazing people.  Unfortunately, not a single one of them came to church yesterday.  But on the bright side, we have a lot of possible baptisms for July 6th.  

Our most solid investigator, Dylan, the one who was watching BYUTV and reading the BOM, was out of town for the last 2 sundays due to family situations, but he is back now so he will be baptized this Sunday!  He had to go to his great-grandpas funeral last week and he found out that he was a bishop and a member his whole life, but Dylan's dad had kept him away because he didn't want to be a Mormon.  It was really sweet, Dylans great-grandpa got to talk to him right before he died and Dylan told him he was going to be baptized, his great-grandpas eyes lit up and he exclaimed how happy he was and that Dylan was his last and greatest blessing, and that he would die happy knowing that someone in his posterity would become a Mormon.  So he is now determined to be baptized!  He is amazing and it's amazing to be able to see how the Lord works.

Also since Hurricane season started last week it has rained EVERY DAY.  And when it rains, it comes down hard!   the amount of rain we get here daily is probably the equivalent of the amount of rain Arizona gets in a year.  So most days we end up pretty wet, there was one day in particular that it was raining extremely hard and usually it stops after 30 minutes to an hour, but today it wanted to keep raining, and it was during the time we appointed to knocking doors.  So we went out and started knocking and within 15 seconds of leaving the car we were drenched!  But it allowed us to be able to talk to more people because they had pity on us:)  And along with the rain we have the craziest thunder storms almost daily as well.  During that particularly heavy rainfall day, there was an extreme amount of thunder as well, one time the thunder was so loud it set the car alarms off in the neighborhood we were in. Florida summers are awesome:)

And it's high mango season right now and people have a surplus of fresh mangoes, and they don't know what to do with them.  So they give them to us:)  Mangoes are the nectar of the gods, so we get a heavenly treat every day:)

That was my week in little Haiti in a nutshell, I love you guys!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

Pic #1 grio, bannann peze and hatian rice

Pic #2 me and Elder Senatus at the Temple (no he's not my comp, I wish though)

Beautiful Florida Sunset

6/16/14 | Raining Miracles for Days

Dear Family,

This week has been the most amazing miracle week I've ever had!  Shelly and Claricia got confirmed and our investigator Dylan's baptism had to be post-poned until next week because his Grandma, who is anti, found out what time his baptism was and scheduled a surprise trip to Miami right at that time.  But he will definitely be baptized this Sunday.

 One of the many miracles was the miracle of faith.  On Wednesday we didn't have hardly anyone to teach and we found out that our most solid investigator had to wait a week to be baptized.  We allowed our faith to drop and we became a little discouraged.  During weekly planning on Thursday we decided that we wanted to change how our area was and we wanted to find people.  We had faith that we would find and we believed that the rest of the week would turn out. 

 The biggest miracle was on Sunday when we had 4 people come to church by no efforts of our own, they felt like they should come to church, so they did!  We didn't have a baptism, so we had more time to work, so we went out to find some LA's.  We tried the first one and she wasn't home so we taught her cousins and they want to be baptized. Then we tried the second LA and he had his friends over so we taught them as well and they want to be baptized too!  It was a miracle Sunday!  We ended up getting 10 new investigators just yesterday!  We had miracles happening all over the place!  

Also it rained just about every day this week, and there was a ton of lightning and thunder.  Florida has the most lightning related accidents in the nation and the most lightning strikes here than any other state.  So when there's lightning, there's A LOT of it.  I was on an exchange with Elder Burgoyne, he also lives in our apartment, and we got caught in this huge thunderstorm. Just to give you an idea of how much ran comes down we were literally 10 feet from the car when the rain started and by the time we ran to the car we were soaked.  We drove to our next appointment and the whole time we could barely see 10 feet in front of us, it was crazy!  When we got to our investigators house we realized that there wasn't a man home, so we taught the lesson on her porch while this storm is going on.  It was epic, while we were teaching lightning was striking this field 50 yards from us.  The lesson was really good though, we were teaching this Haitian lady, Mimi.  We taught the Restoration and she kept trying to prove us wrong, so we relied on pure, simple testimony.  Elder Burgoyne and I each bore our testimonies and you could see a definite change on her countenance and she accepted to pray and ask God if all of this was true.  We will follow-up with that when we see here this week.    And then after the storm leaves the humidity index goes up to 110%, so once youre wet, you stay wet.  Florida weather is just peachy.  

Well, I'm just about out of time now, but this week was amazing! And Happy Fathers day yesterday to the best Dad in the world!  

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

p.s Alyssa, that Haitian family you are meeting with, have they spoken Creole to you yet? and have they fed you Grio? If not ask them to make you Grio, Bannann Peze and Pik Leaves.  And say "Eske ou fè grio?" then say "Mwem reme manje grio, bannann peze, e pik leaves."  They'll get a kick out of that, and hopefully make you some.  

This pool is inside a members home, pretty legit!

This sweet wall wefound this wall while harvesting in the ghetto:

6/9/14 | Miracles is Haiti

Hey Family!

This week has been awesome!  My creole is coming along slowly, but I've learned alot and have been speaking it a bit here and there.  I forgot almost all that I learned in Coconut Creek, but I've picked a lot of it back up.  Creole is a spin off of French, so it sounds a lot like French.  It's a cool language, it doesn't make much sense but it sounds cool. 

 

I don't remember what I called my Haitian investigators last week, so I'll rename them.  They are Shelly and Claricia.  They got baptized yesterday! It was an amazing service!  The other elders also baptized and a set of the sisters in our district baptized as well.  haha, turns out Claricia spoke english this entire time! I didn't find out until the interview when Elder Harper (my DL) was interviewing Shelly and I was trying to talk to Claricia in Creole, then she randomly answered one of my questions in English, so I asked "Have you been able to speak English this whole time?"  She smiled and said "yes".  She supposedly told my comp, but he misunderstood her and thought she said they both only speak Creole. 

 We also had 6 investigators come to Church and 2 of them got baptized and the other 4 all have dates!  It was really stressful and amazing to see them all in Church!  The miracles that occurred this week were subtle. 

Multiple times this week I was prompted by the Spirit to talk with people, I've felt that before on my mission, but not as strong as I did this week.  We were trying to find referrals with a member when we drove past this house with a man sitting in the front yard.  As we drove past, the Spirit hit me and directly told me that we needed to go talk with him and pray with him.  At first I shrugged it off, but as we stepped out of the car, it hit me again so I told Elder Slade and the member that we needed to go pray with that man, they agreed so we hastily walked back before he went inside.  We introduced ourselves as representatives of Jesus Christ and offered to say a prayer with him, he was very touched by the prayer and wanted to be baptized!  He was really solid and will be coming to Church this Sunday. 

The other miracle was with our investigator Dylan who is 15.  He was found by the sisters at the Church trying to get in so he could see what our Church was like.  Turns out he has been watching BYUTV and ordered a BOM from mormon.org and started reading it and he watched the Restoration and Finding Faith in Christ DVD's and he watches sunday devotionals every week.  Also he said that President Monson was a boss and that he loves him.  Super elect! We met with him on Saturday and taught the Restoration, but he already knew it inside and out so he taught it back to us! It was amazing!  He came to Church yesterday and made friends with all of the youth, it was pretty impressive.  He is set to be baptized on Sunday!  The Spirit really is working with the people here in South Florida and has brought many miracles to this land.

funny yet somewhat scary story: Last night we get home and start planning and about 15 minutes later the other elders come running into our room looking a little frightened and they asked "do you guys have anything that is missing?" We looked around and checked and noticed nothing was missing so we asked why they asked that.  They then explained that they came home and noticed a breeze in their bedroom so they checked the window and the window was wide open the the screen was busted, so thats when they came running into our room.  they then thought we were playing a joke on them, but we convinced them that we didn't open their window and we thought they were playing a joke on us, but they convinced us otherwise.  so we searched the apartment and didn't find anyone hiding in our apartment so all is well.  They had unlocked their window the other day and forgot to lock it, so they were asking for it, luckily nothing was stolen.

Well, that was my week, it was awesome!

I love you guys!

Elder Spencer Bailey

planner cover for this transfer

baptism with shelly and claricia and rico, member who baptized them

6/2/14 | Senior Comp in Boynton Beach, Creole speaking....what?!

Hey Family!

This week has been amazing!!!  I got transferred on Wednesday to Boynton Beach Creole.  Yeah, funny thing is, is that I don't speak Creole.  But my new companion has been out for 7 months and is a Creole missionary so we have been practicing a lot, hopefully by the end of my time here in Boynton I'll speak Creole.  Also it is an all bike area and hurricane season started so it's really hot and humid and rains a lot.  But on the bright side, I can't bike because of my shoulder injury so they gave us a car to use, blessing in disguise!  

My new companion is Elder Slade, he is from the little town of Rye, Colorado and he is average height so we still stick out a lot and get laughed at by crazy Haitians because of the height difference.  We are polar opposites of each other but we get along great.  The best way to describe him is, you know on the Best 2 years? the new missionary that comes in with the glasses? yeah, thats my comp, I love it!

So many miracles occured this week!  First one was on Transfer day, we were walking and saw these people (2 haitian women) sitting on their porch, so we start talking to them and find that they only speak Creole, so I smile and listen as my comp prays with them.  We set a return appt and through the following days we, well, my comp has taught them the restoration, Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Law of Chastity.  And they came to Church yesterday! They want to be baptized so bad and they have been studying in the Book of Mormon daily.  They are so elect, they said that they had been attending a church for 2+ years and the church refused to baptize them until they were members for a while longer, so they left that church. A few weeks later, we come by and invite them to be baptized a week and a half later so they full-heartedly accepted.  They will be baptized this Sunday!

We have been trying to be exactly obedient this week since for the last 12 weeks I haven't been exactly obedient, so I wanted to change that.  By our efforts and by our diligence in being exactly obedient, the Lord has blessed us in so many ways.  This area exploded these past few days as weve worked really hard. Our key indicators were almost all zeros on Wednesday but by last night we hit standards on almost all of them.

 On Saturday we went to follow up with an investigator and we accidentally knocked on the wrong door.  suddenly a ton of people come out and they are super drunk and high and they start asking these super weird questions about the Mormon faith.  I was so confused, I was expecting our investigator to come out and I got these people.  So we started talking to them and they had no idea what was going on, so they grabbed the owners of the house.  They came out and talked to us and the man of the house recognized us and said he had been taught by missionaries when he was a boy and that he knew God had sent us to find him again.  He (jack) and his girlfriend (tammy) were very interested because they wanted change in their life.  They weren't able to come to church, but we taught them last night again and they are set to be baptized on the 15th! 

Also I went on Splits with the Bishop and brought up how we had played basketball every tuesday night in Jupiter with investigators and members and how it had been a very successful proselyting tool.  He said they had done it a long time ago, but that we should start it up again.  So on Saturday we spread word that we were starting bball again at the church and almost 30 people showed up to play!  It was awesome!

But that's my week in a nutshell, I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

Zone Conference pic, I'm the tall tan one in the gray suit in case you don't recognize me;)

Box inside the Temple Corner Stone, my name is inside that box on a paper we, missionaries, signed