12/29/14 | "Ring out Wild Bells"

Dear Family!

First off I really dislike the hymn, "Ring out wild bells" we've had to sing it so many times this week because of the new year.  It reminds me of when Karl and I used to play it for opening exercises in Priesthood as a joke because Dad didn't like it:)  It's crazy how fast this year has flown by!  For all of 2014 I've been a missionary, that's weird to think.  But it's been one of the best years of my life, I've learned a lot and changed a lot and am very thankful for all the trials and hard things I went through.  I'm reminded of a quote by Elder Scott, 

"Just when all seems to be going right, challenges often come in multiple doses applied simultaneously. When those trials are not consequences of your disobedience, they are evidence that the Lord feels you are prepared to grow more (see Prov. 3:11–12). He therefore gives you experiences that stimulate growth, understanding, and compassion which polish you for your everlasting benefit. To get you from where you are to where He wants you to be requires a lot of stretching, and that generally entails discomfort and pain."

Just thought I'd share that quote:)

It was so fun to talk with you on Christmas! That was the highlight of the week!  This week flew by so fast! We had a MBZLC (Miami Beach Zone Leadership Council) on Friday and discussed the needs of the Zone and some problems we need to address. We talked about overcoming complacency and negativity and made plans on how we will eliminate that in January. It went very well and it helped get all the leaders on the same page so now we can help uplift and inspire the rest of the zone. I didn't realize how much thought and effort goes into leading a zone! It's been a very good experience so far.  Even with all the crazy scheduling we saw some really amazing miracles.

My favorite miracle that occurred was yesterday. The YSA Branch was cancelled because of the holidays so we went to the Miami Beach Branch. Before Church we rounded-up our investigator, Adrielle, and he was super set on coming to Church. Church started and he didn't show up, (on a brighter note we had 2 LA's come back!) After Sacrament Elder Hutchison felt prompted to go stop by Adrielle's house. When Adrielle opened the door he started by saying, "I know I missed Church, but I was reading from your book and talked with my friend and I've decided to follow the Methodist Church." He was so elect when we visited with him previously so we weren't going to give up on him! We said, "well, we didn't really explain to much about the history of the Church so we'd love to share a little message with you for just 10 minutes." He agreed and let us in. We opened with a prayer and talked about his visit to his Grandma's over the weekend and emphasized how the Gospel blesses families and tied that into the Restoration. We shared the Restoration and the Spirit was so strong! Afterwards we asked him if he believed the message that we just shared and he said he did, so we asked, "What does it mean to you that this is the Church of Jesus Christ?" He thought for a second and said, "Well, it means that this is Jesus Christ's Church so I should follow it and join it." It was such an amazing lesson! We haven't felt the Spirit while teaching like that in a while so we know that the Spirit is the one who helped him come back into investigating. God is good!

Also this upcoming week Elder Zwick is coming to the mission!  We'll have a conference with him next friday and all the leaders are having a meeting with him next wednesday.  It'll be awesome! Also our i-pads will finally be coming within the next few weeks, we are super excited about that, it will help the work progress so much!

Also on a random note, we got to feed and play with a sugar glider on Saturday, they are the creepiest/coolest little animals ever!  Look them up on Google, I don't really know how to describe it, it's like a squirrel.  Also later that night we were walking back to our car and there were raccoon's all over it!  I had a box of Zours in my pocket so I took it out and starting throwing Zours to them and lured them to come closer to Elder Hutchison and I.  We got them to come within 2 feet of us, then we got bored and scared them off and went back to work.

It's been an awesome week and I hope you have an excellent week! I love you!

Elder Spencer Bailey

12/22/14 | Welcome to Miami

Merry Christmas!!!

This week has been awesome!!!!  I got transferred to Miami as a Zone leader!  My new comp is Elder Hutchison, he's from Vegas and goes home after this transfer.  He's super cool and we've been getting along great!  We cover the YSA for the stake so our area is huge! It covers 2 different zones!  I never thought I would get anywhere near Miami since It's all Spanish, so its been awesome!  

We've had a lot of fun working hard!  This week was super busy, we had 2 district trainings and an exchange with the AP's (where I got attacked by bedbugs) all within a few days as well this past week our area struggled and we definitely saw it directly correlate with the zone not seeing success.  We felt pretty bad and are making plans on how to improve this upcoming week and to help inspire and lift the zone to do the same so that we don't have a repeat of last week.  As we've worked hard to find YSA's we've seen a lot of miracles.

Last night we really struggled to find a YSA "hotspot" so we were harvesting in this neighborhood and couldn't find anyone.  We prayed that we would find 1 elect YSA to work with by the end of the night and we had a lot of faith that we would find.  As we finished harvesting we realized that we hadn't found anyone but as we were leaving the last house after praying with them we got a referral for a YSA named Johnny who was harvested earlier that day.  It was a miracle!!!  So we hurried over to see Johnny that night and he was surprised to see a different set of missionaries for the second time that day but was excited to see us.  We shared a message with him and set expectations and he is set to be baptized onJan. 4!  It was an amazing blessing and miracle from God!

I cant' wait to talk with you guys on Christmas, I'm super excited!  Oh yeah, I totally forgot, we get to go to the BYU game today at the Miami Beach Bowl!!!!!!!  President told us yesterday morning that we could go with a investigator if the ward invited us since they got a lot of free tickets, so we scrambled to find an investigator and got some tickets, so we'll be going today!  we are all in shock and awe that this is still happening!  It's going to be fun, and look for me on TV:)  

I love you!

Elder Spencer Bailey

pic of Miami and a cool sign in downtown

12/16/14 | Christmas Magic

Heyo Family!!!

This week has been really good and busy! We had Zone training on Tuesday, and the Christmas Conference on Wednesday, weekly planning on Thursday, then we went on exchanges on Friday and had a long work day on Saturday.   It was a rough week at the beginning, but it wrapped up nicely by the end.  We have 1 amazing investigator being baptizedthis Friday, and 2 more next weekend.  Boca East is also baptizing a family of 4 on the 28th!  It was a nice end to the week!  Also, I'm transferring! I've only been here for 1 transfer and Elder Mota and I get along great so we thought we'd be staying together especially since I just finished his training, but God has other plans, so I'm excited to see what will happen tomorrow.

One miracle we saw this week was when we felt prompted to visit with a former investigator, Ling Yi.  We called her up and she was excited to see us.  We felt prompted to really help her understand the need for baptism and help her understand the "why" of baptism, it was something that wasn't conveyed to her very well the first time she was taught.   The Spirit was with us and helped us convey this message to her in the way that she needed to hear it.  We shared a lot of scriptures and let the scriptures and the Spirit do the teaching.  We shared John 3:5 which shows the necessity of baptism, then 3 Nephi 27:16 which helps build a desire within the investigator, then Mosiah 18:10 which helped tie that desire back into baptism, then we shared 2 Nephi 31:5, 10-13 which ties the "why", "what" and "how all together.  It was an amazing to see and feel the Spirit teach her through the words of the Prophets and we invited her to be baptized on the28th of December and she accepted!!

The Scriptures are amazing!  I was working really hard to stay optimistic and joyful throughout the week so I again looked to the sons of Mosiah for an example of how to stay joyful through trials.  I read in Alma 26 and asked, "What made the sons of Mosiah so happy?"  As I studied I found so many reasons of what made them so happy and the majority of them had to do with being instruments in the hands of God and being able to bring thousands unto repentance.  In verse 22 Ammon gives the key to success and happiness, 

   "he that repenteth and exerciseth faith and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually   without ceasing- unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God... yea, and it shall be given unto such to bring thousands of souls unto repentance."

To have this success the sons of Mosiah did just that, they lived the gospel, humbled themselves, developed charity and they relied on God and didn't fear man.  I've been working at applying that this week, especially to be more charitable to fellow missionaries and our investigators.

I can't think of anything else that happened, it's all a blur, basically the last 6 months are a blur:)  It's hard to believe that Christmas is so close seeing how it's still sunny and a nice 80 degrees outside:)  But it helps me remember the true meaning of Christmas.  I hope you all have a great week! Love you lots! Jenna and Mike- you are so lucky to get to go to utah for Christmas! enjoy the snow and cool weather, have a fun time there with the fam:)  

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

#SharetheGift

p.s if you haven't shared the gift yet, please share it with all your friends!

12/8/14 | Becoming Golden

Tudo Bem Familia!

This week was really good!  We've been enjoying the nice 75-85 degree weather with plenty of sunshine with some nice rain storms:)  I've forgotten what it's like to have snow and cold weather, I'm really starting to enjoy and love the Sunshine State!  We also took a trip down to the Mission Office to stock up on supplies and to get a new bike rack for the car.  It was really good to see the senior couples and get to talk with them for a bit.  We had to drive Elder Houskeeper (the vehicle coordinator) to Home Depot to get some tools and ran into sister Bagget, she was one of my favorite members in Davie, she is single and was like a grandma away from home.  she was so happy to see me she tried to hug me, then remembered that we could only shake hands.  We chatted for a bit then she gave us money to go get lunch, so we went to Chick-fil-a and ran into another one of my favorite families from Davie!  It was a really good day!

Other than that this week was really good for Elder Mota and I to introspect and to become better.  We've been reading the talks "Becoming a Consecrated Missionary", "The Sacred Missionary", and "The Marks of a Man" in order for us to know what we need to do to become those consecrated missionaries, or I changed the name to become the "Golden" missionaries that God needs us to be.  We worked really hard last week but during nightly planning we didn't feel satisfied, our physical bodies were exhausted but our Spirits were telling us that we had a lot more spiritually to give to God.  We had an amazing planning session last night where we made plans to become the "Golden" missionaries this week. It won't just be a week long journey but we will be starting to make those changes this week.  We realized that we had raised the bar for ourselves and God, through his Spirit, told us that we just didn't quite reach the bar.  We are going to put forth more effort to put our heart and mind into the work,  not just our strength.  We started making these changes last week and one of the changes we made was to OYM more and to have more meaningful/purpose filled OYMs.  That's where we saw our AMAZING Miracle!!!

We were biking when we saw a lady ahead of us walking her dog.  We pulled over to let her pass on the sidewalk and gave her a "He is the Gift" card.  She (her name is Sue) saw the card and said, "Well, I'm Jewish, but I converted over to Christianity a few years ago in Arizona and I need to be baptized!" She then said, "I'm going to a church tomorrow to be baptized."  We told her that we could help her be baptized on the 14th into the true Church of Jesus Christ by someone holding His priesthood authority.  She found that very interesting and non-coincidental that we had crossed paths that afternoon at that precise time. We testified that it was no coincidence.  She asked "what makes your church different from all the other Christian churches I have been attending?" What an excellent question:)  We jumped into some H2BT points and went into the Restoration.  She really liked that and said, "well, I feel guilty for not knowing about that message until now!"  We continued to talk about her baptism and then she asked some of the greatest questions on earth, she said "I really like what we've been talking about, but there are 2 questions I've always wondered and I haven't found an answer yet.  I want to know why I'm here, and where I go after I die."  we opened up the BofM and shared some scriptures to help answer those questions, then we rescheduled to share the rest of the message that night.  It was an amazing miracle!!!!  My testimony grew so much more in the power of OYM'ing.  

This week I have been studying on how to be a better missionary and a better leader.  I looked at the Sons of Mosiah and Alma the Younger for an example to follow and based my studies off of their experiences.  I read Mosiah chapters 26-28, about their conversion, then went to Alma chapters 17-19 so focus on Ammon.  I made a list of characteristics and attributes that they all had and tried to seek out what made them so great.  I came to find that they fit a lot of the characteristics of the "Golden" Missionary.  I noticed how much charity, faith and hope they had and how they were wholly converted to their purpose and put their trust in God.  They truly desired to help their brethren, Msh 28:3, "Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble. 

Because of them being so converted they "were instruments in the hands of God in bringing many to the knowledge of the truth, yea, to the knowledge of their Redeemer.

 And how blessed are they! For they did publish peace; they did publish good tidings of good; and they did declare unto the people that the Lord reigneth." (Msh 27:36-37)

We've worked on applying that into our lives and into our district to help us achieve and to become "Golden"!  

I love you guys a lot and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

12/1/14 | Thanksgiving leftovers for days!!!

Dear Family!

This week was crazy! It flew by so fast! Thanksgiving was awesome, we had one meal but got a ton of leftovers!  It was an interesting week, from knocking doors for 2 hours on thanksgiving and no one answering to mistaking a woman for a man (yeah, that was awkward) we saw it all! But we kept on working with faith believing that we would find the elect.  We started using the "He is the Gift" pass along cards and using it in members homes and it's been an amazing tool to use!  Portuguese is a crazy language, it's like Spanish only a lot harder because of pronunciation.  But Elder Mota is doing great at helping me learn it.  Even though this week was rough and looked grim at the beginning, we finished strong and saw some miracles!

The best miracle we saw this week was last night.  We are teaching a Brazilian named Ingrid and she has been preparing for baptism for a long time.  The only thing holding her back was living the law of chastity, because she's been living with her boyfriend.  Well last week they broke up and  he had to go back to Brazil yesterday, so know Ingrid can fully live the Law of Chastity!  We went over last night with a couple of her member friends and had a great lesson, at the beginning she brought up her baptism and was telling us when she wanted it!  It was awesome! she is truly converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ!  Her dad is a member from Brazil and he is coming up for the holidays so she wants to be baptized on the 19th!  As well our other investigator Priscila has been continually reading the Book of Mormon and praying about being baptized this Sunday.  We have very few investigators but  the ones we've been blessed to work with have been progressing!

As well we've been working with a family of 5 and they were all ready to come to church yesterday and they get in the car and it didn't start....the battery decided to die right before church.  Satan does whatever he can to stop the work from progressing, like killing car batteries or having people use their dogs as their excuse not to listen to the gospel because they are barking...

Last week I gave a training on how to combat Satan's tools.  I talked about being creative and innovative and making a playbook of different approaches and tools we can use in missionary work.  I compared it back to bball and how if the offense keeps running the same play, the defense will adjust and make it so the play is ineffective.  just like in missionary work if we keep using the same rote approaches or the same pass along cards or materials the defense, in this case Satan and his followers, adjust and recover and can prepare the hearts of man to reject the gospel.  That's why it's so essential to have the Spirit with us, so he can knock down the defense, and to follow every prompting and to "change the game" so that the defense never has time to recover. We applied that this week and caught a lot of people off guard and more people were interested in listening to us.  

I finished the Book of Mormon again this past week and Moroni chapters 7 and 10 still blow me away!  They are filled with tools and ways to become more like Christ.  They talk about how faith, hope and charity are essential to living with God again.  You have to have all three or else we are nothing!  I was contemplating that this past week and was figuring out ways to have more faith, hope and charity.  Moroni exhorts us to pray with all the energy of our heart to be filled with these gifts from God.  That is the way to true happiness, by living the gospel and striving to improve each day we can grow in confidence in God's sight and have his Spirit to be with us.  When we have the Spirit we are happy:)  As I read those chapters I felt the Spirit so strongly testify that the words which I was reading are true!  I know the Book of Mormon is true! 

 Our Bishop gave a great lesson about the BofM yesterday and how it is essential for every day life and he committed the ward to read the BofM 30 minutes every day.  I'd like to continue that commitment to everyone who reads this email, to read the BofM 30 minutes everyday!  No one is forced to do it.  I can promise to those who do this will gain a stronger testimony of the BofM and in return gain a stronger testimony of Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith and the message of the Restoration.  The reason that I say these things is because last night we had a meal appt with a LA family and the father was a return missionary from Chile and now he wants nothing to do with the Church, his heart is hardened.  It made me so sad to see this RM like this.  He had obviously lost his testimony in something and thats what caused him to leave the church. half of his family followed him.   I don't want to see that happen to anyone, it's tragic!  So read the Book of Mormon, it helps with every phase of our everyday life!

I love you guys lots! have a fantastic week!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

another pic of my comp and I, he's super awesome!