Elder Jensen and Marc Meredith, Sunset in Magna

White Oak Ward Reunion!

Elder John Jensen of the DC North mission, Marc Meredith of the White Oak Ward

Elder Baxter, Elder Gee 

                                                            Sunset in Magna

Last week as a trainee! (June 27)

Hey everyone!

Wow it's been a crazy week! But a good one! We've found some new

people to teach, shed our bikes, and tracted like crazy! It's getting

super hot here, and wearing dress slacks raises the temperature like

10 degrees! But life is good and the work moves forward!

Mondayyyy - We just did our normal shopping, writing, p day stuff! We

watched a movie called risen that just barely got approved by our

mission president! It felt weird to be watching a movie but it was

pretty good! After p day we had a lesson with Alicia and also Ruben

Marquez! Sad part of the day was that Elder Gee popped the tire on his

bike...we tried to repair it, but the hole was too big to repair...so

we've been on foot all week!

Tuesday - We ate lunch with a senior couple in our zone that Elder Gee

used to serve with, along with the other Spanish elders in our zone.

It was fun! Highlight of the event: I used a bidet!! ✅ Haha it was

super weird! But Elder Gee told me before hand that they had one, so

of course I wasn't gonna leave the house without asking to use the

bathroom! ;) In between lunch and dinner we did a bunch of visits in

the trailer park. It was HOT! After dinner we went tracting in a new

apartment building with Hermano Carrasco (only one person slammed the

door on us!:) and finished off the day with two quick visits to some

less active sisters.

Wednesday - we started the day off at the mission office! We got some

supplies and Elder Gee had a departing interview with president! I got

to hang out and talk to the missionaries that were passing through :)

we went home for lunch to find out that Fabian cancelled the last

lesson we were gonna have with him before we passed him off to the

sisters in the YSA ward. The only other lesson we had that day was

with Hermana Andrade--we had technically dropped her, but we still

pass by every once in a while to read the Book of Mormon with her. It

was a good lesson, and we could tell that she enjoyed it, but she

doesn't usually read unless we do it with her, which is too bad.

Thursday - we started off the day with our stake president barking at

a dog. I mean giving a blessing to someone. Haha. But on the way

President Kessler randomly stuck his head out the window and started

barking at this neighborhood dog, it was hilarious 😂 The blessing was

for a lady named Tammy. I think I talked about her a long time ago.

She and her family are in a really hard situation and she's having

some health problems. She's crazy. Lessons with her husband (who

speaks Spanish) are always an adventure because Tammy tends to come in

and start talking about random stuff and gets heated about it. Last

Sunday Elder Gee made a bet with me that it was impossible to have a

thirty minute lesson with them, and of course I said I could do it no

problem :) So we decided that whoever lost would have to make

breakfast for the other for the rest of the week. Well, I lost. I was

pretty upset. Anyway, the rest of that day was filled with planning,

coordination with a senior couple in our area, and 3 lessons! One

lesson was with Guadalupe, the other two were with new people that we

just found! One is a non member lady named Adela (mom of Luis who we

finally met!) the other is a less active family, la familia Ruiz. All

the lessons were great and we're excited to have some new people to

teach!

Friday - we went to the gym for morning workout, showered there, went

to McDonald's and then went straight to church to do our studies so

that we would be there early for district meeting. District meeting

was really good! Elder Gee divided the district into two groups and he

trained one while I trained the other and then we switched! It was a

little stressful to plan for, but other than that it was good! Later

on we had a lesson with Hermana Alicia where we taught the 10

commandment lesson. It was a good lesson! Nothing extra special to

report for that. The pictures with the kids were from that lesson :)

her kids love us to death, sometimes it's hard to teach the lesson

haha.

Saturday - We walked all the way to the Contreras family's house for

our 11 o clock lesson and they weren't home. :/ We've still been

having a hard time meeting with them. So we ended up walking a little

farther down the road to Hermano Carrasco's house where we ate lunch

and finished our studies. After that we had to book it across town so

that Elder Gee could have a temple recommend interview...we walked as

fast as physically possible without actually running. And it was

blazing hot. Good times :) for the rest of the day we just made a

couple visits, and had a lesson with Jose. The last little while he's

been feeling pretty sick so we haven't seen him in a while. But he

seemed to be doing a lot better! After that we finished tracting the

new apartments with Hermano Carrasco. Surprisingly nothing too crazy

happened! We did meet some pretty cool people though.

Sundayyy- pretty much just a normal Sunday! Nothing exciting except

that we got two really good referrals from a member! We have yet to

contact them, but the member said that she thinks they are willing and

very ready to hear the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, so we have

high hopes!

This week we've seen our prayers answered! We've been praying to find

some new people to teach, and we are starting to see the results! Im

so grateful that Heavenly Father loves all of us enough to answer our

prayers! Hope you all have an awesome week! Thanks for all the prayers

and letters!

Love you all!

Elder Baxter

Last week's letter (June 20)

Monday. Monday for district activity we went ice skating! It was a

blast. Of cool air ;)

Tuesday - We had splits with the zone leaders and I was with Elder

Fakatou again! We had fun, but it was kind of a long day because we

didn't have very many lessons, and the ones we did cancelled on us.

But on the bright side we got to talk to a ton of people on the street

and have a couple doorstep lessons!

Wednesday - Wednesday we had a mission tour! It was pretty awesome! We

talked about the Book of Mormon and its importance in understanding

the gospel of Jesus Christ! The book is true and the church is blue?

Something like that ;)

Thursday - we were supposed to have a bunch of lessons but almost all

of them cancelled :( we had a coordination lunch with one of the

senior couples here in Magna! We also did weekly planning and elder

gee says we poured out our souls to each other, but I like to call it

the weekly rage session (companion inventory:)  just kidding, we're

still getting along great!

Friday was a crazy day cuz we had another blitz! We also had three

lessons planned really close together! We had to go on splits to make

all the lessons, but man, it is so hard sometimes to get members to

help us! And then of course we had some cancellations. But it was

still a blast! Got to talk to a lot of new people and have some fun

with some RMs from our ward.

Saturday for our morning workout we went to the local high school

field and played some football! We went with a couple of the other

elders in our zone, it was pretty fun!We were supposed to do some

service afterward, but it ended up getting cancelled, so we finished

our studies instead. We had a lesson planned with a lady in the

trailer park, but that got cancelled too! Too many cancellations...but

it's okay because afterward I got to go to lunch with John Jensen and

Marc Meredith!!! It was definitely the highlight of my week :) we ate

at cafe rio and had a good time talking. Afterward we came back and

tried to see if the appointment from that morning had returned home

and also made a bunch of other visits. For dinner we had a ward party

to celebrate Father's Day, and then made a couple last visits to some

less actives and non members to remind them to come to church.

Sunday Hermana Alicia came to church! It's been a long time. She has

been changing a lot since beginning to read the Book of Mormon. It's

cool to see :)

Sorry about the short letter this week! More to come next time. Love you all!

Elder Baxter

When you can't think of a subject. . .

This This is SaraLyn- Madelyn was out of town two weeks ago and I never got the letter posted.

Then last week, Joshua apparently wrote it, but it somehow didn't get sent. So today we got

last week's letter and today's.  So you get all three today, like it or not! :)

June 13, 2016

Hey everybody!

Here's what my week looked like:

Monday - we had studies, did cleaning, shopping, all that other good

P-day stuff. We also played some basketball and just relaxed a little

:) After P-day was over we went out for a lesson we were supposed to

have with a girl named Alejandra. We stopped to talk to a couple

people on the way though, and one lady talked to us in the street for

like thirty minutes or more! It was crazy! So when we finally got to

Alejandra's house she wasn't there. We went and tried to contact some

other people in the area but we didn't have any luck until the end of

the day when we had a lesson with a less active named Noe Gasca. He

invited us in and we could tell pretty soon he just wanted to planchar

(argue/bible bash). All churches are true because God is everywhere,

I'll go to church if God wants me to etc etc. So we shared a short

message of the restoration, talked a little bit about why there are so

many churches on the earth and then invited him to read the rest of

the pamphlet, and pray about it. By the end of the lesson he seemed to

soften his heart a little and be willing to listen and not just argue

:)

Martes - we started off the day at the chapel because my comp had to

register for his classes...he did that while I did some lesson reports

and then we had a lesson with Fabian. It was a really good lesson! We

were planning to teach him about the great apostasy, but when we

started the lesson, my companion randomly asked how he had been with

the word of wisdom, and it turned out that that was exactly what

Fabian needed. It was really cool! After that we had to go to South

Jordan to the dentist because Elder Gee had two fillings pop out. We

got to eat out at a burger place called The Edge though, so that was a

plus! ;) We had service when we got back from the dentist (moving a

stack of wood, again) then we had dinner with a family from Samoa!

They were super generous and treated us like their own sons. Even

though they were very humble they were some of the most giving and

hospitable people. The dad had been in jail in the past and is working

super hard to get himself and his family back to where they should be.

It was very humbling to me also to see the changes taking place in

their lives through the atonement of Jesus Christ and through living

the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think sometimes when life is good we

forget that ALL of us are desperately in need of the atonement of

Jesus Christ.

Wednesday we had another lesson with Fabian, then we came home for

lunch and spent a bunch of time planning for a district blitz

activity...it was basically an activity where we all got together as a

district, divided up with members (so we had twice as many

companionships) and went out to contact a bunch of referrals and also

tract some apartment buildings! It took a LOT of planning though, but

it was worth it in the end. That took until dinner time, then after we

had a couple lessons and visits. We had a lesson with Alicia that was

really good. We have been reading the Book of Mormon with her and she

seems to really be enjoying it! She is making connections from what

she reads to her own life so we're really excited to see that

improvement! Before we gave her the challenge to read the whole thing

through she didn't really keep any of the commitments we extended, so

she has come a long way!

Thursday. We had lunch at Rancho market (a little Mexican

store/restaurant) with the ZLs and then did weekly planning. I talked

to the lady at the cash register all in Spanish and didn't really

think until afterward how crazy that was. :) after weekly planning we

tried to visit Alejandra again, ate dinner and then had another lesson

with Noe Gasca. It was a really different lesson compared to the

previous one. He was a lot more willing to listen and wasn't

argumentative at all! It was a huge change.

Friday was the big day for the district blitz, and it was crazy! We

had district meeting in the morning (and we always have to go early

since elder Gee is district leader), then right after we had lunch

with the Posso family and Fabian. It was a really big lunch because in

a lot of Latino cultures lunch is the big meal of the day instead of

dinner. It was good stuff :) And it was a good thing too because we

accidentally miscommunicated with dinner and missed it completely!

After lunch we rushed back to the church to finish planning and

printing off some stuff for the blitz, Elder Gee and I split with the

zone leaders so that he could go and do a Spanish baptismal interview,

I taught two English lessons with elder Fakatou, then we met back up

briefly before the blitz started. The blitz was awesome. I was with a

brother from our ward who is pretty young and served his mission in

Honduras--we put on the "after burners" and tracted a whole building

and a half in a little over an hour! We got some new investigators for

us and for the English elders, so it was awesome! And Hermano

Rodriguez is hilarious so it was a good time.

Saturday we did some service in the morning, then we spent a ton of

time contacting some of the Spanish speakers we didn't get to on

Friday. We biked so much! It starting pouring rain about halfway

through the day, and our umbrellas were at home on the other side of

town, so we got soaked! :) We ate dinner at Wendy's during the worst

part of the storm. We had one lesson with Jose Andrade, but the other

lessons we had for the day cancelled. It was a little sad, but it was

still a good day because we got to clean up our area book a lot with

all the contacting we did.

Sunday we biked a lot again! I wish I had a mile counter or something!

After our regular church meetings we went to give Hermano Carrasco a

blessing because he was sick and of course we stayed a little bit to

talk with him (he told us some crazy stories from California and some

"haunted places." It was kinda funny :)then we headed to the trailer

park for some lessons we were SUPPOSED to have. We had 4 people cancel

on us. So we visited some less actives that we didn't see at church

and then headed to dinner. We were able to have a lesson with the

Goodson family and Sarahi Mercado which was good. We also went home

teaching which was a fun change up :) someone didn't have his

companion so we went with him instead! It was super weird not to be

leading the lesson. At the end of the day we had a lesson with a guy

named Ruben Marquez who we've been trying to meet with for a while! It

was such a good lesson. He is a member who hasn't gone to church since

he was a kid. He is so sincere about wanting to know if the church is

true and he's just really fun to teach because when he understands

something he gets really into it and excited :) I have high hopes for

him to return to church.

Overall it was a great week! We had quite a few cancellations, but we

also had some unforeseen opportunities to help others and to teach

some unplanned lessons! And also it rained quite a bit so it wasn't

too hot, which is a plus :)

Sad news is that Elder Gee only has three weeks left! Time is still

flying, which means we're having fun, but it will be sad to see him

go. I hope you all have a great week this week! Yikes this got long!

Thanks for all the letters and support. It means a lot!

Love you all,

Elder Baxter

P.S. some pics...

Us after getting soaked!

Planning for the blitz/elder Gee's thinking face

Workin' our glutes ;)

Elder Gee when he fell asleep during a conversation we were having during lunch  

UPdate

Dear family and friends,

How are you all? I had a really great week this week. We worked hard,

had some good laughs, and talked to a ton of people. It's starting to

get pretty hot out here, and I think the sun is helping me look more

Latino :) either that or the hot peppers! Well I hope that everything

is going well! Without further ado...

Monday we had a stake breakfast to celebrate Memorial Day! The line

was huuuuuge, so we went inside and did some of our studies, then came

out when the line wasn't so big :) Afterwards we went shopping,

cleaned the house, did laundry, wrote some emails, etc. It was a

pretty relaxed day! We also had zone activity where we played some

basketball and volleyball. After P-day was over we went and had a

lesson with a less active family, the Salinas family. They really want

to be active, but in their own words they're "flojos" (lazy). After

that we went to try and visit a couple other families, but no one else

was home. We did get to give a blessing to someone who lives in the

basement of someone we're working with though. It was pretty cool

because even though the person we wanted to see wasn't home, we got to

serve someone in need. My companion and I both feel like we were

guided to be able to be there to help her. She is Filipino and she fed

us dinner later on in the week :):)

Tuesday we started off the day with a lesson with Fabian. This guy is

so solid and we're both becoming really good friends with him. It's

really funny because he's learning English and so he mixes up words a

lot. He told us during the lesson that he's really silly when he first

meets people but after getting used to them he is normal. We were like

whaaaaat? He was trying to say shy, not silly We had our lesson in a

nearby park because it was a really nice day (I got a little sunburned

again though). Afterwards we had a lesson fall through, so we decided

to stop by the church so that my companion could do some school prep

stuff. That took until dinner. The English family that we ate with had

4 little kids...the youngest one was 3 or 4...well during dinner he

crawled under the table and started gnawing on my leg like it was a

bone. He was crazzzyyy. Afterward we shared a message of course, but

it was pretty short since the kids were restless. Reminded me a little

of home :)

Wednesday was a busy day...but I don't remember much of the details.

We did finally teach a lesson with a guy that we've been trying to set

up an appointment with for a while! It was a really good lesson, but he works a LOT, so it's

hard to set up more appointments with him. We finally met a less

active we've tried to contact a couple of times. We also got to teach

Jose Andrade that day which is always good. :)

Thursday morning we had a zone service project! We organized and

cleaned out some of the mission storage units and it was fun to hang

out with the rest of our zone. There is a sister that can't speak or

hear that's assigned to the ASL branch in our zone, and so I've been

practicing my finger signing a little bit, it's pretty fun! After all

of that we went straight to weekly planning. Wow. I was so tired. I

fell asleep while my companion was asking me a question . So we both

went and showered since we were still dirty from the service project

and so that I could wake up :) we finished planning just in time to

head to dinner, after which we tried to contact a couple people and

then had two lessons. The one that stuck out to me was with Sarahi.

 She is someone who could use a lot of prayers. She is a

single mom who is going through some hard things right now, but is

trying really hard to come back to church. She is the one that we met

a week or two ago that said she had been praying for some help right

before we knocked on her door. It was just really good lesson and

lessons with her in general are just very spiritual. It seems that

lessons with those that are truly seeking and trying their best to

come closer to Christ are better and more uplifting. Faith is dead

without works :)

Friday we had district meeting again and had some really good

trainings! Afterward we had district lunch at a Mexican restaurant

called Habaneros. It was delish! But caro (expensive), especially for my limited

missionary budget :) We headed back to the church afterward to finish

some of our studies, then we went on splits with the zone leaders. I

did some service with elder Fakatou, we helped someone move (in our

shirts and ties), and we went to dinner. After dinner me and Elder

GEEman met up again and went to eat with the Filipino sister I

mentioned earlier (yep, it was my second dinner--I wasn't complaining

though).

Saturday was crazy! We had our first lesson of the day fall

through...so we went to the stake center for my companion to do some

school prep again. I usually study Spanish or or one of the lessons

while he does that. After that we had to make a bunch of phone calls

because we were taking Eduardo and María Hernandez to the temple for

the first time, and the person that was supposed to take us all there

and do the baptisms couldn't make it (but we didn't find out until the

night before), so we were calling frantically trying to find someone

to help us. Long story short we eventually made it to the temple and

it ended up being a great experience for us and for the Hernandez

family. It's truly rewarding to see someone go from baptism to

experiencing the blessings of the temple. We tried without success to

visit a couple people after we got back, and ended the night visiting

Hermano Carrasco and updating him on what's been going on.

Sunday--went pretty fast ;) not a super interesting day though. Best

part of the day though was that the Salinas family came to church!! We

also had a couple of other less actives come which was awesome. Sadly

none of our investigators came though. Sunday we also did a bunch of

reports, tried to have a meeting with our ward missionaries (no one

came except Hermano Carrasco), and had two really good lessons with

Hermano Carrasco in place of the meeting. One was with Fabian and the

other with a less active member named Alicia.

Overall it was a really good week! Thanks to all of you for writing

and I hope you all have a great week! Peace out till the week's out.

Love you all!

Elder Baxter