Flood

It was super rainy this last week and our apartment flooded........
A drain clogged out side of our door and it just filled... when we opened the door our apartment it just wrecked us and we had to stay in cleaning until like 10 AM which was the worst.

Other than that we were able to go to a Returning Members home today and we ate dinner with their family :) The husband is a super good cook and he made us something called Zoreshk Pollo. oh. my. goodness. I love Persian food! If you ever have a chance to try zoreshk pollo do it. It's amazing.
we were able to talk to them about the temple as well, they are super excited to be able to be sealed as a family. She bore her testimony about the church and told her story about joining the church and then having to return to Iran for 2 years and how hard it was but how they were able to stay strong. She started crying and holy the spirit was soooo strong.

A couple days ago we got a random call from some elders in a different area asking us for some last minute help with moving a member into the Richmond Hill Ward. So we went over and there was only like 3 people helping her so it was good that we went. One of the members, Luigi Muia, actually trained in California with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He apparently was a huge body builder and but together a lot of the major body building shows in Toronto. Ha hes pretty big.

That's about it for today, sorry I don't have a lot of time..


Have a good week!

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ارشد جک باکر

Elder Jack Bakker

Ruze Pedar Mobarak

Salam fam bam!

Happy Fathers day!!!!!

Pretty good week.

We had another good Skype call with the Farsi elders in Germany! It's soo nice to be able to come together and role play and just practice. Hopefully we will be able to get the other couple Farsi elders in on the Skype call as well!

We had interviews with the mission President and we have some Persian pass along cards on the way! sooooo excited to get those. It's not that big of a deal over all but it is like the only other material we have besides the book of Mormon so we are pretty excited!

We got a media referral this week!!! Holy cow, I have now had three media referrals my whole mission. But this referral was way up in Bradford like an hour north of where we live. We went up there and it turns out the address was either wrong or the guy moved within the last couple of days..... bummer. BUT on the way there we passed a Dutch Treats store and they sell POFFERTJES and PANNENKOEKEN. oh my gosh we we weren't able to go in to get any cause of time but I really want to go back.

Well not much time left right now but I hope you all have a great week!
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ارشد جک باکر

Elder Jack Bakker

First Week Back

It's been a pretty hectic week this week!
Whitewashing is definitely has some challenges, but overall it has been good!

We were able to meet with Brother Yu first thing this week. He is the ward mission leader and we talked about the goals that the ward has for everything.
Good start to the new area.
We had a good meeting with the German missionaries over Skype, they brought a member of theirs to help us learn the best vocabulary for teaching the restoration which was great! I think he used to live in Utah and he knew my Mission President hahahaha weird connection.
We left that meeting early to go help Brother Pajkowski with his garden.

Thursday is our busiest day. Went to the food bank first thing and helped out there for a couple hours, We were able to help a Persian that spoke no English get some food:). Too bad we aren't allowed to proselyte during service projects.....
We then went to Brother Fred's house for lunch, he gave us some good TMNT (tmnt is what he calls pizza) and we were able to talk to some of his neighbors! One of which was Filipino but she speaks Farsi.... what?
After Brother Fred we had an awesome pass off lesson with the sister missionaries here! He is a super cool guy that knows like 4+ languages, the typical Persian, and he is interested in why the apostasy happened and whatnot.
Then we went to sports night at the church.
busy busy

We have also been teaching ESL this week! Super fun. We teach like 20 Chinese people and they have all been coming for like 2 or more years. Most of them have already finished the program but they still come for some reason. They love it.

Sunday was awesome. First Sunday back in Richmond Hill :).

Not much else happened this week.
Hope you all have a good week!

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ارشد جک باکر

Elder Jack Bakker

9 months in the waiting. RH HERE I COME

So its been a long while that I've been in the Don valley ward. When I first got there a member announced that she was pregnant, and about a week ago she finally had her baby.

I am now going back to Richmond Hill! I started my mission there and now I get to go back!

This week has been tons of fun.

Elder Ward and I were on exchange in the Borough (Scarborough) and we had a blast! We were able to teach a 9 year old girl more about the restoration so she can prepare more for her baptism on the 8th of July, and we also taught an older guy about the church and basically how he can really be guided in his life, and how the Spirit is necessary in that. He is also getting ready for his baptism in July! In the midst of these two lessons we were also able to talk to a Muslim guy who tried to prove to us that Islam is the most correct of all, lol not the first time someone has tried to tell me that. So we were just able to give him a few points about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and shared about the Book of Mormon and he was just taken back a bit and didn't really know what to say. Classic. Unfortunately they have to wait a month to go see him again because he is fasting. #Ramadanstrikesagain.

Earlier this week we were also able to skype with the German farsi Elders! Super cool to be able to talk to them and get ideas on how they are able to see success and what materials they are using and whatnot. They have been a big help so far as they have provided a Farsi translation of the Prince of Peace video and they are now sending us some Persian mormon.org cards!!
We are hoping to be able to skype with the LA and Carlsbad missionaries soon too.

We had a Cake auction with the ward the other night and holy cow it was successful. They throw the cake auction every year to raise funds for the youth programs and this year they pulled in about $4,000!!!! of course we put a cake into the bidding but I don't think the ward trusts the missionaries to be able to bake, so ours went for probably the least hahahhahaha, all good though.
All the missionaries ended up pooling our money and started a bidding war for the bishops family cake, things got pretty heated and a couple families started donating cash to us to win the cake! We did eventually beat everyone and bought the cake for $135.... hahaha a little pricey for me but it was all good fun!

well not much else to report on, I hope you all have a good week!

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ارشد جک باکر

Elder Jack Bakker

Bye Bye Baines

Pretty good week all in all

This past week week I've really enjoyed studying the Epistle of Peter, James, and John.  I've also really enjoyed studying the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It's also great to know that one of the last acts that Jesus Christ did while on the cross was making sure that his mother was taken care of.


25 ¶ Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.
26 When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!
27 Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

28 ¶ After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst

On monday Brother Minhsull took us to see John Harrison at Sunnybrook hospital! We talked with him for about 30 minutes. While we were there we were talking about how church was on Sunday and he talked about his past callings and how much he loved them. He was also going off on how much Brother Minshull would like the show American Pickers. classic.

Later in the week we were able to have breakfast with the De Paula family!!! I love that family. They are the best, they help us in every way possible for fellow-shipping and just love to have us over, and they are teaching me Portuguese so win win win!

Then right after that we helped Brother Baines pack up his apartment into his jeep so he could move back to Alberta! sad day. Brother Baines and I were homies. While packing up he gave us some Australian Ginger Beers and he gave me his legit Wallabies rugby jersey from his mission. Such a stud.

Through out the week we have been doing a lot of less active contacting and it turns out that having a less active in Toronto is the hardest thing ever. I'm sure that other missionaries serving in big cities understand. People that live in Toronto move about every 2-5 years and they change their number for some reason as well.... so now we have a full Less Active list of about 200 members but we have no way to contact about 50-75% of them..... yaaaaaaaaaaa good times.

Elder Dixon is killing it. Learning extremely fast. I can see the gift of tongues working through him and it is amazing.

well not much left to say...

have a great week!!!



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ارشد جک باکر

Elder Jack Bakker

Elder Bakker and Elder Dixon

Brother Baines and Elder Bakker

Jersey and Ginger Beer