2/16/15 | Sometimes the Lord reminds me to be grateful...

Sometimes the Lord reminds me to be grateful...

That I'm not serving in Russia. Coldest girl in coldtown over here. The past two days have been the coldest Philadelphia has had since 1700 something. It's 10 degrees right now so it's warmed up a bit. haaaaa seriously: 

This is real life. But we're keeping warm. I've been wearing double fleece lined tights and layers upon layers of sweaters and coats. OHHH boy...this week was one for the book of crazy pants! 

Monday: We decided to wear jeans and do nothing :) We just chilled at the apartment, I made some bread and crafted and stuff. It was just lovely. 

Tuesday: tuesday was....welll bad. Sister Cost cried a lot for a few hours. We were talking about what we should do to help her with her constant deepening depression and she felt prompted to say a prayer. Before the prayer, I told her to listen very closely to any prompting or thought that would come to her mind and I would do the same. During the prayer, I felt prompted to contact the Center City Sisters (Sisters Manson and Jolley --YES! Sister jolley the gublers friend...she is seriously great and wonderful by the way) and see if we could mini exchange or something. We headed down there a few min later for a double in! Miracle! I went out with Sister Jolley and Sister Cost went out with sister manson. It turned out to be perfect because they had too many overlapping things to do that day so Sister J and I took the odds and ends things while Sisters M and C took the teaching appointments :). They went and taught a girl that is struggling with depression so it was really good for sister Cost, She was able to help her. Meanwhile sister Jolley and I had quite the adventure! haaa on my goodness we spent a couple hours driving around center city looking for a parking spot so we could get out and find a big list of less actives...by the time we found a spot...it was too late and we had to head to the church for the RS activity. That night it too another 40 min to find a parking spot..ha. We ended up parking blocks and blocks away and had to run to the apartment. We had a sleep over on the floor and left in the morning after studies. Oh wait... I almost forgot, we lost the car. We walked around for dayyysss looking for the car but couldnt find it...finally we piled up all our stuff and sent sister jolley and manson off to find it. They did and we were on our way ;). Oh mission adventures at their finest. 

Wednesday: I don't really remember what happened on wednesday; I practiced the piano for a sec cause Elders Millerberg and Issertell asked me to play for Zone training with the request of "make it fancy" ha. 

Thursday: Zone training day! It went really well! The Elders taught us effective planning with all the resources we have on the ipad and stuff. Oh Oh OH! Delta burrs: Do you knoow an Elder Shamo?? he is in my zone and he said that uncle james was his dads best man at their wedding! 

Friday: Sister cost woke up with a terrible migraine so I spent the morning studying 100 things...then I crafted up 100 things (painted, embroidered and smashed!), it all got terribly boring after a while. oh I also watched all of the district episodes, all the i'm a mormon's and 2 episodes of the joseph smith papers. ha. 

Saturday: Our heater broke in the night...it was mighty cold in the apt in the morning. The heater man came pretty quick though so we went to the church to study. Then all off our appointments cancelled because it was "too cold" (people out here are crazy) I took sister cost out to panera for lunch for valentines day becasue I am the nicest companion in the whole united states. After that we went to help  a family in the ward unpack (they just moved in). That was fun. Came home and showered off the cold so we would be decent for our dinner appointment. wonderful. 

Sunday: Damien didnt make it to church..which means he didnt get confirmed :( but it's ok, he will make it next week. Basically no one made it to church this week. that what haappens when it is too cold. Oh well. All of our appointments cancelled on sunday too.

So that's how this week went. pretty comical to look back on. This morning we took a trip down to Broomall! Sister Cost had a visit with Elder Jones (he is one of the senior couple office elders and conveniently is a psychologist too) They had a good visit and talked about what sister cost can do to help herself. meanwhile, I had THE greatest time with Sister Jones! Greatest greatest. And now we are at Pei Wei's eating crab wontons (that's right, thinking of you Mumsie pants!) 

Love you all so so much! I will send some pictures later when I get home. oh and a big bbig happy birthday to my baby PIKA!!!! I can't believe you are 14!! and happy birthday's to grandma Burr and Grandpa Bailey!!! 

L0

VE,

Sister Bailey 

2/9/15 | We had 2 really cold days and 2 really warm days this week

Helloooo! 

What a wonderful week we had here in Pennypack!..Ok actually the beginning of our week wasn't that spectacular but the end made up for it. Sister Cost has been struggling with some things, it has all been adding up and she crumbles sometimes...but then she gets to meet with the mission counselor just in time and things get better :). SIster Cost had a dream about getting a blessing, so we drove down to Frankford (where the district leader serves) and the elders gave her a blessing. I ended up asking for a blessing too because it's hard to have companions that struggle like this and I needed some extra help. It was really good. 

Despite the struggles of the week, we were able to meet with Damien a few times and finish his teaching. He is so solid! We taught him the law of chastity early in the week and it was just wonderful! He is so prepared for everything we teach him! He told us that right before he met us he started to struggle with aspects of the Law of Chastity, then after the first time we met and taught him, he felt prompted to stop those things! How cool is that!? We were able to testify to him that that experience he had was a manifestation of truth. Ah, I wish all of you could sit in on a lesson with damien, he is the perfect investigator. The District Leader came and interviewed him on thursday after district meeting and he passed :) 

Sunday we had stake conference (which was wonderful), right after the meeting was Damien's baptism! We finished filling the font and got the jumpsuits (The elders had an investigator get baptized too! Her name is Imoni) and everything was ready to go! President and Sister Anderson stayed too :). The program was beautiful and so many people came! We were on the inside of the font to give them their towels when they came out. My goodness, to have the opportunity to be the tool by which someone receives the gospel is such an incredible thing. Sister Cost was crying the whole time because she was so happy. It was just a beautiful day. After the baptism we had a light Haitian lunch (imoni is Haitian) and then we got a text from Tyreese, our investigator, saying he wanted us to come teach him! yay! So we headed to the Menezes and taught him the 10 commandments. 

Yesterday, I made a more specific effort to follow the promptings I would receive. So I followed every single random thought I got. The spirit led us to a few less actives with no success, then we knocked on Jennifer Smith's door. A LA we have been trying to get in contact with for 6+ weeks. She opened the door and exclaimed, "I knew you would come today!!!" As we were talking with her, I listened, really listened and felt prompted to show a specific mormon message with her. She cried through it and said, "that is exactly how I feel all the time." (it was you never know mormon message). We were able to testify that God loves her and knows her and sees her efforts! It was so good!

Elder Gordon Smith of the Seventy came to our stake conference meetings this weekend. He is THE MOST incredible speaker I have ever heard, I could listen to him for dayz. He told a story of when he was on an assignment in the middle east (he's a politician), he was on his way to a meeting through the desert and he saw a sign pointing to a place called Gilead. That night while he was sharing a meal with some king of some small country no one has ever heard of, he asked him if they made balm in Gilead still. The king had no idea what he was talking about so he explained how in the bible there is this balm made in Gilead. The kIng turned to his assistant and said he wanted a report on his desk in the morning regarding this balm and wether you can still get it there. Several weeks later, Elder Smith got a letter in the mail of the report. He opened the envelope and found a rather short description of the balm, taken directly from our bible dictionary :). At the bottom was written out, "We don't make it anymore." Elder Smith went on to testify that although this healing balm was no longer made in Gilead, The Savior provides that healing balm, the balm that heals all wounds! Wether physical, spiritual, mental, or emotional, His Atonement can and will heal us every time!

I was so happy to be able to see so many people I love from the Morrisville ward! I was so happy to see that so many of them remembered me, a few even ran to hug me :). I love being a missionary. There is no greater love than the love you gain from serving people and bringing the gospel into their lives. Oh I almost forgot! 2 miracles happened as we walked into stake conference on sunday! We were headed into the chapel and a man stopped us, he told us he was less active but wanted to come back, he also said that he has a neighbor that is interested in hearing from us! Then the cutest lady came and found us, she had served her mission in Ukraine and had a LA member that she taught that moved into our ward. She wanted us to contact her and help her feel needed. :) How cool is that?! pretttyyy cool i'd say. 

Well, I can tell you this, The gospel if Jesus Christ is real and true and I am so grateful that we have all been so blessed to have it in our lives! I love you all and hope you have a really wonderful week. I'm realll happy that lil button baby made it here safely. Three cheers for A. Mae! She does look really nice. 

Love,

Sister Alyssa Bailey 

Damien's baptism

Three cheers for making covenants!!

Look! It's me and sister co$t

Fresh outta the oven!! Just like baby Audrey

2/2/15

Happy February Folks! 

We had a week of miracles!!!!! 

Christy Negron came into our lives! She called us out of nowhere on tuesday and asked if we could meet with her. We were like uh yahhh! then we were like wait who was that??? ha so we set up the appointment with her for the next day at the church. 

The lesson was so good! She explained how she came out of the blue; she lived in Vineland NJ and was meeting with the missionaries there a while ago, then she moved to philly and somehow got our number and wanted to continue learning from the missionaries. She was so full of questions! So our first meeting was mostly her asking 100 questions and clearing up stuff the elders in Jersey taught her. We set up another appointment wit her at her house and invited her to invite her husband to join us. So we met with her again on friday and it was incredible! We taught the restoration and she was hanging on to every single word we said! It was wonderful. and her husband really liked it too. We commited her to be baptized on March 8th, and she accepted :). Her husband isn't sure yet but they both came to church on sunday and had a really good experience. 

Gary Dean, did I tell you about Gary?? He's the one that waltzed into the church building last sunday and wanted to learn. So we've continued teaching him this week. He also has a baptismal date for March 8th! The last time we met with him, he brought his brother with him, Greg. Greg is a bible basher. So we start teaching the restoration and it is going really well. the spirit was very very strong and gary was very emotional through it. Then Greg flipped out a little bit over his confusion between the gospels (as in matthew mark luke and john) and the gospel of jesus christ. So he spouts of for a min but we reined him back in pretty quickly. He continued to try to take the lesson off track here and there but he spirit wouldn't let him. At the end of the lesson, we offered him a Book of Mormon, he said no. So we prayed and right after the prayer he said, "actually I'll take the book, I want to read it and see" We gave him the book and he took it out to the car and started reading immediately while we were still chatting with Gary and setting up another appointment. It was really cool to see how the spirit can influence even crazy people and people who want to prove us wrong :). The next day,, Gary called us and told us that the reason he brought Greg with us was to disprove us. (gee thanks gary) He said that if Greg couldn't prove us wrong then we must be right! haa, Gary's cray.

Damien is still on schedule to be baptized this sunday! Pray for him. He is doing so good! He has such a stong testimony! 

At Zone training at the begining of the month, Elder Millerberg and Elder Zoleman commited all of us to set a goal for when we could reach all of the standards of excellence in our area. Thats reaching the mission number goals. We set a goal to hit all of them the last week of the transfer (this week) and we did it!!!!! I was so so so so soo sos happy! I love reaching goals! Our area is on fire ;) 

We did get some bad news last night though, Christy dosn't live in our area. We had to turn her over to the Jerrettown Elders but its ok because she will still get baptized and aall that good stuff. :). 

Oh my goodness, Monday! Last monday was the funnest p day in the whole united states! Tom took us to Philly with the elders and it was so so fun! We hit the rocky steps, fairmont waterworks (like on monopoly), oldest post office in merica, independence hall, liberty bell, ben franks home and had THE BEST cheese stakes everrrrrr. Just so you know, when yous go get a cheese stake, get it wit whiz!!!! YUMMM.  

Well, that's basically all I've got. I'll send some pics from last p day. I love you all 100 annd I AM SO EXCITED FOR THE ARRIVAL OF THAT LITTLE BUTTON!  Oh myy goodneess I bet she will look like me too :). ah little Audrey Alyssa Dickson, what a beauutiful name. Have a good time with her and stuffy stuff. until next week: 

Sister B 

That bell of Liberty.

the oldest post office. See that tunnel...Benny Frank used to walk
through there to go home every day....guess how I know that...

ROCKY BALBOA