8/25/14 | "It's a great day to be alive"

Dear Family!

What an INCREDIBLE week!!!!  My testimony has grown in the power of unity in a companionship.  On Tuesday morning Elder D'Addabbo and I got into a little fight, but we resolved it and figured out how to get along for the next transfer and what we were each going to do to have more unity.  Ever since then we have seen so many miracles in our area!  

Our first set of miracles occurred Tuesday night.  We created an "If, Then" statement that if we walked quickly and with purpose from door to door, then we would get 4 new investigators.  As we did that, we saw so many miracles.  The first one was when we found Christina.  Her husband committed suicide a year ago, and she lost everything, so life has been pretty rough for her.  We said a prayer with her and invited her to be baptized and she accepted.  She went on to explain that her son had been baptized into our church many years ago and had since gone inactive.  She also said that she used to have missionaries over all the time but wasn't interested in listening to the messages.  Over the years though, she noticed that she has had 7 major tragic events and each time the Mormons have showed up.  She said that it was no coincidence, and we testified that God had always sent us to help her.  She was in the process of moving so we were able to help her many times this week move stuff to her storage unit and each time we shared a message with her.  She came to Church yesterday and in Relief Society she bore her testimony about this Church and how it is the Church of Jesus Christ, she is amazing and so elect and she will be baptized this Sunday!

Heres a story of how our weekend went: the sisters that are in our ward and live in the same complex as us have had a huge cockroach problem, so they deep cleaned their apartment and accidentally mixed bleach and ammonia.  But they didn't figure that out until yesterday, so they had been breathing it in for 3 days.  And on top of that one of the sisters turned on a bug bomb as it was pointed at her face, so she inhaled all the poison.  so we talked to them on Sunday and they said they had been throwing up all night and couldn't breathe and they wanted blessings, so we went over after church and walked through their apartment to get to their porch and it smelled so strong of bleach.  so we gave them a blessing and had them evacuate their apartment and we opened up all their windows to let it air out, then we took them to our apartment and had them study in our room while we studied out on our porch.  

we had them call the mission nurse and she flipped when she heard about what they had been cleaning with, and called Sister Richardson who came real quick and took them to the ER.   then we got a call from the mission nurse telling us that we needed to rush to the ER too since we had been in the apartment too.  so we start heading to the ER  but then we get another call from Sis. Richardson telling us not to go because they said they couldn't do anything for the sisters.  So we thought they were going to die! then she explained more that they could only give them some medication and have them breathe fresh air so we didn't need to go since it wasn't too severe.  So our weekend was crazy!

The other miracle occurred not too long after we met Christina.  We kept knocking doors in this neighborhood and met Lydia.  She had just moved here from NYC and was living with her son and grand-kids.  We said a prayer with her and invited her to be baptized and she said that she really needed to be baptized again.  We have been able to meet with her this week and she came to Church yesterday and loved it!  We taught her the message of the Restoration last night and Elder D'Addabbo and I have been really trying to teach with unity by switching off quickly.  The Spirit was super strong because we taught with unity and she believed the message and will also be baptized this Sunday!  

I also realized that it really does just take a seed of faith for miracles to occur.  This week has been the best week this area has had in a long time and the best week Elder D'Addabbo and I have had as a companionship.  We went out this week expecting to find miracles and we were so greatly blessed by God!  I have been studying in Helaman and have studied the pride cycle and how to overcome pride.  That has been one of my weaknesses on my mission is pride, so I've really been working on that and it's really helped the work progress and our unity increase as I've humbled myself.  

Also we had new ward and stake boundaries last week, we got a big addition to our ward and we are now in charge of covering it all.  We go all the way out to the ocean so our area doubled in size it goes out an extra 12 miles then what it used to be, so they gave us a loaner car to use until they figure out the mile situation since we can't really bike out there since there aren't any roads that you can bike on to get there.  

wow, that's a long email, and I gotta go! I love you guys and have a great week!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

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These pics are from a Sister Gifford in his ward. She loves having the missionaries over. She's a new convert and gets the new member lessons often. So Elder Bailey and Elder D'Addabbo see them a lot. 

8/7

8/14: They took the Elders and Sisters out to dinner to celebrate Elder D'Addabbo's bday. 

8/16

8/19/14 | Sweat till you drop!

Hey Familio!

What an interesting week!  We had so many miracles at the beginning of the week and found so many people but on Fridayand Saturday all of them dropped us.  It was pretty down-heartening but we kept the faith knowing that if we believe we will achieve!  We went out for many hours this past weekend and just harvested since we didn't have anyone to visit.  It was really hot and humid but we made an if-then statement earlier in the week that if we didn't complain then we would find a family of 4.  So we started saying things like "I love how hot it is right now!" and "I love to sweat a lot!"  It helped us keep our spirits high and not let us get negative.  

And we had transfer calls last night. My whole apartment is staying! We had stake conference, so a new zone was created and ward and area boundaries were changed, so it's going to be a crazy transfer.  I'm staying with Elder D'Addabbo, still greenie-breaking him, must not have done it right the first time;)

I'll write about one miracle that occurred. It was Tuesday night and we had been knocking for many hours and we needed 1 more blessing to reach our goal.  We knocked almost an entire apartment complex with no success, then we got to the bottom floor.  We knocked and knocked but no one answered.  We had been praying silently that we would be able to get one more blessing, but we finished the building and had to get biking home.  On the way to the bikes we saw a guy walking through the parking lot, so we go talk with him and tell him that we are representative of Jesus Christ and that we were sent to say a prayer with him.  He accepted even though he only had 1 minute.  so we said the prayer and invited him to be baptized, he didn't accept but the Lord provided a way for us to achieve our goal by placing that man in our paths.  It all starts with faith, that is how miracles are created!

Also my comp got sick, he was throwing up all Tuesday night, so we didn't get much sleep.  Wednesday happened to be our busiest day, and we didn't think that we would be able to go out and work since my comp felt like crap so I was getting ready to cancel appts and move things around. But my comp is a trooper! he said "we can't stay inside, lets just go get me a Monster (energy drink) and get to work!"  I tried to argue since first off he was still pretty sick, and secondly a monster probably isn't the best thing to drink when youre sick. But he wouldn't hear it, he's pretty stubborn, so we went and got him a monster and he worked the entire day!  It was pretty impressive.

That's about all that happened this week.  We will keep pushing hard this week and see a lot of success as we have faith!  also austin I hope you get feeling better! It's no fun to be sick! 

I love you guys!

Elder Spencer Bailey 

8/11/14 | Back to the Basics

Dear Family!

What an amazing week!  We saw so many miracles this week!  The law of compensation is real!

I'd like to focus on the miracles that happened yesterday.  We felt prompted to knock this area that hadn't been knocked in a long time.  We started knocking doors and no one answered but we saw a guy on the street who was smoking, so we went up and OYM'ed him.  We offered to say a prayer with him and he accepted, he had strong desires to stop drinking and to stop smoking. 

After the prayer he said he felt really good, so we shared a little message with him and invited him to be baptized.  He didn't accept right away but we testified even more and he accepted to have us come back on Tuesday to share more of why he can be baptized again.  We asked him if he had any cigarettes or alcohol that we could get from him so that the temptation wasn't there and so he could start to overcome the addiction, he willingly handed over his pack of cigarettes!  

Then as we were walking back we saw a lady bringing in groceries from her car, so we went over and introduced ourselves and asked if we could help her bring her groceries in, she accepted! after we helped her out, we prayed with her, Abigail,  and her mom, Jackie, and they said they felt "wonderful" after the prayer and that they recognized that the Spirit was there, I love it when they recognize the Spirit!  They go on to explain the many different trials and challenges they are going through as a family, and they highlighted a lot of different points of the gospel, so we shared some scriptures and a message with them and invited them to be baptized.  They didn't right away accept but they wanted us to come back to explain more of why they needed to be baptized again.  It was amazing! We will be meeting with them and Carlos on Tuesday, I know that they will feel the Spirit as we share the message of the Restoration and have those desires to be baptized!

We also had 2 random people show up to church! they missed sacrament, so we took them to gospel principles, then during Priesthood we went into a classroom and had a member with us and taught the message of the Restoration, then we had them go to sacrament in the next ward's meeting.  They are so cool, they had the random thought to come to church that morning, the Spirit works in many different ways!

I was also studying in Alma chapter 36-40 and it's when Alma is giving instruction to his sons, there is so much good information in there, I don't have enough time to talk about what I learned from it.  One thing I loved is the repetition of how the Lord works by small and simple means to bring about His great works.  It's through the basics that we become converted to the gospel.  Just like in basketball, you have to practice the fundamentals or the basics everyday if you want to improve.  We need to study the scriptures everyday, something very simple, yet it's one of the basics that overtime will increase our spirituality and strength.

Also we have had random opportunities to serve random people this last week.  It is so true that service is how you find joy!  I love being able to serve others, and it opens up great opportunities to bring in the gospel.

And in other news, we were getting hit on by one of our investigators.  she was 65 years old...yeah...so we dropped her.  Her desires weren't in being baptized.  #cougar

That's about all that happened this week, I love you guys and hope you have an excellent week!  

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

8/4/14 | The Crash

Dear Family!

This week was really hard, but we kept working hard throughout the week and kept trying to find success.  Our most solid investigators, (Robert, Jen and Nicole) got extremely sick and we haven't been able to come in contact with them for the entire week.  and all our other investigators went MIA.  So it's been rough and were weren't able to find anyone this past week.  But we still have the faith and have great plans to improve this upcoming week.  

One miracle that I saw this week occurred yesterday at church. Over the last few weeks, we have been talking as missionaries in this ward on how to help our ward increase in their activity in helping the missionary work progress.  Yesterday was fast and testimony meeting so we decided to bear our testimonies on missionary work and how every member can be a missionary.  Before we even got up, there were many members who bore their testimony on missionary work, it was amazing!  And then during relief society they had us, missionaries, do a role-play on how to contact people on a daily basis and how to invite them to come to church.  After church it was amazing, there were so many people that wanted to help and many people realized that member missionary work is really easy to do. Hopefully this will continue and we will get a lot of support from the ward now.  

I was studying in Alma, chapters 17-20, which are the stories of Ammon.  As I was studying I wanted to improve on my attitude.  I was reading in Chapter 17 and its where the kings sheep got scattered and the servants were super afraid and lost all faith.  Ammon on the other hand took this as an opportunity to help his fellow brethren.  He says, "be of good cheer", now how could they be of good cheer, they will most likely be killed by the king, so this phrase seems out of place.  it was all in the attitude towards the situation.  Ammon was positive and excited to show forth the power of God.  I decided to follow this example this week by being excited and positive to go out and work each day.  This upcoming week will be really good and we will have a lot of success!

Also on the way home from Ward Correlation last night we crashed on our bikes.  To be honest it was pretty funny and the first time I've crashed on my bike.  A car was pulling out of a driveway, so I started slowing down just like any other time I've had to slow down, but I started slowing down right as we were going through this sandy sidewalk, so next thing I know my bike wasn't underneath me.  Luckily I was able to land just right and slid in the sand, but I ended up running into a spiderweb with my face, my comp wasn't so lucky.  His brakes stopped working so he ran into my bike and went airborne for a while before landing on top of my bike.  The person that was pulling out of their driveway rolled down his window and laughingly asked if we were alright, my comp raised his fist (with his face still in the dirt) and said, "yeah, we're okay."  What a trooper;)  No damage was done, we just got back up and kept doing with a few scrapes and bruises.  

I love you guys and hope you have a great week!  The work will progress this upcoming week for sure!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey