Wherein Landen Shares How We All Get Answers in God's Timing

September 24, 2018

     Thanks for the package! Hopefully I'll get it on Wednesday when we go up to the office!

     The people we are teaching (investigators) are doing good! Please pray for Jose Guivas. He should be getting baptized this weekend if all goes well with his baptism!  Also for Angel Rosario, who should be getting baptized in these next couple of weeks, an also for JeanPaul and Xioana, who are super cool but are falling behind in their progression. 

      We had a super good week this last week, seeing a ton of new miracle people that we are teaching now that God has been preparing for a long time. 

     I'll tell you about one real quick, her name is Wanda. A few weeks ago we got a member referral to teach her son, so we went by to teach her son and we found Wanda!  She agreed to an appointment and we went by, she received us really well and we shared a very powerful first discussion.  The Spirit was very very strong, to the point of tears.  In this lesson we learned that she actually already knew a lot about the restoration of the gospel as we had shared it. She told us that she had talked a lot with the missionaries over 20 years ago. I asked her if in her studies before she had ever prayed to God to know if that message that they were sharing then and that we shared now were true.  She responded yes. So I then asked, if she had ever received an answer from those prayers.  Her response was powerful and it still has me meditating about the plan that God has for everyone of his children.  She just simply said "I believe we are all prepared to receive answers at different times in our lives" (that is a more or less translation from Spanish of course).  And you know what -  it is really true! God gives us the answers we need at the times that we need them. Our job is to ask with faith, and have patience for the answer to arrive.  We don't know exactly all of the steps God has had Wanda take to receive her answer. Maybe us showing up again and knocking her door is part of the answer she asked for 20+ years ago, maybe now she is ready to receive more answers from God and is prepared even to act upon them. I don't know fully - but this I do know and this I trust, that God has established a personal plan of salvation for all. He gives everyone a path to come back, and he ensures all men the opportunity to take that path. The choice is up to each and everyone of us if we chose to take the path that God has established for us, or if we chose to wander off in the wilderness that could be our destruction. 

     I am grateful for the opportunity that God has given me to be the bearer of this standard of truth for the children of God in Puerto Rico. I know that the one and only path that God is preparing people to come to know and follow is our savior Jesus Christ and His gospel. That is the one and only path that leads to Him in heaven.  I have the faith and hope to follow it the rest of my eternal life. (2 Nefi 31:20-21).

    That was kinda a slurge of words that just came out of nowhere, hope it makes sense....awkward if it doesn't but I don't have time to proof read it, sooo, yeah. Just use your spiritual Urim and Thumins maybe and learn from the Spirit about it!

     Sounds cool about conference, always an exciting thing as a missionary as well! Also I had no idea you were the Young Women's president! That's pretty cool tho! Good Luck, I know you'll do great!

Love you all lots!

Elder Bailey

Wherein Landen Takes Off His Tag.

Sept 17, 2018

     This week was crazy!!! It seemed like everyday we had something new and crazy going on! We had a super fun Zone activity! Me and my comp put together an "amazing race" like we use to do for those FHEs once a year,  and it was a huge success!     
  
     Then we had to go to an MLC meeting with Pres. Gonzalez of the 70 who came to do a mission tour. Thursday we had an exchange with the elders in Salinas. They are struggling a little bit with the ward there, but we were able to give them some good ideas to try to improve and do better. Then Friday we had a zone conference with Pres. Gonzalez.  It went well. I had to get up and do a small presentation of an application of a principle in PMG, it was weird.  I didn't know I was going to have to do it, President just called me out in the moment and made me give it! So I was nervous and thought I messed up bad, but it ended all well.  

     Elder Gonzalez dropped some good missionary work bombs that are going to help us a lot as a mission! One of those things was to work more with jovenes (youth), the rising generation.  He promised more success for working closer with them - both in teaching non-member youth and in strengthening the youth members.  

     So the next day we went and tried to apply it a little and we took all of the YM/YW in the ward to do a Book of Mormon experiment. Idk if y'all have seen these, they made a few YouTube videos about them.  Basically Pres. gives us permission to dress like regular people and take off our name tag so that people don't recognize us. Then we take a page of the book of Mormon attached to a questionnaire to public places and ask people to read the page and fill out the questionnaire as part of an "experiment" (but mostly its just to have people read the Book of Mormon without knowing what book it is!)  Then after we talk to them, we contact them about missionary visits if they have any interest! So all of the Jovenes in the ward went out and did this with us. It was super fun and successful!  Then we had a good stake conference yesterday. It was fun, even if none of our investigators showed up though.  So we have a lot of inviting to repentance to do this week, like most weeks!

That's life right now, I hope all is good back home, 

Love you all!

Elder Bailey

Wherein Landen Raps and Snarfs Down Cereal!

September 11, 2018

   Sorry, we had some complications with the car yesterday and ended up passing all of P-day stuck inside a Pep-boys :(  So that's why I didn't write! I don't have a ton of time today, but in answer to all of your questions: 
1. Yes, we are fine, no storms are even close to hitting the island ;)  
2. We haven't gotten to see the broadcast from the church yet, but I have heard about the Saints book. I've read a few of the chapters that they have been posting in the Liahona but I would love to read the book if idk, someone like wanted to send me a cool September present or something.... 

3. Yes, they just came out with a new version of PMG where they changed a lot of terms in it (like investigators) and they changed the whole planning and schedule and numbers scheme that it use to have and now we don't use. They only have the new PMG in English though, so we haven't gotten to use it yet here in our mission (Spanish life).

 Good job to Seth on asking her out, I don;t know her either, but that'll be fun for him.  How does he have Hillcrest friends? LOL  But hopefully he does good on the ACT too. I'd say I'm praying for him, but its already to late for that, the test is taken and I'm sure he did fantastic. Here's to hoping he beat me!

    Now for the prophets' visit!  It was super cool to hear and see them. It was like way incredible!  We didn't get to shake their hands or take pics with them or anything like that, there was just flat out too many of us there and they would have been trampled!  

    But Hna and Eld Gonzalez talked first (the area president and wife who are also coming to our mission for a mission tour this week!).     

   Then Hna and Eld er Renlund talked to us. Sis Renlund talked about our commitment as members for how we live our lives taking upon ourselves the name of Christ. How our actions and attitude should reflect that we carry this name with us.  Then Elder Renlund talked about seeking guidance from the lord in all our actions in life, and being humble enough to follow what He tells us. In the last decade or so the church in Puerto Rico has suffered significantly from a lot of the really strong members moving away from Puerto Rico to the states in search of better jobs or living situations or whatnot and it has left a lot of the wards here without strong leaders, so he tried to talk against this practice. 

    Then President Nelson talked. And he brought down the roof! He is so cool, just the way he talks and interacts and jokes with the interpreter and brings the spirit soooo strongly!!!!  In both the Saturday conference just for missionaries and the Sunday conference for everyone, he talked about the Abrahamic Covenent and the Gathering of Israel.  Way dope stuff that I am starting to understand on a whole new level! 

    He spoke about how the congregation of Israel is a Literal Spiritual Congregation. That we are United in One faith everywhere and in our own lands (or Zions) promised to us from God. He read a scripture that said that the Jews would be gather unto Zion in Judah and that the other Israelites would be gathered unto Zion in Israel. He than said (kinda touching on that same issue that I mentioned that E. Renlund addressed) that Zion was to gather to one heart and one mind in our own lands or in his own words: "the Japanese with be gathered in Japan, Brazilians will be gathered in Brazil" and, he didn't say it directly but everyone got the message: Puerto Ricans will be gathered in Puerto Rico! 

     so that was just a chispa of what he taught. I've got a lot of notes written that y'all can read in like a year when I get home if you want tho :)

Hope everything is good back home.

I love you all! 

Blessings!!!

Elder Bailey

Here are a few silly videos that Landen sent us. Looks like he is getting along well with his companion and is as goofy as ever!

Wherein Landen Listens to a Prophet's Voice and Finds an Old Friend!

   September 3, 2018

    That's awesome to hear about BYU, they need a good season. (And hopefully a good win against Utah, the rivalry is starting to become a joke cause we just haven't won it in forever!)

    Speaking of Seth - what are his plans for the mission? Is he planning on going right out of High school? Or waiting a while? Has he been applying for schools? Or thinking about this stuff at all? 

    This week was super cool here. As we all know, the prophet of the church came to the Caribbean.  Apparently he was awoken at 2 in the morning last Wednesday by the Spirit telling him that he needed to go to the Caribbean.     So that was way cool. He shared a really cool missionary devotion with us that we watched by satellite on Saturday with all of the missionaries of the Caribbean. 

    Then we all gathered together as a whole Island on Sunday to see him live in the Colieo de Puerto Rico. A lot of people came and I got to see a lot of good friends from old wards and past companions and what not.  Way cool experience. 

     Definitely the best part was when the missionaries from Aguadilla (the area that I started my mission in) showed up with their investigator all the way in San Juan. I recognized the investigator almost right away as John, a 15 year old kid that me and my trainer had knocked his door over a year ago in Aguadilla. He was the first person that I ever invited to be baptized in my entire mission and my entire life!  After the hurricane hit I tried to get the elders to look him up again but turned out that he had left to the states after the storm. Well, I guess he came back though for summer vacation or something and got in contact with the missionaries and is now going to finally get baptized on September 15th!  I got to talk with him and catch up with him. He recognized me too and we hugged and had a happy little reunion.  He was super excited to get baptized and happy in all ways.  It brought me a lot of joy to see that. I never actually baptized anybody in Aguadilla when I was there, so it made me really glad to see that all of those doors that we knocked on weren't in vain. Yeah for John!

    Then of course the Devotional was cool as well. We had one investigator come with us, named Jose. We just found him this week, but he really wanted to go see the prophet, so we made it happen! He seems really golden, so we'll see how it goes with him!

That's it really for this week, I hope everyone is happy and healthy, and doing well in school.  Send my love to all that ask!

Love you guys!

Elder Bailey

**Link to the news story and video of President Nelson's visit to Puerto Rico**

Crowds gathering to hear the Prophet!

Look How Happy he is to hear the Prophet speak!