8/24/15 | The Last Email

Hey Family!!

It's crazy that 2 years have gone by! we worked hard and finished strong this week, our baptism on saturday with Corey fell through. we were super sad about that.  His wife went crazy so we had to postpone the baptism to a later date.  But we didn't let that stop or phase us, true success is measured off of our commitment to find, teach and baptize.  We stayed committed all week and finished strong!

Yesterday we went on splits with the Elder's Quorum. I went with a brother Cluff. We stopped by a LA who wasn't home so we went to see some investigators, neither of which were home. But while walking to a home we OYM'ed this lady named Tammy. We had prayed with her the night before and she wasn't extremely interested.  But something changed over night. She started asking questions about why we had invited her to be baptized again and why she needed to be baptized again.  We said a prayer then taught the Restoration, she understood it super well! By the end she said, "I get it, I understand why I need to be baptized again! It all makes sense!"  She is super solid for the 12th of September.

I got to give a talk yesterday in Sacrament, spoke on repentance. It went very well, it was good practice for this upcoming Sunday when I get to speak again:)  

Thank you family and friends for your support over the past 2 years! Your prayers, letters, and emails were much appreciated!  

I close with just one thought based on what I've seen over the past 2 years serving a mission.  We've been closed off to a lot of what's been going on in the world, but we've seen enough to know that Satan is attacking the family hard!  We can especially see it with the recent allowance of gay marriage in the US.  It's more important now than ever before to strengthen the family and be a defender of truth.  Here's a quote from "The Family: a Proclamation":"THE FAMILY is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. . . Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. "

The Prophets came out with this statement in 1995, the family wasn't under attack like it is now, so this proclamation is definitely inspired!  The only way for Satan to win is for good men to do nothing.  I would invite whoever reads this to review "the Family" and find ways to strengthen your family so that we can have more power to withstand the temptations of Satan and one day all live with God again, that's what its all about.

I love you all and thanks again for all that you've done for me!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

8/17/15 | Allow God to keep His Promises

Hey Family

This week was amazing! I can definitely see the hard work, obedience and diligence of the past 2 years paying off this past week.  We had 5 investigators at sacrament and 7 dates set, 5 of which are going to be baptized in the month of August, it's going to be awesome!!!  Elder Kama and I got along a lot better this past week, and I've been praying super hard for the gift of charity and the other night I felt the Spirit very strongly when praying and I've felt so much more love for others ever since then, it truly is a gift from God to have charity.  Corey sadly wasn't baptized over the weekend, but he'll be baptized this Saturday for sure!

We saw a huge miracle last week as we followed the Spirit.  We felt prompted last saturday to go stop by some former investigators.  We followed the prompting and went and visitied them, Shirlene and her daughter Jae'mitria, and they still really wanted to be baptized and to come to church. We had just lost contact with them and they were wondering when we would come back.  We got them committed to come to church and they came yesterday and loved the service!  We taught them the Resto yesterday after church and they are so committed to be baptized on the 29th!  I'm not even going to be here to see them baptized but I'm going to do whatever possible to ensure that they'll be baptized on that day.

I heard a quote this week from one of the church videos that goes something like this, "Do whatever it takes to allow God to keep His promises."  God wants to bless us and help us out.  He's promised that He will always be there for us and help us make it through anything as we keep His commandments.  For God to keep His promises, we need to "believe in Christ, and deny him not; and Christ is the Holy One of Israel; wherefore ye must bow down before him, and worship him with all your [heart], might, mind, and strength, and your whole soul." (2 nephi 25:29) If we do this then God can keep His promises and help us "prosper in the land", we've seen this in our area this past week as we strived to become better missionaries and work diligently to the end.  We applied a lot more faith and even though we got rejected hundreds of times last week, we didn't let our faith die down, because of that we'll be baptizing 5 souls in the month of August and help them prepare to live with God again, it's been such a blessing to help God's children out.

I'm loving the work, crazy that I only have 1 week left, but I'm going to give it my all!  I gave my final training last week on the law of sacrifice and how God asks us to sacrifice our all. In the Old Testament he asked for animal sacrifices as a similitude of Christ's Atoning Sacrifice. Now he asks us to give of ourselves. We made a list of things that were impure about ourselves that were holding us back to put on the "altar of sacrifice".  our district has done really well at sacrificing those things that were holding us back from progressing.  This final week will be great, we'll finish strong by baptizing Corey this Saturday, very excited about that!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

snagged a pic of this sunset last night right off of the Caloosahatchee river

we found a pier last night and went out to it and took this pic

8/10/15 | Everything always works out

Dear Family!!

Man, I'm exhausted! This past week was crazy, started off when my comp ran away while we were playing a game of knock out with the zone on pday.  He got mad and left the chapel without anyone knowing.  We found him a while later and  he was extremely mad, so the Zl's took him and I stayed with another set of elders for the rest of the day.  The ZL's got him calmed down and we've gotten along all week, he just had a random explosion of anger. 

also President almost transferred me to finish training someone for my last 2 weeks, there was a problem with the other companionship, but they got it sorted out, so I got to stay here, thank goodness.  

Everything fell apart this week, all of our investigators dropped and we lost contact with our most solid one, Corey.  But then on Friday afternoonwe ran into Corey's wife, who is a member, and she said that he was still reading the BofM and they couldn't visit with us because they had an emergency with her pregnancy.  Everything worked out and Corey is still planning on being baptized this weekend, such a miracle!

I learned this week the importance of faith and the power that comes when we exercise it. I was reading in Alma and read these verses in Chapter 44 when Capt. Moroni is fighting Zerahemna 

" ye are angry with us because of our religion.

 3 But now, ye behold that the Lord is with us; and ye behold that he has delivered you into our hands. And now I would that ye should understand that this is done unto us because of our religion and our faith in Christ. And now ye see that ye cannot destroy this our faith.

 4 Now ye see that this is the true faith of God; yea, ye see that God will support, and keep, and preserve us, so long as we are faithful unto him, and unto our faith, and our religion; and never will the Lord suffer that we shall be destroyed except we should fall into transgression and deny our faith."

No matter what other people say or do they cannot destroy our faith.  Satan can't even destroy our faith.  The only thing that destroys our faith is when we fall into transgression, which weakens our faith.  The way to strengthen faith and to ensure that your faith doesn't dwindle is by doing the basics, 1. reading scriptures daily 2. praying daily 3. attending church weekly and repenting frequently.  We shared this with a LA we found this week and she came to church on Sunday, met with the Bishop and started on the repentance process so that she can be worthy to partake of the Sacrament. 

I also had my final interview with President on Thursday, it was really good! Gave me a lot of good advice and we talked about my mission and the things I learned and how to adjust to normal life in a couple of weeks. 

all in all, it was a crazy week, but I learned a lot and everything worked out in the end, so can't complain about that:)

Love you!

Elder Spencer Bailey

8/3/15 | Living it up in Paradise

Heyo Family!!

This week is my final week to find people to baptize before I depart, the pressure is on!  We have quite the line up of people being baptized in the next couple of weeks, so we are excited about that.  Yesterday we had a very interesting testimony mtg, we had 2 older black women get up and bear their testimony and they both had Baptist backgrounds.  It felt like we were at a Baptist church listening to preachers, it was one of the best testimony mtgs i've witnessed!

 we also had a miracle at church! Our investigator Michael came and after sacrament we were walking out of the chapel and this lady flags us down.  It took a second to recognize her but she was  a lady that we had prayed with the night before! (Her name is Beverly) She was completely not interested when we prayed with her, but she said she woke up and felt like she needed to come visit the church. (We had left a church invite with her)  I had the opportunity to bear my testimony last and I bore it simply on the restoration and the Book of Mormon.  Beverly asked if we could stop by and talk more about Joseph Smith and the BofM, she was really interested!  It was awesome!  I learned a couple of lessons from this experience. 

1."the worth of every soul is great in the eyes of God." If we hadn't given Beverly every opportunity to accept the Gospel Saturday night she wouldn't have come to church.  I learned that it is essential to give it all you got at every door approach, we're planting seeds with everyone we talk to.

2. Bear your testimony whenever possible.  Beverly was so interested in Joseph Smith and the BofM simply because of the testimony I shared during Sacrament mtg. which allowed to Spirit to touch her heart and spark the interest.   I learned that there is power in bearing testimony.

Nothing too interesting happened this past week, just another week!

Love you!

Elder Spencer Bailey