Thursday, August 31, 2017

No Barriers!

Heyo!!

This week was in the top 3 of my mission.

We did some stuff at the beginning of this week, honestly can't remember what happened.... sorry......
But towards the end is when everything actually happened. So I'll give you an update from Saturday on.

To start off our day we had a great meeting with our Taiwanese friends as we saw our investigator be baptized!!!!!!! It was so good! We went in just expecting to witness it and say congrats and what not but, no, we ended up translating the meeting for him over Skype. A missionary there translated from Mandarin to English and we translated from English to Farsi. Then when he gave his testimony we did the same thing only vice versa, Farsi to English to Mandarin. It was sooooo gooooooood!!!!!

Then after that we had an awesome had an awesome English class party and we celebrated our students "graduation"! They brought in all these different Chinese food dishes and it was super good.

Then after that we went to a BBQ with our investigators and the ward! Super good, the ward loves the couples we are teaching right now and they are being accepted super well.

The next day we enjoyed a wonderful Sabbath.







Have a good week!--

ارشد جک باکر

Elder Jack Bakker

Monday, August 21, 2017

6 AM Interview

Hello all!

It has been a fantastic week of miracles and progression!

In our last zone conference we talked a lot about setting goals and making plans to achieve those goals. We talked about how if we plan prayerfully and seek inspiration we will then make inspired goals instead of meaningless goals. I was on exchange with Elder Leung this week in the Cantonese area and we tried to set inspired goals instead of just going through the motions of writing a number down that sounds nice. We did so and we both felt as though we should set a goal for 5 new investigators. I thought that was a little high to be honest, but I felt that it was right and so did he so we set it. We went out into the day and did everything we could to find those people. I'll tell you what, God knows. That day we made return appointments with 5 people for the next day. A family of 4 and an individual man. It's a testimony to me of listening to the impressions of the spirit and acting in faith. I know as we do so we will see blessings and miracles.

the rest of the week has been pretty similar to weeks past and not much else to report on....

JK...
We were able to commit another family to baptism!!!! They are excited to really follow Jesus Christ and take that first step.
Our investigator in Taiwan had his baptismal interview on Sunday and he is ready to be baptized this Saturday!! Its been interesting teaching him, our time is exactly opposite of his so when he gets home from work at around 8 o'clock PM we are starting our day at 8 AM and due to that we had to come to the church at 6 AM on Sunday for his baptismal interview. Good Stuff. Love the work of salvation!

Well I hope you all have a good week!!!!

--

ارشد جک باکر

Elder Jack Bakker

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Super Fast

No time....
sorry.
we have 2 more investigators on date!
Hope all is well things are going good here.
Have a good week!

--
ارشد جک باکر
Elder Jack Bakker

Translator Status

This week came and went pretty quickly honestly
not much to tell.

One of our Skype translation investigators is doing awesome! He is preparing to be baptized at the end of the month! We are super excited for him and he is still as excited as ever to do some missionary work himself! He wants to share everything he knows about The Church with everyone. Especially those people moving to Turkey. He is a super cool guy. I love being able to teach him and help him progress.

The other person we are teaching over skype is moving to Toronto!!! YESSSSSS super excited to be able to meet her and teach her in person! She is doing great, and is excited to come here!

We also have started teaching a great family. Its a mom and her 2 kids. They have started coming to sports night and have really started to dive into the gospel. They are really looking to know how they can receive real answers and how they can act in faith.Ssuper excited for them.

We also have been working with a great family who is working towards going to the temple in September!!!! They are extremely excited. Since they were baptized a couple years ago they haven't been close enough to a temple to be able to attend so they are excited to go for the first time in their lives.


It is truly amazing to see the progress and dedication of this family. They have extremely strong testimonies and a true dedication to the Gospel despite the dangers of their current situation.

love you all! hope you have a great week!

--

ارشد جک باکر

Elder Jack Bakker

Tirgan Festival

As of right now, our investigators are doing amazing! If everything goes well we will have another Skype baptism in 2 weeks! Super excited for that!! And we have some other investigators that are ready to be baptized and we told them they can but it would be better and more special if they did it as a family so she is willing to wait for a bit.
Nothing new. We did get to go to the biggest Persian festival outside of Iran though! There were like 200,000 Persian people there! There was a pretty famous Iranian music artist and everything, it only happens once every 2 years. Its called Tirgan look it up! Also look up Shanbe Zade he is the artist, listen to one of his songs.

ارشد جک باکر

Elder Jack Bakker

1 Year to Come

Happy Pioneer Day!

I'll be hitting my hump day on Thursday. Weird! time is flying, no way of stopping it.

This week has been great. we have a lot of great investigators coming out of the woodwork and things seem to be taking off here!
One investigator has accepted a baptismal date of August 19th! He is doing awesome and has expressed to us his desire to share the gospel with others the same way we are with him. He told us how much he disliked people talking bad about the Mormons and that we wants to learn as much as he can from us so he can go tell and show everyone else that they are wrong and that the Church Of Jesus Christ is the true church of God.
Another is having a hard time accepting that she can't be baptized right now, its a hard situation as she knows the Church is true and she has been taught everything and now is being re-taught everything. The only problem is that she doesn't have a permanent residency here in Canada or in any other country other than Iran... but she is strong and enduring and is even doing some great missionary work right now.
Our other is doing awesome! Reading 3-4 pages of the book of Mormon every night and feels amazing as he prays. And his only question right now is "why are we here." We hope to help him take off pretty soon!
We have two freshly found investigators who learned about the church through a friend in LA and now they won't go to any church other than the Mormon church. More to come on them next week.

We have been hitting the pavement hard and have been seeing miracles.

Sorry its a short email.
Have a great week!
--

ارشد جک باکر

Elder Jack Bakker