12/8/14 | Hellooo

Dear Family 

How are you all doing?! I'm good because I'm eating hi-chews as I type this. We had a really quite memorable week :). Lets start with...

MONDAY: We had the most smashing day in Center City Philadelphia! We took the subway and Sister Cost was freaking out with excitement (she had never been on the subway before) We got off at City Hall (its a super cool station, it comes up above ground in the middle of city hall...just google it, it's cool. We made our way across the street to Love Park to find the Christmas Village. That is my favorite christmas thing ever! I think I'll come every year. We went and saw all the vendors and marveled at their very costly things before we settled on buying some foreign cheese and calling it quits. From there we made our way to the temple! Oh my goodness it is coming along so nicely!!!! Its so big! Here is something fun to know about it, when the church was working with the city of Philadelphia to get the building permits and other tedious things sorted out, the Catholic church threw a fit and said that the temple couldn't be taller than their cathedral just a few blocks away. The church complied and made it the exact same height, but because of a slight incline of the land, our temple is a wee bit taller :). thats all. Anyways, as we were walking up the block to the temple, guess who we saw......Sister Bettilyon!!!! WAaaahooooo! What a coincidence right?!  Just kidding there are no such things as coincidences, especially when you invite your favorite people to meet you in the city on p day :). So we made our way back to Love Park with her and her companion (Sister Larsen from Alpine!) and then we met up with Sister Shaia! oh my goodness right?! thats way too many fun people in the same place to be allowed. We took 100 pictures and then went to grab some foods at Reading Terminal Market. YUM. There we found Sister Manson! here is a fun story about running into her: We had planned on meeting her and had called her earlier to see where they were. they were still doing chores and said they would call us when they were done. Our phone is very special and decided not to do anything when they called 100 times. :( So they gave up on trying to find us and were starving to death so they moseyed their way to the Market. Sister Manson was having a sad day and really wanted to see me badly, so she closed her eyes and said a little prayer pleading to Heavenly Father to let them find us somehow. Right when she opened her eyes, there I was waving vigorously from  across the way! Happy Happy Happy! After Lunch we made the trek to the rocky steps and marveled at what a beautiful city we were in at the top. Ah, Philadelphia truly is beautiful. (Mom and Dad, you know...NYC is just a short train ride away, haha) Oh I forgot to mention what a warm day it was too! all the way up in the 60's! I didn't even wear a coat :). Night was falling, so we made our way back to the subway station to findd that  sister cost had lost her subway token, unfortunate. We ended up having to baack ttrack to the station that sold tokens but it was all good. That night we taught a leess active  familiy.  yay. 

Wednesday: 

We had interviews with President Anderson!!! I Love President Anderson. We had a wonderful chat. When I first got in there, he looked at me and said, "Sister Bailey, Sister  Cost thinks you walk on water!" Ah I chuckled a bit and said "I know, its the worst" He smiled real big and said that he agreed with her. He went on to contemplate what he was going to do without me when I go home. I told him to just let me stay!!! but he can't, oh well it was worth a try. He has some big big plans for the pennypack area. He had me draw our the ward boundaries and the missionary area boundaries on the chalk board and we discussed possibilities of changes to be made. Our ward has too many mmissionaries so he wanted to pick my brain on how I would change stuff. It was good.

That night we taught a new less active that contacted the bishop because she wants to ccome back!!! Her name is Belinda and I think she is secretly a model, but her cover is tthat she works at a bank. She is so ready to come back to church it is incredible! and she wants to get into family history! 

Thursday: Zone Training. We were asked to teach for a portion of the training about Repentance and Companionship Unity. It went so well! We had been preparing when we had spare time through the week and I was wondering how it would all come together. Let me tell you how it came together: the Holy Ghost! We had prepared as much as we possibly could and just jumped into it with faith so the holy ghost helped us and made up the difference in our message. Me and the Holy Ghost came up with the 7 Be's to a Happy Companionship during one of my personal studies earlier in the week :). They are:

Be Meek

Be Humble

Be Honest

Be Patient

Be Sorry

Be Repentant

Be a Listener 

We taught some other stuff with it too and everyone loved it! The Zone Leaders had asked me to do the musical number too so I whipped up a little mash-up of "when I am baptized" and "let zion in her beauty rise" and roped sister cost, sister clark and sister ricks to sing. It went really well! I just love the spirit music brings! After the meeting we had trainer accountability with the Zone Leaders and gave them a double in list before we hit the pavement. 

Friday: Exchanges 

Sister Manson came to work in Pennypack with me for the day. We had the most incredible day! Sister cost and I had identified a street we wanted to knock (due to all of the christmas lights we saw on it) so I took sister Manson there and we started knocking with little success. So we switched to talking to literally every person that we saw on that street, weather they were just walking by or getting in or out of their car etc etc. It was incredible! We ended up staying on that one half block for at least 3 hours. One girl, named Becky, we knocked on her door and used the he is the gift approach. she was interested and we showed it to her right there on her doorstep #iPadblessing. She wants to meet with us again! Elder Millerberg (our district leader) came up with a facebook project for our district. With every person we talk to about he is the gift, we are to take a selfie with them and the card, post it on facebook, tag them and have them share it on their wall. cool huh, so we took a selfie with becky and are super excited to meet with her again. Then we talked to a man named Tom who was getting out of his car with his son, his son was rude and stomped into the house but tom stayed out to talk with us. We shared the he is the gift video and he wants to come to church! We gave him a Book of Mormon and he was so excited to read it1 (he didnt end up being able to come to church this week because of his work but he is coming next week!) Then we ran into a rude woman to told us to bug off. very rude. (I'm telling you this for a reason, remember this lady). We went about our business talking to everyone. Lots of rude Philadelphians, lots of nice-ish (nice by east coast standards, which apparently isnt nice but I can't tell anymore) people. We stopped and talked to a woman smoking on her porch. She wasn't interested but somehow found herself walking from the cover of her porch (it was raining) down her sidewalk and to her gate where we were waiting to talk to her. Turns out she is Puerto Rican and lives down there for half of the year. She recognized our tags, put two and two together and told us about the Elders that visit her in Puerto Rico. She said she sees them all the time and always invites them in for a break and drink of water. I asked her if she knew what they taught people and she said no. She still wasnt interested in hearing it from us but I asked her if she would do something for me. I pulled out a restoration pamplet and told her that we teach people about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I asked her to, whenn she was in puerto rico next week and saw the elders, to pull our this pamphlet and ask them to teach her. I explained that they would be so shocked and thrilled! I wrotte our  name and phone number on the back and told her to call us and tell us their reaction to our little prank :) She laughed and delightfully agreed! Now when the elders teach her, she will feel the spirit and be baptized before the returns to the US! After that eencounter  we made our way back down the street. We ran into that mean woman again, she was clearly still angry and trying to wash her windows. We opened her gate and approached her, she assured us that she wasn't interested but that we could knockk on her door and see if her boyfriend was interested. We watched her struggle for a moment, then I told her that I would be washing her windows today. She looked att me like I was mad but agreed because of my height advantage. As I washed her winddows  we were able to talk with her and get to know her. Let me just tell you taht  sservice  seriously softens hearts because by the end of or talk with her. she was hugging us (liek  5 times each) and saying that she knew it was no coincidence that we ccame to her her that day. We had a return appointment with her on wednesday  :). That night we taught Ross (after our dinner appointment where the members made us wwalk ttheir ddog...) oh my she is a hard one to teach. She is all over the place! First we get there and she makes me heal her bleeding cat with some ointment..the cat seriously hated it and tried to kill me. Ross kept bringing up strange hebrew and jewish books and dead sea scrolls and weird stuff I dont know about. It was rough. 

Sunday! 

We got to watch the devotional! Want to know my favorite part?? The part where everryone sang together and I couldnt help but think about all you hooligans singing at tthe same time with me :) Guess what! Before the devo, there were people practicing sinnging for the mesiah sing a long in the chapel, and I knew most of them!! they were all from the morrisville ward! It was so fun to see them all!

Well family, I love you so so much. all the way to the moon and back (speaking of, did you see the moon the last night!? it was incredible!) I hope you happy week. I get to speak at young womens in excelence on wednesday and then speak again in church onn sunday so wish me luck! You all mean the world to me :) mmmmwwaaahh! 

Love, Sister B. 

Sister Bailey Loves YOU!