I got transferred to the Ft.Lauderdale Zone! I work in a city called Hollywood, its been nicknamed Holly"hood" for a good reason. I'm happy to be back "home" in Ft. Lauderdale! I love this zone!! Our area is amazing and I'm to be with Elder Hayward, he is an excellent missionary. He's my new comp, he's from Colorado, half-black, and really cool. We have seen so many miracles in our area this week I don't even know where to begin! we didn't have enough time to effectively find last week, which is a good problem to have, so this week we will be spending a lot of time knocking doors. God blessed us greatly yesterday, we had 5 investigators come to Church, 3 of them were found on Saturday! I'll share one of their experiences/miracles with you.
On Saturday we had limited time to knock doors. We had previously prayed and felt good about this particular street, so we went there in the little amount of time that we had. After a couple of doors, we saw this guy walking into his house so we hurried and called after him before he shut the door, he came back out to talk with us. He, Brian, recognized us as Mormon missionaries and said he wasn't too interested, but after getting over some of his concerns he allowed us to pray with him. After the prayer we recognized the Spirit that he felt and invited him to be baptized. He said he was not interested in being baptized into the Mormon church. He continued talking with us and asked if we could answer one question that he had had for some time, he asked us, "Why are there so many religions claiming to be the right Church? To me it seems as if they are all broken up and don't have all the truth. So what can you tell me about that?" Excellent question! We told him that we would love to take a few minutes to give him the answer, he accepted and let us inside his house. We shared one of the most powerful restoration lessons of my mission. Afterwards he told us that randomly last week his mom, up in New Jersey, had purchased a BofM off of Amazon to read. He and his family are Catholic, so he thought it was random that she was interested in reading it. then just a few days later we came calling after him. We showed him that it was no coincidence that we were sent to him. He felt the Spirit strongly as we shared the Restoration and accepted to come to Church and read the BofM. He came to Church yesterday and had read!! He told us that the service was captivating and that he really, really wanted us to come back and share more. We're going back over tonight. It was such an amazing miracle!
Today I did a study on Testimony vs. Conversion and read a talk by Elder Bednar. A testimony is a precursor to becoming converted to something. A testimony is a personal knowledge of truth obtained by revelation. Conversion, however, expands upon our testimony. It's a result of revelation from God, accompanied by individual repentance, obedience, and diligence. It requires all of our heart, mind and strength, as well as patience and persistence to become converted. Elder Bednar gives 5 basic elements that lead to conversion.
1. Believing in the teachings and prophecies of the holy prophets as they are recorded in the scriptures.
2. Exercising faith in Jesus Christ
3. Repenting.
4. Experiencing a mighty change of heart
5. Becoming "firm and steadfast in the faith."
Following this pattern will help us become converted. I'm continually striving to become converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what we will start applying within our zone, I believe that conversion is what we are in need of at this time to become great again.
Also the apartment I moved into has bedbugs, I thought I was done dealing with those creatures, but I guess not! As well, the first night I got here we had a Temple tour set with a family we are teaching, the Temple is awesome!! I'll send home a pic:)
Love,
Elder Spencer Bailey
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