Sister Alyssa Bailey: 11/18/13

This week was spent in my apartment...boooooo. 100% not my favorite thing! Sister B has been in bed all week with some sort of major exhaustion caused by either her thyroid or extreme hypoglycemia. Super sad to see her like that. But I can say that I learned a lot about companionship unity this week. As (hopefully) you can tell, sis b and i are the best of friends! So I had been wondering how our companionship could get any stronger! Well the Lord decided to show me how (sorry sister b). Forced service. Sister B is someone that is very hard to serve because she likes to do everything for herself. I had been trying to find ways to serve her and just wasn't coming up with anything until she literally couldn't do anything. I have had so many opportunities to serve her this week! At times (like at district meeting) she is too weak to even open the lid of her water bottle--service opp. She has to eat every 3-4 hours--service opp. The list of service opps goes on and on but I wasn't even put out by having to do all of those things for her! Over the week our friendship and companionship has grown even stronger and I can't even wait for her to get better and we can hit the streets of west chester! yayyy.

So...we were supposed to stay in our apartment 24/7 this week (mission nurse's order) but sometimes you just have to leave the apartment and do some missionary work anyways...whoops. On one night that we decided to be missionaries. We went to the Lovely L____'s house for dinner. I'm not going to go into any real detail but when we arrived, there was a real crisis happening. It just sounded like an argument of sorts so we decided to drive around the block and give them some time to cool off. we came back 10 min later and there were a few cop cars. We texted M__ and asked if everything was ok, she said no...We asked what we could do for her and she said "Pray for my son" At that moment, K____ came running out to our car absolutely hysterical. She jumped in our car and gave us a sobbing run down of what had happened. Turns our B___ had had some sort of rage fit and had taken off into the woods. The police had the area surrounded and were looking for him with the K9 unit. H_____ came out to the car with C___ (k___'s baby) and was pretty shaken up too. Between sobs, K___ asked if we would say a prayer. We did and then she made us come in the house with her. They found B____ and lots of stuff happened and T__ and M__ went to the hospital to see B____. K___ and H____ begged us to stay with them and have dinner and just help them keep the spirit in their home. So we did and we got to share a really good message (mormon message style) with Z___ there and everything (he's not a member). It was a much needed miracle for us to be in their home that night and I'm so glad that the Lord has allowed us to grow so close to this family.

Miracle: T__ L_____ CAME TO CHURCH! With M____ and K___, H____ and C___!!! We were so so happy we both shook T__'s hand twice cause we can't hug him :).

Last night I spoke at a fireside about "How I decided to serve a mission and How I prepared." (When the bishop asked me to speak on this last week, I was like, I've already shared that story with everyone in sacrament meeting and basically every member that has ever invited us over for dinner so I'm not sure what I can add to it...bad attitude). It was really odd, that yesterday morning at church, Bishop came and found me to tell me how much he really wanted me there to speak tonight and that if we had to, he would find a woman to go and stay with sister b while I went to the fireside. The elders told us later that he had expressed to them as well how much he wanted me there to speak...odd

Remember last week when I told you about when we had dinner at D_____'s house and the room would fall absolutely silent every time I spoke about the gospel, Well that happened tonight while I was speaking. It was an absolute wonder. It's amazing to me how much the YW loved hearing my story, I guess for them, most have already decided that they want to serve a mission. They were absolutely shocked when I told them that I had no desire to serve a mission until the spirit prompted me to. It was at the O'___ home and went really really well! Elder M spoke too. I was so nervous about speaking all week long but after I felt so happy and uplifted! yay. Before we left, we were sure to thank the O'___ for having us in their home. Now, Sister O'___is a member but Mr. O'___ is not. He owns the 76ers (can you picture what a beautiful house they have!?) So we went and shook his hand and he thanked us for coming. Then he looked at me and said "you have a beautiful testimony." oh geese thanks and yes we can be best friends and I would actually love to go to a basketball game or two. :) But yeah last night was super good and I love all of the youth in our ward and never want to leave Sister B or West Chester.

I actually brought a picture of the fam to show some of the yw that have been nagging me to see the boys. hahah they about keeled over when they saw you guys! ha and they're really cute tooo! and they come to utah every summer and some are going to start writing spencer :). My favorite one is M____ C_____...she is 12 and so much funny and pretty and Randon she thinks you are so CUTE!!! perfect :)

Well thats about all that happened this week. Super exciting. OH wait! Amidst all of the sitting and studying in the apartment this week, I figured out how to teach lessons on the phone so we wouldn't have 0 week :) yay! We were only one short of our goal for lessons taught! yayyy!

Love you 100 my people.

<3 Sister Bailey

P.S. Holidays in the mission are going to be bliss :) We've already had one thanksgiving dinner and have 2 planned for thanksgiving day (we had to turn down like 100 offers and figured we could do 2 dinners :)) oh and people are already fighting over us for Christmas Dinner.