The Hardest Thing I Have Ever Loved to Do

                                       18 Months
                                        565 Days
                                         5 Areas
                                        2 States
                                  10 Companions
                            2 Missions/Presidents
                             Countless Memories
            And most importantly... A Testimony Gained

Hello from Oregon one last time.

In two days, I will be returning home to California. If I told that to any random person here.... they would say good riddens to the Californians and then they would proceed to tell me to take all of my California friends back with me lol. Even though I am really excited to go back home, Idaho and Oregon have become my second home, and these people have become my family.

I have learned a lot of things on my mission and it would be quite impossible to even attempt to share all of them with you in this email. I am going to share just a little bit though.

• The atonement of Jesus Christ is real, it is infinite, it is powerful

• The Lord places us where He needs us

• Watch closely for black cows when driving at night

• Set goals and work towards them

• We are all children of God

• Don't mistake Ether 12:27 with 3 Nephi 12:27

• You cant afford to miss a day without scripture study

• Pray mightily, He is there and He is listening

• When chasing a chicken/or goat, form a corral around it and slowly block it in, dont run around trying to catch it...you wont

• Count your blessings daily

• Continuously build your testimony

• Heavenly Father has a sense of humor

• Time flies but we are the pilot


Sorry this is short, but I'll see ya in 2 days
(😊😅😭❤😁🎉) < All my emotions in a nutshell

Love you all!

Love,
Sister Bailey :)

Lindsey's Baptism 

Lindsey's Baptism 

Goodbye Oregon

Watch for Black Cows at night on the road!!

Christmas in Baker City

This week started out great! We got to go Caroling with our mission mom, Sister McCall! We usually have a lesson every Monday evening in the McCall home, but they decided to switch it up a bit and we went caroling! It was a blast!

That brings us to Christmas eve. What even happened Christmas eve...? Um... oh yeah! We weren't allowed to go visit people, so we got to play games with other missionaries! We also finally got to watch the Christmas devotional oops. It was so good though! They even sang one of the songs from Handels Messiah! Cool stuff. After all that we got to go to one of our recent converts home and help her prepare for Christmas dinner that we would be having the next day. On Christmas we played Christmas Jeopardy/games with the missionaries and it was a blast! Then we had our dinners, yes dinners as in multiple... no matter who it is, everyone just wants to feed the missionaries, non members and members. I'm not complaining though lol. Someone gave us a whole frozen Turkey and potatoes and gravy... idk when we are gonna have time to cook it but it's there. At the end of the day we went to the Lutz's home and watched Big Hero 6 with them, a recent convert, and her non member husband as well! SHOUT OUT TO AUDREY. Literally during the whole movie I was cracking up because I was thinking about how we couldn't even breath when we watched that movie. Haha wow. Good times.

Then the day after Christmas we tried to contact literally everyone, because everyone is super happy, with family, and home. Mega score. We also had a lesson with Cheri! She is amazing. She is so prepared! We also had a lesson with Josh and went to visit Pam and Anthony. We finally are getting to his deep questions and what he really wants. Now we can help him. It has been to cool to see his demeanor change slightly through our words and questions. He is now willing to keep commitments extended to him. Pam and Anthony are so excited to start lessons and learn more. She even wants to donate money to the missionaries because of what we do! They are the nicest people ever!

We went to Halfway this week for Lindsey's baptismal interview! She is so excited! Her brother Gabriel now wants to take the lessons and be baptized as well. MIRACLES! This work is truly amazing and the Lord is truly preparing everyone to receive the gospel. We also found someone named Dalton Baker who is willing to take the lessons. He has lots of friends who are missionaries and wants to see what exactly they are doing!

As of yesterday, the countdown was at 10 days left. My companion, Sister Stevenson and I, decided to tell our third companion, Sister Bateman that we are going home. She thought is was funny so we are all good there! Now we can help prepare her for taking over the area!

Love you all!
Love,
Sister Bailey :)

Merry Christmas!

Hey everyone! Ok so to start out the email, we had this super awesome Christmas Missionary Conference with a few of the zones surrounding us. We played games, sang songs and had a talent show. It was a blast. I also got to share my... departing.... testimony :( OH speaking of the departing testimony. I have no clue how, but Sister Bateman still hasn't clicked together that I am going home haha we are planning on telling her after New Years lol.

After the Christmas concert we made it back just in time for the institute party review. We found and invited Josh, who is not a member but loves food lol. For the institute activity, we made homemade pizza, reviewed what we learned in institute, and watched the Christ Child. It helped Josh open up and ask lots of questions. He then decided that he wanted to meet with us and take the lessons! He also came to church, and is planning on starting institute with everyone when it starts back up in January! So cool!

The next day we had district council, which is a meeting with us and the 2 sets of missionaries in La Grande. We talk about how we can be better and do better. This time we focused on goals and goal setting. The week before this district council, our companionship counseled about our goals with the Lord. We set goals for how many new people we would find to teach, how many people would attend our church meeting, and how many people that would be on date for baptism. We prayed mightily to know how many people the Lord has prepared for us to find this last week... a normal week we find 2 people the most... after we prayed we all looked at each other in confusion and everyone thought of 6... were there actually 6 people that the Lord prepared for us to find and teach? Or was it just our high hope's? We decided all good things come from the Lord and set it as our goal, but that is not all. We did everything we could to reach our goal. We saw so many miracles and yes, we found 6 new people to teach and they are ready and prepared fully. Wow. Out of those 6 people, 20 non members came to sacrament this week and multiple told us that they feel very comfortable coming again! We had 8 lessons this week and they were all miracles in their own way!

I know that this is the Lords work and He is preparing all to receive the gospel! I know that Jesus Christ Lives and that He loves us He loves us so much that He laid down his life for us, his friends. Even though He lives us so much, our love for Him is everything. Our love for him is what changes us, it's what brings us to obedience, it's what brings us to find joy, in life. I invite you to rejoice in repentance, rejoice in the atonement, and rejoice in Jesus Christ and His gospel always. He is our Savior and redeemer. He is our mediator and our advocate. He is rest, peace, and joy. He is Jesus Christ remember Him this Christmas, let him in. He is knocking at the door just waiting to be let into your life.

I love you all!
Love,
Sister Bailey :)

It's COLD !!!!

*gets phone call from a number in a different state

Me: "literally I think we are getting another spam call..."
Sister Bateman: "Do we answer it??"
Sister Stevenson: " aw man these spam calls are the WORST"
* Everyone comes to a consensus*
Me: "ok ok I'll answer... Hi! this is the missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints"
Austin: Hi, hello! Thanks for answering my call, my name is Austin.
Me: Oh Hi Austin! Thanks for calling!
*confused looks all around*
Austin: hey my friend invited me to watch general conference a few months ago and it has been on my mind lately... I guess I just have a few questions...

-continues phone call-

OK YEAH MIRACLE Austin is from Washington, moving to Baker city in a week! He has read the book of Mormon and loves the feelings he has when he reads it, he said it's the same feeling he had when he watched general conference! We are so excited to meet with him again!

We also found 3 new people because Sister Stevenson is SO inspired. We were knocking on a door for someone we had an appointment with... but there was no answer... so of course even if it didn't work out with the plans we had, there was a reason we were there at that time. Sister Stevenson looks up and says "hmmm let's go to that house" and so we went and we found Jeff.
We found out that he plays basketball at the church every Wednesday night and they have been to church before. He was heading out that night so we said we would stop by later in the week. We stopped by again and found Pam. We invited them to the special Christmas church meeting on the 22nd and she wants her son Anthony, to learn about religion and choose for himself what he wants. So we found a teaching opportunity with Anthony! He is about 11 years old (interesting age... temple???)

We also got to have lessons with April, Cheri , Riley, Damon, Karmen, Lindsey, and Jess. They are all progressing really well and we are getting everything ready for Lindsey's baptism on the 2nd. I'm going to have to make some trips back up to Baker in the next 2 months after January because all of these people are going to be baptized and I am just going to miss it!

We also had to make a trip to Boise this past week for a 3 week follow-up meeting for the new missionaries. Just to make sure they are surviving Haha. It was a super inspired meeting, since it was a ways back to our area, we got to spend the night in the mission home! Because of this, we were able to have a companionship study with the Nyggards! We focused our study's on finding. How we can effectively find those who want to hear about the gospel. It was super cool!

Yesterday we had the Messiah Choir concert and it was AWESOME! I did a solo ... just kidding lol I didn't do a solo Haha. But it was super fun! We drove with Jess and her friend and Jess is on top of everything. She invited her friend to come to our special Christmas sacrament program! We are super excited for that!

Last item of business: our heater broke Haha we are going to call the landlady and see if we can get it fixed because its cold!!! and it is only 12 degrees!!!

Love you all!
Love,
Sister Bailey :)

Yum ???

Thank you G-ma Claudette for the card making supplies

SOOOOO COLD!!!

Frozen Lake

Christmas

A day at the warm beach!

Gingerbread reality LOL

Gingerbread expectations 

Sister Brown is going home

Meet the Missionaries

Hi everyone!

This week we...
Had lessons with:
Damon and the McCalls
Cheri and the Murphys
Andrew and the Andersons
The Schaaf family
Lindsey and the Browns
Jess and the Lutz/Rushtons

We went to the Messiah choir practice
Had Interviews with president
Hosted a "Meet the Missionaries" night
Baked cookies to give
Found a service opportunity cleaning
Went to Baker Valley and Baker 2nd Christmas parties
Made Christmas crafts


We got to teach all of our lessons in member homes which was amazing! There are so many amazing fellowshippers in this area! All of our lessons went really well and Lindsey is planning to be baptized January 4th! She is super excited and so is the little branch she will be attending! Cheri and Andrew are excited for baptism also, we just gotta wait for the okay! Everyone is progressing really well!

The funniest lesson we had this week:

*says opening prayer
Mom: Ok kids sit down and listen for 5 minutes and if you can't do that then go to the other room so you don't distract from the lesson
Us: Awesome! We have a super fun video to show you! Are you ready!?
Kid #1: My favorite video is frozen! I'll go get it
Mom/us: No no no! This one is way better come watch!
Kid #2: hey hey hey hey hey ×10 tapping my shoulder watch flash jump! *proceeds to move his stuffed animal up and down
Kid #3 : I got to read in school today
Us: Reading is so good! Our favorite books are the bible and Book of Mormon do you read those?
Kid #3: yeah in class at school we read a chapter everyday
Mom: of the book of Mormon?
Kid#2: hey hey hey hey hey ×10 tapping my shoulder watch flash skip! *proceeds to move his stuffed animal up and down across the room
Mom: your teacher reads the book of Mormon to you in class?
Kid #1: hey mom where did frozen go?
Kid #3: ....
Mom: .......
Us: ..... well that's awesome! This video is super cool! *starts playing video ect...

Haha fun times lol

Speaking of kids, we had an activity with the older kids, the youth! We had an AMAZING "meet the missionaries night" that we put together with the youth! We had it at a members home and invited the ward missionaries. We didn't have any non members come but now that the youth know what will be happening they said they were excited to do another one and would bring their friends! During the activity we shared a short message about Jesus Christ, played fun "get to know you" games, and had snacks. I have learned that as long as there is food you are pretty much set lol.

I had my departing interview with president (the very last interview). I am so grateful that President Nygaard is my mission president, he has helped so many people in so many ways. He has the true Character of Christ. Shout out to mom and her inspired packages! Sister Nyggard was in need of Christmas craft ideas for zone conference during the interviews! Because of moms inspired (ness) we were able to share the ideas that were sent to us! Sister Nygaard thanks you and says you are the coolest mom ever! We also got to bake the cookie mix's that she sent, and give them out! The first batch were a little burnt.... but we got it down after that!

We also had so many Christmas parties! That was super fun and we saw lots of people we didn't recognize! Even someone who wants to meet with us now! Woohoo! That's all for this week! Remember to light the world one by one! Love you!
Love,
Sister Bailey:)

Star Clothespin hinge craft 

Snowflake Clothespin Craft

Popsicle Manger

Mega Snowstorm !!

This week we:

1. Got our new missionary
2. Had a lesson with Cheri, Lizzie, her mom, and Lindsey
3. Built a snowman
4. Watched Up
5. Met with Joni, The Cromptons, and the Millers
6. Went tracting
7. Went to Halfway
8. Decorated for Christmas!!!


Ok starting with #1. WE GOT OUR NEW COMPANION!!! Her name is Sister Bateman!! She is the cutest ever!!! Her favorite color is blue and her favorite animal is a penguin! She is from Texas... so none of us are good with snow... but it's fine Haha this is my 7th out of 9 companions that have been from the south. Crazy! We are excited for this transfer! She has no clue that I am going home after this transfer on January 8th, she thinks I have been out for 15 months haha this is gonna be a good time lol.

#2 We had a bunch of lessons! They all went really well! Lindsey is planning on getting baptized in January! Cheri is getting baptized as soon as she possibly can, and Lizzie wants to as well, we just haven't pin pointed a specific day! Lots of exciting things happening, they are all progressing really well!

#3&4 Both happened on Thanksgiving day! We got to build a snowman with our favorite members ever and it was intense. It was literally the PERFECT snow for building a snowman... I also accidentally did a snow angel backwards.... so I did it face down instead of on my back lol that's what happens when you didn't grow up in the snow I guess. We also got to watch a P or PG movie as long as we can relate it to the gospel or missionary things for President in our email to him today. We watched Up, so I'm gonna go with the Plan of Salvation and also how Russel was so bad at his door approach and to not do that when you visit people lol.

#5 We talked with Joni for a good bit as well as her neighbor who was with her at the time. We got to invite both to the upcoming Christmas party! We also got to go to the Cromptons and seriously we walked into their home and it was a winter wonderland (5 trees) with cookies and everything. We got to watch The Christ Child with them and talk about it after! And of course the Millers!!! They are seriously the best ever, I love talking with them! We got to tell them about The Christ Child movie as well... ITS SO GOOD, watch it if you haven't yet!!!

#6 We took Sister Bateman tracting for the first time and Haha not 1 person let us in lol we only talked about light the world too! (If you don'www.lighttheworld.org)

#7 So this is a crazy story but... long story short... we were very innocent (with snow) and drove up a mountain in a snow storm and the members got so mad. We can no longer visit the branch unless its through video call. Everyone had to cancel church here in Baker.... it's pretty bad.

#8 later that night we got to put up all of our Christmas decorations (thanks mom!)

I hope you all have a good week and remember to find joy in your trials! Rejoice in the gospel and rejoice in repentance at all times! Love you!

Love,
Sister Bailey :)

Snow Storm

Book of Mormon....wait for it....ROCKS!! 

Door Decoration

Christmas Decoration

Christmas Picture

Last Transfer

WE GOT THE NEWS AND IM STAYING IN BAKER FOR MY LAST TRANSFER (6 weeks) AND IM STAYING WITH SISTER STEVENSON BUT WE ARE ALSO GOING TO BE A TRIO!!!!!

We will be training a brand new missionary here in Baker for the holiday season! I AM SO STOKED RIGHT NOW!!! This is literally all I have hoped and dreamed for.

SO with our new missionary.... we made a plan... we are NOT going to tell her that we are going home and see if we can pull it off till the last day. So don't tell her Haha! We will get her on Wednesday!


This week has been amazing to say the least! We had 5 lessons through technology! That is a huge miracle right there because you never know with technology...it will be all fine and dandy one day.... then like a second later it will go crazy and you cant really accomplish anything. BUT technology was in our favor this week all of our video lessons worked PERFECTLY! It's so nice because when we get deeper into winter it's going to be harder to get to all of the little surrounding towns to teach!

We also had exchanges in Fruitland ID! It was so fun! Then the following day we had zone conference with Elder Carpenter and McCune! Man oh man did they stretch us! As they both spoke they continuously challenged us to do specific things and promised blessings to us. I have a lot to work on! So far I have definitely seen the many miracles and blessings promised to us! They are truly inspired men of God.

I know Thanksgiving hasn't even happened yet.... but its snowing constantly so its Christmas lol. We got to help our favorite person put up her Christmas lights! It was a party for sure! I am so excited for the Christmas season, especially for this years light the world initiative!!! If you go to lighttheworld.org you can add your phone number to get daily texts for ideas to brighten someone's day! (Don't worry mom and dad I already signed you up hehe) it's a great way to focus on the one. And instead of worrying what you are going to do to serve, you are focused on who you will serve. I would also like to encourage all to go onto the same website previously mentioned and watch the 18 minute video of The Christ Child! Not gonna lie I thought it was weird at first because it was in a different language and I thought it was dumb because no one would know what's happening... BUT I WAS SO WRONG. It is AMAZING!!! You all have to watch it and share it with everyone you know!