Transfer #4

This week has been pretty fun going from one dinner appointment to the next. Meeting all the members and getting pictures for my companion.
I went on 2 exchanges at the beginning of the week which kind of threw me off all week cause I missed so much. But that's all good cause I'm back in the swing of things here.

I can't remember which day but we went down to a place called DUNDAS SQUARE, its essentially just a smaller version of Times Square in New York City. That was pretty awesome. The only down side to going there is we have to drive on a rode called Church Street. This is a no go zone for missionaries. Just because of all the bad things that happen there.

The highlight of the week was the Christmas party put on by the church. Sooooo fun! We had around 12 Persian people there and they all had a good time. We also convinced one of our investigators to come sing with us on stage. She is in 6th grade and is kinda shy around new people but she loved it!
There was good food for everyone and good skits and different things preformed.

Sunday night we got our transfer calls! I am staying in the Farsi South area and I will be serving with Elder Casdorph!!!!
This next 7 weeks is going to be good.--

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Fried Dumplings and Alyssa's Old Companion

The week started off pretty good.
This week my Awesome sister sent me the information of her companion that she served with in Lisbon, Portugal.  She now lives here in Ontario and weirdly enough in the city that we have just recently started working in! It seems as though the Lord is really throwing us a bone as we expand Farsi work out to Kitchener/Waterloo. After one visit there we have 2 investigators, 3 potentials, and a Member that lives there that we are in contact with. AWESOME! This blessing has made the work in Kitchener that much more effective and now we have more reason to go more frequently.

Later on in the week I went on exchange with an Elder named Elder Davis. All was well when we first got together but after our usual morning scripture/language study things got a little out of control. We decided to make dumplings for lunch so we boiled some and they tasted weird so we decided to put a pot of oil on the stove and fry them! We left the oil on the stove for a little too much time so when we put the first dumpling in it exploded and molten oil went everywhere (no one was hurt). We started to freak out because it was shooting oil everywhere so we couldn't reach over and turn off the stove..... so with all the adrenaline that was pumping through my body I put on an oven mit and just picked up the put and ran it out onto the balcony. Surprisingly, I only got burnt once. Now that the oil was outside we decided to try cooking the dumplings out there, and it worked! We then made like 20 dumplings out on the balcony. It was awesome.

On sunday we had a FANTASTIC fast and testimony meeting. Super spiritual and overwhelming. To top it off Elder Jansons dying testimony to the ward got us 18 appointments for this week. What a blessing. We are going to be running from member to member all week to get pictures for Elder Janson before he goes home.

The Church just came out with their Christmas Initiative #LightTheWorld. I invite you all to go check it out on Mormon.org.  There are different challenges everyday that give us ideas on how we can serve. Its Awesome!


love you all!
ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Turkey Day Finally Came!

The week started off with me rearranging the apartment because I was bored of the arrangement. shortly after that we finally got rid of the smoke/weed smell in our bathroom! The solution was duct tape over the vent and it worked surprisingly well!

On Thursday an amazing member named Barbara Ann put together a big Thanksgiving dinner for some missionaries and President Shields and his family. It was awesome. She had American flags on the table and everything. And being her favorite I got to cut the ham. ;)

The next day my comp and I made a day trip 2 hours west to the Kitchener/Waterloo area in search of Persians! And the trip was a major success! We found one woman and her family that speak Dari (Persian dilect) and it was easily that most confused I've ever been on my mission but somehow my comp was able to talk to and understand her. I was able to teach her the restoration and she was easily one of the most open Muslims I've talked to. After that we were able to meet with another man in a Burger King, he has met with the missionaries before and loved talking with us! He is going to church this Sunday with the suster missionaries over there! The third person we talked to is awesome, she is pretty childish and funny but she keeps bringing people to the gospel even though she isn't even a member yet! So things are looking up in the Kitchener/Waterloo area and we are planning on making the trip over there more regularly!

That's pretty much everything this week, hope you all had a wonderful T

hanksgiving!


love you all!

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Thanksgiving (USA)

I know it isn't Thanksgiving yet but I can't email on Thursday so I will say it now, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Here in Canada everything is just a copy of America, and since there are so many missionaries from the states here we are allowed to celebrate the REAL Thanksgiving :)

So this week has been pretty interesting. At the start of the week our zone leaders sent out a text inviting all of us to really focus on baptism this week and that if we did we would see blessings from it. So thats exactly what we did! We started to focus on baptism more, and we definitely saw the blessings from it.  A member of the church that was baptized a couple years ago and is now less active has started to meet with us and has been coming back to church more regularly. We have focused on helping her bring her family to church but for some reason she didn't want her family involved in the same church that she is a part of. This last week we met with her again and the first thing she says to us is "lets set a baptismal date for my son". WHAT?? he has been taught all the lessons already as he has grown up learning with his mom, so now he is able to be baptized and we set a date for December 3rd! soooooo cool!

Later on in the week we met with our recent convert for the last time... sad day but we are super happy for him! The entire time we were teaching him he was looking for a job and sending in resumes but not having any real luck. Then within a week of his confirmation he recieved a job offer, accepted and moved about an hour and a half away.What a blessing for him!

The day I went on exchanges this week happened to be the rainiest and coldest day of the week.... and the elder that I was switching with lost his bus pass so we were on bikes.... all day..... I'll tell you what, Freezing rain on bare hands is the worst. It was so cold, and I am now sick because of it..... ugh.
all good tho. Still working and learning and baptizing here!

Love you all and hope you are all able to see the little blessings in your life!

--

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Week 17? IDK

hey hey

This week has been pretty interesting!
At the beginning of the week my companion and I were pretty sick, so it was pretty hard to go out and work all day long. It didn't help that he lost his voice so I did 100% of the talking.

After we recovered from our illness we were able to help a member family rake their leaves. We went to their house expecting to be there for like and hour or so.... the entire job ended up taking us about 4 hours in total. But they bought us Pizza so it was all worth it!
While we were raking leaves, like 4 people passed us on the street offering us jobs to rake their lawns as well but when we said we would love to but we wouldn't let them pay us they said no.... what the heck? why do people turn down free service? goodness just let us serve you and share the gospel with you and bring you to church.

The next day we were invited into a members home for dinner. His name is Jermaine and he is roughly 6'5" and he is from Jamaica. He makes the BEST jerk chicken. but lately he has been testing our pallets for spice, so he decided to make a Jamaican curry with like 3x the amount of pepper than he would regularly use. He said "last time I made curry this hot it made an elder cry"......... holy cow. that stuff was hot. I wasn't able to speak for like 10 minutes after I ate it.

The last big thing is that we had our recent convert receive the gift of the holy ghost and the priesthood! super exciting!

love you all and hope all is well in your lived!--

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

SALAAM!

How is it going?

The great white north is doing well. Weird how warm it is still, everyone complains about how cold it gets but its still like 50-60 degrees. idk why everyone is complaining.
The election is happening!!!! Everyone in Canada loves to talk about the election and about Trump, but when I ask them about what is happening in their own government they don't have much to say. HA. USA!!!

Funny story about the election, I was tracting with an English area near an investigators house and the first door we knocked on was a Croatian man. The first thing he says to us while pointing his finger in my face was "what is your business?!" (imagine that in like a Russian/Croatian accent) so we start talking to him about Jesus Christ and he raises his voices and pulls us into his house (which was extremely stinky and dirty) to show us this massive ceramic piece of art on his wall of Moses pointing towards a cauldron of fire. He started talking about how he should be the Pope. We then went back outside and somehow he switched the conversation to Donald Trump and how he thinks he should win because America needs to be America not Mexico not Canada. America. so ya that was weird. Also he loved to talk about how Noah split the red sea, and when we told him that that wasn't Noah he yelled at us and told us that he is older and smarter than we are. soooo ya ha that was interesting.

Also this week I have been able to put my language skill to the test! a couple days ago I was on exchange with an English elder and we walked past a lady and she didn't want to talk to us at all. I looked at her and asked if she spoke Persian "Farsi baledid?" She turned and freaked out and started to speak to me in Persian! I was able to have a small conversation with her and teach her about the Book of Mormon!! soooo cool, she loved that this big white guy spoke Persian. Most Persian people do. ;)

Transfer calls were on Sunday! I am not going to be going anywhere and neither is my companion! We are still going to be in the Farsi South area giving it our all.

Nothing else really big has happened!
Hope you all are doing well!

--

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Roaches and Moving

So this week has been pretty interesting. On Wednesday Elder Vanderzanden finished his mission. We are down to 5 Farsi missionaries in all of Ontario, our numbers are dwindling. By the new year there will only be 4 of us Farsi's and that,s when things will really get interesting...

On a more gross note, our apartment has been having a bit of a cockroach problem... that's all I'm going to say about that.

view from the new apartment

Since Elder Vanderzanden died the penthouse apartment that he was living in is now vacant. So my comp and I were instructed to move in so the Chinese Sisters could live in our apartment. I'm not going to complain about having to move into a 16th floor apartment with a skyline view of Toronto. There is also a Persian member that lives down the hall from us now and she brings us food at random times of the day, it's great.




Went on exchange with Elder Bybee and we walked for like 12 hours in the rain.... but we found this weird moose thing on the side of the road so that was cool.

We also made a giant cookie for one of the members that is going through a hard time, it was awesome, good thing I come from a family of cookie bakers or that probably wouldn't have turned out so well...

Life is going be getting about 100x busier for us for the coming month(s). Our area absorbed one of the Central Farsi areas and now we have more than double the amount of investigators than we did last week... pray for us plz.

One of our investigators had his baptismal interview yesterday and is being baptized this Sunday!!!!! super excited for him. He is one of the most prepared people I have met, he has accepted and lives every principle of the gospel that we have taught him.

love you all and hope all is well in your lives!
Dustet Daram!

--

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

The Gift of Tongues

So this week was interesting.

On Wednesday I went on exchange with my Zone Leader Elder Stowell (he went to Brighton). He is a super cool guy and a great missionary. Also since he came to my area I got to drive :) It was a good day, all of our lessons fell through so we spent the day finding people to teach and trying to talk to members. Fun day, the mandarin elders are a good time.

Then 2 days later I was able to go on an exchange with Elder McBeth! He came to Toronto with me and is also a Farsi missionary! Neither of us are very good at Farsi yet but somehow we ended up teaching 3 lessons that day.... the first 2 lessons were ok and we were able to communicate through a member and a little English (oops) but the last lesson we had was with a lady that speaks no English. We went in and tried to have a conversation with her and got right into the lesson. Not really sure what we said but we were somehow able to teach the Plan Of Salvation! I think she understood what we said, or she is just nice and told us she understood. I’m ok either way. :)

Today all the Farsi missionaries had lunch with President and Sister Shields. We took them to Ava Esfahan (a Persian restaurant in the area) to get there first taste of Persian food! Super fun. Me and Elder Janson also went to a Portuguese bakery in town. If any one was curious, Portuguese people are some awesome bakers! We stopped at Value Village on the way home and I almost bought a poster of Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson. wish did...

Love you all and hope all is well in life!!

DUSTET DARAM

--

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Canada is Wierd

My p day is on Tuesday this week because Canada decided to have Thanksgiving yesterday, I tried to tell them that it’s not November but they didn't listen to me.....

but that's OK because I was able to have 3 Thanksgiving dinners this week :) we went to Bishop Duodo's house on to have an African thanksgiving meal, oh my goodness it was soooo good. They made these fried fish heads, had spicy steamed vegetables, the classic mashed potatoes and roles, had some good fried rice (idk why they had that but it was good) and some classic turkey with cranberry sauce. Holy it was soooo good. We then went to the Placidos home on Sunday for some Filipino (idk how to spell it) Thanksgiving, they had pretty much every kind of food and then a bunch of noodles and shrimp and these weird calzone things idk it was soooo good, and the icing on top they brought their Catholic friends and has us teach them about families and temples!! Super fun. The third meal was also from the Duodos, the other elders in my area weren’t able to make it to their house for dinner so they gave the food to us hahahahah sucks for them.

Super cool week, we had interviews with the mission president on Wednesday. so interviews with the president usually only takes like 2 hours for the whole district but this time it took about 6.... we pretty much just had to sit at the chapel for 6 hours waiting for out interviews...... goodness that was a long time. 

After Interviews I went on exchange with Elder Vandezanden and I got to stay at his apartment. Oh. My. Goodness. He lives on the 16th floor with a perfect view of the city. Idk how the mission affords an apartment with that kind of view. 

For P-day I went on a split with Elder McBeth and we went to the Aquarium for the day, super fun but not nearly as good as any aquarium in the States. USA 4 life. 

IN the aquarium they have a little petting zoo area with shrimp that clean stuff (like in Finding Nemo) and you stick your hands into the water and they all swarm to your hands and start to clean all the dead skin off! What?!?! It is the coolest thing ever! I just had shrimp give me a manicure! hahaha that was fun!

DUSTET DARAM!!!!!

Love you all!​

-- 

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Elder McBeth (not my companion) and me at the Aquarium

Night skyline from the Central Farsi Apartment window

Cockroaches and Confernce

Its been a good first week of the transfer!

I am now with Elder Janson. He is the man! He has some great talents. He can hold his breath for 5 minutes, he can beat box, he has a ridiculously high pain tolerance and he is dying in like 8 weeks. I transferred into the southern Farsi area which we call South Persia and it is great! The apartment actually has a carpet and nice desks, the only downside is that it has theses nasty little bugs called cockroaches that live under our sink.... it is impossible to kill them all because they multiply so quickly... ew!!!

This weekend we were able to hear from Our Prophet and the Apostles!!! Sooooo cool! I really enjoyed the talk on joy. We all go through hard times, whether that be with family, friends, school, work, or having to learn a language that is extremely foreign. But we can always find the joy in those things, "Men are that they might have joy". We came to this earth to have fun and find the good things in life!!! Going through hard things will be such a small moment in the entirety of our lives.

All is well here :)
I only have one more year of being a teenager... better live it up!
love you !!!!!
Dustet daram!!!!!

--

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Elder Janson and Elder Bakker

Bye Bye Richmond Hill

Hey Hey Hey

This week has been pretty interesting!
At the beginning of the week we went to see an investigator and he went off on all of his notes about being Muslim. He tried to convince us that our church and Islam are pretty much the same if you take out the atonement of Jesus Christ. We explained to him that the Atonement is key in our religion and that you can't just take that away, he then continued to slam us with all of his Muslim facts. That lasted about an hour and a half, so that was super fun :)

This week has been bitter sweet, lots of good but in the end we will be saying goodbye to Elder Atkinson. He is an All-Star Farsi missionary.

We buy these things called Kinder Egg Surprises here, they are chocolate eggs with a toy inside, and we use them to predict our transfer call. Mine predicted that I am being transfered! So I am leaving my area (Richmond Hill) and I'm going to the south Farsi area with Elder Janson!!!! He is a super cool guy and he loves to bake which is perfect for us Bakkers. I am super excited about that.

lots of love to all of you!
Dustet daram!!!!

PS: have a question going into conference!!!!!! God is the only way to receive personal revelation!
--

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

On Top of the World!

Hello everyone!
Hope everyone is doing well.
This week has been super fun!
Started it off by going to downtown Toronto to see the CN Tower! super cool. For everyone that doesn't know what the CN Tower is, its pretty much the space needle but like 5x the size, its 1500 feet tall and the 7th tallest free standing building in the world. Also its the tower that Drake is sitting on on his album cover "views." So that was a super cool experience, also I'm super scared of heights and there is a glass floor. that was nuts.
We were also able to go get some Poutine from Smokes Poutinerie. That was super good. Poutine is a Canadian food, it is essentially French Fries, Gravy, and Cheese Curds. It was super good. I got the Philly Cheese steak.
We were also able to see the Blue Jays Stadium!!!

We reconnected with an investigator this week and we went in with the plan to teach more about the restoration and Joseph Smith but that is not what happened at all. He pulled out all of his notes and was going off on the stories from the Quraan and just kept slamming us with different views of the Muslim religion. Goodness gracious, he is extremely steadfast in his faith.

We were also able to find a new investigator! I cant give a name for security reasons but we found her through tracting and we ran into her again Sunday night! gave her a Book of Mormon and we will be seeing her soon!

Dustet Daram!!!!!
(love you!!!!)

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Basketball and Conversion

To keep us from going insane from 4 hours of study every morning, our companionship plays a basketball game on a little nerf hoop in our apartment called "If I make this shot". Pretty much we shoot the ball from various points in the room. Every time you make a shot the other person has to do what you said. For example, the other night I said "If I make this shot Elder Atkinson has to make me pancakes". Long story short, my companions have to make me a full breakfast.

This week we had a super cool experience to hear the conversion story of one of our recent converts. I won’t share his name for security purposes, but its a pretty amazing story.

Some background information: In the country of Iran you are either Muslim or you are Christian. The government of Iran is an Islamic state. That basically means that if you are born into a Muslim home, then you MUST follow the laws and customs of the religion of Islam or be put to death (If you are born into a Christian home, you may join Islam whenever you would like or stay Christian). However, if you ever decide at any point that you want to convert to Christianity if you are a Muslim then you are immediately killed or locked up in jail for a long time.

Well, our investigator found the light of Christ while he was in Iran and sought after the gospel of Jesus Christ. The government found out and left him a small note slid underneath his front door saying “we know you have intentions of becoming Christian even though you have practiced Islam during your life. Stop now or we will have you killed.”

He and his other friends who were in the same situation and had converted to Christianity got together and devised a plan to go into the mountains of Iran by night and escape to Iraq where they would be free to go to church and receive baptism.

Long story short, he made it to Canada after many long years of waiting to receive legal residency in Canada, and one night he got into an elevator with 2 Farsi speaking Mormon missionaries. He saw them, read their name tags, and was overcome with joy.

He was baptized 3 months ago and is one of the most devout Christians and examples of Christ's love and devotion that I have ever seen. This is a man that gave up everything to follow Christ and I got to sit next to him at church yesterday. I feel like we don't realize how good a lot of us have it.

Not much else has happened this week.

Dustet daram!! (I love you!!)

ارشد باکر
Elder Bakker

Winter coat purchased in Canada in preparation for a cold winter.

Salom Sept 6

Hey Hey

So this week has gone by pretty slowly because pretty much all of our investigators decided to go on vacations so we haven’t been able to teach our normal amount. That’s ok though because it allows us to go out and find new people to teach! We were able to find 2 new people on Tuesday!!! The missionaries here in Richmond Hill run an ESL program (English as a Second Language) and we use it as a way to find new people to teach. Unfortunately there are only like 3 Persian people that come so we usually get put into the Mandarin classes. So for the whole hour we're teaching a lesson in all English about how to find a job to these people that speak only Chinese.. It’s nuts.

It seems like everyone in Toronto drives a nice car. Every family has a Porsche, Mercedes, or a BMW.

So last P day my companions and I went to Niagara Falls which was extremely fun but it also meant that we didn't have time to shop for the week so we have been rationing or food everyday for the past 8 days. It’s been a rough couple of days... lol

On Monday we had an exchange so we had a Cantonese elder come work in the Farsi area. Elder Mak is a super cool guy and speaks little English. It was great. Throughout the day we did our normal amount of studies and service and missionary work and whatnot until about 8 o'clock. We have this Chinese man that lives down the street from us and we see him every once in a while, he always wants to have us over at his house but we've never been able to go due to the lack of speaking Mandarin and all that. So on Monday he waves down our car and has us come into his house, lucky for us we had en elder from Hong Kong to teach him!! His name is Wong Wei.

Farsi is still going good here, I understand like 5% of what is happening in lessons but hey that’s more than last week.

I would love to hear from you guys!

love you all!

ارشد باکر
Elder Bakker

Persian Life

How's everyone doing?!?!?!?!?!?

All is well here in the Great White North!

Farsi or Persian or whatever you want to call it is still really hard if anyone was wondering...super fun though.
I feel like my mission life is half study and half teaching.
The members here in the Richmond Hill ward are amazing! we get fed like every night, and they always want to come teaching with us. It's great!
Finding new Persian people to teach is tough. There are a couple places that are highly populated with Persians, but once you have tracted through and tried to teach them, there's not much you can do... We work a lot off of referrals from the Persians that we are currently teaching. Also it's hard because a lot of them are Muslim and don't want anything to do with Christian missionaries. It is amazing to see people open up and listen to our message though.
Being a Persian missionary has its perks, Since we don't have a specified area and we are able to teach wherever there is a Persian investigator in the mission. We are also able to go wherever we want on p days! So taking advantage of that we are going to Niagara Falls!! I'll be on the border of the states...land of the free.

love you all!!!!

                                                          ارشد باکر 

Salam

Chekhabar!!

All is well here in Toronto!

My mission experience started out pretty crazy.... landed in Toronto thinking everything was going to be easy and just fly by, I thought that I had that world at my finger tips when I first got here. The Lord has good ways of humbling us.

So here's the story....

Day one: I land in Toronto, feeling great. It's hot and humid. Stood in the customs line for about 3 hours, what a blessing. Met President and Sister Shields, they are amazing. We drive to the mission home have dinner and a meet and greet testimony meeting and what not with the new guys and the Dragons(Mandarin AP's) and then we go to a hotel for the night, all is well.

Day two: We go to the stake center to meet our new companions and whatnot. So we are all sitting in a room with the new guys and all the new trainers, like 5 minutes from meeting them and the president pulls me out and changes my mission call..... in the previous night we had an entrance interview, we talked about how I come from a line of bakers originating in Holland and talked about Dutch and whatnot and he asked if I was intimidated by languages, I said no and he said great, then I left not thinking anything of it. So back to day 2 he says to me, "Elder Bakker, we have a need for more missionaries in the Farsi work." So now I'm going to be speaking Farsi aka Persian.  There are 7, including me, Farsi speaking missionaries in Toronto.  It feels like I started from scratch, but the Lords work is the same in every language.

On Tuesday night my trainers decided it would be good for me to invite someone to be baptised.. in Farsi... so that was cool.

On Wednesday we got me a dictionary and grammar book. had a meeting with the 4 other Frasi's in the mission and taught some lessons.

Thursday was amazing! we were able to see a couple get baptised in Slovania! They were taught by my trainers over Skype! Elder Atkinson(my oldest trainer) has taught people in 8 different countries and actually opened up the Farsi work in Germany! He is incredible.

On Friday we taught some more lessons, learned some more Farsi, and read some scriptures. you know the usual.

We got to go listen to Elder Ballard in person!! Super cool! Shook his hand and everything. Then after that we listened to him again (not in person).

On Sunday Elder Ballard did an Ontario wide broadcast that we got to see! So we heard from him 3 different times! He talked to us about following the Apostles extremely closely, and pretty much said that things are going to start getting crazy. We also got to see another baptism!!! Super cool week!

Love you all!!
Khoda Hafez!!
(Goodbye!!)

kh makes like a german glottal sound btw

Book of Mormon and the old Iranian flag

Mission tag in Farsi, I've ordered mine, it will be about 6 weeks before I get it

Book of Mormon and Bible in Persian

                                                                     

Milk in a bag.

Landed in Canada!

Jack made it to Canada!  His mission president sent an email with some pictures saying he arrived safely and all is well!  His address is always the mission home address listed on the side of this blog, but his current apartment address is:

                                                        Elder Jack Bakker

                                                        102 Gordon Rowe Crescent--BSMT

                                                        Richmond Hill, ON L4C 8R1

                                                        CANADA

Sister Shields, Elder Bakker, President Shields

Elder Bakker arrives in Canada

Incoming missionaries to Toronto Canada

Last MTC Letter

Hey hey

What’s going on everyone

Its crazy how fast things are going here. Its also crazy how little of the real world I hear about. So will someone please tell me how the Olympics are going or something?! goodness. All I’ve heard is that Michael Phelps has gotten a couple medals but what’s new?

I only have like 2 days left here in the mtc then I’m off to good ol' Canada ay.

Elder Tarter and I have been killing lately, just got an atheist to accept our invitation to be baptized, so thats cool.

We are also teaching this other guy named Arnold and he is a legend. He has been a professional photographer, built log homes, worked as a phone repair man, beat cancer, and he has been married like 3 times. What a man.

There are way too many snacks in our residence hall. Everything is much appreciated and is being eaten but it has definitely taken a toll on me lol. The animal crackers were gone in one day, all 98 cookies that I have received have been eaten quickly and the banana bread was gone in like 2 minutes (banana bread was easily the best thing that I have gotten in a package). Also everything came in a toaster box and everyone here literally thought that I got a toaster. People came into my room asking me why I got a toaster hahah. All good though. I love getting stuff.

Hope all is well in the 84020

I’m starting to pack today so I should probably get off and go switch my laundry and whatnot

love you all

Elder Bakker

At the Provo Temple 

Elder Tester, Elder Simons, Elder Bakker at the MTC

HEY HEY HEY

The MTC is an amazing place. I love it here.

Time is flying by and Elder Tarter and I are killing it!

We started teaching investigators on Monday, Ganlin and Sergio.

Ganlin didnt show up Monday but we have been able to teach her on Wednesday Thursday and Friday which is great.

We have been teaching Sergio all of this week and he is amazing! He has been feeling the spirit every time he prays and has accepted our challenge to be baptized!!!!

Throughout the week is pretty much just class and teaching and meals... we get little time to do anything else.

Seeing all the new missionaries come in on Wednesday was great! I got to see so many people I know! Elder Simons and Tester are killing it! I haven’t seen Elder MacKay yet but I am looking so I’ll see him soon!

I saw Elder Sorenson, Sandlin, Selman, and Anderson as well. They look great!

Food is awful and it seems like I’m not getting enough sleep even though I get like 8 hours a night, the days are extremely busy and so exhausting.

Getting mail is the best thing ever. Sorry if I haven’t written you a letter back yet, I still need to buy some envelopes and stamps and what not.

Still waiting on my flight plans so I’m not exactly sure when I’m leaving...

love you all
Elder Bakker

Elder Tester, Elder Bakker

Elder Simons, Elder Bakker