Kyle Lowry and Southern Lovin

Pretty nutty week,

Southern Lovin is a reference to me staying in Farsi South...., AGAIN ha this will be my 9th transfer here! And I'll be serving with one of my previous companions, Elder Dixon!

Started off with Tuesday night when we went to ESL. We pulled up a bit early and idk why but our church parking lot is notorious for loitering, not by kids or anything but by super rich people that like to park their G wagons, Bentleys, Royces, you name it. So this time we roll up and there is this massive 14 passenger van (Mercedes Sprinter) that was blacked out, tinted windows, black rims, everything. So we just thought it was some goober loitering and we didn't pay much attention to it, so we went inside and came back out to take the trash to the dumpster and I saw the guy in the front seat just chilling and reading a book so I decided to talk to him and see whats up. I started off the conversation asking about his van and he says "oh ya its nice, but its not mine. It's KYLE LOWRY'S." My jaw just dropped and I'm like you're kidding right and he just says nope, I'm his body guard, Robin. I about lost my crap and he is like here let me show you inside. So he gets out and opens up the door and lets us go in and sit in his van, heat/cooling seats, flat screen TV, all Leather. goodness, I know I'm not supposed to focus on that kind of stuff but it was niiiiiiice. Then he casually said "ok, well I have to go pick up his wife and kid. I have to take them downtown for the first game against the Cavs." Wow. what an experience.

Earlier in the week, an elder bought our entire zone all you can eat sushi as well, so idk what's going on but I've been spoiled.

Our mission was also very blessed to have President Ballard, Elder Gay and Elder Homer come to our mission. Leading up to their visit we had a challenge as a mission to talk to 5,000 people in 4 days, we succeeded with 5,333 and it was a bunch of fun.

My Companionship didn't have a lot of time to go contacting this week so on Friday we set aside 2 hours to go to Yonge Street and talk to literally every person we could. So we did and it was nuts hahahaha During this window of time was crazy storm, winds were clocked at like 110 km/h and a rainstorm hit that flooded the street in like 5 minutes.  The rain cleared and we kept contacting and we ended up talking to 102 people. Good stuff, we had a guy tell us he was Jesus, said a prayer with a guy from Cairo, saved an old man from the wind (he was holding onto a pole so he wouldn't blow away), saw pretty much every advertisement on the road break and fly into the traffic, saw another sign fall and puncture a hole into the hood of a Mercedes right in front of us. It was nuts. The whole city lost power for couple hours and all the stoplights were out for about 3 days.

Elder Ballard then came in and basically told us that work is the key to success, big surprise there, but hearing it from an apostle hit us all from a different angle. It was great, President Ballard shook my hand and looked straight into my sole. He is an Apostle of the Lord.

love you all!

--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

Bass Pro Shop

Morning Folks!

How goes things?

Things are good here! It's the last week of the transfer and its warm! 7 months of winter is a drag. seriously. But things are going good! We have been enjoying the weather.

This week was a bunch of exchanges and meetings for us so I just give a quick rundown on the goodies:

Mission Leadership Conference
We had our MLC meeting on Wednesday and it's very likely that 6+ of the 20 Zone Leaders won't be zone leaders next transfer.... too bad. The reason is is that 10/20 of them go home with me in the coming months, so president is putting us in other areas to help those areas. but since we all know it was likely going to be our last hurrah together we decided to take a picture with all our Bass Pro Shop hats (another joke from the MLC elders), our mission vehicle coordinator took the picture and said "none of you are smiling, do you know what makes me smile? my favorite store, BASS PRO SHOP" then we all whipped out our hats and President and Sister Shields were just like "wait whats going on?!". it sounds a lot more lame when I type it out but I promise it was funny.

We then went on exchange with Elder Johnson and Elder Cruz. Elder Johnson came to our area with me and Elder Auerbach and we decided to contact Ryerson university. The University is right on Dundas Square (Toronto Times Square) on a Friday... not our best idea. It was seriously so crowded that it was almost impossible to contact people... There was a guy trying to anti us with "Manufactured Terrorism by the government", idk he was nuts.... and while that was going on there was another guy juggling fire while standing on a 10 foot pole..... should have taken a picture but there was too much going on and I didn't get the chance.... sorry....

Those are the main highlights of the week, the only other good thing is that we have finally gotten our eternigator to come to church! If you were reading my emails about a year ago, I talked about an investigator that "Loves being Burned" and couldn't come to church because he plays tennis on Sundays, he is a very wealthy and well off man. But he has been to church that last 2 Sundays and will be coming to see President Ballard speak this week! 1 year later and a lot of progress made. woo hoo!

Thanks for tuning in,

Have a good week!

--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

Safe

Hey mom, not sure if you heard but there was a vehicle rampage deal, not sure what to call it, on Yonge and Finch which is where the majority of my missionary work is done. But I wanted to let you know that I'm safe and that all is well with me :)

Yellow Vests

Things are WARM here! Crazy, last pday (1 week ago) we were fighting an ice storm that put like 4 inches of snow/ice on everything. Now I'm rocking a short sleeve with no jacket. lol.

Things are good.

Been moving trees all weekend for the "10,000 trees for Rouge" annual service project. Its pretty weird to say that I did the exact same service project last year around this time in the same place...

We went on exchange with the AP's, Elder Kimball and Elder Ballard, yes they are related To Heber C. and M. Russell. It was a super good time. Elder McBeth stayed in the area with Elder Ballard while Elder Auerbach and I went to Brampton. Elder Auerbach and I have a a common companion, Elder Ward, that is living in the Brampton and he didn't know that Elder Auerbach was coming with me on the exchange so we played a prank on him. Basically made the elders in the house think that someone broke in... one of the elders was freaking out and ready to call the cops and the other (Elder Ward) put on his Bass pro hat and grabbed a bat and went down ready to fight whoever it was. lol. We stopped him before he could.
Elder Ward is easily the closest companion I had to being a dad. What a good guy.
The next morning we went to the church played some ball, came back and had a nice breakfast.
Life is different in the mansion (basically a frat house lol).

Other than that I also went on exchange with Elder Smith, a Chinese speaking elder and we went contacting almost all day on the subways and outside in the cold. We were able to find a couple Pi's and whatnot so it was a good day.

The work is also moving along, eternigators (eternal investigators) are starting to come to church, people are wanting to meet. I can't complain at all, Missionary life is simple and sweet.

Hope you all have a good week!

Your boy,
Elder Bakker


ارشد جک باکر

PBUH

Top of the morning fam!

PBUH is an Islamic term that means Peace Be Upon Him. Talking about prophets that have passed. So this week we have been using it a bit when talking about missionaries dying. EX do you remember how elder Bakker(pbuh), did....

I'm still here in Don Valley Ward (Farsi South) coming up on 12 months!

Things are cold here ha, massive ice storm hit Ontario and cancelled church for almost everyone!
The weather has been up and down this week. Started off in the 50-60 range and we were able to go proselyte downtown Toronto in a light jacket.... then Thursday hit and it got colder and started to rain... then Saturday got even colder and turned into ice rain... the entire city was covered in a sheet of ice.... then it warmed up a bit last night and flooded Toronto... ugh. Gotta love Springtime in Ontario...

But anyways things have been good. Mission life is treating us well.

Interviews were also this week, President shields making comments about me going home and whatnot.... ugh x2. too weird.

Not much to report on but enjoy the pics!

Enjoy the week :)

--
Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

Halal at ya

Heyo
Pretty good week.


This week has been crazy and we have been all over the map.

We have used the car maybe 3 times in total this week for necessary things. The rest of the time we have been subwaying around. The majority of our time has been spent downtown as well, dropping by less actives and referrals. Its been good. We were able to go to Krispy Kreme as well! There are only like 2 in Ontario.
This week we were going to have a Halal (meat prepared as prescribed by Muslim law) only week, so we started off by going to a place called TopGun Burger. It's a super good burger place downtown that's 100% Halal. Super good.
But turns out Halal is pricey soooooo ya, we bagged that idea but it was still a good burger.

The other exciting thing that happened this week is that Elder S Gifford Nielsen of the 70 came to speak to us! If you don't know who he is look him up. BYU allstar quarterback, 6 years in the NFL. he is a GIANT, spiritually and physically. He came to our zone conference and really lit the place up, super funny guy, very smart and extremely spiritual.

Nothing else to really report on....

Life's good.

--

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر

This is what the burgers look like.

Stop Selling Diabetes!

Hey folks

What a conference, am I right?
Hope you all enjoyed it while it lasted!

Elder McBeth, Auerbach, and I have been doing some classic grinding this week!
Classic missionary work mixed with meetings, the temple, and conference. oof.

It's been pretty funny teaching this week, we had 2 lessons come down to the same concern in different ways. One of them I was giving a life example relating to the cookie business and our investigator flipped and was saying that we shouldn't be selling cookies because they were unhealthy and that we were basically selling diabetes..... and the other was a similar concern but our other investigator was asking us about the Word of Wisdom and if we could sell products as long as we don't partake ourselves. His example was owning a hotel that sold alcohol, and it escalated from that to "if cocaine was legal, would we be able to sell it as long as we didn't use it ourselves." ha ya...... idk....

Other than that we were able to enjoy the temple, what a blessing it is to have temples on the earth where we can go and find peace and comfort in the Lord's house.

Conference was bumping with spiritual talks and administrative stuff. What a weekend. If you haven't watched, watch.

Well hope you all have a good week!

Elder Jack Bakker
ارشد جک باکر