Friday, June 29, 2018

Week 100

How goes fam?

Life is going well here in Toronto!
Elder Brown and I are doing well and things are moving forward!

We have enjoyed some sweet music from Marvin Goldstein, heard about Iran almost having a draw with Spain, moved some friends out of their apartment and had some great interviews with President and Sister Shields!

It has been a a weird week to say the least. Now all missionaries around me know that I am going home in a couple weeks so its a constant reminder that time is running out.. and then talking to President Shields knowing that my next interview will be my departing interview....

The highlight of the week was definitely teaching M. He has to go back to Iran in the next couple weeks but he is one of my favorite people I have taught on my entire mission. I would dare to say that if the permanent residency policy wasn't a thing he would be baptized and be a great member.

Hope you are all tuning into the Iran-Portugal game!

Time is closing in but there is plenty of time here and work to do and I plan to squeeze every bit out of it!

Have a great week.

--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر


Friday, June 22, 2018

Iran vs Toronto Police

Hi
Quick shout out to Pops, Happy Fathers Day!

Been a pretty crazy week with the World Cup and all. I didn't think it would be that crazy here but Iran beat Morocco and everyone flipped, at least the Persians did. We went over to Yonge street and people had parked their cars sideways across the road and blocked it off completely to traffic. There was music blaring, bike cops chasing people down, just the works. Also, it was surprisingly good contacting! Happy people make soft hearts!

Other than that we have just been blessed. Jdub stands on Yonge, Home cooked Korean BBQ and Sunday Grub at the Rollins. Can't complain here!

Transfer news came last night with a bang!

I'm staying in the Don Valley Ward AGAIN! ha I don't know exactly how long it will be but by the time I go home it will be roughly 15/24 months spent in this ward! Gotta love it. To be honest, pretty surprised they never gave me a calling....

Welp hope you all have a good week!

Smile, God Loves You!
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر



Shout Out to Lewis

Kinfolk,

Shout out to Alyssa and Bren Durfee for having a kid. Welcome to the world Lew.

Things are good here! Tender mercies are everywhere!

Last Sunday we had a random person walk into the Don Mills chapel and stay for all three hours. He is pretty new to Canada and has been attending the English class there as well. But anyways we taught our boy the restoration on Sunday and he was LOVING IT. He just at it up. Elder Dixon was on exchange on Saturday when he wanted to meet again and they talked about his Book of Mormon reading and his understanding/questions thus far. Turns out he read a huge chunk of 1 Nephi and had a solid understanding. Then they taught the plan of salvation and he absolutely loved it and was so impressed by how much it makes sense compared to others beliefs. He thought it really showed the mercy and love of God.

That same day 3 Iranian friends came to English class and also became new investigators. BLESSED.

The Final Tender mercy we saw was when another man came church. A sister member met him playing Pickle ball a few weeks back and decided to invite him to church. He is a Chemical Engineer and is awesome. We were able to share the Book of Mormon with him and set a little meeting to see him on Thursday. In case you were curious, he is A1.

The lord has been blessing us.

His hand is present.

Have a great week!
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر



Shout our to Toronto sunsets



Tim Hortons Coming in the Clutch

HELLO

Everything is good here. Just another week of skype teaching, meetings and whatnot.

Just a quick shout out to the Cleveland Ohio Mission and my sis Dani, we are now teaching a sister there!

Some goodies that happened this week was on exchange! We didn't find any new investigators or anything but I had a great time with Elders Auerbach and Brown, the youngest Farsi missionaries. We were able to go around contacting and checking out some Persian book stores and trying to slide in our message with their owners. Unfortunately they weren't having it. But since I hadn't had lunch yet I asked to stop at the gas station and they had a Tim Hortons inside (typical Canada) so I shot some Farsi with the ladies and they ended up giving us 4 free pastries :) yeeeeeees

We also had a great experience with a member and her friend. She brought a friend of hers and was kinda getting on us to help him with all of his temporal problems and was saying "he will be baptized next week, then he can get help from the church." If you didn't know, we don't do that. But we talked to him more and found his deep love for his family, and how he misses them as they were recently taken from him by his ex wife. We were able to talk to him more about the gospel and we are going to be meeting with him this week :).

We had another 2 miracles on Sunday, we had a potential investigator come to Brampton Ward, and another man walk into Don Mills ward!! Both are excited about the gospel and are excited to meet with us this week!

We ended the week by having an open fire pit barbecue with a member and enjoyed some good Jujeh Kabab.

Hope you all have a good week!
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر











FSU D1 ball and the Antichrist

Hey Fam, how goes?

Happy Memorial Day to all. Eat some good BBQ for me.

Weeks seem to be flying by and its a hard realization that I won't be here forever. But we have been making the most out of it and have been having a good time!
Some cool experiences for ya:
We met with an investigator of ours who is atheist, and every time we bring him up to our ward mission leader he calls him the Antichrist, but this was Elders Dixons first time meeting him and in the past we have joked about reading Alma 30 with him about Korihor. So we get there and it turns out that we actually used that scripture with him... as we were reading what Korihor taught, he was super supportive and sympathizing with him, he thinks what Korihor taught is exactly right.... so basically without going into a huge amount of detail, our Ward mission leader wasn't to far off when calling him Antichrist.... yikes

But on the bright side we also met a kid that was landscaping our church and he was 6' 7" getting ready to play D1 basketball at FSU. So there ya go.

And we also contacted a couple more G-Wagons and Maseratis in the church parking lot. Another summer day in Toronto.

Hope you all have a good week
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

Turkish Blessin's - Plain Banksy

Hey Fam,
Also happy Victoria Day, I hope you all celebrated.

Well things are good, Elder Dixon and I are having a blast. Suns out, guns out amiright?

Well we have been hitting the pavement pretty good the last little bit and have been blessed to teach some great people.

Had a super weird day on Saturday.... I was on Exchange with Elder Heppler and we had a stellar day planned. 3 lessons, service for a member and all. But as the day went on, every one of those things fell through by 3 o'clock, hahaha typical. So we ended up going home to finish up our studies... mid prayer I remembered that some random guy in Turkey got our number from another person that I met on the street some 4 odd weeks ago and said that he needs to be sponsored to come to Canada... another typical situation. But I decided to shoot him a message anyways and he said he could Skype in 5 minutes. Yikes. So we hustled our behinds to the church and Skyped him. We had talked for like 5 minutes when he basically said "so you gonna help more or not?" and like so many times in the past I had to decline, but he asked which kind of Christians we were if we aren't Catholic or Protestant. BINGO ha we then had a good 40 minute restoration lesson and he downloaded the gospel library app, committed to read, and committed to go to church which is 3 HOURS from where he lives. God is good.

Also, Banksy is coming to town. I'll let you all know who he actually is when I meet him.

Stay tuned.
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر




Plains of Toronto


Mums Day Shout Out


Happy Moms Day to my Mom, Grandma Peterson, and Grandma Bakker!

All is good here,
Super good to talk to you all last night! Glad everyone is doing good!

I am officially back in action with Elder Dixon! By the end of this transfer, over a quarter of my mission will have been spent with this guy haha.

Last tuesday we had a pretty sweet miracle! We went to our English class and no Persians showed up unfortunately, but at the end the church phone rang and some guy on the other end told me that he wants to come to church. I talked to him a bit and turns out the he is from "Persia"! We met with him and he basically laid out a spiritual out of body experience that he had, he told the police about it earlier this week and they basically just told him to go to a church and find a Father or Priest. So he googled "church near me" and found our phone number. We have met with him now and he is super keen on living the Gospel of Jesus Christ! He wants to be baptized! Woohoo! And the cherry on top, He was born in DALLAS. Amen to teaching American citizens, no permanent resident worry at all.

We were also invited over to a Persian member's home for dinner, this time she fed us some A1 qorme sabzi. It was good stuff! So shout out to her for hooking us up.

The rest of the week we had a couple meet ups with other investigators. Same old same old, the work is good!
--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر