12/25/17 | What a wonderful time of year!

  What a week!  Christmas time is absolutely amazing!  It was so fun to talk with you family!  I loved catching up, talking about how you were all doing, and sharing stories with you guys!  It was super weird because it felt like I just talked with you guys last Mother’s Day, I can’t believe that was about seven months ago!  Time flies!  What a blessing it is to have such a wonderful family!  Mom and Dad, thanks for being such incredibly amazing parents!  I owe everything to you, thanks so much for the love and support you show me!  I also love all of my siblings too!  Thanks for being such amazing brothers and sisters!  Mike and Jenna, Alyssa and soon to be Jake, Spencer, and Randon, it was so fun to talk with all of you guys!  I will always be eternally grateful for each of you, and how much of an impact you’ve all had in my life.  I am so grateful to say that every member of my family is my best friend! :)  I’ll look forward to speaking with you guys again face to face at Mother’s Day!  It will literally be just around the corner!  I’m so glad we had such an amazing uplifting call!

         We had our Christmas Zone Conference last Wednesday, and it was so awesome!  The theme was “Faith in Jesus Christ.”  It was really cool to recite “The Living Christ,” I definitely don’t have it perfected yet, but I’m still working on the latter half!  Like I said last week, I’ve learned so much more about our Savior Jesus Christ from studying “The Living Christ.”  It has strengthened my testimony of Him, and I’m so grateful for that!  I’d strongly recommend reading and studying it!  Throughout the Zone Conference, we had amazing trainings from President and Sister McMurray, and the Assistants.  It was overall an amazing Zone Conference!  During lunch we were given Christmas gifts, and letters from our parents with their testimonies written to us.  That was so awesome to read your testimonies, thanks so much to that!  Later in the conference, we had a White Elephant gift exchange!  That was so fun!  I ended up with a signed picture of Elder Gentry, one of my last companions!  It was a nice gift to end up with.  Haha.  After we had a really good Zone Breakout session with the Greeley Zone, and it was awesome to apply what we learned, and to set goals!  Overall a wonderful Zone Conference!  I learned a lot!  

           Later that same day, we had Elder McFadden with us for the rest of the night and we had an amazing lesson with our investigator Billy.  We were able to teach him the Restoration Of The Gospel Of Jesus Christ.  The whole lesson went amazing, and the Spirit was so strong!  He asked amazing questions throughout the lesson, and near the end we invited him to be baptized in January!  He said he was going to pray about it and tell us his answer on Christmas when we met with him.  He ended up cancelling our lesson Christmas morning, because family came to town and surprised him.  We are looking forward to meeting with him this upcoming week!  He told us during the lesson that he has been praying to find the truth his entire life, and we were able to promise him that God has sent us to him to bring him that truth he has been praying for!  Such an amazing lesson, and the Spirit was definitely present!  Billy is so amazing!

           On Friday we were Weekly Planning at the institute building, and as we were walking in a man came up to us and asked us if we had jumper cables, and if we could help him jump his car.  We were so glad he asked, so we drove our truck around and helped him out.  We got it started in no time, and we were able to talk with him about The Book Of Mormon!  He accepted a copy, and said we could come back to teach him. He told us that if his big black truck is outside, he’s home!  We can’t wait to teach him!  This was not a coincidence, I can assure you that.  One huge thing I have seen on my mission is Heavenly Father places us in situations, or has us be in certain places to talk with certain people.  It is amazing to be an instrument in our Heavenly Fathers hands to progress His work here! I know that everyone can be an instrument in His hands, as you pray for experiences and opportunities, Heavenly Father will begin to trust you to help others come unto Christ as you act upon every prompting.  Going back to Elder Rasband’s talks, “Let the Holy Spirit Guide” and “By Divine Design,” we can all begin to be instruments to progress His work, as we act upon those promptings and pray for those experiences daily!  If you feel like you haven’t had amazing missionary experiences, try and recognize the little opportunities and miracles each day, and record them in a journal.  I’ve done this since I talked with Brother Weber, one of my favorite members from Cheyenne, on October 17th.  Since that day, I’ve seen a miracle each and every day!  Some days have more than one, others have one, some significantly more amazing than others, but there has been on every single day.  As we recognize those promptings and act upon them, we will be able to see miracles in our everyday life!  I can promise you will see miracles every day, if you learn to recognize them!  I love seeing miracles daily!

          Elder Hatch and I had an amazing Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day!  We are at the Perry’s house, Jack Sattler’s House (our Ward Mission leaders house), and the Seamons house!  It was so fun to have loving members!  On Christmas Eve we went caroling with a district of missionaries in Johnstown.  Only one person rejected us, but we had some awesome experiences!  A non-member family invited us in and gave us cookies, apple cider, and water.  They had us sing another song to them, and we talked with them for awhile.  They asked where we are from, why we’re here, etc.  We were able to tell them that we were missionaries, and it was such a positive experience!  The sisters are going to go back and follow up with them after the holidays.  I think the most impactful person we sang to was the last person on the street.  As we knocked, an older man answered the door, and we sang Silent Night to him.  As soon as we started to sing, you could tell he was feeling the Spirit.  The Spirit of Jesus Christ was touching his heart!  After we finished, he sincerely thanked us for singing to him.  You could tell he was very lonely, and by himself for the holidays.  It was an amazing experience to bring that Spirit to him during his time of need.  Another miracle that was amazing!  

          Actually, just barely at Men’s Warehouse in Fort Collins, while Elder Hatch was buying a new suit for his birthday, I was writing this email when one of the workers asked me what I was doing!  I told her I was writing an email, and asked me why I was writing such a long email.  I explained to her that as missionaries we can only communicate to our families once a week, and FaceTime home twice a year.  She was baffled, and told me a story how she was dating a Mormon guy once, but she didn’t want to convert then so she broke up with him.  At the end of our conversation, I invited her to take a look at The Book Of Mormon, and to look up any questions on Mormon.org and talk with an online representative.  She happily accepted a copy, and told me she would take a look!  What a huge miracle!  I love it!  There are opportunities all around us, even in pdays!

          I was studying this past week in Moroni 7, and verses 42-44 stood out to me.  This verse is tied into D&C 4:5 as well.  President McMurray taught this concept in Zone Conference.  Those verses state,

5 And faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work.

42 Wherefore, if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope.

43 And again, behold I say unto you that he cannot have faith and hope, save he shall be meek, and lowly of heart.

44 If so, his faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart; and if a man be meek and lowly in heart, and confesses by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, he must needs have charity; for if he have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity.

          It is interesting, the five things that qualify us for the work, all end up leading back to love.  As it says we cannot have faith and hope without being meek and lowly of heart.  It also says we cannot be meek and lowly without having charity, therefore all the five points of being qualified for the work leads back to being loving.  Love is the key.  I’ve hear this many times from Dad, President McMurray, and from the prophets.  We need to love everyone as Jesus Christ loves them.  It may be hard at times to do this, but it is so rewarding once we become loving!  As we learn to be more loving, we will be able to develop the other Christlike attributes as well!  How amazing!   I would invite you all to study Moroni 7, it’s an absolutely amazing chapter!  I hope you all had an amazing Christmas as I did!  Love you, an have a great week!

Love

Elder Bailey 

Pics:

1: an Elders nice joke suit coat, had to try it on!

2: my white elephant gift.

3-4: our Windsor Stake nativity at our investigator missionary dinner.

5: my wonderful family! :)

12/19/17| 6 Days till Christmas!

 I can’t believe Christmas is coming so soon!  How crazy!  It hasn’t felt too much like Christmas time yet because of the warm weather, but it’s supposed to get super chilly this upcoming week, with a bunch of snow!  So we are excited to hopefully have a white Christmas!!  This week has been pretty good.  We had a great time spreading the joy of Christmas to an old folks home this past Wednesday.  We went with a bunch of other missionaries and sung to them for a good hour or so.  They were so grateful for us coming to sing to them, and we’re going back every week to sing!  It is always amazing to spread the Christmas cheer and the love of Jesus Christ, especially to those who are in need of it.  I love the Christmas season!

       There were missionaries departing halfway through the transfer to go home early for school, so we were in charge to taking Elder Evans around to have him say goodbye to people.  He wanted to say bye to a bunch of people in Cheyenne, so we got to go up to Cheyenne Thursday night.  He served in the wards I served in, so I knew most of the people he wanted to say bye to.  We ate at the Turners house for dinner that night, and it was fun to catch up with them!  They were some of my favorite members while I was serving up there!  It was fun to see a bunch of the same people I knew!  

        It was a little frustrating this past week, because almost all of our set lessons with investigators fell through, and we were supposed to have six investigators attend church this past week, but none of them showed up...... but we know that as we continue to try and get them to come to church, we will be blessed for our efforts and eventually they will come to church!  This next week, we are going to push so hard to get them all at church!  We’re praying for miracles so it can come to pass!  

        Yesterday we had a wonderful day!  We were on exchanges with some missionaries, and I was able to go with Elder Mitchell for the day!  He is a really good fun missionary to be with.  While Tracting before dinner, we found a man and his wife who wanted us to come back and teach them more about what we believe.  The man told us that his wife only speaks French, and they wanted us to bring a French copy of The Book Of Mormon when we visit them later this week!  We are excited to visit them!  We also went Tracting later at night right after dinner, and we decided to go “singing Tracting!  We went around and sang “Nearer My God To Thee” and “Silent Night.”  It actually worked out really well!  A family invited us in to sing to them, and it was awesome to see how they were feeling the Spirit as we sang.  They weren’t interested in hearing our message, but we know we left that experience with them to think about!  We had an amazing success as we met a woman named Luz.  We introduced ourselves and asked her if we could sing a song.  She said she would love us to.  We sang to her, and it was really cool to see how music invited the Spirit very quickly!  After we finished, we taught her about The Book Of Mormon and promised her that as she read from its pages, she would feel God’s love for her.  She accepted a copy and told us we could come back on Wednesday!  What a cool miracle!  It was so fun to sing to people, and invite the Spirit of Christ into their lives!  

        On Saturday morning we helped some members in our ward with moving furniture from their deceased mothers retirement home to a Uhaul then we unloaded it into another apartment for a member of the ward.  We helped them from 8:00 to 12:00, so they ended up buying us breakfast at McDonalds and lunch at Chick-fil-a!  It was so nice of them to do that, and it was totally worth helping them moved all of the stuff.  Elder Hatch and I were recruited for this to be the heavy lifters, so it was fun!  Haha.  We were lucky enough to have an elevator in the retirement home to get the furniture down to the ground level, but in the new apartment where we were moving the furniture to, we had to lift all the heavy stuff up a flight of stairs!  After we got all the moving done, Elder Hatch and I were absolutely exhausted!  They asked us afterwards if we could accept tips as missionaries.  We told them we can’t, then they told us that they were going to give us a Christmas presents with gift cards to Texas Roadhouse as well, we told them they didn’t have to but they kept insisting.  We can’t really deny Christmas presents can we? :)  They are such nice members!  

        For Zone Conference this week, we have been asked to memorize “The Living Christ,” so I’ve been studying that a lot the past couple of weeks.  I honestly had never vitalized it before, and I’ve learned so much as I’ve studied it!  Here is a couple of lines that stood out to me,

“He gave His life to atone for the sins of all mankind. His was a great vicarious gift in behalf of all who would ever live upon the earth.”

        Especially during this Christmas time, I am especially grateful for that great and wonderful gift that our Savior, Jesus Christ has given to us.  He is the Gift. He has provided it for us because He loves us so much!  Let us all turn to Him by serving others especially during this Christmas season, and always think of His sacrifice each and every day!  I would invite you guys to read “The Living Christ” and ponder the words of the Prophets and Apostles, especially this week before Christmas.  I know you will feel a deepened love for our Savior as you do so, and you’ll be able to feel His love during this wonderful Christmas season!  Have a wonderful Christmas!  I know I will out here in the mission field!  I love you guys, and hope you have a great week!

Love

Elder Bailey 

Pic: Singing at the old folks home!  

12/12/17 | I Love the Christmas Season!

  I can believe it’s been another week!  So unbelievable.  It’s so amazing to serve a mission, but especially during the Christmas season, when we are teaching everyone we can about our message, which is centered in Jesus Christ.  I’m so grateful that I have this opportunity to serve God and His children!  This past week was awesome, and we were kept so busy throughout the whole week!  We had a pretty good lesson with Nyssa this past week.  It’s been a struggle with her to help her keep commitments that we extend.  We decided it would be best to have this be one of our last push’s to help her keep those commitments, and help her get to church.  We read from Alma and the lesson went very well!  She seemed to understand why it is so important for her to be reading from The Book Of Mormon.  She committed to read the very next night, and we were going to text her to remind her and see how it went.  We texted her the next day, and she said she was still planning on reading that night.  Hopefully this will help her to keep up on her commitments to progress more!  We also taught the Bentz family.  We first asked them why they couldn’t make it to church last week, and it turns out they went to the wrong ward in the wrong building..... but we were so happy that they actually attended church!  We read 1 Nephi 1 with them, and it was awesome to see their family reading the scriptures together!  We invited them to continue to come to church, and to read The Book Of Mormon as a family.  They were all enthusiastic about reading together and told us they were so excited to come to church as well! They are such a wonderful family and we can’t wait for the parents to be reactivated and for Parker to be baptized!  He told us he still wants to be baptized, and that he wants his dad, Jon, to baptize him.  Jon wants to receive the priesthood, so we are working with Bishop to help him do so.  Parker and Bobby are such sweet little kids, they are just soaking up all of the lessons and want to come to church!  So amazing!

         On Thursday we had to pick up a car from the Nissan dealership in Greeley that was getting fixed, and we had to drive it out to Fort Morgan Colorado to meet the Sterling Colorado Missionaries to swap with the mission office’s white Toyota Sienna.  We had to got to four different gas stations and fill up all three cars throughout the day, so we got pretty sick of filling up the cars with gas.... Honestly it was probably one of the longest driving days of my entire life....... haha, we were literally driving after District Meeting, from 1:30 until 6:30, then we went straight to a lesson with the Bentz and we were busy the rest of the night.  We didn’t even have time to eat dinner it was so crazy!  We had about 30 minutes to visit people and to find people to teach.  In that 30 minute period, from 8:30 to 9:00 we found one amazing new investigator.  We were visiting a potential investigator who didn’t answer, then we saw this man pull up and get out of the car with his wife and child.  Elder Hatch and I both looked at each other and we both knew we needed to knock on his door.  We did, and we were able to teach him about Jesus Christ and The Book Of Mormon and asked if we could come back and share that message with him another time.  He told us we could the upcoming Saturday.  How amazing is that miracle!? We tried to visit him on Saturday, but his daughter had just returned from the hospital and they said next Saturday would work better.  I know that the Lord blessed us with meeting Anthony and his family!  Even though we only had 30 minutes to go out and find, as we put forth the effort He still blessed us for it!  Throughout my mission I’ve gained such an amazingly strong testimony of working diligently until 9:00, and the experience just strengthened that testimony of mine.  How incredible.  

         Later in the week we had a solid lesson with Anne and Jason!  Jason is our investigator who bore his testimony twice in sacrament meeting last week.  We taught them The Plan of Salvation, and the lesson went so good!  At the end, we talked about the priesthood and baptism.  We were able to invite Jason to be baptized on January 13th, 2018, and he said that he would love to work towards that date!  His mom, Anne, still wants to pray about it and feel a little better about being baptized.  We are so excited to see them progress and work towards being baptized in January!  Jason is setting a wonderful example for his mom, and that will help her decide to be baptized as well.  The amazing part of the whole lesson was to see the excitement and happiness on Jason’s face when we set a date for him to be baptized.  He has such an amazing spirit about him, and wants to truly learn more about Jesus Christ’s true church.  How incredible!  

         On Sunday night we helped gather food donations at the interfaith choir concert in Johnstown Colorado with another set of missionaries.  Both sets of missionaries who are serving down there were in the choir so they needed some extra help.  It was really interesting to see a ton of different people from different faiths all in one place.  Elder Gentry and I as we gathered food from people, were able to tell a major difference between who was a member of The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and who wasn’t.  We started calling it out to each other, and the people we knew were members would come up to us and say “Hi Elders!”  There was a distinct amount of light radiating from members, and a different countenance filled with happiness, joy, and love.  The people who weren’t members of our church seemed like they were lost and they were missing something.  It was amazing to tell that difference, and it was a testimony builder to me that as a missionary, we are teaching the truth.  We are a part of Jesus Christ’s one complete true church established again onto the earth.  It is so amazing to know that for a fact.  I know The Book Of Mormon is true, and it is the word of God.  It is a true account of His children here on the American Continent!  What a blessing it is to be a part of something that is so true.  Think about how much the Gospel has blessed your life, and thank our Heavenly Father for blessing you with it!  I’m so grateful I have it in my life and I have such an amazing family, amazing parents, grandparents, and ancestors who set the path for me to receive these truths.  I will always be grateful for the Gospel in my life.  What a blessing!

         During my studies this past week, I came across a talk from The April 1992 General Conference titled, “The Tongue Can Be a Sharp Sword” by Marvin J. Ashton.  In this talk he mentions a very amazing quote about becoming Charitable and what the true definition of Charity is.  He states, 

“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all. …

“Charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever.” (Moro. 7:46–47.)

Charity is, perhaps, in many ways a misunderstood word. We often equate charity with visiting the sick, taking in casseroles to those in need, or sharing our excess with those who are less fortunate. But really, true charity is much, much more.

Real charity is not something you give away; it is something that you acquire and make a part of yourself. And when the virtue of charity becomes implanted in your heart, you are never the same again. It makes the thought of being a basher repulsive.

Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other.”

         This truly opened my eyes about what it means to be truly Charitable towards our fellow men.  This is something I’ve challenged myself to work on with my missionary work, and with everyone I come in contact with.  I want to invite each of you to think of how you can be more Charitable with your family, siblings, parents, friends, etc.  There could be many ways we can all improve, and I definitely know I have sooo many things I need to improve in, but focusing on one thing will help us become more like our Savior Jesus Christ!  I hope you all have a fantastic week, and remember to seek our ways how you can Light The World, and help others have a fantastic Christ centered, Christmas season.  

Love

Elder Bailey 

Pics:

1: Service at the food bank!

2-3: Our missionary Stake Breakfast this last Saturday .

 

 

12/5/17 | Another Amazing week!

     What a great week!  Transfers made this week absolutely crazy...... we were running missionaries around in our truck over to Fort Collins, back and forth from Greeley to the mission office in Windsor, and then they needed an extra driver for the transfer van to head down to Longmont, so Elder Hatch and I drove a bunch of missionaries down there in the big 12 seater van!  Such a crazy day, but I had a good time driving the van down!  Haha, you feel absolutely massive driving that thing, it’s awesome!  It reminded me of one of our family trips when we got a 12 seater van as the rental car, it was pretty fun!  That night, after all the driving around, we went out with our Ward Mission Leader and his wife to visit an older less active lady.  Our Ward Mission Leader is absolutely incredible!  Jack and his wife Laura are some of the coolest, most missionary minded people I’ve met, and we always go out with him on Wednesday nights to visit people!  Their amazing.  Anyways, we visited Sister Black.  She is an older lady, and she is from some southern state, and sounds like a southern Baptist woman.  It was so awesome to listen to her tell us about her life.  She hasn’t been to church in a long time.  She shared with us her testimony of Jesus Christ, and it was amazing poetic words that she spoke.  You could feel the spirit when she testified of what she knew to be true, it was amazing!  We invited her to attend church, and she told us she would love to attend and try it again.  She told us she was offended by someone, but now doesn’t feel any hard feelings towards the person or towards church at all, she just hasn’t come back.  It will be cool to see if she finally makes that change and starts to come back!  

        We had a “no drive day” this past Saturday, so we were on foot the whole day!  While we were walking to our area, we saw a man fixing his bike, so we talked with him.  He knew a lot about us, he has a Book Of Mormon at home, so we invited him to read from it.  He said he’d check it out, and we also gave him a Light the World card to check out as well.  It was awesome!  We’re praying he checks out the videos to help him have a great Christmas!  While we were there, some random members drove by and gave us these philly cheese steak sandwiches, such a blessing!  As we were walking to dinner, we knew we were going to be a little late, so we pick up our pace a little.  Then out of the clear blue there was a truck with a Utah license plate stopped at a gas station.  The guy asked us if we needed a ride, so we gladly accepted.  He was just on a business trip, and he offered us a ride.  What a Christlike man!  Right when we needed it too.  After dinner, the member who fed us took us to our lesson with Jason at 8:00.  Then he introduced himself and left us cause it was getting too late..... haha.  This made us super confused because we were on foot, but we didn’t really care too much!  After our lesson we started walking.  As we walked, we called everyone in the ward we could think of to give us a ride.  No one answered..... but we kept walking!  By the start of our nice walk home, we were about 8-10 miles away from our apartment, and we had walked 30 min and recognized we were going to be waaay past bed time.  It was 9:15 and we still had a long way to go!  It was super cold, it had been a long day, but no members were open to give us a ride!  We were thinking about hitchhiking on the highway home, which would have been super fun!  But we decided to call another set of missionaries who life in our complex, and they got permission to drive to pick us up so we wouldn’t be home at 11:00.  Such a crazy long day!  Haha, wish we would’ve hitchhiked!  That would’ve been fun.  

        We had some pretty good lessons with our investigators this past week!  We met with the Lopez family, and taught them The Plan of Salvation.  They expressed a desire to come to church, but it has been a struggle to get them there for awhile.  They ended up being sick so they couldn’t come this Sunday, but we are working on helping them get there!  Their sin Isaiah still wants to be baptized as well, so it is a waiting game to see when they attend so we can move forward!  We will continue to do our best at getting them to church!  We’re praying they’ll have that desire to.  We met with the Bentz family, and taught them The Plan of Salvation.  Parker Bentz still wants to be baptized, and we also found out that his dad wants to receive the priesthood to be able to Baptize him!  How cool!  They said they would read The Book Of Mormon as a family and attend church!  We also met with Jason and his mom, and had a really solid lesson about the Restoration.  We focused on them reading from  The Book Of Mormon, and attending church.  They had some misunderstandings about the Restoration from other missionaries, so we clarified and taught them more.  Apparently Jason’s Grandma is a hardcore Jehovah’s Witness, and him and his mom both started expressing how they were so grateful for us coming by and teaching them about The Book Of Mormon.  They’ve never agreed with what the Grandma believes, but they were always seeking the truth.  It’s amazing to see how we have the full truth, and we have that opportunity to share it with all the world!  So incredible!  

        We weren’t able to meet with Billy this past week.  He called us and cancelled because his car broke down and he had to get it to the shop.  He told us he has been reading from The Book Of Mormon, and he has been writing down all of the questions he has on paper so he can ask us when we meet again.  He told us how he still would love to meet with us to learn more!  We’re excited to teach him and bring him closer to Jesus Christ and His gospel!  It is still so amazing how we were guided to him, what a miracle!  

        We had Jason, one of our investigators, attend church this past Sunday.  We don’t know what happened to the rest of our investigators, but we’re on that for this week!  It was actually Jason’s first time, and it couldn’t have gone any better!  He sat by us during sacrament meeting, and then he leaned over and asked us if he could bear his testimony.  We said he could for sure, and he went up and introduced himself, and shared a little testimony.  It was awesome and powerful!  A little later in the meeting, he leaned over and told us he forgot to say something, and if he could go back up.  We told him that wasn’t a bad thing, so he went right back up!  The second time he expressed gratitude for “the Mormons” coming over and teaching him.  He actually called us by name and told us how grateful he was, and how grateful he was to find a new church to go to.  We think he is going to continue to come after he had this amazing experience!  He is a teacher aged young man, so he was able to quickly make friends with some of the youth in our ward, and he loved the rest of church!  How amazing is that?! We can’t wait to have him continue to progress, and to meet with him and his mom to teach them this week!  

          We had MLC this past week, and it was so fun!  It was one of the, if not the, most productive MLC’s I’ve attended.  We discussed and set goals, had good trainings, and discussed how we can best help our mission to continue to grow and progress.  I’ll share one part that I absolutely loved!  President McMurray shared with us a BYU-Idaho devotional given by Elder Wilford Anderson titled “The Faith to Reap.”  This was absolutely amazing!  He spoke that their are two kinds of Faith, first is the Faith to Try, and second is the Faith to Do.  He said most people have the Faith to Try, and that’s honestly the goal is to develop the Faith to Do.  He likened the Faith to Do to another phrase, the Faith to Reap.  He stated that there were three things that help us develop the Faith to Reap,

1. Have Faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement.

2. We must Align our will with His. (Reminded me of this talk, “That we might not shrink” by Elder Bednar)

3. Work, or do!

          Developing these three aspects isn’t an easy task, but as we do so we can find peace and a surety that God will be able to work miracles through each of us!  I was actually studying in Ether 12 this past week, and I found some scriptures that applied to this concept.  The first one was in Ether 12:12 and also Ether 12:18,

12 For if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them; wherefore, he showed not himself until after their faith.

18 And neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first believed in the Son of God.

          We have to exhibit our Faith in God and his son Jesus Christ in order for Him to bless us with mighty miracles.  We may lack in Faith, but we can always grow our Faith as we base it in Jesus Christ.  He is “the Rock” that we can base our testimony in, so we may have a sure foundation.  In verse 18, it says how they first believed in the Son Of God.  Like Elder Wilford Anderson states, that is the first step in developing the Faith to Reap.  I want to invite each of you to think where you base your testimony.  It is never a bad thing to base your testimony in others testimonies, but I would invite you to base it in our Savior, Jesus Christ.  If we do so, our testimonies will stay strong, and we will always know they can, because he is an everlasting rock that cannot be broken, therefore our testimonies cannot he broken if we base them in Him!  (Helaman 5:12). I hope you all have a wonderful week, and don’t forget to Light the World this Christmas season each day by serving others and following the online advent calendar at Mormon.org.  Love you guys!

Love

Elder Bailey

Pics:

1: my man Elder Tippetts!  Glad I got to see him.

2: Elder Hatch and I bumpin in the 12 seater transfer van.

3: MLC

4: Found this on our “no drive day.”

11/28/17 | Light The World my friends!

  This week was amazing!  The #LightTheWorld initiative is back, and I would encourage you all to watch the new Christmas video as well as the daily videos that the church has produced on mormon.org.  It’s our time to Light The World this Christmas season, let’s share this message with everyone we can!  

        Elder Nally is officially gone to the land down under..... which was super sad!  We had an amazing last week together in our companionship, and I’m grateful that Elder Hatch and I were able to be companions with him!  We took him to the mission office yesterday and said our goodbyes.  He’s going to be an amazing missionary down Australia!  Now it’s just Elder Hatch and it’s kinda weird, but I’m really excited for this next transfer.  We actually found out yesterday that Elder Hatch and I will be staying together here in Greeley for another six weeks!  It’s going to be so legit!  We have a ton of work here, and it’s absolutely amazing!  

        We got in contact with a bunch of our investigators this past week.  We talked with the Bentz family, and set up an appointment with them to teach a lesson this upcoming Friday.  We haven’t been able to find them, because they got kicked out of the last house they were at, and that’s the only address we had for them, so we actually used Facebook to contact them and to give them our Bishops number for them to meet with him for help.  Through technology and Facebook, we were able to get in contact with them and Bishop met with them this past week.  He was able to get their new address so we could meet up with them again!  What a blessing we have to use technology!  We can’t wait to teach them this week and get them to church this Sunday!  It will be awesome!  We taught the Lopez’s a lesson as well.  We taught them the Restoration and they all had a lot of good questions!  Their son still want to be baptized, so we set his date for the 23rd of December!  We can’t wait to see him progress and his family to come back to church!  They are planning on attending church as well, so that will be so amazing too!  We were able to schedule a lot of appointments for this upcoming week, so we are super excited to teach a lot of people!  And of course we are so excited to continue to find more and more people to teach!  It should be awesome!  

        Our Thanksgiving was so amazing!  Of course it wasn’t like being home with all the family, but it was really amazing still!  We went to the Smith’s home, they were missionaries in our mission office last year so they invited us over!  It was an amazing meal, and it was awesome to feel the love from them towards us.  I felt a little bit of home from them, so it was super good!  We ate, then helped Brother Smith chop wood, then we had dessert.  I honestly love chopping wood, it is so relaxing and fun to do!  It’s also a workout!  We were pretty tired afterwards, but it was worth it!  Nothing else too exciting happened, but it was definitely a fun day thinking of what I’m most grateful for.  I just want to let you know that I’m grateful for you family!  Mom and dad, you are the best parents I could have ever asked for, thanks for your examples!  I’m thankful for all of my siblings, you are all amazing and so fun to be around!  I’m thankful for all of my other family members and friends, for the support I receive from everyone, I appreciate it so much!  I’m thankful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and for The Book Of Mormon.  I’m thankful for a loving Heavenly Father who provided us a way, through His son and our brother Jesus Christ, to live with Him again and to be cleansed from our sins.  I’m thankful for the Restoration Of Christ’s Gospel on the earth through the prophet Joseph Smith, I know he is a prophet of God!  Im also thankful to have President Monson as a Prophet today!  What a blessing it is to have a living prophet to guide Jesus Christ’s church under His direction, and to guide us through these troubled times!  I’m grateful for a loving mission president and his wife to have here on my mission, they have helped me so much!  I’m also thankful for all of my companions I have had and will have on my mission, I have learned so much from them, and I’m grateful for the friendships I’ve made.  There is so much to be grateful for, I could go on forever!  I love thanksgiving time, and I want to invite you all to think of things you are thankful for, even when it isn’t thanksgiving, and to express them to Heavenly Father through prayer.  I know He loves to hear what we are sincerely thankful for!  

        I was studying in Ether this week, and a recurring trend in The Book Of Mormon stood out to me!  In Ether 11:1 it says,

1 And there came also in the days of Com many prophets, and prophesied of the destruction of that great people except they should repent, and turn unto the Lord, and forsake their murders and wickedness.

        It is always promised and prophesied in The Book Of Mormon that the people will be destroyed unless they repent and turn unto the Lord.  I love this concept!  Not because of the wickedness or destruction of the people, it’s because we have the opportunity to repent daily, all thanks for Jesus Christ, our Savior!  Before my mission I didn’t really think about it, but as we repent daily, we can continually turn our hearts to God.  I need to get better at this, but I know that as we all try and repent daily, we will be able to see our hearts and lives change as we continually turn unto God!  What a blessing it is to be able to repent daily!  

        I’m going to close with a miracle that we experienced this past week.  We were actually supposed to take Elder Nally to the airport yesterday, but President McMurray ultimately said that he couldn’t have Elder Hatch and I out of our area for that long because we could be finding more people to teach.  Which was interesting because it was in the mid afternoon on a Monday, but we trusted him.  We were out trying to get in contact with some less active members during the time we would have been to the airport, and we witnessed the hand of God in our missionary work!  We were walking after we had just contacted a less active member, and we kept walking up this street almost mindlessly.  Elder Hatch finally realized that there were no more less active members up the street and we were about to turn around when it popped into my mind that we were up this street for a reason.  We looked up at the apartment complex in front of us, and we knew exactly what door to knock on.  We knocked and met our friend Billy.  Billy saw who we were, and immediately let us in.  We sat on his couch and he told us that his wife had passed away a week before, and he had been going through a really rough time.  We taught him about The Book Of Mormon and promised it would bring him peace, comfort, and hope during these rough times.  He told us he would read from it and pray to know if it is true.  We also invited him to church, and he said he would love to come.  We have another appointment with him next Monday, and we can’t wait to teach him again!  He was ready to hear the truth, and I know we were sent there to his door to bring that to him.  We witnessed a miracle this week, and it was amazing to truly feel “On the Lord’s Errand.”  I am so thankful for President McMurray, and his inspiration to not let us drop Elder Nally off at the airport.  There was definitely someone for us to find, and the Lord guided us to him.  I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love

Elder Bailey

Pics and a Video:

- Last pics with Elder Nally

-chopping wood on thanksgiving!

11/22/17 | Happy Thanksgiving!

 This week absolutely FLEW by!  It’s getting a little ridiculous how fast time goes, but what do you do..... Man can the weeks get any better?  I feel like every week is so amazing, along with every single week.  Some may think I’m just saying that, but it’s true!  Being a missionary is incredible!

       We had another fantastic week.  Thanks for everyone who wished me a happy birthday!  It was super weird to see all of the birthday wishes on Facebook, but thanks so much! I really appreciate it, and I’m grateful for the family and friends I have.  The support and love I feel each week, and especially this last week was awesome, and I thank each of you for it!  Thanks so much mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, jenna and mike, alyssa, spencer, randon, and President and Sister McMurray for the hand written letters and packages you guys sent!  My first and last birthday in the mission field was one to remember, it was awesome being able to serve other people.  We did a bunch of Tracting, so that made me happy!  Also, we enjoyed my favorite cake mom, it arrived here in one piece and tasted incredible!  We’re still working on eating it!  Thank you so much, your the best mom in the world, I’m fully convinced!   

       We had a couple of exchanges this past week with the Spanish Elders and Peak View Missionaries.  The first exchange Elder Nally and I went with Elder Michels, and we had a great day!  During Tracting we found a bunch of people to go back and visit, and were able to give people copies of The Book Of Mormon left and right!  It was awesome!  We had a little Q&A with a young couple who are dating.  They had a bunch of questions for us, and we were able to answer them all.  Throughout the questions we could tell that they were a little hesitant, but at the end we told them all of their questions lead back to The Book Of Mormon.  We read Moroni 10:3-5 and promised them that if they read it sincerely, and prayed with real intent they would receive an answer of the truthfulness of The Book Of Mormon.  The Spirit was definitely working on them, and they each accepted a copy.  How amazing!  We were able to connect with them on Facebook and we started a group chat on Facebook Messenger.  What a great tool to have!  That made our day worth all the work!  Our next exchange I went with Elder Robbins.  He’s a Utah boy like me!  We had a great exchange, and we had such a great day!  We Tracted a lot and only one lady wanted us to come back, and another guy wanted us to come back so he could convince us we’re wrong....... so not too much success there, but later that night we had a lot of success.  We had our dinner down in their area in Millikan at a super amazing little Mexican restaurant!  Afterwards we visited a bunch of the people in their area book who had been forgotten by the missionaries, and they hadn’t been visited or contacts in 200-420 Days!  That seemed a little crazy to me, so were able to visit five of them on our list.  At the end of the night we had gotten four people to answer, and at all four we were able to set return appointments for next week.  What a MIRACLE!  These people had just slipped past missionaries who hadn’t looked for that opportunity in their area book.  I’ve learned that Tracting is awesome and there is no substitute, but using the area book to contact people who have already been found is like Tracting with a scope and a target.  Instead of knocking on a thousand doors, you have one person who expressed interest in the past, and they’re honestly 1,000 times more likely to be a legit investigator.  Elder Robbins and I definitely saw that while on exchanges.  So incredible!  

       We were actually able to get in contact with some of the people we Tracted into over the past couple of weeks.  We had about an hour long conversation with two girls, and it was really amazing.  They started asking questions, so we were able to teach them more about The Book Of Mormon, why we come out as missionaries, and how much Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love them.  They expressed to us how alcohol and smoking is consuming their lives, and has been a huge challenge for them.  The conversation got really sincere and the Spirit was definitely present.  At that moment we expressed to one of them and testified that Jesus Christ knows and loved her so much.  Immediately we all felt the Spirit super strong and she started to cry.  We gave her a little bit to be able to talk again, and we told her that feeling she felt was the Holy Ghost.  We invited them to attend church, and they said they want to make a change in their lives.  They weren’t able to make it this week, but we are hoping they come sometime soon.  During that same night we Tracted into a man named Keen.  He is in his early 30’s, and we were able to talk with him about The Book Of Mormon, where it came from, and that it is another testament of Jesus Christ.  He accepted a copy, and we have a return appointment with him this Saturday.  He told us just recently he had been talking to his brother about how they need to get back to a church and have that spiritual aspect in their lives again, then we show up at his door.  “There are no coincidences”, as Elder Rasband said this past General Conference.  I know there are divine coincidences all around us, we just need to recognize them!  Yesterday we also got in contact with Joe and Isabel, the people we met my first day back in Greeley.  We helped them move a tree they had just cut down, and taught them about The Book Of Mormon.  We were able to set a return appointment for next week!  I can’t wait to meet with them!  

       The part member family that we were working with, got kicked out of their house and we couldn’t find them.  Their phones didn’t receive calls or anything.  We found them on Facebook and reached out to them through Facebook Messenger as a last effort to find out what happened to them.  Actually just this morning about an hour ago, we received a lengthy response explaining the hard situation that they are in.  They told us that they have been reading from The Book Of Mormon for comfort, and they are still interested in us coming over.  We gave them our bishops number so they can be helped out. That is such a miracle!  We had no way of contacting them, and then we had Facebook Messenger as a tool to find them, reach out to them, and start teaching them again!  I am so glad the Lord has entrusted us with these tools, and I know that He is hastening His work!  We also met with Ethan this week.  We haven’t had contact with him for awhile because he has been out of town with the national guard.  We had a wonderful lesson with him!  He was so happy to see us, and told us earlier that day he had been thinking about us, and how he felt like he needed more spirituality in his life.  Another “divine coincidence!”  He told us a friend told him we believe in three heavens, so we knew exactly how to answer his question :). We taught him The Plan of Salvation and he had so many awesome questions to ask!  We invited him to read and pray about The Book Of Mormon, and he told us he would!  We promised it would bring him happiness throughout all of the difficulties he has had lately in his life.  Such an awesome lesson!  Parker is still on date to be baptized, the part member families son, but we will have to push it back because we couldn’t find them for a week.  We were also able to set Isaiah Lopez on date to be baptized as well!  He is part of another part member family who we started teaching this past week.  I can’t wait to teach them more as well! 

        A random guy walked into church the other day, and told us he was a non active member who hadn’t been active since his baptism.  He told us him and his wife wanted to come back and join the church!  His wife isn’t a member, so we are excited!  We are teaching them tonight!  Interesting thing is, the church can’t find his records.  We might have to baptize him again if they can’t find his records, so things should be interesting!  Our plan is to teach them The Restoration tonight and invite them to be baptized.  We can’t wait!  

       I was reading in Ether this week, and all of chapter 5 stood out to me!  It is six verses, but it is jam packed with so much information!  It is Moroni telling us that the Book Of Mormon will have witnesses.  In verse two he references the testimony of the eight witnesses, and in three and four he references the testimony of the three witnesses.  I haven’t ever realized this before but it is incredible.  It says,

2 And behold, ye may be privileged that ye may show the plates unto those who shall assist to bring forth this work;

3 And unto three shall they be shown by the power of God; wherefore they shall know of a surety that these things are true.

4 And in the mouth of three witnesses shall these things be established; and the testimony of three, and this work, in the which shall be shown forth the power of God and also his word, of which the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost bear record--and all this shall stand as a testimony against the world at the last day.

         Isn’t it amazing to think that 11 men, along with Jospeh Smith have given their names to the world as a witness that The Book Of Mormon is the word of God, and they have witnessed them!  I invite each of you to read these witnesses at the front of The Book Of Mormon, and to think of how amazing it is that we have their testimonies! These men never denied these things, and had testimonies till they died.  I can testify to you that I know The Book Of Mormon is the word of God, and that Jospeh Smith is indeed a prophet of God who restored Jesus Christ Church back to the earth, in preparation for the second coming of our Savior Jesus Christ!  I love how if we read from The Book Of Mormon, we can receive a witness of its divinity if we ask.  All we have to do is ask!  I love each of you, and hope you have a great week!  

Love

Elder Bailey 

Pics:

1-2: My Bday! (The incredible cake!)

3: Our District Meeting, Sister McMurray came!

11/14/17 | I love to see the Temple!

  Another great week in the paradise of Greeley!  We had a wonderful temple trip this morning, and it was incredible to be in the temple once more!  I love the temple with all my heart!  Every single time I am there, I feel peace, love, happiness, and joy!  It is absolutely incredible!

        This week honestly flew by, it’s weird to think I’m writing again...... there was so much that happened!  Don’t know how I’m going to include it all, but I’ll try!  I’ll start it off with our Zone Conference this past week.  We met it the Trilby church building across the Fort Collins Colorado Temple, and had an absolutely incredible meeting!  I think I loved it so much because it was a lot of the same trainings we received at MLC, so it was another inspiring meeting to be a part of!  President McMurray’s starting training was incredible, and it’s what he learned from a meeting President and Sister McMurray attended with a bunch of other mission presidents and their wives.  They had Elder Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and a bunch of other members of the 70.  One thing that stood out to me that he shared was two things that will always protect us is 1. Read The Book Of Mormon every single day and 2. Follow the council of the modern day prophets and apostles.  Those two things are honestly the two key factors that we need to have for our testimonies, I know they can protect us!  It’s so awesome to know that we have modern day prophets who guide us through these rough times, and to have The Book Of Mormon to lean on to always have that spiritual nourishment every single day.  What a miracle!  Later in Presidents training, he mentioned how important it is to send a weekly report/letter to him each week.  He said he counted up how many missionaries had written him every single week for the past ten weeks, and he said there were 17 missionaries in our whole mission who had.  He recognized the ones from the Greeley Zone, it was Elder Michels, Sister Olsen, and me!  I honestly didn’t know that missionaries didn’t do that each week.... but President McMurray gave each of us these two nice fancy pens.  The little things pay off!  In this case we got nice pens...... but applying it to the Gospel is pretty much the same.  Little things like reading The Book Of Mormon and praying every single day brings forth blessings that may not be apparent immediately, but they do come!  Throughout the Zone Conference they had members from Walmart Pharmacy come and give flu shots to all the missionaries, or all the ones who weren’t scared to get them..... haha.  President McMurray told us before hand to consider the safety of little kids and old grandparents, so if we didn’t want to end up causing a death we would get a flu shot.  This was very persuasive for most of us!  After all the missionaries had gone, we finally went and got our shots with President McMurray, it was probably the funnest flu shot I’ve ever gotten!  We were all just joking around and having a good time!  The rest of the Zone Conference was a lot of training for using Facebook.  Elder Nally bore his departing testimony because he is leaving to Australia, and he did a great job, we’re totally going to miss him....... It was a really good inspiring meeting!  

        After Zone Conference, we started exchanges with the Sterling and with one of the Assistants Elder McFadden.  I went with Elder McFadden, and we were on foot the rest of the night.  We had dinner on UNC’s (University Of Northern Colorado) campus with a YSA Member, and we were able to speak with a ton of people on campus.  It was so fun to talk with people our own age!  We gave all of the referrals to the YSA sisters, so we hope they all pan out for them!  We had a good rest of the night and had a nice chilly night Tracting!  

        We had another good lesson with Nyssa this past week, and we finished reading 2 Nephi 31 about baptism, and we finished explaining to her importance of it.  We told her that she needs to make the decision and the commitment to progress, so if she isn’t sure and hasn’t kept commitments by the next lesson, we may have to stop visiting her as frequently.  It’s always sad to stop visiting Investigators, but sometimes it’s just not time for them to have the heart to change.  It may take time but hopefully someday those people will decide to come closer to Jesus Christ and follow Him.  We also weren’t able to get in contact with the people we have tracted into, but we are visiting them this week to set up a time to meet!  On the brighter side, we were able to teach Parker Bentz and his family, the referral we received last week.  We actually had our lesson cancel earlier in the week, but we invited them to attend a YSA baptism with us and they said they would love to!  They came an hour early for a lesson and we taught them the Restoration.  It was a very powerful lesson, and the kids loved it!  I can’t wait to see this family come back to activity!  Our ultimate goal with them is to get them to the temple to be sealed as a family!  It will be so amazing!  I love it when the Lord sends us elect people to teach, what a blessing!  

         Funny thing that happened after the YSA baptism.  The person who baptized the YSA girl forgot to pull the plug in the font, and you couldn’t reach it from the edge of the steps.  I volunteered to try and fix our problem, so I ended up taking a little dip up to the knees, but then it got jammed so I had to stick my whole arm in to reach and fix it.  Haha, that was an experience!  While everyone was congratulating the girl on being baptized, two missionaries were watching another take a quick dip to fix the problem!  Just another day in the mission field I guess! 

        Yesterday we had exchanges with Elder McFadden and Elder Reiswig in Windsor, and it was a pretty sweet exchange!  I went with Elder McFadden, and we put in the work!  We had a little crazy morning due to some issues picking up President McMurrays new car, but we were able to go Tracting for the rest of the evening until dinner.  Our goal was to tract 50 doors, and we did that!  But it was a little hard because the people in Windsor are a little hard to reach.  They aren’t to open to learning more about the church, but we put in the effort and we were able to hand out a few copies of The Book Of Mormon!  Later that night we had a long deep doctrinal lesson with a less active member, which was very long and interesting.  It was a pretty sweet exchange!  I love doing missionary work with Elder McFadden!  He’s super legit!

         I was reading in the first part of Ether, particularly Ether 3, and verse 9 really stood out to me, (this is when the brother of Jared see’s the finger of the Lord, then the Lord reveals Himself to him.)

9 And the Lord said unto him: Because of thy faith thou hast seen that I shall take upon me flesh and blood; and never has man come before me with such exceeding faith as thou hast; for were it not so ye could not have seen my finger. Sawest thou more than this?

         I love how great of Faith he had in order to first see the Lord’s finger, then to have such exceedingly great faith that the Lord couldn’t withhold showing Himself unto the Brother of Jared.  I hope and pray we are all striving to have a little bit of the faith that the brother of Jared exhibited to further our testimonies of our Savior Jesus Christ, I know that as we do so, by doing the little things such as praying and reading from The Book Of Mormon daily, we can be blessed beyond our comprehension!  I would encourage you all to watch President Uchtdorf’s Mormon Message “Shower Of Heavenly Blessings”.  Heavenly Father has blessings to give us, we just have to be ready to receive them.  I love you all so much, and I’m grateful for each and every one of you!  Hope you have a great week!  

Love

Elder Bailey 

Also thanks mom and dad + the fam, jenna and mike, and Grandma and grandpa for the birthday presents, can’t believe Im only going to be a teenager for one more night...... crazy stuff!  Haha love you guys!  :)

         

         

Pics:

1-3: temple trip!

 

11/7/17 | Snowy Day!

 This past week was another good one!  We did have a little scare yesterday though.  We were doing Companionship Study and 12 week training for Elder Nally, when we all received an email from President McMurray with Elder Nally’s flight to Australia info.  It said he was scheduled to leave this upcoming Saturday!  We were all super sad, and it was pretty unexpected.  We finished up Companionship Study and headed to lunch.  Then right after lunch we got a second email from President that said that his flight was changed back to the 27th of November!  That was a huge relief!  We were so scared he was going to be leaving us, but either way we knew it would have been the right thing.  Glad he is staying with us for the rest of the transfer!!

         We went to three out of the four district meetings in the Zone this past week, and they are doing pretty good!  For one of them we had a nice drive out to Yuma again to pick up the rest of a closed missionary apartments furniture.  Let me tell you, that is a long drive with nothing in between!  After the lovely drive we had dinner with our amazing ward mission leader, Jack Sattler!  He’s one of the best ward mission leaders I’ve had on my mission, and he is a recent convert of a year and a half.  We went out and visited some people afterwards, and a less active lady committed to come to church!  Which she ended up not, but it’s all good!  That’s all in the life of a missionary!  We will be hounding her this week about it!  We also started creating a ward mission plan for our ward, so we are excited to help get that rolling!

         We had MLC this past Friday, and it was so inspiring!  We were able to watch the Christmas video for this year, and it’s so awesome!  They are using the same initiative as last year but with new videos!  #lighttheworld is back at it again!  I’ll talk more about that in a few weeks.  President McMurray read out of 3 Nephi 11:10-15 about The Doctrine Of Christ.  I love how he focuses on Christ’s Doctrine every single meeting we have with him, so amazing!  He told us never to take The Gospel of Jesus Christ for granted, and to always remember the importance of our callings here as missionaries.  He said, “Don’t be Shy, teach by the Spirit!”  That got me super pumped up!  Throughout the meeting we focused a lot on having the Faith to Find, and setting goals for the mission.  We have noticed that our mission is still having a hard time grasping Preach My Gospel Ch. 9, “How do I find people to teach?”  The first concept it mentions in that chapter is developing the Faith to find.  President McMurray explain to us how developing Hope is a huge aspect in developing the Faith to find.  He shared with us Ether 12:4-6,

4 Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.

5 And it came to pass that Ether did prophesy great and marvelous things unto the people, which they did not believe, because they saw them not.

6 And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.

          He explained how it is a never ending cycle between Hope and Faith, that they are dependent on each other, and that you can’t have one without the other.  It opened my eyes a lot to this concept.  Someone asked why disobedient missionaries are successful, and President McMurray said, “Sometimes even a blind squirrel finds an acorn.”  We were all dying laughing, but then in all seriousness President shared a quote from Elder Bednar which states, “Disobedient Missionaries who testify of Christ and Baptize, use the Lord’s name in vain, and will one day be held accountable.”  He explained how God will not withhold the blessings of the Gospel from his children, even if the missionary is disobedient, but the missionary will be held accountable.  This kinda sent chills through my body.  I would much rather always be obedient than have to account for that at judgment day.  After Presidents instruction, Sister McMurray had us read Elder Rasband’s talk, “By Divine Design,” from this past October Conference.  The past two General Conferences, Elder Rasband’s talks have been my overall favorites!  In his talk he speaks of “divine coincidences” because there are no coincidences!  Heavenly Father plays a huge part in our lives, we just have to learn to recognize His hands helping us each and every day, and be grateful for them!  Absolutely love that talk!  We have a new mission theme that we came up with.  One Eye, One Faith, One Baptism. This comes from Mosiah 18:21, and it honestly applies to everything!  We know that this will help us be united as a mission, and see the fruits of our labors as we work diligently with “an Eye single to the glory of God!”  In closing President McMurray said, “Go out there and do good things!”  This was truly one of the most uplifting meetings I have been a part of, and we can’t wait to help the rest of the missionaries feel inspired and gain the Faith to Find!  

          We received two amazing referrals this past weekend as well.  One is a less active man, Jon, who wants to get his family back to church.  We visited him the same day we received the referral, and it went amazing!  His nine year old son Parker wants to be baptized, and we asked him if he wanted to set a certain date to be baptized.  He excitedly said yes, and picked December 2nd!  It was so amazing, and we are so excited to help them come back to church and renew their baptismal covenants, and ultimately be sealed in the temple!  What a miracle!  We also visited the other guy, Shannon, he moved here a few days ago. He was being taught back in Oregon, and wants to continue to be taught here!  We will see how that goes!  We tried getting in contact with a lot of the people we tracted into the past couple weeks but couldn’t connect with any of them, but it’s amazing because every single time we try one of them, we run into someone on the street to talk to.  Definitely not a coincidence that’s for sure!  

         I’m excited to continue to do missionary work here in Greeley!  We are already seeing the fruits of our labors!  In the past three Sunday’s, we have gone from 0 Investigators at sacrament meeting to 3!  There is definitely a lot of work to do here, and the people are eager and ready to receive the message of Jesus Christ’s true church on the earth.  This past Sunday was fast and testimony meeting.  Elder Nally, Elder Hatch and I all bore our testimonies, and the Spirit was very strong in that meeting!  I talked about our Savior, Jesus Christ.  The first two lines of one of my favorite hymns, “I know that my redeemer lives”, say “I know that my redeemer lives, what comfort this sweet sentence gives.” He is our Savior, He is our Comforter, I have come to know these things through reading The Book Of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ.  I can promise each of you that if you want to strengthen your testimony of Him, open up The Book Of Mormon and read each and every day!  You will come closer to Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father, that is a promise from President Monson!  I love this true everlasting work, I know it is the right thing to be doing, and I’m grateful to be a part of it!  I hope you all have a great week!

Love

Elder Bailey 

Pics:

1-2: our drive out to Yuma! Found the birthplace of THE KING, Lebron James! Akron!

3-4: Elder Tippetts and Elder Kimball, the greatest!

5-7: MLC, (we all decided to match with floral stuff)

8: found our sign! (We got the same first name haha)