Monday, December 15, 2014

12/15/14 | Hello from Pennypack

Happy Happy Merry Merry! 
I am SO excited for Christmas! We had a super week filled with Christmas Spirit and pass along cards. The coolest thing happened!We were leaving an appointment with a less active and were headed to the car. We saw a woman moving around her garbage cans and stopped to help her. I introduced us as missionaries, we got talking, and I asked her if she celebrated Christmas. She said she "sort of did Christmas." I chuckled a little and asked her what on earth that meant! She then went on to tell us how she really hated how Christmas has turned into such a commercial holiday that came with so much stress instead of joy and peace. We readily agreed with her and went on to tell her about the message we have been sharing with everyone this season. She was very excited to see 'He is the Gift' and invited us over the next day to show her and her eight year old granddaughter! (They had to reschedule because they got sick, but we've been in contact with her and she is still really looking forward to having us over.) 
After our conversation with that woman, we continued down the street, away from our car for some reason. Just a few houses down, a woman (Johannah) emerged and asked from her porch, "Hey did you girls say you were missionaries?!" (she had heard us talking to her neighbor down the street and had gone in her house and waited patiently for us to walk by) "Yes! we are missionaries!" we replied as we walked through her gate and up to her door. She sat down on her stairs and told us that her mother had died within the past year and she was having a really hard time with it. We were able to teach and testify of the plan of salvation right then and there! Then she told us about a friend she has who the missionaries found, taught and baptized. She has been able to witness the complete turn around he has been able to make in his life with the gospel and wants the same for herself. We will hopefully be able to meet with her this week. 
Ah, this was just the coolest experience for me because I usually don't introduce us as missionaries. I try to tell them that we are servants of the lord or messengers of god because people get freaked out by the word 'missionary.' But for some reason I said it that day. I am so grateful I did! If I hadn't, Johannah wouldn't have stopped us! And I have no idea why we even walked down the street instead of going to our car. I guess the spirit can prompt us to do thing without us even realizing it sometimes. 
We had Golden Retraining on Tuesday, It's this 5 hour meeting that trainers and golden's get to go to and it's the best! President and Sister Anderson and the AP's taught us 100 good things! We watched a talk called "It's better to Look up" by Elder Someone Cook. New favorite. Also, when we first got to the meeting, I went up and played the prelude music cause no one else was. People were bustling around getting settled and President came in. He walked right up to the stand and leaned over to me. Right up in my face he says to me, "You have been hiding that  from me your whole misssion!?!" haaaa, well most of my Zone's know I play, I told him. " Ah! just keep playing!" he instructed and walked away. Looks like I've got to watch my back at missionary meetings from here on out :). Oh then Elder Tarry was conducting and announced the song and prayer bla bla bla, then turns to me and is like, Oh and sister bailey will you play? And that is why I don't play at missionary meetings. because then they ask you to play and you've got to say, uh yeah, no I can't read music. and everyone stares at you real funny like you are a lying lie face because clearly you can play the piano. Yeah so that happened :). 
On Wednesday the YW had young women's in excellence thingy. They asked me to speak at it and it went pretty well.Thursday it snowed!!! and stuck but then melted so still no snow on the ground up here but I'm not sad. We had district meeting in Jerettown so we had to go pick up the elders (they don't have a car) and drive for an hour, which is strange considering that it was supposed to me 15 min away. We had the best meeting. Elder Millerberg taught us about Elias and how he is a person back in Noah time but that Elias is also a title meaning forerunner or  restorer. Look it up in the guide to the scriptures, there is some pretty cool stuff in there. We also learned about family history work. I got on family search and guess what, Reva Petersen isn't on my trree. mom, can you do me a favor and go in to my family serch and get that sorted out??? I dont want to break it :). After the meeting we got to have lunch with the Carrs! They are the ones overseeing the temple sight. They fed our whole Zone a Christmas feast! It was wonderful! 
I gave a talk yesterday about sharing the gift. It went rather well, sister cost spoke too. They are changing up our area this transfer, The other sisters that were in pennypack are being doubled out and our district leader is now our zone leader which leaves our district without a district leader and I highly doubt they will put more elders into our ward so we might be experiencing some zone boundary changes this week. Our area is probably going to be doubling in size so that should be a fun take over. The Pennypack ward is awesome! We seriously love it here! 

Love you all 100

Sister Bailey 

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