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!

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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!

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ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker