August 1 . . . 2011

dear fam,

sounds like life is sure crazy for all the bakers this week.   hoooly smokes! (Karen was in the hospital and Rand was moving into their new house)

I have heard from Joe. We where writing about every week for a few weeks and I haven’t heard any thing this last week. He has been having a good time. He is going a little crazy in the MTC like any missionary.  Maybe a little more because he is there for so long. He seems pumped to go into the field but a little nervous about the Spanish. He was telling me that I am the only English speaking missionary from our group of kids.  That made me feel black sheep and a little special (ed?) ha-ha   he seems like he is doing fine, got that greenie spirit for sure!

Dylan did get baptized.  What a great experience that was!  We had a great turn out from the ward. Dylan asked that there be only a few people. So, we only invited a few people and well they invited some others and there were a lot of people there.  Just about all the young men came.  Great support.  I hope and pray that the ward will keep it up and we will retain.  Elder Mower leaned over and told me the only time he felt the spirit that strong is in the temple. I hope that pumps him up to get another baptism. We all like to see baptism and be apart of them.  Sometimes as missionaries we forget this person is a son or daughter of God, a real person, very special -  not just a statistical candidate.  The ward gave him a quad. I was trying to think what to get him.  We got Eddie the Ensign subscription.  Dylan is 17 and he has those.  Any ideas? I guess I should have thought about that earlier. ooo Could you send out a picture of Christ?  They don’t have any in their home. Maybe that would be a good gift.

  

That’s a darn good question on how did we get our cards switched around. We were on exchanges (Elder Spencer is who I was with) and we went out to lunch.  The waiter or whoever takes the money, somehow got the cards switched and we didn’t care to check to make sure that we had the right ones.  When we went out again a few weeks later he didn’t eat anything and the waiter called his name (there were a lot of us so calling names seemed the easiest) and so we figured out that our cards were switched.

Our teaching pool seems to be continually shrinking.  Leaders seem to say things just to keep us motivated to keep pressing on in the ward.  In the white had book it says that holidays are the best days to proselyte because families are together.  ha-ha, they got that right but they want to spend time with family not us ... the summer a lot of people are out and about... umm I haven’t seen that too much. I am excited for fall to start.  I remember with Elder Kinini that’s when we talked to the most people.  After summer when it’s cool and school is started people are trying to catch the fresh air.  Vacations are over for a season and the nose is back on the grind.  That’s when I saw the most success.

We did pick up two new investigators this week, Paul and Barb… nice catholic family. Here’s the story, we were at a dinner that took way too long.  The mother wanted to do her home teaching that night (it was the last day of the month).  In the moment, it was very frustrating that a member would do that. But after words our first stop was Paul’s home.  He said hey we just got home about 5 minuets ago... but come on in.  It was a blessing to know that for some odd reason that sister waited to do her home teaching that day and for some reason it took forever to get out of their home.  But God knows... He does.  While I’ve been training, I have really been trying to be 100% obedient and stuff like that gets me down a little because I feel less obedient.  But seeing why that happened  ... well, every thing happens for a reason even if we don’t know the reason.  (maybe the Lord is teaching him about letter and spirit of the law . . .)

We are having another district get together for the last time.  We are getting a zebra team (Spanish and English) in Redwing, so I get to study a little more Spanish now.... I am the new district leader.  I always enjoyed leading back home and stuff.  For some reason out here in the field, its difficult to get pumped for leadership... all is well the church is true thank goodness :)

I love you all. A few weeks ago I can’t remember who it was, but we talked about how it’s difficult to love those we do not know.  This week I felt a 'click' with that. President sent out an email about that.  I just felt it so intense . . . the spirit and the love.  I will continue to work on that . . .

have a great week

elder baker