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.”
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