The Gift of Tongues

So this week was interesting.

On Wednesday I went on exchange with my Zone Leader Elder Stowell (he went to Brighton). He is a super cool guy and a great missionary. Also since he came to my area I got to drive :) It was a good day, all of our lessons fell through so we spent the day finding people to teach and trying to talk to members. Fun day, the mandarin elders are a good time.

Then 2 days later I was able to go on an exchange with Elder McBeth! He came to Toronto with me and is also a Farsi missionary! Neither of us are very good at Farsi yet but somehow we ended up teaching 3 lessons that day.... the first 2 lessons were ok and we were able to communicate through a member and a little English (oops) but the last lesson we had was with a lady that speaks no English. We went in and tried to have a conversation with her and got right into the lesson. Not really sure what we said but we were somehow able to teach the Plan Of Salvation! I think she understood what we said, or she is just nice and told us she understood. I’m ok either way. :)

Today all the Farsi missionaries had lunch with President and Sister Shields. We took them to Ava Esfahan (a Persian restaurant in the area) to get there first taste of Persian food! Super fun. Me and Elder Janson also went to a Portuguese bakery in town. If any one was curious, Portuguese people are some awesome bakers! We stopped at Value Village on the way home and I almost bought a poster of Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson. wish did...

Love you all and hope all is well in life!!

DUSTET DARAM

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Elder Bakker

Canada is Wierd

My p day is on Tuesday this week because Canada decided to have Thanksgiving yesterday, I tried to tell them that it’s not November but they didn't listen to me.....

but that's OK because I was able to have 3 Thanksgiving dinners this week :) we went to Bishop Duodo's house on to have an African thanksgiving meal, oh my goodness it was soooo good. They made these fried fish heads, had spicy steamed vegetables, the classic mashed potatoes and roles, had some good fried rice (idk why they had that but it was good) and some classic turkey with cranberry sauce. Holy it was soooo good. We then went to the Placidos home on Sunday for some Filipino (idk how to spell it) Thanksgiving, they had pretty much every kind of food and then a bunch of noodles and shrimp and these weird calzone things idk it was soooo good, and the icing on top they brought their Catholic friends and has us teach them about families and temples!! Super fun. The third meal was also from the Duodos, the other elders in my area weren’t able to make it to their house for dinner so they gave the food to us hahahahah sucks for them.

Super cool week, we had interviews with the mission president on Wednesday. so interviews with the president usually only takes like 2 hours for the whole district but this time it took about 6.... we pretty much just had to sit at the chapel for 6 hours waiting for out interviews...... goodness that was a long time. 

After Interviews I went on exchange with Elder Vandezanden and I got to stay at his apartment. Oh. My. Goodness. He lives on the 16th floor with a perfect view of the city. Idk how the mission affords an apartment with that kind of view. 

For P-day I went on a split with Elder McBeth and we went to the Aquarium for the day, super fun but not nearly as good as any aquarium in the States. USA 4 life. 

IN the aquarium they have a little petting zoo area with shrimp that clean stuff (like in Finding Nemo) and you stick your hands into the water and they all swarm to your hands and start to clean all the dead skin off! What?!?! It is the coolest thing ever! I just had shrimp give me a manicure! hahaha that was fun!

DUSTET DARAM!!!!!

Love you all!​

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Elder Bakker

Elder McBeth (not my companion) and me at the Aquarium

Night skyline from the Central Farsi Apartment window

Cockroaches and Confernce

Its been a good first week of the transfer!

I am now with Elder Janson. He is the man! He has some great talents. He can hold his breath for 5 minutes, he can beat box, he has a ridiculously high pain tolerance and he is dying in like 8 weeks. I transferred into the southern Farsi area which we call South Persia and it is great! The apartment actually has a carpet and nice desks, the only downside is that it has theses nasty little bugs called cockroaches that live under our sink.... it is impossible to kill them all because they multiply so quickly... ew!!!

This weekend we were able to hear from Our Prophet and the Apostles!!! Sooooo cool! I really enjoyed the talk on joy. We all go through hard times, whether that be with family, friends, school, work, or having to learn a language that is extremely foreign. But we can always find the joy in those things, "Men are that they might have joy". We came to this earth to have fun and find the good things in life!!! Going through hard things will be such a small moment in the entirety of our lives.

All is well here :)
I only have one more year of being a teenager... better live it up!
love you !!!!!
Dustet daram!!!!!

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Elder Bakker

Elder Janson and Elder Bakker

Bye Bye Richmond Hill

Hey Hey Hey

This week has been pretty interesting!
At the beginning of the week we went to see an investigator and he went off on all of his notes about being Muslim. He tried to convince us that our church and Islam are pretty much the same if you take out the atonement of Jesus Christ. We explained to him that the Atonement is key in our religion and that you can't just take that away, he then continued to slam us with all of his Muslim facts. That lasted about an hour and a half, so that was super fun :)

This week has been bitter sweet, lots of good but in the end we will be saying goodbye to Elder Atkinson. He is an All-Star Farsi missionary.

We buy these things called Kinder Egg Surprises here, they are chocolate eggs with a toy inside, and we use them to predict our transfer call. Mine predicted that I am being transfered! So I am leaving my area (Richmond Hill) and I'm going to the south Farsi area with Elder Janson!!!! He is a super cool guy and he loves to bake which is perfect for us Bakkers. I am super excited about that.

lots of love to all of you!
Dustet daram!!!!

PS: have a question going into conference!!!!!! God is the only way to receive personal revelation!
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Elder Bakker

On Top of the World!

Hello everyone!
Hope everyone is doing well.
This week has been super fun!
Started it off by going to downtown Toronto to see the CN Tower! super cool. For everyone that doesn't know what the CN Tower is, its pretty much the space needle but like 5x the size, its 1500 feet tall and the 7th tallest free standing building in the world. Also its the tower that Drake is sitting on on his album cover "views." So that was a super cool experience, also I'm super scared of heights and there is a glass floor. that was nuts.
We were also able to go get some Poutine from Smokes Poutinerie. That was super good. Poutine is a Canadian food, it is essentially French Fries, Gravy, and Cheese Curds. It was super good. I got the Philly Cheese steak.
We were also able to see the Blue Jays Stadium!!!

We reconnected with an investigator this week and we went in with the plan to teach more about the restoration and Joseph Smith but that is not what happened at all. He pulled out all of his notes and was going off on the stories from the Quraan and just kept slamming us with different views of the Muslim religion. Goodness gracious, he is extremely steadfast in his faith.

We were also able to find a new investigator! I cant give a name for security reasons but we found her through tracting and we ran into her again Sunday night! gave her a Book of Mormon and we will be seeing her soon!

Dustet Daram!!!!!
(love you!!!!)

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Elder Bakker

Basketball and Conversion

To keep us from going insane from 4 hours of study every morning, our companionship plays a basketball game on a little nerf hoop in our apartment called "If I make this shot". Pretty much we shoot the ball from various points in the room. Every time you make a shot the other person has to do what you said. For example, the other night I said "If I make this shot Elder Atkinson has to make me pancakes". Long story short, my companions have to make me a full breakfast.

This week we had a super cool experience to hear the conversion story of one of our recent converts. I won’t share his name for security purposes, but its a pretty amazing story.

Some background information: In the country of Iran you are either Muslim or you are Christian. The government of Iran is an Islamic state. That basically means that if you are born into a Muslim home, then you MUST follow the laws and customs of the religion of Islam or be put to death (If you are born into a Christian home, you may join Islam whenever you would like or stay Christian). However, if you ever decide at any point that you want to convert to Christianity if you are a Muslim then you are immediately killed or locked up in jail for a long time.

Well, our investigator found the light of Christ while he was in Iran and sought after the gospel of Jesus Christ. The government found out and left him a small note slid underneath his front door saying “we know you have intentions of becoming Christian even though you have practiced Islam during your life. Stop now or we will have you killed.”

He and his other friends who were in the same situation and had converted to Christianity got together and devised a plan to go into the mountains of Iran by night and escape to Iraq where they would be free to go to church and receive baptism.

Long story short, he made it to Canada after many long years of waiting to receive legal residency in Canada, and one night he got into an elevator with 2 Farsi speaking Mormon missionaries. He saw them, read their name tags, and was overcome with joy.

He was baptized 3 months ago and is one of the most devout Christians and examples of Christ's love and devotion that I have ever seen. This is a man that gave up everything to follow Christ and I got to sit next to him at church yesterday. I feel like we don't realize how good a lot of us have it.

Not much else has happened this week.

Dustet daram!! (I love you!!)

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Elder Bakker

Winter coat purchased in Canada in preparation for a cold winter.

Salom Sept 6

Hey Hey

So this week has gone by pretty slowly because pretty much all of our investigators decided to go on vacations so we haven’t been able to teach our normal amount. That’s ok though because it allows us to go out and find new people to teach! We were able to find 2 new people on Tuesday!!! The missionaries here in Richmond Hill run an ESL program (English as a Second Language) and we use it as a way to find new people to teach. Unfortunately there are only like 3 Persian people that come so we usually get put into the Mandarin classes. So for the whole hour we're teaching a lesson in all English about how to find a job to these people that speak only Chinese.. It’s nuts.

It seems like everyone in Toronto drives a nice car. Every family has a Porsche, Mercedes, or a BMW.

So last P day my companions and I went to Niagara Falls which was extremely fun but it also meant that we didn't have time to shop for the week so we have been rationing or food everyday for the past 8 days. It’s been a rough couple of days... lol

On Monday we had an exchange so we had a Cantonese elder come work in the Farsi area. Elder Mak is a super cool guy and speaks little English. It was great. Throughout the day we did our normal amount of studies and service and missionary work and whatnot until about 8 o'clock. We have this Chinese man that lives down the street from us and we see him every once in a while, he always wants to have us over at his house but we've never been able to go due to the lack of speaking Mandarin and all that. So on Monday he waves down our car and has us come into his house, lucky for us we had en elder from Hong Kong to teach him!! His name is Wong Wei.

Farsi is still going good here, I understand like 5% of what is happening in lessons but hey that’s more than last week.

I would love to hear from you guys!

love you all!

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Elder Bakker