Wednesday, September 7, 2016

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

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