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!

11/24/14 | No sun for 5 days!

Dear Family!!
This week was crazy!  It was cloudy and "cold" for a few days and then it warmed up but stayed cloudy, it was the longest elongated time that I haven't seen the sun in over a year!  Also we had a specialized training and we finally got to see "Meet the Mormons"!  It's a super good movie!  We also go to see the new Christmas video that the Church made to be like the Easter one, "Because of Him."  For Christmas they are starting a new launch called, "He is the Gift".  For New Years week they are posting an ad on the huge Billboard on Times Square! It's going to be awesome!  The video isn't released until Dec.1, so get excited!  Also I was talking with President during lunch and he told me that they are opening a Portuguese branch sometime in December, so he assigned me to learn Portuguese ... this will be a fun challenge:)
This week has taught us a lot as a district.  I'm reminded of the scripture in Job 23:10 when he says, "when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold."  This past week I feel like the Lord was trying us to see how we would react next week, to see if we come out as Gold or if we come out as Bronze.   We will choose to come out as Gold!  
This past week we saw a huge miracle!  It started on Sunday when a Brazilian member decided to invite her step-sister, Priscila, to attend service with us.  She came and we set up a return appointment with her and visited with her 3 times this past week and had members with us each time and had some amazing lessons.  She went from not even knowing much about baptism to wanting to be baptized this Sunday!  Priscila was telling us how the messages we shared answered so many of her questions and made life make a lot more sense.  She is really prepared and truly desires to be cleansed and grow closer to Christ.
I was studying in the end of Mormon today and I love chapters 7-9.  It's when Mormon and Moroni each bear testimony of the power of the Book of Mormon in conversion. There is so much to take out of those chapters because they are true sincere testimony and as I was reading through those chapters my testimony was strengthened that this work is true!  I love how in Mormon chapter 9:21 Moroni tells us to pray "doubting nothing" and God will answer our prayers. It went along with a talk I read called, "Approaching the Throne of God with Confidence" in it Elder Klebingat tells us that we can't allow ourselves to have any self-doubt because if chisels away at our faith.  I've been working on praying with real intent and with faith and not allow fear or self-doubt enter my heart.  As we apply this, this upcoming week, we will see miracles and we will be able to baptize our investigators on Sunday!
It's been a very good week overall! I hope you have a great Thanksgiving! I love you guys!
Love,
Elder Spencer Bailey

P.S.
actually the new christmas video is out! go to mormon.org/christmas and watch it!

11/17/14 | 4 Minutes

Dear Family!!

First off I am so excited to be in Boca Raton! It's been an awesome week!  I'm with Elder Mota now, he's halfway through training, so I'll be finishing his training and he's Brazilian but lived in London for half his life! We've been getting along really well and have been getting a lot of work done.  We live in a house now, the first one I've ever lived in on my mission, it's been really weird having so much open space, we even have a backyard with an avocado tree!  Also I'm serving as DL now, and that's been a really good growing experience, I realized I need to rely a lot more on the Lord and on the Spirit.  Elder Ruiz and Rice are the other elders in the District, yeah it's just the four of us.  The Member work is pretty good here, there is a lady in the ward who makes sure we get fed almost everyday by members!!  Hopefully I'll be able to put on weight in this area:)  It was a crazy week! Tuesday we had District training, Wednesday-exchange with the ZL's, Thursdayweekly planning, Friday-full day to work, Saturday-exchange with the other elders, Sunday-Church then the other elders baptism.  But we still saw a lot of miracles as we went out and worked hard.

The first miracle was on Friday.  At district training I left the commitment to OYM at least 20 times each day.  Elder Mota and I made sure we talked to EVERYONE we saw.  As we did that we met a lot of awesome people.  While biking on Friday we were on our way to drop in and see a member when we saw this lady getting out of her car with a baby, so we stopped and asked if we could help out with anything, like bringing in the groceries, but she didn't need any help so we asked if we could share a prayer with her.  She, Tatyana, accepted and we left the Harvest Blessing and she felt the Spirit super strongly, so we testified that Christ truly had sent us to cross paths with her and she knew that was true because she was saying how she had stopped attending church 2 weeks ago and has lost direction in her life.  She's 19 with a 1 year old son so she's had a lot of pressure to show the world that she can make it through and be successful.  We testified how the gospel of Jesus Christ can help her do that and that this truly is His church, we then taught a 5 minute restoration lesson and invited her to be baptized.  She accepted and said this is exactly what she needed at exactly the right time!  It was amazing to see how God works, if we hadn't been working on OYM'ing we would have biked right past her!  It strengthened our testimony that God has commanded us to open our mouths for a reason and that He will bless us when we do.  

This week I was studying for District training and felt prompted from the Spirit to study urgency.  It seems like there was a lack of urgency last transfer in this district, so I want to change that.  I was really struggling to make a training on urgency so I prayed and instantly the talk, "Your 4 minutes" came to mind so I studied that talk and received so much insight and revelation on how to help this district have more urgency to help our investigators progress and to be baptized.  I was looking in the Book of Mormon at the examples of Ammon and Alma and how they were so quick and urgent to preach the gospel at all times; Ammon when he was amongst the Lamanites jumped on the perfect opportunity to preach the gospel to Lamoni without delay; Alma always preached repentance and exhorted his brethren to not delay the day of their repentance.  It's been a really good study this week!

I'm out of time, but I love you guys lots and hope you have a fantastic week!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

Oh yeah, happy Birthday Jenna this weekend! Ill be sending you a card this week,

And Happy bday Austin, last weekend, I'll be sending you a card today as well

My new comp and I

The front of our house

11/10/14 | Just another day in paradise

Dear Family!

Wow, this week was crazy!  Elder Garrett got sent home Wednesday morning because of his depression, so I got stuck with the other elders I live with so we were in charge of 2 areas for a few days.  Also we have transfers tomorrow and I'll be transferring:(  Super sad about that, the member work here has skyrocketed since I came here 4 months ago. The members came to trust and love the missionaries, like yesterday a couple came up to us and told us they were pregnant and that we were the first to know because Elder D'Addabbo and I had gone over there about 3 months ago and they wanted us to pray that they could become pregnant, so they wanted to thank us for doing that.  I was super happy for them, theyre an awesome couple (they remind me alot of Jenna and Mike).  

As well yesterday after sacrament, Bro. Poetz came up to us and asked if we could teach the Restoration during High Priests and talk about missionary member work.  The other elders had to be at sacrament, so I went on a split with my friend Elder Houskeeper (he's a senior couple in our ward) and we taught the Restoration to the High Priests and they loved it so much they told the Seminary teacher and asked us to go to early morning seminary and teach it today.  So we woke up at 5:15 and went and taught the restoration to them.  It was awesome!  I respect kids that go to early morning seminary now, just like alyssa was saying a couple weeks ago.  

One miracle that we saw this past week was being able to cover both areas as a trio.  As we worked diligently each day to work effectively things just worked out.  We were able to see a lot of people and teach a lot of people in both areas.  We really applied Zone training and we had some of the most spiritual lessons I've ever had on my mission.  We saw hearts change and things start to click in investigators minds as we applied being bold and loving and teaching by the Spirit.  It was amazing to see the Lord's hand in the work!

This week I was studying in Helaman and noticed a scripture I hadn't noticed before.  In Helaman 14:12 Samuel says that God gives signs unto the children of men so that they "might believe on His name."  It all kind of clicked as I read that. I always thought it was weird that we had so many signs, like the signs of His second coming and wondered why all the Prophets had given us signs to look for.  As I read that it all made sense.  God gives signs so that we can believe.  If the Nephites didn't have the signs of the Saviors birth, they wouldn't have been able to exercise faith in Christ.  If we didn't have signs of His second coming, we wouldn't know what to look for and how to prepare.  That's why God has given us signs.  I don't know how much of this made sense, it was just a cool thing I found while studying.

But I have to go now, really short on time.  I love you guys lots and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

11/3/14 | "Change the Game, Don't let the Game Change you!"

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

the Temple the other night