Dear Family!!
What a week it has been! it's been from helping my comp who had a complete breakdown to having one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission! This week has been crazy! But when weeks like this happen, the most growth happens too. I won't go into detail about my comp, I'll just say he's battling super hard with depression and a bunch of other stuff, but on the bright side thanks to advice from Brother Oaks, we are going to beat his depression!
Real quick since I ran out of time. We had a awesome lesson with Judith (yes i've been teaching her for over 2 months now) at the Temple, we were able to go inside to the waiting room and we look on the wall and " The Family" and "The Living Christ" are posted on the wall, so we had her read them and the Spirit came in SOOOO strong!!! I invited her to pray and ask God if this Church true and if she should be baptized. She prayed and again the Spirit was sooo strong and we invited her to be baptized for the billionth time and she said, "I believe this Church is true, however if I didn't already have my church I would've been baptized into Jesus Christ's church months ago." What?!?! She admitted that this is Jesus Christ's Church yet she didn't want to be baptized. she said she still needs time, which is perfectly fine but totally hardened her heart to the Spirit. Good news though, I don't give up, so we have an FHE with her tonight with the 2nd Counselor of the Stake Presidency and his family tonight. She knows it's true, she just needs to get over her concerns and get baptized. she will open her heart to the Spirit one of these days and the Spirit will convert her, no doubt about that.
Another great miracle occurred just last night. We got a referral from the Hollywood sisters and went over last week and found the referrals sister, Fatima, so we said a prayer with her and she loved it and accepted baptism. We came back the next day and found the actual referral, Francis and continued where the sisters left off. She wanted to be baptized and was really interested in the Church, so we taught the Restoration and she loved it! As a district we have been really working on being innovative and trying new things, that day we decided to hand out "For the Strength of Youth" pamphlets, so we gave Francis one and she really liked it and said it will help her out a lot. We went by yesterday to see Fatima and Francis since they didn't come to Church, but we met the Mom and found out they had been called into work last minute Sunday morning. The Mom had just gotten home for a quick lunch break from work so we caught her at just the right time. We shared a prayer with her and informed her that we were helping Fatima and Francis to prepare for baptism, we also gave her a "For the Strength of Youth" pamphlet and she loved that and gave permission for us to continue teaching her daughters and that she would support them. This all occurred after she read through the table of contents and saw what the Church had standards for. It would've been a lot different if we hadn't been thinking creatively. It was amazing! This week we will continue to be innovative and think of new things to try, we saw so many other miracles from handing out "Word of Wisdom" pamphlets and other material that isn't frequently used.
I was studying in the war chapters in Alma this past week and was really focusing on becoming a creator of circumstance rather than a creature of circumstance, hence the email title, choose to act, not be acted upon. In Alma 46:8 it shows an excellent example of the Nephites being acted upon by the flatteries of Amalikiah. Moroni on the other hand was a creator of circumstance, he creates the "Title of Liberty" and helps others covenant to fight for the cause of Christians or in other words to be creators of circumstance and to act. Shortly after, Amalikiah is preparing the Lamanites for battle, whereas Moroni is "preparing the minds of the people". The mind has so much power! There is a quote Dad shared with me a few weeks ago that goes along with this, "THINK(leads to what we) DO (leads to what we) BECOME." That's exactly what Moroni was doing, he was preparing the minds of the people to think, then to act and then to become the people God wanted them to be. When we control the mind, we control ourselves and Satan doesn't have power to do whatever he pleases with us.
quick little story, on Halloween during lunch we decided to go get pumpkins to carve because we had to be home at 7pm. so we go out and cant find any pumpkins, finally our lunch was about over and we stop by a Winn-Dixie and find some pumpkins! but they were only about 5 inches big, but hey we still got to carve pumpkins:)
I love you lots and hope you have a great week!
Love,
elder Spencer Bailey
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| the Temple the other night |
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