2/17/15 | YSA Life

Dear Familio!!

This week has been great! We saw A LOT of improvement in the zone overall.  We gave a zone training on the importance of setting the vision for the Temple from the beginning and working with members and how to get referrals from them.  we found a lot of people to teach last week but none of them were elect.  We got rather tired of teaching people who weren't progressing, so on Sunday we cleaned out our teaching pool and made a "Standard of Electness" which includes certain things that investigators must do in order for us to keep teaching them.  We will find the elect this week!

We had a huge miracle occur this past week while texting out our new phone number to all the contacts in the phone.  We randomly got a text back from an investigator, Jennifer, who we don't know.  She said she would like to come to Church and have us come by sometime to share a message with her!  It was amazing! We went over Sunday night and found out that her whole family are members except her and her other sister who are both YSA!!  They want to learn more about Jesus Christ and want us to baptize them!  It was a huge miracle!!

I did a study on "How to discern the Spirit from our own thoughts" while preparing a comp study for the sisters.  It was an amazing study!  While studying, I remembered a quote Alyssa had shared with me, "No Random Thought."  Meaning that whatever thought we have pertaining to missionary work is not random and that we should act on it.  The Spirit talks to us mostly through thoughts and he speaks very softly. When we act on those thoughts we receive we can learn to discern what the Spirit is telling us.  The more we listen to the Spirit or act on the thoughts we have, the more our thoughts and actions will become like Gods thoughts and actions.  This is when it's difficult to tell where the thoughts are coming from.  The more we act, the more faith we have.  with more faith we can gain a pure knowledge and differentiate between our thoughts and the Spirit.  We left a commitment to act on every thought and we've been doing the same thing.

Also yesterday we were driving around in Downtown looking for a place to park, (I know how you feel Alyssa) and finally found one.  We ran into a Smoothie King to grab a little snack and when we came back out I had a parking ticket!  Every where you park in Miami requires you to pay, but no one ever does and cops don't care, but I guess this particular one did.  Oh well, at least the Smoothie was really good:)    

Also, winters in Florida are so nice!  It's been a nice 75-80 degrees with a nice ocean breeze and a lot of sunshine, Florida is a great place!  

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

Also Happy Bday to Randon and Grandma Burr and Grandpa Bailey this past weekend, I hope you all had great Bdays!!

2/9/15 | Emailing already?

Dear Family!!!

What a crazy week!!  It seems like I was just emailing yesterday!  With transfers and MLC, stake conference and stuff it was hectic, we only had about 8 hours to work in our area this past week!  

We had a District Leader Council on Saturday and had Elder's Corry and Carver come with their comps. It was really good, yet we found that there is a lot of negativity, disobedience and lack of faith throughout the zone.  We made plans on how to lead by example and magnify the callings God has given us and convert ourselves and then convert our fellow missionaries.  We have good plans to excite the zone this week and build the faith within ourselves and within the zone.  I'm thankful to be with Elder Nogueira for this, he's an excellent missionary!  He's my new comp, he was born in Peru, then moved to Washington state and ended up in Payson, Utah.  He's one transfer ahead of me, but this is his first time being a ZL.  This transfer will be great!

We saw a miracle while tracking down referrals. We hadn't been having success when we tried the last referral on the list.  His name is Chris.  We stopped by and found him home and it turns out he has been taught by 2 different sets of missionaries previous and it still interested in hearing the gospel.  We shared a short restoration with him since time was short and testified that God had once again sent us to him.  He wasn't too sure about baptism, but we testified that if he prayed God would answer and help him know if he should be baptized.

This morning I had an amazing study in Alma 14.  I was studying on how to submit my will to God's will in humility. chapter 14 is amazing.  Alma and Amulek are taken prisoner after preaching the gospel and have to watch the martyrdom of women and children.  Then they get cast into prison and for many days they are smitten, questioned, threatened, starved and naked and spit upon.  Yet through all of this they didn't say a word.  It's human instinct to react defensively in situations like that yet they still had power over their natural man tendencies.  The gospel had changed their nature, not just their behavior.  Even though the natural man inside them was trying hard to fight back or say something, they stayed silent and in humility they submitted their wills to God's will.  Their Spirit had more power than their bodies.  It wasn't until this total submission that "the power of God was upon Alma and Amulek, and they rose and stood upon their feet." (vs 25)  In this moment Alma cries out to God and asks how long they will have to suffer these afflictions, it parallels the prayer Joseph Smith had while in Liberty Jail.  God then gave them strength after their total submission to his will.  God can give us strength to overcome anything we go through, but that strength is dependent on our faith in Christ.

I can't think of anything else that happened this past week, it was so full of meetings and stuff that it's all a blur!  Congrats Jenna and Mike on the new addition of Audrey to your family! glad to see that your both healthy and doing great!

I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

2/3/2015 | Witness

Heyo Familio!

This week flew by so fast!! It's crazy that Elder Hutchison goes home tomorrow!  he hasn't been trunky at all!  We worked super hard this week and had a baptism all set up for Fabian, but he fell through last minute.  His grandma talked with him and didn't want him to be baptized and he really respects her so he backed out, but we will still work with him and help him prepare for the future. Super sad because it was Elder Hutchisons last sunday and last chance to baptize, so it hit him pretty hard, but after chatting with him he got back to normal.  

Agency is a great gift  but it can be awfully frustrating.  Elder Hutchison gained some insight at church and shared it with me.  He said God lets us experience what it feels like to have investigators use their agency to not accept the gospel so that we can catch a glimpse of what He feels like when we don't keep His commandments or when we use our agency poorly.  I hadn't thought of it like that before.  It's so true!  It's helped me introspect and make sure I use my agency wisely because I know what it feels like when others use their agency poorly, I don't want to have God feel like that.  This week will be great though!

We saw  a huge miracle this past week!  We got a referral on Friday and went to see her, Barbara, that night.  We visited with her and asked her questions and she started sharing a cool experience she recently had.  She went to Guatemala to visit her step-mom and dad in December.  While their her step-mom, who is a devout Catholic, invited her to Church with her.  Turns out that her step-mom had been meeting with missionaries and was going to be baptized into the Church in a few weeks.  So Barbara went to one of our Church services in Guatemala and loved it! Said it was the best church experience she had ever had!  While on the plane ride home to Florida she sat next to a returning sister missionary and the sister told her almost everything about the Church. then just 2 weeks later she saw some missionaries walking by who OYM'ed her, that's how we got the referral.  She connected the dots of how all of this was non-coincidental and that Jesus had sent us to her.  She started tearing up when she thought about that.  It was an amazing miracle to see it all unwrap and see how God has been preparing her to hear the gospel!  she is preparing to be baptized on the 22 of February!

This past week I was studying the power of Bearing Testimony.  I was reading in Alma 4 and at this time the Nephites are in perilous times.  Because of previous destruction they were humbled and 3,500 souls were converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ and were baptized.  Not too long after, they let pride into their hearts and it caused the work of God to come to an abrupt stop.  Alma saw the problem and knew that God could do something about it but he first needed to act.  He leaves his judgement seat and sets out to preach the gospel and bring people back to the Church.  He saw that there was "no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them."(vs.19) Alma understood who the real teacher was and is, the Spirit, and knew that by the words of his testimony he could invite the Spirit to touch the hearts of the people.  There's a quote from the BofM study Guide about Testimony. "To bear testimony is 'bear witness by the power of the Holy Ghost; to make a solemn declaration of truth based on personal knowledge or belief.' Clear declaration of truth makes a difference in peoples lives. That is what changes hearts. That is what the Holy Ghost can confirm int he hearts of God's children."  We've been working on using testimony more to invite the Spirit so that the Spirit can be the teacher.

Yesterday we got permission from President to do the first ever Miami Beach Blitz! We brought most of the zone into Miami Beach's area and knocked doors like crazy for an hour and found lots of cool referrals and people to work with.  Someone came up with the idea at our stake meeting at 7am (I'm not a fan of early morning meetings) and President really liked it so he told us to do it, and it worked out quite well, so we'll keep doing it periodically. 

I hope you all have a great week! I look forward to seeing pics of little audrey next week! hope all goes well Jenna!  

love you!

Elder Spencer Bailey

Picture of one of our districts after D-train pulling the soccer team pose