Elder Bailey

Dear Friends and Family:

As you know, I stayed in Boynton Beach North. But you may not have known that Elder Van Wagenen was transfered to the Coconut Creek ward, and that my new companion is Elder Bailey. He's an english missionary, and he's really awesome from the few days we've had together so far.

Boynton Beach North is an all-bike area. However, Elder Bailey has been instructed by a doctor to stay off of a bike for the next two months. Is there a contradiction? No. Because, for at least the next two months, this area has a car! (With unlimited medical miles!) Hooray!

Elder Bailey is very tall. He is 6'7". He likes to play basketball, and he likes to read, and to exercise, and to be outside. He's not quite as happy as I am that he can't use a bike for a while. I'm just counting my many blessings. He's also a very hard worker, and a great teacher. We have seen so many miracles in these days that we have been together.

We are currently teaching some very awesome investigators. They are some of the most elect I have ever taught.

The two baptisms that are scheduled for this next Sunday are Shelly S. and Claricia D. They are two Haitian ladies who we found while we were harvesting on our first day together, after we got home from Wednesday's transfer meeting. They don't speak English, so as we went back to teach them I was the only one who could really participate in the lesson. They have been keeping every commitment that we have given them. Shelly, in particular, is always apologetic that she only read the assigned chapters once, and she has not yet reread them, so she says she still doesn't have a full understanding. But, she's the only investigator I've met so far who's had any idea what it is that she read, and who naturally applies it to herself. Claricia is less verbose, but she is just as excited about being baptized this Sunday.

We also found out that they know Boynton Beach Central's investigators who were just baptized yesterday. We're going to try to get them to come out teaching Shelly and Claricia with us.

There were so many other transfer day/transfer week miracles that we have seen. We've accidentally found the elect while we are going to teach a different investigator, we've taken out members to teach who, as it turns out, already knew and were friends with the investigators, we've seen our numbers for the week jump from almost 0 at the end of Wednesday to almost standards by the end... And now we have a car, so we can be even more effective with our time.

Last week, I forgot to mention: we found a less-active member by accident. It was a miracle that we did, he had moved without telling anyone where he was going. We were biking home for the night, and we stopped to give a guy a card. He told us that he used to go to our church, and over the next few minutes we found out that he was Michael LaForge, who was baptized over a year ago, and who had stopped going to church because he didn't have a ride.

Hurricane season started yesterday. I believe it'll last for about four months, until September.

Pray for Shelly and Claricia, so they will be able to be baptized this week; and pray for Jarmel, Tameka, and Myrlande, so that they will be able to be baptized the week after.

I love you all!

Thanks,

Elder Slade