9/30/14 | Rattlesnake Joe

Hey Family!

This week was another trial of our faith, but we endured faithfully and worked diligently each and everyday to strive to reach standards.  We saw one amazing miracle this week.  We were biking on Sunday and we had a jam packed schedule.  Our investigator, Judith, had to postpone our lesson for an hour which made our schedule even tighter and we didn't think we would be able to get everything we had planned done.  But the Lord had different plans then the ones we had made.  Since we had another hour at the fore-front of our evening we felt like we should keep harvesting.  Elder D'Addabbo had never heard of flow finding before so I explained it and we decided to try it out.  We were led to knock on this door and after we knocked twice we were walking away when a lady, Elisa, answered the door.  She was very interested in the prayer after our intro and we've been really working on being real and getting to know the people we come in contact with.  We really got to know Elisa which made saying the harvest blessing so much more heartfelt and meaningful.  After the blessing she exclaimed how awesome she felt and as we invited her to be baptized she hastily agreed and said that's what she wants to do.  The Spirit was really strong and prompted us to teach the Restoration, so we just started teaching and taught the Restoration and afterwards asked Elisa if she believed the message to be true.  She said it made perfect sense to her and that she believes this is the Church of Jesus Christ.  It was AMAZING!!!  

Then yesterday we went over and taught the Plan of Salvation and used the Book of Mormon to back up our teaching.  After the lesson we asked if she had any questions or comments, she said again that the Plan of Salvation made perfect sense to her especially because of the passages we used from the Book of Mormon.  She is going to be baptized on October 19th!  She is super elect!

Also I'll be praying for Bro Hilmo, send them some love for me! I agree with Karl, he's played a huge role in my life being in the young mens program with him and he helped me a lot at the beginning of my mission, so I hope everything works out well.  

We also got to go to an amazing member meal, they took us to a sushi buffet, and my comp had never had sushi, so the member didn't even give my comp the option to get sushi, had him get something else, not sure why but hey, more sushi for me!  That was my attitude at the beginning, but then she kept ordering more and more rolls of sushi to the point where I lost track of how much sushi I had eaten, then it was my comps turn to laugh at me after the meal when I felt super sick for eating so much sushi, but it was still delicious:)

We've been knocking a lot in our new area and it's really rundown.  a huge contrast from the rest of my area which is all really nice and upperclass.  The new area weve been in is white ghetto, way sketchier than most ghettos because there are a lot of psycho white people who live in these types of areas.  We were knocking and met this guy who said he was a baptist snake wrestler from Alabama.  He didn't give us a name so I thought the name Rattlesnake Joe would be fitting.  He asked if we had the power of God with us and we said, "yeah, were Representatives of Jesus Christ." He said, "well I believe that if youve got the power of God, you cant be bit by snakes, I've never been bit my whole professional career because I've got that power in me."  Then he invited us to put that power to the test and stick our hands in a container that had a rattlesnake in it.  We said, "nah, not today, we'll pass on that offer, thanks though!"  

That's just a little example of the strange south Floridians we run into on a daily basis.

We've also seen huge miracles in finding LA's.  We've really struggled to meet with them previously because the ward doesn't have a list of whos LA. So we've been going around meeting members and figuring out who's active and whos not and as weve increased our relations with the members, we've been knocking into LA's while harvesting! It's been amazing! Last week we met 4 LA's just while knocking doors, and yesterday we met 1.  The Lord blesses us in mysterious ways.  

That's all I have for this week, I love you lots and hope you have a fantastic week!

Also I'm staying in Davie and Elder D'Addabbo is transferring.

Love you all!

Elder Spencer Bailey


Heres some pics of my Zone from zone training a couple of weeks ago, I love them lots!  If you'll look on the far right, that sister is sister McGrath, I went to high school with her, she just got here 6 weeks ago, small world.