Transfer #4

This week has been pretty fun going from one dinner appointment to the next. Meeting all the members and getting pictures for my companion.
I went on 2 exchanges at the beginning of the week which kind of threw me off all week cause I missed so much. But that's all good cause I'm back in the swing of things here.

I can't remember which day but we went down to a place called DUNDAS SQUARE, its essentially just a smaller version of Times Square in New York City. That was pretty awesome. The only down side to going there is we have to drive on a rode called Church Street. This is a no go zone for missionaries. Just because of all the bad things that happen there.

The highlight of the week was the Christmas party put on by the church. Sooooo fun! We had around 12 Persian people there and they all had a good time. We also convinced one of our investigators to come sing with us on stage. She is in 6th grade and is kinda shy around new people but she loved it!
There was good food for everyone and good skits and different things preformed.

Sunday night we got our transfer calls! I am staying in the Farsi South area and I will be serving with Elder Casdorph!!!!
This next 7 weeks is going to be good.--

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Fried Dumplings and Alyssa's Old Companion

The week started off pretty good.
This week my Awesome sister sent me the information of her companion that she served with in Lisbon, Portugal.  She now lives here in Ontario and weirdly enough in the city that we have just recently started working in! It seems as though the Lord is really throwing us a bone as we expand Farsi work out to Kitchener/Waterloo. After one visit there we have 2 investigators, 3 potentials, and a Member that lives there that we are in contact with. AWESOME! This blessing has made the work in Kitchener that much more effective and now we have more reason to go more frequently.

Later on in the week I went on exchange with an Elder named Elder Davis. All was well when we first got together but after our usual morning scripture/language study things got a little out of control. We decided to make dumplings for lunch so we boiled some and they tasted weird so we decided to put a pot of oil on the stove and fry them! We left the oil on the stove for a little too much time so when we put the first dumpling in it exploded and molten oil went everywhere (no one was hurt). We started to freak out because it was shooting oil everywhere so we couldn't reach over and turn off the stove..... so with all the adrenaline that was pumping through my body I put on an oven mit and just picked up the put and ran it out onto the balcony. Surprisingly, I only got burnt once. Now that the oil was outside we decided to try cooking the dumplings out there, and it worked! We then made like 20 dumplings out on the balcony. It was awesome.

On sunday we had a FANTASTIC fast and testimony meeting. Super spiritual and overwhelming. To top it off Elder Jansons dying testimony to the ward got us 18 appointments for this week. What a blessing. We are going to be running from member to member all week to get pictures for Elder Janson before he goes home.

The Church just came out with their Christmas Initiative #LightTheWorld. I invite you all to go check it out on Mormon.org.  There are different challenges everyday that give us ideas on how we can serve. Its Awesome!


love you all!
ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Turkey Day Finally Came!

The week started off with me rearranging the apartment because I was bored of the arrangement. shortly after that we finally got rid of the smoke/weed smell in our bathroom! The solution was duct tape over the vent and it worked surprisingly well!

On Thursday an amazing member named Barbara Ann put together a big Thanksgiving dinner for some missionaries and President Shields and his family. It was awesome. She had American flags on the table and everything. And being her favorite I got to cut the ham. ;)

The next day my comp and I made a day trip 2 hours west to the Kitchener/Waterloo area in search of Persians! And the trip was a major success! We found one woman and her family that speak Dari (Persian dilect) and it was easily that most confused I've ever been on my mission but somehow my comp was able to talk to and understand her. I was able to teach her the restoration and she was easily one of the most open Muslims I've talked to. After that we were able to meet with another man in a Burger King, he has met with the missionaries before and loved talking with us! He is going to church this Sunday with the suster missionaries over there! The third person we talked to is awesome, she is pretty childish and funny but she keeps bringing people to the gospel even though she isn't even a member yet! So things are looking up in the Kitchener/Waterloo area and we are planning on making the trip over there more regularly!

That's pretty much everything this week, hope you all had a wonderful T

hanksgiving!


love you all!

ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

Thanksgiving (USA)

I know it isn't Thanksgiving yet but I can't email on Thursday so I will say it now, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Here in Canada everything is just a copy of America, and since there are so many missionaries from the states here we are allowed to celebrate the REAL Thanksgiving :)

So this week has been pretty interesting. At the start of the week our zone leaders sent out a text inviting all of us to really focus on baptism this week and that if we did we would see blessings from it. So thats exactly what we did! We started to focus on baptism more, and we definitely saw the blessings from it.  A member of the church that was baptized a couple years ago and is now less active has started to meet with us and has been coming back to church more regularly. We have focused on helping her bring her family to church but for some reason she didn't want her family involved in the same church that she is a part of. This last week we met with her again and the first thing she says to us is "lets set a baptismal date for my son". WHAT?? he has been taught all the lessons already as he has grown up learning with his mom, so now he is able to be baptized and we set a date for December 3rd! soooooo cool!

Later on in the week we met with our recent convert for the last time... sad day but we are super happy for him! The entire time we were teaching him he was looking for a job and sending in resumes but not having any real luck. Then within a week of his confirmation he recieved a job offer, accepted and moved about an hour and a half away.What a blessing for him!

The day I went on exchanges this week happened to be the rainiest and coldest day of the week.... and the elder that I was switching with lost his bus pass so we were on bikes.... all day..... I'll tell you what, Freezing rain on bare hands is the worst. It was so cold, and I am now sick because of it..... ugh.
all good tho. Still working and learning and baptizing here!

Love you all and hope you are all able to see the little blessings in your life!

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ارشد باکر

Elder Bakker

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