Wherein Seth Arrives in the Field!

August 26, 2019

I can't say much but I made it to the field. It is beautiful here. I don't know who my trainer is or the area I'll be serving in but I'm super excited. I'm doing well. Anyway, I'm safe and doing well and I love you all very much. I'll email you sometime soon. Not sure when my p-day actually is. prolly lunes. 

love ya,

Elder Bailey

(From the mission president)...

     August 26, 2019

Congratulation your son is in the mission!!!!!

Dear family of Elder Bailey we announce you that your son has arrived safely to the best mission in the world, the México Cancún Mission, and we are really happy for having your son in this wonderful work, we express you our sincere love for the great job you had made as parents of this noble missionary.

Your son is going to start his mission in the Pedregal Area and his trainer is going to be Elder Limachi

PD: We attach a photo of your son with President Marin and lots of our sincere love.

- Mexico Cancun Mission

Wherein Seth Shares Spiritual Insights.

August 22, 2019


   This is my district and our amazing teacher Hermana Ojeda. She took a bus here for over an hour to get a pic with us. Our morning teacher, Hermano Gallegos didn't show up for pictures even though he lives across the street... He's awesome too though. 

Hola Madre. Camping sounds like so much fun. I wish I could just go sleep under the stars one of these nights and light a campfire. Too bad fire ain’t allowed here. 😕 Good luck to all the kids with school. Send those back to school pics that we take every year, please. Good job on the cake. I’m sure they appreciated all the work you put into it. Love you muchisimo.
Seth

      This week was truly wonderful. I leave in three days for el campo and I am so excited. 

Learning here kinda died down a bit cause our teachers made it through all the grammar lessons and whatnot so it's been really relaxed. I help my teachers a lot with some of the grammar reviews because their broken English doesn't work the best to teach Spanish to some missionaries in my district. Luckily I took Spanish all through elementary school so the basic grammar has been ingrained in my head for most my life and I can make it more understandable. Also I shaved all my body hair in prep for the heat and humidity of Cancun. Not sure if it will actually help with sweat prevention, but I figured I'd give it a try. Kinda funky feelin'. I also memorized all of El Cristo Viviente so I'm pretty happy about that. 

     I've sat through a lot of devotionals this week and in the weeks past, not gonna lie, I would sleep through them. These ones were different for some reason though because I gained a ton of spiritual insight and was connected and attentive for all of them. On Tuesday we watched a devotional from president Bednar that was broadcast from the provo MTC. He truly is an amazing apostle that has some incredible insights on life. He mostly talked about understanding the Holy Ghost and what impressed me the most was what he said about the involvement of action. He said, "Inspiration only comes when we're moving our feet." The Holy Ghost won't tell us every step we need to take and which direction to take it in; rather, He'll direct us in the paths that were already taking. A good example of this is in the story of Nephi. When he was instructed to go and get the plates, he and his brothers attempted three different times and, with the first two attempts being amazingly disasterous learning experiences, Nephi went down in faith relying on the Lord to deliver Laban into their hands. He "was led by the spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which [he] should do." Even so, he "went forth." Nephi started going. He had no clue what the heck he was going to do or where he might be going, but he was moving. He was no stagnant beast like his brothers, but an impressionable servant of the Lord. Bednar stated, when on question about being a missionary, "As long as you are being a good boy and your feet are moving, you're doing it right... There is no need to be perfect, none of us are perfect, just try to do good." As we're striving for good, rather than evil, we can have the spirit in out lives and He will direct our ways. God wants to help us out, and naturally he desires that we do what is right so as long as we are trying our best to follow Him, He will let us know what we must do. I exhort you all to follow Christ and in those times when you need a little direction in life, pray for some help then start going on your way, without knowing for sure what you should do. 

I love you all so much and hope you have the best week ever.

Love, 

Elder Bailey

Wherein Seth Video-Calls Home for the First Time!

August 15th = P-day; August 16th = Dad's Birthday and First Skype Call Home!


     So it's dad's birthday tomorrow, we're allowed to call and say hello
if y'all wanted. I think it would be best done through Google Hangouts.
If that's something you're up for email me with the Gmail account that
would work and the time that would work best. If not that is
completely fine and I'll call you at Christmas.
     Also, on a completely different topic, aunt Allison sent me a package
through the missionary package service thingy with a bunch of snacks
and stuff but I don't have her email so if you wouldn't mind texting
her or something and just let her know that I'm extremely grateful for
the package and her love and support for me on my mission, that would
be much appreciated.
. Literally like nothing happened this week. The package service is just something that Mexicans do where you pay for it online, they go and pick it up from the store and bring it to the CCM. I'm not sure exactly how. All my roommates got some giant packages full of food and we definitely can't eat all of it so I won't need a package in the ccm. Hopefully life will spice up a little bit when I get to the field. 

Love you much, 

Elder Bailey

 Oh, also we had fish tacos for lunch today and they were freaking bomb so that was a little tender mercy from the Lord. 🐟🌮 👌😀

So great to see his face and hear his voice! 

Wherein Seth Teaches Us about Patience.

August 9, 2019

   Dad, 
     Happy to hear things are going well at home. You can use all the sulfur you want, and the ammonium nitrate I left in the back of the Subaru you can also use, but I would suggest mixing it 95 to 5 with that aluminum powder and using it as tannerite. It's a lot more fun. Then you can also use the potassium nitrate for whatever, it's a stump remover but it could work as a fertilizer... Not sure. The potassium perchlorate prolly isn't good for plants but you can mix it two to one with the aluminum powder and just get rid of it all in a fascinating boom for your bday next week or Jackson's tomorrow. Either way, probably shouldn't throw them all away together because they could break open in the truck, mix, and destroy some poor garbage truck. That wouldn't be good. 

My companion is from San Antonio but has lived all over the south because his dad's in the military. They sell digital cameras here in the tienda for 2100ish pesos (~$120) so I could just but one. Or if you find out a safe way to transport it, you can do that. I also would like grandpa's first two books to read later in my mission so if you sent the camera, it'd be nice if you could send those too. Heck, maybe you could hide the camera inside one of the books. I dunno. Anyway, best of luck with the Spanish and your new job. I'll see if I can call you on your birthday with Google Hangouts or Facebook messenger. 

Love you a million,

Seth

Elder Bailey

Mom, 

So I didn't get to email yesterday because they changed my p-day to Friday this week so that we could all meet with the consolate and get some green cards or something today. Funny enough, they didn't even
have my district in the list so we're not even doing that. I hope all goes well with grandpa, I'm sure it will all work out in the end. It makes me happy that the youth conference went well, in all reality I didn't do a lot of planning for it but from what I heard in all the meetings I went to to plan it, it was supposed to be pretty awesome.
Life here is pretty routine. I wake up every morning, 5 am, and make some soup. It's the best. Jk I wake up at 6:30, shower and get ready for the day, go to breakfast at 7:30, class at 8, lunch at 12:15, gym time, and class again at 2:30 until dinner at 6:45. We then have study time from 7:30 til 9 and then go back to the house, journal and just

hang out til bed at 10:15. Yesterday was an incredible day in kinda a strange way. My companion is having a pretty rough time here (please keep him in your prayers), he gets frustrated when asked to do things
in Spanish because, funny enough, he's not fluent in Spanish, much like the rest of us. I love him to death and try my best to help him with whatever knowledge I might be able to offer, but he usually pushes me away and tries to figure it out on his own. It's kinda hard
being rejected/ shunned for trying to help (which I'm sure will happen plenty in the field) so I ended up reading in preach my gospel and opened to the page on the Christ-like attribute of patience. I hadn't
read it in a while so I did and it was exactly what I needed. I couple hours later our teacher lead a Book of Mormon read which was Alma 38. It too talked about patience. We had a great discussion on the topic and my teacher told of her time on her mission and what it taught her.
She said she tends to get frustrated at small things and that when she does, she thinks of Christ. No matter how small the inconvenience in life, he suffered for it.
I know He didn't just come to the earth to pay for our sins, 

He loves us so much that He knelt down and felt everything we would. He felt the broken bones, the stitch in your side, the debilitating and splitting headaches that never seem to end, the frustration when your
toddler breaks your China, the worried soul, and the broken heart. Everything. I'm sure He knew what they were like, but that wasn't enough. He wanted to feel what they were like so that when we had to feel them too, we could rely on him.
    This reminds me of a line in El Cristo Viviente, Él dio Su vida para expiar los pecados de todo el género humano. La Suya fue una gran dádiva vicaria en favor de todos los que habitarían la tierra. El expiación es realmente una dádiva para todos. Amo este eviiangelio y la experiencia que estoy predicando.

Thank you for all your prayers and support. I love you lots.
A fellow servant in the Lord, 

Elder Bailey 

Wherein Seth Visits the Mexico City Temple

August 1, 2019

     Oh man. Life sounds crazy up north. Everything has kinda settled into a routine now so it's dying down a bit on the excitement level. I too spoke in sacrament meeting on Sunday and will be singing in it this Sunday so I'm looking forward to that. Spanish is coming along real well and my teacher asked me last Saturday if I wanted to change to a
different district because my Spanish was "very professional." I thought and prayed about it for some time and figured there wasn't a solid reason not to so I told her yes and that was that. Then Monday rolled around and she said she talked to her supervisor and that it wouldn't work so now I'm still in district 3A with all my pals. I hope you all have fun at stake Youth Conference. We planned a lot of activities that should help you all grow spiritually so it
should be good.

     Oh that trip to Oregon sounds like a ton of fun. Kinda sad y'all waited for me to leave to go on it. Jaja! I honestly have never seen whales or redwoods ever in my life so we'll  have to go back when I get home. And that's really sad that brother Pappas died. He was a really great and nice man that I looked up to and admired. (And his cooking was divine). You guys should have them over for game night some more. 

      My p-day will be on Friday next week just as a heads up. I got to go to the temple today which was incredible. Oh how I miss working there. It was pretty neat cause one of our teachers, Hermano Gallegos, is a temple worker there and we got to see him. He's one of the funnest craziest spiritual guys I've ever met. Dad, best of luck with your new job. Work hard and it'll be worth it. Love you.

Miles: Here in México is really nice. It never really gets cold but it rains every day so that's fun. This week I gave a talk in sacrament about personal revelation and got asked if I wanted to transfer districts cause my Spanish was pretty good. I said yeah, cause why not? Then my entire cuarteto freaked out on me and then some logistics got in the way and I couldn't. I do miss your sandwiches though. The food here is great and is all you can eat so I stuff myself every meal, but the food gets old and is not American or really even Mexican. And I can't wait to get back and beat you in Frisbee golf. (Jk, you'll probably be way better than me.) Anyway, I'm gonna go to the temple today so I'll see if I can send pictures. 

Love ya lots. 

Elder Bailey