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

1/26/15 | Sugar Gliders

Heyo Family!!

This week flew by so fast!!  I hardly remember what happened!  We had some district trainings and exchanges and thats honestly about all that I remember.  We've been working hard this week to find YSA but are still struggling.  YSA lives off of referrals and we haven't received any referrals for over a week now, but we still keep our faith up and trust that God will start blessing us with referrals and miracles.

We already had one miracle occur last Sunday night. we were looking for a place to proselyte and the Spirit led us to this neighborhood that we hadn't noticed before.  We started knocking and kept knocking for a long time without much success.  Later we OYM'ed this guy and he was interested in being baptized so we stopped by Monday night to visit with him, his name is Fabian.  He is super elect!!!  We taught him the Restoration, Gospel, LofC, WofW and he loved it all.  He told us that living the commandments would be way too easy since he had already decided to live a righteous lifestyle.  He came to church yesterday, he even drove the entire time on a flat tire because he didn't want to fix it and be late.  I'm really happy that we'll be able to baptize the last sunday of the transfer and and on Elder Hutchison's last Sunday.  God is Great!!  

This morning I was studying in Mosiah and reading the accounts of King Limhi and Alma the Elder and how they both went through respective trials.  I was studying on how to stay positive during trials and how to learn from them.  It's interesting to compare and contrast the experiences of King Limhi and Alma's people.  They were both brought into bondage, but the way they reacted is what sets them apart.  King Limhi's people relied on their own strength and murmured and complained whereas Alma's people relied wholly on the Lord and cheerfully and patiently submitted their wills to God's will.  In the end they both were delivered by God.  We see 2 excellent examples of different ways to approach trials and the respective outcomes of each.  1 way to react is to complain and fight against the trial and eventually be compelled to be humble, in the end you learn a great lesson, but you had to make it so much harder for yourself to learn it. The 2nd way is the much better way to approach trials.  Humble yourself and rely on God to give you strength to endure and you will be able to pass through the trial and still learn a great lesson.  There's so much more that I learned from looking at those 2 experiences,  I highly recommend reading those experiences in Mosiah.  

Oh yeah! I forgot some other miracles that occurred yesterday.  At Church a random member came up and told us to write down a list of groceries that we needed so she could buy them for us.  It was a miracle since we are all out of MSF, so we weren't planning on buying anything.  Then right after that another member came up to us and said she is going to set up a time to feed us and let us know.  Miracles come in many different ways:)  

Also we got to play with a sugar glider the other night, super cool little creatures.

I love you guys!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

1. Me holding sugar glider

2. Also here's a pic of a really cool sunset from last night

3. heres a pic of my and my bday cake from a couple weeks ago, thanks again mom!!

1/20/15 | Remember the Name

Hey Family!!

We had a really hard time finding people to teach this past week which led to an overall poor week.  But we worked hard and diligently and constantly sought to find the elect.  We got some exciting news the other night, we picked up Ft Myers and Naples, so now theyre apart of our mission.  We got a new zone with 30 missionaries in it! Turns out they're pretty lazy and not too obedient, but we'll whip that out of them once they get integrated into the mission.  Thanks for all the bday stuff! Especially loved the bday cards and the papa johns delivery:)  

  This past week we did a zone training on the importance of remembering names, like the name of Christ as well as our family names. The AP's showed up, so that was a bit nerve wracking, but it still worked out great.  We trained on how we can take upon ourselves the name of Christ and always represent Him and our families as we go out each day. We trained on making changes and becoming who God needs us to be.  It was really good and the Spirit was very strong and helped the zone learn what they needed to learn. overall it was a good training, the Spirit was strong and we were all edified.

Miracle time! Late Wednesday we were talking and discussing how we can find since we had been struggling to find people to teach.  I remembered the story dad shared with me last monday about the power of fasting, so I suggested that we faston Thursday.  We both felt good about it and decided to fast for 2 elect referrals and to find a YSA to teach.  Throughout the day on Thursday we got 3 referrals and found 2 YSA to work with.  It was an amazing miracle to see!  There really is power in fasting!

I was reading in Mosiah 27 last week and studying the conversion of Alma the Younger again.  Alma has one of the greatest recorded stories of the power of repentance and change.  In verses 24 and 25 we see how this great change occurred.  God wants us all to have an Alma the Younger conversion experience. To change from our carnal state to a state of righteousness.  I've been introspecting on what things I can change and how to change them so that I can become who God needs me to become, that's what we emphasized at Zone Training.  All things are possible with God!

Also on Sunday night we got chased by a dog for the first time in my mission.  It was late and pitch black outside and we were finishing knocking doors and heading back to the car when we saw a really big dog standing in the middle of the road up ahead.  Some other dogs started barking at us which drew the really big dogs' attention to us so he started barking at us and running really fast towards us! I've never seen Elder Hutchison move so fast! He took off before I even knew what was going on!  We ran for a while until we outran the dog.  Then we headed to the car using a different route, just to run into the dog again when we were almost to the car.  Again, Elder Hutchison took off running soo fast and the dog started running too.  We ran and got in the car in record time and the dog just kept barking at us from outside the car.  that's my story for the week:)

I love you guys lots, Have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

Heres a couple pics, one with the city of miami in the background and the other is with Elder Zwick, I'm finally not on the top row!:

1/12/15 | The Weekly

Dear Family!

What a busy week!  I only worked 2 days in my area this week!  On wednesday we had MLC with all the ZL's and STL's and Elder Zwick.  It was really good and inspiring, Elder Zwick is a really good teacher.  Then on Thursday we went on an exchange with a struggling companionship. That was super fun! I got to ride my bike through the crazy streets of Miami.  Then on Friday we had zone conference all day and had to help out another companionship, then we got to work on Saturday.  I'm so exhausted right now!  But after taking a trip to downtown Miami and playing some streetball I should be good to go for the upcoming week:)

We really struggled to find elect YSA this week.  But some miracles still occurred.  We've been working with a LA named Ashley for the past 3 weeks and she finally came to Church and will be coming every week!!  It's so awesome to be able to rescue those who have wandered from the path!  Also at church we were making a final effort to get people to church by calling everyone we had in the planner, and as we were calling our long time investigator Samar came walking in! A member had just went and picked her up, it was a miracle!!

I've been studying this week in Helaman 3 on Sanctification.  In this chapter it talks about the thousands who joined the Church of God and the things they did to strengthen their testimonies.  They did the basics.  They were humble, prayed often, strengthened their faith and these things filled their souls with "joy and consolation."  It purified and sanctified their hearts "which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God." To sanctify means to "make holy or free from sin."  to yield means to "surrender, or give way to force". We must sanctify ourselves and submit our will to His will if we want any growth or change to occur.  That's what we will be focusing on in Zone training to go off of what Elder Zwick mentioned multiple times throughout his training's.  

haha, funny story time.  Yesterday we were rounding up investigators and tried William. He kind of dropped us but he was super elect when we first met with him so we tried one more time to get him to come to Church.  While we were talking with him his little dog came out and was walking around our feet, then all of the sudden Elder Hutchison said, "What!?! Your dog is peeing on me!!" we looked down and Elder Hutchisons shoe and the bottom of his pants were covered in pee.  So William took the dog inside but didn't get a towel or anything, so we asked him again if he would come to church and he said no.  Elder Hutchison wasn't too happy at this point so he said, "come on man, your dog just peed on me, you have to come to church now!"  William still didn't accept but it was super funny:)

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

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

1/5/15 | Bring in the New

Dear Familio!

What a week!  We are so happy with our zone right now! we got 4 baptisms and got way more people to church this past week and as well we set a goal of 250 Harvest Blessings and we got 272!!  Setting these little goals to achieve the big ones has really helped our zone out  a lot!  We had a lot of fire last week and worked really hard to achieve what God needed us to achieve.  Even though we had 2 district training's, 2 fire exchanges, 1 full exchange and new years eve it was amazing that we were able to pull this off since we had a crazy week.  

God is so Great!  We had a goal of 77 BG and made sure that each blessing was quality.  We had been praying to know where to Harvest and this one junction on the map had been sticking out to us for a while, so we went down there on Monday and found an awesome town house complex right in the middle of the Ghetto.  We worked there for the majority of the week and found so many elect people, and we found out how to work selflessly.  The majority of the people that we found we passed to members of our zone and God truly compensated us.  We found an elect YSA named Sarah and she came to Church yesterday even after being antied by her sister 2 days ago.  We set really good expectations on the first visit about what we plan to help her do as well as we set expectations of opposition.  Because we set those expectations we were able to bring her back after she was antied.  We know the Spirit was working with her and helped her come back and still have that desire to be baptized.

This past week I learned more about just how omniscient God is.  I was reading from Jacob to Mosiah and was able to see the wisdom in Heavenly Father for inspiring Nephi to start the small plates and for inspiring Mormon to include the small plates.  Without the Small Plates we wouldn't have many of the revelations from Nephi or Isaiah, or from Jacob or from any of the Prophets writings contained in the Small Plates.  I read a quote by Elder Holland which said something like "we received more from the Small Plates than we did from the lost 116 page manuscript.  We have more revelation and knowledge about God and His plan for us than that which was written on the Large Plates."  It really hit me just how important those 142 pages are and that we should carefully and prayerfully study over those books.  

Theres an awesome quote that we heard yesterday in Elder's quorum that I'd like to share, "Next time you're tempted to groan, you might try to laugh instead." -Elder Wirthlin

I love you guys!

Elder Spencer Bailey