Wherein Landen Does Some Insanity Workouts!

January 28, 2019

     Wow, that was a crazy week! The film festival sounds cool! also, I've been meaning to ask you for a while now, but what belt are you in jujitsu? Like color and bar and everything if that's still how Emfield does his system... Mom says you're getting super jacked in jujitsu, and she says that Seth is getting super jacked in the gym, and I've... been getting fat on an island, at least until recently. My new comp first morning we had together pulled out a DVD player with a bunch of "Max 30: Insanity" videos (they are approved) and has been putting me through this crazy workout program that's killing me (not literally) - so, who knows, maybe I'll get put back into shape before I leave here. 

      Things are good with the new companion. That one that you saw in the pic was my new comp, but I'll try to send some more pics too.  We haven't done anything super cool to be picture worthy yet. 

     Mom, in response to your WML question, no we do not have one here. We barely have enough priesthood to fill a branch presidency + an elders quorum president.  So the new change is actually kinda nice for the branch cause now those responsibilities that formerly were either undone, or done by ourselves, are passed now to the EQP and RSP.  In past areas though, the WMLs were huge helps. Especially in San Sebastian. (the WML was that girl Arliss, that you use to work with's, uncle) and we were able to coordinate with him frequently and put some huge things into action.  We had a super good relationship with him and it helped a ton to connect with and help/receive help from the ward. 

     As for here, we had a great first week together with Elder Segura.  We taught - I think a record amount-  in Dominica, at least the whole time I have been here.  We are still working with the Sanford family.  This week we went up to the Indian reservation (where they are from) and helped him work on his moms house that he is building. I have some pics from that I'll try to send.  

  

      We are also working with a Haitian family. The dad's name is Dilicon, and we have been teaching him my entire time here.  He comes to our Engilsh class, and to church and everything. He just recently though flew his family over from Haiti. He has 4 daughters ranging from 19-5, and all of them come to our English class now.  And he took all of them to church this last week too. The hardest part is definitely that since they are from Haiti they only speak Creole, and my Creole is still not too good.  So we are working to teach them, mostly through Delicon the dad since he speaks really good English already.  We are super excited to see where these two great families go! 

   Sorry about all the influenza going around. I hope everyone can stay healthy!! I hope everyone back home gets better and doesn't die!!!  But like for reals, plz don't die anyone, love you allll!!!

Elder Bailey

Wherein Landen Gets a Surprise New Companion!

January 21, 2019

     Heyyyy, sounds like everything is going well back home. Things are nice on the Island, Elder Mancilla left - that was sad. But Elder...........................(that's my drumline)..................Segura, got here. It is actually super interesting, so fun story, a couple of centuries ago when I started my training, I was sent to live in an apartment with 2 sets of Elders. Right when I got there one of the elders in the other companionship that lived with us was just finishing up his training (his first 12 weeks). Well, I was just starting mine. When I finished my first 12 weeks, that elder who was just finishing his when I got started left the area and his replacement was another little greenie who was going to be starting his training right as I was finishing mine. So- that first elder was Elder Mancilla, and his replacement was Elder Segura. 

       So its super like de ja vou-y that it kinda happened again. but Elder Segura is super cool. Like I said, we two lived together for a little bit at the beginning of our missions. We were only together for like 2 weeks, cause this lady came through our mission and destroyed everything, but now we're back together again for probably a couple more months. He is super excited to be out here and work hard, and so we are both ready to get some great work done. We've already seen many great miracles from the short time he has been here. He is from southern Temecula, California (it is the city right next to where I use to serve when I was in Cali). He's also a convert to the church (of about 5 years) and went to BYU before the Mission too!!! 

    Most of our week was going around for Elder Mancilla to say good-bye to people. We got to share with the Sanford family a little bit and they are doing super good. Then we had a long drive to the airport to pick up Elder Segura.  The mission refused to tell us who my new companion was, and they were being really cruel about it, so we had no idea who it was gonna be until he walked out the door of the customs area. And we both kinda flipped when we saw him, cause Mancilla and I had been thinking about and making predictions all week of who was going to come out and he was not even one we had thought of!  But any ways, it's gonna be a good time, I'm happy with how things worked out. 

     That's about it for things though.....Love you all super much!!! 

Elder Bailey

Wherein Landen Learns His Companion is Transferring off the Island.

January 14, 2019

     I had no idea about Lexi leaving on a mission, that is super cool!!! I haven't talked to her in forever... do you know when she reports??  

     Thanks for the update on everyone else too! Sounds like all is well back home. Things are nice here on Dominica.  We had a pretty good week. We worked hard and developed some fantastic plans for next week which should be even greater! We didn't teach a lot this week, but met some new people that show some good potential.  We also spent some time saying goodbye to some members because Elder Mancilla is leaving this Saturday to go to finish his last transfer in PR. 

   We will be picking up my new comp on Friday, so I'll let you know who it will be next week since I still don't know. 

      I put some pics on the group album last week, I hope you saw them, but no new pics from this last week. 

    They did release a pic of the PR temple, and it looks super cool. Super tiny...and for some reason doesn't have an angel Moroni on it, but maybe they just forgot to draw it in...

Love you all muchisimo! 

Elder Bailey

This looks like it was his Birthday cake last week! ;)

Wherein Landen Attends a Catholic Wedding.

Jan. 7, 2019

 Congrats Emerson!!!!!!!!! That's super cool!!!! Love you so much little dude!!!!

That's super cool about Seth and his mission Papers!! Supes excited for him too! He'll prolly be getting his call online now too, huh! Sorry to hear about Mary, that's been rough! She'll be in my prayers, tell her hi for me next time you call!

Things on the Island are going good, we had an Aiight week this week, and taught quite a bit actually.  We also had some cool experiences that I will share:

* So we got invited this week to a wedding. It was a member getting married to an Investigator. They got married in a catholic church tho... the member is active and everything, her new husband has interest in the church and everything too, but the catholic priest offered to do the wedding for free, so they did it there. It was a party! we didn't go to the reception or anything, there was way to much party at the reception. But just the wedding ceremony itself was cool. We get weird looks here whenever we walk into any building here...just because we are white. We get even weirder looks because were missionaries. So Just try to imagine the types of looks people were giving us when we walked into a Catholic church in our complete missionary attire, especially being the only white dudes in the whole building! They musta thought we were super lost!! It was funny. There was one guy staring at us legit the whole time, and he got even more confused when the brides' son turned around and waved to us (cause we're tight). LOLlolLOLlol. Everything turned out good though and we made it back in time to go teach a lesson with Pinky. Idk if I have ever told you all about Pinky before, but hes the 1st counselor here, and he's a former Rasta who never got a hair cut. Major homie. His kids are the ones in the Christmas video. 

* Then the next day was Church. How did the 2 hour block change go for you guys??? Dominica's been on a two hour block for over a year so there was no change for us, but church was super cool. We had quite a few non-members show up! The first was the family that we had just gone to teach the day before with Pinky after the wedding. We had a super cool Lesson with them on the Sabbath day. Her name is Edlyna and she is a single mother with 3 kids (8, 4, 0.5) and when we invited her to church the day before she told us: "Not tomorrow, but maybe some other Sunday" Which was disappointing, so we were shocked to see here there the very next day, walking into the church with all three of her kids bathed and nicely dressed and ready to go. We were both shocked.  But so happy she made it!

The other person to come to Church was one of Pinky's friends. His name is Mr. Francis.  He was a friend of Pinky's back in his Rasta days and from what we've seen Mr. Francis still lives the Rasta life. But he came to church and participated a ton in Sunday school and even during fast and testimony meeting got up not only once to bear his testimony, but a second time as well during a really long awkward pause between testimonies. His opening line of his testimony was golden as well. He gets up there and says: "I wanna testify to you all, JAH Lives! Oh, I mean Jesus Christ, Jesus Lives!" and his closing line: "Yeah *with a thumbs up*" It was golden. 

Otherwise the week was pretty normal. Sanford family is doing good. Everyone is cool. 

Thanks for the update!!! Lots of Love!!!!!

Elder Bailey