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)

 

10/31/17 | Happy Halloween!

This week was another good one!  There were so many miracles it will be hard to include them all in this email so I’ll try my best to include the best ones!  We tried contacting all of the people we met last week, but we only caught a few people home.  We set up some appointments for this week, so we are excited to see what comes from those!  We did have a follow up lesson with Ethan.  We met with him this past Thursday night, and taught him The Restoration lesson.  The Spirit was so strong throughout the lesson, and he had a lot of questions.  We were able to answer his questions, and invited him to read and pray about The Book Of Mormon, and to ask God specifically if it was true.  He said he would, and we are planning on meeting with him again this week with our amazing ward mission leader!  It should be awesome!

        We had another solid lesson with our investigator Nyssa!  She has been hard to get in contact in the past, but lately we have been able to meet with her and teach her!  We read with her 2 Nephi 31, which is when Nephi tells why Jesus Christ was baptized.  We had a good conversation about that, and taught her how important it is to follow His example and be baptized by someone holding His priesthood authority.  We also explained to her how receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost is such a blessing that our Father in Heaven has blessed us with.  She asked why it is that important?  So we were able to explain how everyone is born with the Light if Christ.  Everyone can discern and feel the Holy Ghost touch their spirits, but once we have the Gift of the Holy Ghost we can have the Holy Ghost with us 100% of the time as long as we are living worthy of it.  We had Elder Nally invite her to be baptized, and she said that she is open to it, but wants to read and learn more before she fully commits to it.  We explained to her that it would be a goal, not a set in stone date, that we can work towards.  She said she doesn’t feel comfortable setting it right now, but she will in the future.  We know that as we continue to work with her on her conversion process, she will become more comfortable with being baptized!  Can’t wait to continue to teach her!

        Yesterday was honestly amazing!  We went on exchanges with the Spanish Elders, and I was with Elder Nally and Elder Berkabile for the day.  We had a pretty good day out finding and contacting people.  We were able to give another new investigator, an older lady named Maggie, a large print copy of The Book Of Mormon and The Bible.  She was so grateful we stopped by!  The real miracles came before we had dinner and after dinner.  Before dinner we were out Tracting, and we found this really nice lady named Janine.  She accepted a copy of The Book Of Mormon and she said her and her husband would be open to having us come back!  She seems really interested, so we were excited about that!  We had to stop by the post office for Elder Berkabile to pick up a package.  While he was picking up his package, we started talking with an atheist lady.  We asked her if she knew anything about The Book Of Mormon and she said she had seen the play.  We laughed about that, and asked if she wanted to find out from the actual source what The Book Of Mormon really is?  After the great conversation, as we were walking out, she accepted a copy of The Book Of Mormon.  We invited her to check it out and read from it, then to pray and ask if it is true.  Hopefully someday she will read it!  After dinner we went Tracting for the rest of the night.  It was pretty cold, but we knew it would be worth it!  We talked with a lot of people in the apartments.  One lady, Kira, was out smoking and we started to talk with her.  She expressed to us how she hasn’t been treated kindly by some other people sharing their religion with her going door to door.  She said she was out smoking and another set of missionaries from another church came by with their little kids and spit at her because she was smoking..... She told us she was grateful that we were nice to her and talked with her.  She said we could come back and talk more with her another time!  Another lady, Holly, was walking up to her apartment and we started talking with her.  After she accepted a copy of The Book Of Mormon, we asked if we could come by and share more about what we believe.  She said she is home Wednesday, Thursday, and Fridays, and to come by anytime!  In an hour and a half we were able to hand out seven copies of The Book Of Mormon!  What a HUGE miracle!  It was honestly ridiculous how many people showed interest and wanted us to come back to share more with them about Jesus Christ and what we believe!  The blessings and miracles that we see out in the mission field are incredible, and it’s amazing to see the Lord’s hand throughout our work each and every day!  I absolutely love it!

        In my studies this past week, I read in Mormon 9:18-20 which says,



18 And who shall say that Jesus Christ did not do many mighty miracles? And there were many mighty miracles wrought by the hands of the apostles.

19 And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.

20 And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust.



       Yesterday was a manifestation to me that miracles are wrought upon us in our day, but as it says in these scriptures, we have to exhibit faith in order for miracles to occur.  If we stop believing in miracles, they won’t occur, but if we continue in our Faith, never ceasing to believe, then we will se so many mighty miracles throughout our lives!  I can truly testify that if you have Faith in our Savior Jesus Christ, read from The Book Of Mormon daily, and trust in Him continually, then you will see and be able to recognize His hand in your lives every single day!  I hope you all have a great week this week, that is full of miracles!  Love you guys!



Love

Elder Bailey

10/24/17 | Back in Greeley!

        First off, sorry for everybody who was expecting a reply on Monday, our p-days for my mission are switched to Tuesday from now on for the rest of my mission.  It is kinda sad and weird not to have them on Mondays, but it should be good!  And shout out to my lil bro Randon for getting a 4.0 this past term, and for killing his deer, atta boy!  Proud of you bro!  This week was honestly amazing!  We saw so many miracles, and my new companions are pretty good!  Elder Hatch is from Gilbert, AZ and went to the same high school as my last companion Elder Tippetts.  He’s one of the mellow, stern, funny guys!  He came out a transfer a couple transfers before I did.  My other companion is Elder Nelly from Mesa, AZ!  Yeah all of my companions from now on are going to be from Arizona...... I’m pretty confident they will be! Elder Nally is 6’ 5” so it has been fun to have another tall guy around!  He is waiting for his visa, and then will be heading to the Sidney Australia South Mission, so we get him for a transfer or two, it just depends on when his visa comes in!  It has been a fun week with these two, and we have had a lot of cool experiences!

         Last Wednesday was Elder Nally’s first official day in the mission field, and it was one of the most amazing days of my mission!  In total for the day we ended up handing out seven copies of The Book Of Mormon, and have a lot of new potential investigators to visit and teach this upcoming week!  We were planning on contacting a bunch of potential investigators to start to clean up our area book.  I’ll share with you a few that stood out to me!  At the first potentials house, we met a lady named Sara, and she wants us to come back and teach her this week!  The second potential also wasn’t home, but a man named Kayne answered!  He was a funny guy and accepted a copy too.  The third potential wasn’t home, but we saw a couple cutting up some huge tree limbs, so we immediately went over and asked if we could help them out.  They were so happy that we offered, and we moved all of the big limbs in a few minutes.  After we were finished they expressed how grateful they were for our help, and we started talking with them about The Book Of Mormon.  We were able to give both of them a copy, and we tried visiting them a few days ago but they weren’t home.  We are trying again this week!  They seemed really interested!  Later that night we were Tracting, and we knocked on Mario’s door.  He was really really drunk, but we had a good quick talk with him.  We testified that as he read from The Book Of Mormon, he would be able to overcome his addictions through the power of Jesus Christ.  We don’t know if he was all there, but he asked us how we knew to knock on his door.  We just testified to him that God has sent us here to help him in his life.  It was a cool experience and it was the best feeling to be “on the Lord’s errand!”  

          We had trainers meeting this past Friday, and we received instruction from President and Sister McMurray.  It was so cool to hear from them!  President specifically told us that it is our responsibility to start off these new missionaries missions right!  He told us how the way we help start off their missions, will effect them eternally.  That really put it into perspective of how important it is to continue to be the best we can be!  It was inspiring to me.  After the meeting, we had interviews with President McMurray, which were amazing!  I had a bunch of gospel questions for President, and he told me a bunch of stuff to study to find the answers, it was awesome!  I’m so grateful to have such an amazing mission president!  

          We had a good lesson with one of our investigators Nyssa.  We read 3 Nephi 18 when Jesus institutes the sacrament unto the Nephites.  She has little to no knowledge of who Jesus Christ is or why we need Him, so we were able to testify and explain how He is the only way we can return and live with our Heavenly Father again someday!  We also explained how he suffered for all of our sins and provided the Atonement for us, so we can repent and become clean again.  She is starting to understand a little more of who He is.  We invited her to read more about Jesus visiting the Nephites in 3 Nephi, and pray and ask Heavenly Father to help her understand who Jesus Christ is.  We know she will receive an answer if she asks sincerely!  Can’t wait to see her progress!  

          We had the Windsor Stake Breakfast at President Packard‘s House with all the missionaries serving in the Stake this past Saturday morning.  During our little devotional afterwards, he brought up a scripture in Jeremiah that struck me!  It was in Jeremiah 17:7-8 which says, 

7 Blessed ​is​ the man that ​​​trusteth​ in the ​​Lord​​, and whose ​​​hope​ the ​​Lord​​ is.

​​​​​8 For he shall be as a ​​​tree​ planted by the waters, and ​that​ spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not ​​​see​ when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of ​​​drought​, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

          I want to invite you to read these scriptures and relate it to how you can plant your testimonies by the true Living Water Of our Savior Jesus Christ.  Then to apply it to your life and find a couple of ways that you can gain and strengthen your testimonies of Him!  I know that if you do so prayerfully, the Lord will show you what you can do to strengthen your testimonies.  Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ want to bless us so badly, we just need to ask!  

          Being back in Greeley is amazing again!  The people here are humble and ready to receive the gospel!  I can’t wait to meet more people who are ready to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Being a missionary is so incredible, and I am so grateful to Heavenly Father for letting me have this opportunity to serve.  I love you guys, and hope you have a fantastic week!

Love

Elder Bailey 

Pics:

1. My new companions! 

2. The World Record for “the largest stem to have ever been witnessed on a pumpkin”