ایسوع المسیح

 It's been a fun week! 

Found some new investigators this week so that was cool :)

We also went on exchange with 2 companionships, Elders Hafen and Hansen and Cruz and Stephens. Suuuuuper good time!

With Elder Hafen had some good times, we made some homemade sushi and we went to see a guy named Steven. He was in a mental hospital for some things and the guy right next to us pretty much crapped his pants while we were trying to read from the scriptures...... Elder Hafen and I were keen to get out ASAP but Steven didn't even flinch. I don't know if he is just used to it or can't smell but either way it was a rough situation.... memories nonetheless.

Elder Stephens and I had some good times as well! We went to The Rustic Slice and got our missionary free slices of pizza cause the owner loves us and the staff knows us ;) and then had to go move a fridge into the attic of a 160 year old house........ ugh.

After the exchanges we went to help out at Bishops Store House and got some shawarma while there. Some lady from Iraq came up to me and got in my face a bit about how I shouldn't have Isah Masih on my tag and that it should be Isu' Almasih'. haha not the first time that some people freak out about my tag. All in all she was just trying to help a brother out as she was actually Christian!

Well its been a good week, sorry if this email doesn't make any sense, not much time to write!
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

Sleeping, as usual

It's been a cold week

Traded ties with Chap here.  He hasn't traded a tie since his mission.

How About the D&C, eh?

Its been a cold week this week but we seen some cool miracles!

The one thing I want to share with you is what happened at soccer night the last 2 weeks!
SO. Starting 2 Fridays ago, we got a call from a guy named Phil about our soccer night and he came and had loads of fun with us. He is Nigerian but lived all over the place like Houston and Ottawa and what not. We talked to him a bit and invited him to come play again next Friday.
He came again and we start talking to him more about the Church and he starts telling Elder Thieme that he used to go to all kinds of churches with his family so naturally Elder Thieme asks if he has ever gone to a Mormon church before. Turns out that he says "ya! my family used to be members back in Houston!" He kept talking about it and said "ya I think I was even baptized too!" ha so he has been baptized in all kinds of churches and one of them happens to be ours! It'll be a little tough finding his records but we will get it done and he wants to come to church and institute!

Well thats our main miracle of the week!

Oh and a side note, just wanted to let everyone know that the Doctrine and Covenants sections 1-104 are on lds.org in Farsi :) the church never stops progressing.

have a good week!
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

December 4

We had interviews this week with President and he is looking to call some new Farsi missionaries! I love getting fresh help in the work. Hopefully he will call them this coming transfer.

The only real thing I wanted to highlight this week happened on Saturday! GARRETT WAS BAPTIZED woohoo!!!! It was a really good service, his family came to support him and he bore a really powerfully testimony on baptism and prayer in fast and testimony meeting. It's been a good week :)

I gotta go but have a good week and #LightTheWorld

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

16 Months

Well about 8 months tell I come home. Not that I'm counting.

This week flew by.

The main thing I want to talk about is Garrett! He came to church yesterday and passed his baptismal interview!!! Super awesome, he will be baptized this weekend and then will be confirmed on Sunday.

We were also blessed to have a nice American Thanksgiving meal at the Alexanders! Melissa invited us over and we had a load of turkey and stuffing, good stuff.

We were also able to take a 1.5 hour road trip up to Swingin' Wingham! hahaha this is a little middle of no where place in the northern part of our zone that we had a referral for, Kelly, she is super cool too bad she isn't YSA. We passed her off to the nearest sisters but we were blessed to enjoy the weirdest scenic road trip full of horse and buggies and little Dutch Mennonite kids playing soccer and riding their bikes.

Honestly nothing else to really talk about... we just had a massive amount of administrative paperwork kind of stuff to do this week.

Have a good week!
#LightTheWorld
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

Still Here

So its transfer weekend and I'm staying in Kitchener YSA with Elder Thieme as my new comp!
Imma keeping this email short and sweet, like usual
Its been a super cool week!
We had our first lesson with Gavyn! We taught him the restoration and he has good questions and full intent to be baptized. All the members here thought he was already a member. Hopefully we set a date with him this week!
The second cool thing happened with our investigator Garrett! We had a really good lesson with him about what his next step should be and he came to us saying he needs a major change in his life and asking if baptism would do that for him. He went home to think about it and called us 2 days later saying he has thought about our conversation a lot and that what we talked to him about helped him a lot. He then came to church an approached us and said "I want to join the church." Showed us the calendar on his phone and picked the date Dec 2nd.Holy cow that was sooooo cool to see his change of heart all in one week!!!!


Those were the highlights.
also how about the Face 2 Face?
check it out if you havent!


have a good week!!

--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

November 13, 2017

All is well here and we had a great week!
Its gotten pretty cold here this past week and we have gotten a skiff of snow but nothing too serious.

We have been doing some major service this week, we pretty much built his house. ha jk but we did build his deck which took a fat minute.  We also have painted pretty much his entire upstairs. Its been good to help him, his wife is so pregnant she is about ready to pop so I'm glad we have been able to help out a bit.

I was also able to go on exchange with elder Olson this week!! We had a lesson with one of his investigators in a members home, and it went great! except for the fact that the members husband is super anti and absolutely hated that we were there. He would just walk into the room every once in a while and just glare at us. Every time he did you could seriously feel this weight come into the room. Not fun.

But anyways we also went to Mt Pleasant! That's where Joseph Smith taught the Nickersons, that's also where some of the first Canadian saints were baptized. So that was super cool! It was stinkin cold but worth it!

We had a guy named Gavyn come to church with a member yesterday and he is super keen to be baptized! His words in elders quorum "Hi, I'm Gavyn. I am not a member of the church, but I'm looking to become one." We will be teaching him this Wednesday ;)

love you all! have a good week!

--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

Salvation vs Exaltation

This week has been pretty good with exchanges to the the Mansion, interviews with President and hugs from a General Authority.

The AP's in our mission live in Brampton in an apartment known as the Mansion, It's literally a house with a basement, ground floor and upstairs. 4 bedroom 2 bath.. Its ridiculous. Super fun there.

The next day we had interviews! I don't have much to say about them except that they were good.

We have a General Authority, Elder Pearson of the 70, touring our mission and he came to do a stake conference in our stake! So we were able to see him shake his hand and what not. He is a super good speaker. We were able to hear him speak 3 times this weekend and we have 3 more meetings with him tomorrow and Wednesday so its gonna be a good week!
He accidentally left all his notes in the stake center along with his Ipad and Book of Mormon. By the time we found it he was already an hour away staying at the mission home. Our president had us drive it all the way to him last night....... ha we dropped it off, he gave us a big GA hug.

2 of my favorite quotes from Elder Pearson:

"Salvation is a personal matter, Exaltation is a family matter."

"You get what you consistently focus on"

hope you all have a good week!!
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

We found Elder Pearson's Book of Mormon!

Kenya to Korea

Its getting cold. Last winter on the mish

At the beginning of the week we thought we were gonna just kill this week because we found 2 super solid potentials day 1 and boosted our confidence and what not, but of course some things are just too good to be true... ha 1 fake number and the other never responded.....

Not too much happened until the weekend after that.

The weekend came and I was able to go on exchange with a Visa waiting Spanish elder here named Elder Contreras! He has been out for a couple weeks and he is waiting to go to the Dominican Republic. Pretty sweet day to be honest. We went to this little Latino store near our apartment and got some Mexican coke and pupusas! Super good ha none of the people in this place spoke English and we got them and just sat done at one of these like common tables where everyone sits together and he just started talked to everyone! Super cool. I was just sitting there spitting my high school Spanish that I've completely forgotten and all I could remember to say was como estas and y tu and contigo and nosotros estamos aqui. Was kinda a bummer because they don't get as excited as Persians do when a white person tries to speak their language...

After that we exchanged back and Elder Cook and I had to do a bunch of paperwork for the stake called MCC reports and holy cow that took about 4 hours.... that was a rough night.

The highlight of the week was probably Sunday! We had about 5 investigators planning on coming to church and they all cancelled except for 1 who we haven't even met yet... he was just a referral from the sisters that we called and invited. We get to church and he calls us half way through sacrament meeting and says that he is coming. So we are just pumped that we have someone coming to church but about an hour after he called us we were well into gospel principles and he still isn't there. I honestly thought this guy was just playing with us or something but about 5 minutes before the class ends he calls us again and say that he is here. So we walk outside looking for him and he is just standing in front of the church, this like 6' guy that just moved here from Kenya. His name is Yang and he walked an hour and twenty minutes to get to the church! He is a cool guy, he was really appreciative that we invited him to church and got him a ride home and everything.
Then that night we were able to meet with another new investigator! Her name is Selena and she moved here from Korea about 3 months ago. She met with my comp, Elder Cook, and the Chinese Elder, Elder Tang, for a passoff lesson while Elder Myers and I, the other Chinese elder, went contacting.
Seriously so cool how diverse Ontario is! I love it.


hope you all have a happy Halloween!--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

Kitchener YSA Pumpkin Patch

All is good here in the Kitchen

We had a pretty sweet time this week!

Started off by teaching Tishawa and Tamrah at the university. They are baptized Catholic and both are from Jamaica. They are pretty quiet people but they are homies. Like they would be the kind of people you would want to bring around with your friends just to crack jokes and whatnot.

Right before that lesson though a guy walked by and I could just tell he was Persian. So we stopped him and started talking. I whipped out a quick "farsi baledam" and it was game over, taught him a restoration lesson and got his number... it was awesome!

We have an investigator here, and I'm sorry.... he is Persian so I can't give any details......., but we were able to teach him and he is seriously the nicest guy ever. He has a crazy back story too. In short he was in a rebel group since he was like 10 and has been shot about 4 times..... we were able to teach him this week and help him out with his questions as well as helping him come closer to the Savior.

Also serving in YSA is awesome cause you get to bring your investigators to all the fun FHE activities and go to institute and what not. This week we went to a pumpkin patch and helped the people pick a bunch of pumpkins they were getting ready to sell.

I love Kitchener, honestly soo fun.

Hope you all have a good week!

--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

REKD

So this week was sweet.
But it started off pretty rough.
Right after I sent off my email last week we went to Costco and hooked ourselves up for about a month with food and whatnot. Then right after that we went to play ball. About 10 minutes into playing with the other elders in my zone I went up for a ball and come down on my foot wrong and ended up spraining my ankle pretty bad..... likely I tore some ligaments but I really don't know. I'm in a boot right now and its a bit rough. 

Other than that it has been a pretty good week! I was able to see 2 people that served at the same time as Alyssa in Portugal!!!! They are both in my YSA branch.
One of them is Jacob Belo. He gave a us a referral so we went over to his house for dinner and invited some guy over. His words "I know nothing about him other than he has been to Utah and is somewhere between 27-25" ha turned out to be 38.  He absolutely loved Utah though and wants to move there. Such a funny guy.

Well I have to get off now. But I hope you have a good week!
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

YSA

heyyyyyy

There's been a whole lot of change the last couple days!

For the past 14-15 months (10 transfers) I have been going back and forth between 2 areas in 1 zone. spent 9 of those months in Don Valley and 6 in Richmond Hill. All in the North York Zone.
This past week was transfers and so Elder Dixon and I got a call pretty early in the night and were told that we were both getting transfered and that Elder Dixon will go to Don Valley again as a District Leader and I will go to Kitchener YSA as a Zone Leader.

My new comp is Elder Cook from Highland, UT. I sat next to him on the plane coming into Toronto and I thought that I would probably never serve with him, but here I am!

Super excited to be here in the YSA. We went and contacted around the university yesterday and it is so stinkin easy to talk to people that are around my own age in English!
I'm excited to be here!!

have a good week!--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکرر