9/26 Rainy Days are the Best Days

        It has been such an awesome week! It flew by so fast, and so many things happened!  We are actually up in Dubois again, because I had a free haircut and we wanted to spend a P-Day up here in the beautiful mountains!  I honestly love it here! Wyoming is really pretty, once you get past the flat areas......  Our apartment was getting really old, so we got a bunch of stuff from a thrift store, and church pictures and decorated a bit.  It feels a lot more like home now!  I'll send some pics.

       Anyways, this past Tuesday Elder Ma'ake had to do his last set of exchanges with some Elders in Lander.  So Elder Ma'ake went to Lander with Elder O'Driscoll, and I had Elder Griffin come to Riverton.  We had a books schedule for the night.  We went to Chopstix for dinner with Brother and Sister Rhue, and he shared his testimony with us about how if the missionaries and God weren't in his life, then he would probably not be here today.  He has had a lot of problems with PTSD from his time served in Desert Storm.  So he said that the least he can do is take us missionaries out to eat just to pay back a little bit of what he has received.  It was nice to hear that as missionaries, we are doing so much good!  What a calling!  These are the ways I want to effect people in all the areas that I serve throughout my mission.  

        Later that night we visited with Dave Meserve.  A little about Dave, is that we are his 8th set of missionaries who have taught him.  He has been building little by little.  We talked about baptism, and the baptismal interview questions.  I asked if he would like to be baptized on the 22nd of October, he said yes! Haha with an exception, he wants his son to baptize him, and his son has an elk tag that he has to fill before he could come down to baptize Dave.  Typical Wyoming..... everyone is gone on the weekends hunting, so it's been kind of tough to get investigators to church.  Anyways, I hope I stay another transfer to see his baptism!  

        We had Zone Meeting this week in Casper.  It was an alright meeting, the Zone Leaders tried to get the rowdy missionaries under control, but they couldn't really.  Overall it was good material that they taught, echoing what Elder C.Scott Grow said to us at mission tour, and it was awesome to refresh on his words.  It was another big drive in the squished transfer van.  After we got back from the Zone Meeting, the sisters needed help giving Blessings on the Res, so we went and spent all night teaching and we gave two Blessings.  The first blessing was to a native sister that is sick, I don't know what with, but she has faith to get better.  So we kind of explained what Blessings were, and helped her understand a little more about them.  She wanted Elder Ma'ake to give her the blessing.  So I anointed the oil, and he administered the blessing.   I just want to bear testimony that the priesthood power is real.  As soon as we placed our hands on her head, I could feel the Spirit so strongly.  I could literally feel the priesthood power coursing though my veins.  I love that feeling so much!  So we also gave a man a blessing too.  As soon as we placed our hands on his head, I had the same experience!  Feeling the Spirit that strongly and having that desire to grow, makes me want to strive to become fully-converted, and I know that if you strive to grow and become fully-converted, God will help you with all He has! I've seen it! 

         We have a really promising investigator that Elder Ma'ake and I are going to teach tonight.  I think I've mentioned him before, but his name is Randy.  We ran into Randy my first day in the mission field, and my first time tracting.  He is a Cop for Riverton, and when we first met him we taught him about the first vision on his doorstep while he was unstrapping his bulletproof vest and taking his gun off.  It was a bit intimidating, but we weren't scared.  We asked if he thinks that a boy seeing God would be crazy, and he said "not at all, if he had faith why not?"  Nobody answers that way! We have been trying to schedule an appointment to come and teach him, but he has been going through police training.  Now he is done! We went to his house a couple days ago, and made an appointment with him and his wife for tonight.  I am way excited to teach him, I can't wait!  I know that he is ready to receive this Gospel.  

       Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday it rained so much! Which was nice, but a bit on the colder side.  On Saturday, we went Blitz finding with the Aspen Park elders again, in the downpour of rain!  It was awesome, some people swore at us, yelled, told us to get lost, but at least it was a nice rainy day!  People say they hate walking in the rain, I love it! So Elder McFadden and I had little success, but we did find a member who just moved in from Henderson, AZ.  So we are going to go back and see if she is active and tell her when our ward meets on Sundays.  

        Well overall it's been a really good week!  I challenge all who read my email, to prepare for General Conference this upcoming week by having at least 3 questions in mind.  Everyone has questions! So I challenge you all to have at least 3, and if you pay attention in Conference, they will be answered.  It may not be immediately, but if you strive to know the truth, the Lord will help you and give you that understanding.  I love this Gospel with all my heart!  I love missionary work, and I love our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ!  Have a fantastic week! 

Love, 

 

Elder Bailey

Sent from my iPad

9/19/16 | Love being a Missionary

 So many blessings happened this past week! It has been so cool to see God working in people's lives.  So to start off, we had service scheduled at this less active old lady's house, and she is renting out one of her bedrooms in her house through an online thing called Air&B I think.  It's this thing where people rent out parts of there home, kind of like a hotel, but it's a lot cheaper.  So I guess it's getting pretty big around the world.  So we went over to her house to install a cat door.  So it turned out some people were staying in that bedroom for a couple nights, so we got talking with them.  There names were Andre and Veronica, they are from Slovakia and Czech Republic, but they live in England.  They are touring around the world, and they were passing through Riverton on there way to Yellowstone.  So they are sort of Atheist and Catholic because in Czech Republic, they are mostly Atheists, and in Slovakia, they are Catholic, so they have mixed feelings about religion. So we talked about what we believe in, and taught them about temples.  It was really cool to see the Spirit working on them.  They kept on asking so many questions that were really good questions! So we talked for about and hour and a half, and I don't know what will come of them, but I know that we planted that seed so that maybe someday they'll see some missionaries in England who will teach them!  Maybe Keaton will find them in England! Planting those seeds is so important, even if I don't have a chance to see what happens to them later in life, it's good to know that we left them better than when we first met them. 

       So another cool thing that happened this week was when we were going through our area book, and we visited people we haven't met yet.  One of them was the Strickland's.  As soon as I walked into their home, I knew I would like this guy!  He had hunting stuff everywhere!  So we started talking, and at first they were a little on edge, but when I brought up hunting, he went off!  We talked for another hour about there lives and about what they knew about the Gospel.  I guess they loved the missionaries when they first started to meet with them, they would have them over for dinner, games, and they said they loved learning about the Gospel.  So they started going to church, and they were in Gospel principles when they were talking about feeling the Spirit.  He had been struggling to know if President Monson was a true prophet or not, and he didn't think he could feel the Spirit.  So this lesson would have helped him, but a member said "If people at church haven't ever felt the Spirit, they shouldn't even be here."  So that kind of turned him off from church.  I explained to him that I was sorry for that member who said that, but said that we are all human and make stupid mistakes.  I think he will come to church if we keep working with him.  We are going to invite him this week to watch General Conference coming up to help him gain a testimony on President Monson.  When we left, he said he felt a really good vibe from us and said we are welcome anytime!  I am super excited about this family!

       I went on exchanges this past week with a guy named Elder Robertson.  Going into this I was expecting the worst.  But it turned out pretty decent.  He didn't talk to me much, but I tried to be his friend.  He isn't the most obedient missionary, and doesn't work that hard.  So I tried to help him see how hard work pays off.  He wanted to contact people in the ward directory and see if they were active or not.  So we did, and ended up talking to this older lady who lost her husband recently.  She was saying how she had a heart attack and when the doctor said she was going to live, that she was super sad and distraught cause she wants to die already.  I explained to her that God still has something for her to accomplish, she then said that she's been meaning to finish up some Family History work that has been lying around for many years.  So I said that's probably what she needs to do! So she said she would work on it.  That's about all we did that whole day cause he didn't want to work. So I just studied and talked to him about his struggles.  So I learned that I am really grateful for Elder Ma'ake!  We work hard and love missionary work.  If you don't work hard and love it, it really defeats the purpose of missionary work.  So I'm so grateful for him! 

        So we went blitz finding with the Aspen Park missionaries again.  I went with Elder McFadden and we saw so much success!  Every door we knocked on, people wanted to listen.  The coolest experience of thud was when we knocked on a Lutheran mans door.  He opened it and said "Can't you read! The sign says no soliciting!!!"  Elder McFadden said that we weren't, but he said "yes you are, you're pressing your religion on me, that's soliciting!"  Seeing that this was going nowhere, I had the thought to ask him about his dog.  So I said, you have a pretty dog.  Then he opened up and started to talk.  That was the fastest I have ever seen the Spirit soften some bodies heart in my entire life!  By the end, we were best friends with this man.  I apologized for "pressing our religion on him" and he said no worries, and that he had so much respect for what we were out doing.  If we listen to spiritual promptings, even the smallest ones, God will make miracles happen!  This experience strengthened my testimony on the power of the Spirit.  

        Elder Ma'ake and I drove up to Dubois this past Friday and stayed through Sunday.  We stayed with the Myers.  They are the nicest people I have ever met!  They live outside of town up on the highest part of Dubois.  They fed us for breakfasts an dinner, and they have a pool table down where we stay.  So Elder Ma'ake and i played a bit before bed.  I beat him, almost every time!  There was also that huge fire near Dubois, and it got within three miles of the Myers house.  We saw all the scorched areas, it was way sad how much it burned.  But Brother Myers also is very good at building, so he built his house and the elevator inside!  They are awesome! So I guess when all the Billionaires took over Jackson Hole, the Millionaires got forced over to Dubois.  So there are a lot of wealthy people in town.  But they are 20 times nicer than the people of Riverton! We went tracting, and every door that answered wanted to know more!  A lot of them were wealthy too!  So I was surprised.  We also walked around on Main Street and talked to a lot of tourists, I also took a picture for a lady and she asked who we were, so of course we told her we were missionaries.  She was from New York.  I just love planting seeds! We are going back next week for some return appointments and a free haircut for me by a less active member!  So I am super excited to go back!  

        Well this past week was such a solid week! I am so happy to be a missionary!  Teaching people and helping them become fully converted has been such a testimony builder for me that this church is absolutely true!  Love you guys! 

Love, 

Elder Bailey 

    

9/12/16 | Cold and Rainy day in Wyoming

This past week was amazing!  So many awesome things happened!
So last p-day we went up in the Wind River Mountain Range and went
hiking in Sinks Canyon.  They call it Sinks Canyon because the river
sinks underground in some caves, and rises back up to the surface a
couple miles down the canyon. It was so nice to get back into the
mountains again and go hiking! We hiked up to Popo agie falls which
was so incredible.  It is this waterfall that comes off some rocky
cliffs, and splits off into different streams that go into these cool
pools that a lot of people go swimming in. It was so pretty!  I'll
show you guys some pics at the end.  I didn't notice how much I had
missed the mountains till we went on this hike.

        That night we had dinner at the Revelli's house, they're
members.  We got talking before our lesson and I said I was from
Highland.  He said, I have an uncle that taught at Lone Peak.......
Yes, creepy science teacher Mr. Revelli! I just smiled and said he was
a great guy..... If he only knew that his uncle was a creepy man.....
I love these random connections that I make with people up here.  The
other day a young couple moved into the ward, and we talked to them
for awhile.  He knows a lot of kids I knew from basketball, and he
said he knew Frank and everything.  So that was pretty cool.

         Anyways, I went on exchanges with Elder McFadden this past
Tuesday, still in Riverton just on the other side of town.  He is an
incredible missionary, we work very well together.  We taught some
solid lessons where I could truly feel the Spirit in.  After every
lesson Elder McFadden turned to me and said, "Man I wish we were
companions, you are such a good missionary!"  That made me feel pretty
good, I really like him.  He got here a transfer before me, and we
both have that fire burning within us, and we just want to teach
everyone!  His companion is struggling, and pretty much interrogates
people instead of teaching them by the Spirit.... So that's not good.
It was good to help Elder McFadden out, and have a super solid
exchange with him.  We taught a lesson to this old lady named Georgi
and she had a lot of questions, one of the questions was about how her
brother never heard of the Gospel, then how could he be Baptized.  So
of course I explained to her about baptisms for the dead and Elder
McFadden also talked about how the other temple ordinances are saving
ordinances for us on earth and in heaven.  I asked if she had ever
done her family history work.  She said she tried ancestry.com but
hated it.  I told her about how the church has a program called
familysearch.com and how everything works.  That helped her a lot, she
wants to start with her family history work now!  Elder McFadden was
really happy I was there to talk about family history, cause he said
he had no idea how to do any of that!  We also ran into this
less-active member with one of Elder McFadden's investigators when we
were street contacting.  We got talking with her, and I don't know how
it came up, but the less-active member said, "ya, I have the gift of
seeing guardian angels."  Elder McFadden and I were like, ya sure you
do...... So we asked some questions about that, then Elder McFadden
kind of doubtfully said, "what does mine look like?" She said that all
she could tell was that he was a man.  He kind of went silent, and
then I asked if I had one.  She started laughing and said that mine
was just under my shoulder.  At that moment I felt a tingling warm
sensation on the left side of my body where she pointed.  I honestly
think she was telling the truth.  I said to her that she was blessed
with that God given gift to be able to see that.  It was a really cool
experience! Afterward I talked with Elder McFadden, and he said he
felt that same feeling on his left side where she pointed.  So this
kind of bore witness to both of us.  I know that we all have guardian
angels who help us through our lives.  I don't know if she could
really see them, but I did feel like someone was there.  It is so cool
to feel those kinds of experiences, and they are magnified when we are
on missions.

     Another highlight of our week was teaching mutual in the
Pavillion Branch.  We taught about 6 youth.  We explained how
missionary life is, how we prepared, and let them ask questions.  The
funniest question was a kind of awkward kid asked me "Are you like a,
white version a Shaq?"  Haha people up here just haven't seen tall
people before.  I feel like everywhere I go, people ask me about my
height, which starts up conversations very well!  Yesterday for Sunday
we also taught Junior and Senior Primary in the Sunset Park Ward about
missionary life and preparing for missions. Before we could even
introduce ourselves, the kids said I was a giant and started chanting,
"Touch the Ceiling!"  So, of course I did! They went wild.  So then we
calmed them down and taught them.  They all love me now!

        So we had our Mission Tour this past Friday.  All the
missionaries in our district carpooled in the transfer van down to
Laramie on Thursday, then to Cheyenne and back on Friday.  We have the
3 biggest missionaries in our mission in our district.  So we had to
split them up so there would be room.  So we were really squished for
about four and a half hours.  We spent the night in Laramie, then went
on to Cheyenne.  So we had Elder C. Scott Grow come from the quorum of
the 70.  I totally forgot this, but he spoke at our Stake Conference
this past spring.  So I remembered that we talked afterwards with our
family.  He said to say hi to him when he came to my mission!  So
before he started speaking, he said he wanted to meet all the
missionaries.  So we said hi to him, and he remembered me.  He said he
was glad to see me, and how much he loved you guys! So we started the
meeting, and he talked about how he knew some of the missionaries.  He
said he knew someone's grandma from Arizona, and some other things,
then he said, where is my friend from Highland?  I raised my hand, and
he had me stand up.  He said we met at my stake conference, and how he
told me to say hi to him at our mission conference.  He also said how
amazing my family was, and especially mom :) and how dad is in the
stake presidency.  So that was really nice of him!  So we had our
meeting, and he talked to us about how our mission is an elevator
mission, how we baptize people all at the end of the transfer.  He
wants us to become an escalator mission, to baptize people throughout
the transfer, and to prayerfully set goals for baptisms 3 weeks in
advance.  He emphasized a lot on focusing on teaching families and
caring for those that we teach.  I know it has helped me a lot of
focus on truly teaching people not just lessons.   These things are
awesome to learn at the beginning of my mission!  Some older
missionaries were kind of complaining and asking stupid questions, but
all of us new guys want to shape up the mission!  After one of the
complaining questions was asked, Sister Grow said, "I don't think you
guys get the point, your mission is below average and needs to be
shaped up!"  That made me so pumped, to turn this mission around by
listening to Elder Grow's council.  It made me so pumped!  At the end
of the meeting, Elder Grow bore his testimony, I could feel the Spirit
so strong!  It was awesome! We sang "I know that my Redeemer lives"
which is one of my favorite hymns to sing.  The Spirit in that meeting
was incredible!  I love how the Spirit can touch our hearts on a daily
basis!

     We did quite of bit of service this past week as well!  Some of
it was awesome to help people out, and some was absolutely disgusting.
We volunteered to help this investigator clean his yard..... He has
two big dogs that they haven't cleaned up after in years.  So he had
us rake it all up and clean his whole back yard while he sat and
watched us.... So we had two garbage cans full of dog poop and some
other random things he told us to go take to the dump.  So we got in
our car and drove to the dump.  We were in our car for about 15
seconds and we could smell the dog poop.  Elder Ma'ake said, oh shoot
check the bottom of your shoes!  So we checked and we both had a ton
of dog poop all over them!  It was so bad!  So we had to go and scrape
it off on the road.  That was the worst thing that happened to us this
week!  Hopefully that helped our investigator though.

     Overall this week has been incredible!  I am so glad that I am
serving a mission.  It is seriously the best thing that I could be
doing right now!  I found a cool scripture this week in Doctrine and
Covenants 17:6,  it is when Jesus Christ himself bears testimony of
the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.  It strengthened my testimony
of the Book of Mormon and its truthfulness as well.  If Christ himself
testifies of the Book of Mormon, I know that what I am doing is true,
and I'm so grateful for that!  I love this work!  Hope you guys have a
fantastic week!  Love you!

Love,
Elder Bailey

9/5/16 | Week 2 in the books

This past week flew by!  We had a training meeting and interview with
the mission president in Laramie, so we had to wake up earlier to
drive the 3 hours there.  I slept most the way, which was awesome!  We
got there and I had my interview with President McMurray.  It was a
good interview!  He just asked me how I was coping with the new
missionary lifestyle.  I said everything's fantastic!  Then we had a
long training meeting, which was really spiritual!  It was so nice to
see Elder Judd again!  We'll be companions someday, I know it!

After our meeting we headed to Casper to start exchanges with the Zone
Leaders.  So I stayed with Elder Shepherd in Casper.  For the next
2-days I was in Casper!  Elder Shepherd lost his driving privileges so
I was driving the whole time!  They just barely got a brand new Toyota
Sienna mini-van! So I was driving that, it was way nice! They serve in
the YSA Ward so it was really cool to visit with people my own age!
Connecting with them is so much easier!  The one bad thing that
happened during the exchange was that, I got pulled over for the first
time in my life......... Haha not cause I was speeding don't worry!
So we were using a GPS, and it kind of lead us through a cement
factory warehouse place, which we found out was private property....
So we were driving through and at the other exit I saw a car, and I
just knew it was a cop.  So of course it was and he pulled me over.
So he came up and told us we were trespassing and I guess you can call
me a sweet talker, but I apologized a bunch and talked myself out of a
ticket! :) also I know that Heavenly Father helped soften the cops
heart, he was really nice through the whole thing.  So that was
exciting, then we got to this guys house we were headed to...... So he
is a veterinarian and loves to save dogs.  And of course he has some
of my favorite kind of dogs, 6 pit bulls.  So they were psycho and as
soon as we sat down they jumped on our backs and licked us till our
shirts were completely soaking wet!  After we tried to teach him with
all the dogs all over us, we left smelling like wet dogs!  It was so
nasty! It was pretty solid first exchanges though!  I learned a lot of
stuff from Elder Shepherd!

So let me tell you a little more about Riverton!  The members here are
super nice!  They love to feed us, have us over to help with service,
and getting to know us!  They make me feel like I'm at home, which is
way nice!  It has been raining the past 3 days, it is super pretty and
cool when it rains!  You can also see mountains in the distance, so
it's not too flat! We have a Walmart in town, and Taco Bell so I don't
need anything else! Overall I love the area!

So we are at the Wind River Casino the other day with the Zone
Leaders.  We ate at the Buffalo, it's a super good food court.  So I
guess a member is the CEO over it, and we were talking to him.  After
we ate he came over and paid for our meal, he's a super nice guy!  We
also attended an Arapahoe Indian Pow-wow.  It was a super neat
experience!  All the cultural dances were way cool and people were
really nice to us, everyone knew us!  Being noticed was way easy,
because we were the only white people there, and I was about 6 inches
taller than any other person there!  I had about 100 Natives ask me
how tall I was, and if I could dunk it.  A lot of them wanted pictures
with me for there snapchat stories too, so I got my picture taken with
a ton of people!  It helped get our name out there, a lot of little
kids asked why we had the same first name, we just laughed and had a
good opportunity to teach them! It was a cool, experience!

One cool spiritual experience that we had this week was when we went
blitz finding with some other elders.  It is when we go on splits and
go tracting on the same street, so we can have more effective
tracting.  We ended up getting 6 return appointments and we taught a
lot of lessons.  One in particular stood out to me.  We met this lady
named Christy from Ogden.  She was helping her mom move her stuff to
Utah.  Anyways, she started talking to us, and she said when she was
going through a hard time in her life, she tried to turn towards our
church, but nobody would help. So she turned to another church.  We
bore our testimony's to her and said that God loves her, and she
started to cry.  She said she wished that we would have been there
during her hard time, I said sorry that we weren't, but God will
always be there for you.  You could feel the spirit so strong! I feel
like we touched her, and I bet she might try coming to our church
again.

I love missionary work!  It is so awesome!  There is nothing more
satisfying than bringing somebody eternal salvation, and actually
having them accept it and start to progress! I love the feeling I get
whenever I teach a lesson!  I love you all and hope you have a
fantastic week!

Love,
-Elder Bailey