Week 17? IDK

hey hey

This week has been pretty interesting!
At the beginning of the week my companion and I were pretty sick, so it was pretty hard to go out and work all day long. It didn't help that he lost his voice so I did 100% of the talking.

After we recovered from our illness we were able to help a member family rake their leaves. We went to their house expecting to be there for like and hour or so.... the entire job ended up taking us about 4 hours in total. But they bought us Pizza so it was all worth it!
While we were raking leaves, like 4 people passed us on the street offering us jobs to rake their lawns as well but when we said we would love to but we wouldn't let them pay us they said no.... what the heck? why do people turn down free service? goodness just let us serve you and share the gospel with you and bring you to church.

The next day we were invited into a members home for dinner. His name is Jermaine and he is roughly 6'5" and he is from Jamaica. He makes the BEST jerk chicken. but lately he has been testing our pallets for spice, so he decided to make a Jamaican curry with like 3x the amount of pepper than he would regularly use. He said "last time I made curry this hot it made an elder cry"......... holy cow. that stuff was hot. I wasn't able to speak for like 10 minutes after I ate it.

The last big thing is that we had our recent convert receive the gift of the holy ghost and the priesthood! super exciting!

love you all and hope all is well in your lived!--

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

SALAAM!

How is it going?

The great white north is doing well. Weird how warm it is still, everyone complains about how cold it gets but its still like 50-60 degrees. idk why everyone is complaining.
The election is happening!!!! Everyone in Canada loves to talk about the election and about Trump, but when I ask them about what is happening in their own government they don't have much to say. HA. USA!!!

Funny story about the election, I was tracting with an English area near an investigators house and the first door we knocked on was a Croatian man. The first thing he says to us while pointing his finger in my face was "what is your business?!" (imagine that in like a Russian/Croatian accent) so we start talking to him about Jesus Christ and he raises his voices and pulls us into his house (which was extremely stinky and dirty) to show us this massive ceramic piece of art on his wall of Moses pointing towards a cauldron of fire. He started talking about how he should be the Pope. We then went back outside and somehow he switched the conversation to Donald Trump and how he thinks he should win because America needs to be America not Mexico not Canada. America. so ya that was weird. Also he loved to talk about how Noah split the red sea, and when we told him that that wasn't Noah he yelled at us and told us that he is older and smarter than we are. soooo ya ha that was interesting.

Also this week I have been able to put my language skill to the test! a couple days ago I was on exchange with an English elder and we walked past a lady and she didn't want to talk to us at all. I looked at her and asked if she spoke Persian "Farsi baledid?" She turned and freaked out and started to speak to me in Persian! I was able to have a small conversation with her and teach her about the Book of Mormon!! soooo cool, she loved that this big white guy spoke Persian. Most Persian people do. ;)

Transfer calls were on Sunday! I am not going to be going anywhere and neither is my companion! We are still going to be in the Farsi South area giving it our all.

Nothing else really big has happened!
Hope you all are doing well!

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ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Roaches and Moving

So this week has been pretty interesting. On Wednesday Elder Vanderzanden finished his mission. We are down to 5 Farsi missionaries in all of Ontario, our numbers are dwindling. By the new year there will only be 4 of us Farsi's and that,s when things will really get interesting...

On a more gross note, our apartment has been having a bit of a cockroach problem... that's all I'm going to say about that.

view from the new apartment

Since Elder Vanderzanden died the penthouse apartment that he was living in is now vacant. So my comp and I were instructed to move in so the Chinese Sisters could live in our apartment. I'm not going to complain about having to move into a 16th floor apartment with a skyline view of Toronto. There is also a Persian member that lives down the hall from us now and she brings us food at random times of the day, it's great.




Went on exchange with Elder Bybee and we walked for like 12 hours in the rain.... but we found this weird moose thing on the side of the road so that was cool.

We also made a giant cookie for one of the members that is going through a hard time, it was awesome, good thing I come from a family of cookie bakers or that probably wouldn't have turned out so well...

Life is going be getting about 100x busier for us for the coming month(s). Our area absorbed one of the Central Farsi areas and now we have more than double the amount of investigators than we did last week... pray for us plz.

One of our investigators had his baptismal interview yesterday and is being baptized this Sunday!!!!! super excited for him. He is one of the most prepared people I have met, he has accepted and lives every principle of the gospel that we have taught him.

love you all and hope all is well in your lives!
Dustet Daram!

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ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

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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ارشد باکر

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