Back in Magna

Hey familia y amigos!

We had a solid week week! It's been really weird but really fun to be back in my first area. It's been cool because some of the people that we found or were working with and then dropped when I was here the last time because they weren't ready, are ready now and want us to come back! Of course there's lots of other people that still aren't ready to hear the gospel, but everyone has their own time. Most people in the ward still remember me as well since it's only been 3 months since I was last here. 

On Monday night, my last night with Elder Andersen we had five missionaries in the apartment! We had to go pick up two missionaries from the mission office and find a place for them to sleep at our house, then go and pick up Elder Cienfuegos, Elder Andersen's new companion. It was a late night...and then on top of it we had to wake up at 4:30am to take an elder from our zone to the mission office for his departure home. :) Later on on Tuesday I parted ways with Elder Andersen and met up with elder Page in the mission office. I spent some time unpacking and then we went out to work! We got to see Hermana Andrade again; it was a different home without Jose there though. 

Wednesday and Thursday we had pretty uneventful days. On Wednesday we had several visits, a stake correlation, and dinner outside with hermana Zepeda (she always spoils us). I got to know her pretty well last time around.Thursday morning we had an awesome first lesson with an older Catholic guy from Mexico. His name is Juan and he has noticed a lot of things about Catholic doctrine that he doesn't think are correct. Him and his wife are both really open to what we have to share. Interesting side note is that last time I was here we taught their daughter the restoration while we were helping her wash her hummer...she wasn't interested at all then but since that time she's gone through a lot of stuff and so she's very open to talk to us now. :) Only problem is she's super busy with work, so it will be a little hard to talk to her. We also had weekly planning ( :/ ) and had a lesson with a recent convert named Sergio.

Friday we started off the morning with a zone training! It was just an hour long, and we're going to be having one at the beginning of every transfer now, which is pretty cool. Friday we also had an awesome lesson with the Moreno family, and put them on date to be baptized. We have to help them get married though, but that's something they're already working towards so we're pretty hopeful :)

Other highlights of the week:

-We put another family on date! They're staying with their family who live in our ward.

-general comference! We took our recent convert Sergio to the morning session. Also my companion and his last companion sang in the priesthood session choir. It was made up of a lot of people I've served with here

-today we went laser tagging, and then cleaned the house and went shopping. Good day :)

Love you all! Hop you have a good week!

Love

Elder Baxter

My new zone! Elder Page, my companion is on the very left.

Bed Bugs, Transfers, and Snow (September 26)

Hey family and friends!

How's everyone doing? We had a pretty good week this week. Its been starting to get colder and there's snow on the mountains! So I'm trying to get myself mentally prepped for winter :) Also we got transfer calls and I'm going back to my greenie area! I'll be district leader and be follow up training a new missionary, Elder Page! (Follow up training is just when the greenie has a different trainer for the second transfer). So I'm pretty excited about that, plus it'll be fun to go back and see some familiar faces. Sadly, I got news this past week from Elder Gee that Jose Andrade died of his cancer. His family could use lots of prayers.

This week we spent almost two full days helping some sisters in our zone take care of a bed bug problem. The whole house got infested and the sisters were starting to get bug bites all over their faces and arms and stuff, it was getting pretty bad. So we helped them move to a members house to stay for a little while while the mission looked for a new apartment and then the next day cleaned out the whole apartment and took everything inside to the dump. We had to use the mission truck and trailer and it was a pretty extensive job! The assistants helped us though, and we had a pretty good time being destructive and chucking stuff into the dump of course :) We also got permission from sister Palmer to sell a really nice weight set they had sitting in their apartment, so we've been enjoying some extra funds :)

We had some pretty good lessons this week. Adrian and Ericka are still progressing, but they seem to be a little bit scared of baptism itself. Ericka literally has a fear of water. But I feel pretty confident we'll be able to work through it. I'm a little sad I wont be in the area anymore to keep teaching them. Sonia isnt doing so great. She has started to miss a lot of lessons and she hasn't come to church in several weeks, so it looks like were gonna have to drop her. We found a lot of new people to teach recently though, so hopefully Elder Andersen and Cienfuegos will have some solid investigators this transfer.

Today for P-day we went to Top Golf (using some of our extra funds :). It was super fun! Its basically a giant driving range but there's targets on the ground that you have to try to hit, and you get points based on how close to the center of the target you hit, and how far away the target is. I'll include a picture below. I'm slowly getting better at golf haha. :)

On Saturday we were having a little bit of a rough day. A ton of our appointments had been cancelled, and it was pouring rain. We had both kind of lost some of our motivation since everything seemed to be going against us. But, we hopped in the car, and went to try and make a couple visits. The song Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing came on and it changed the mood of the night completely. We both felt the spirit strongly and felt that we were doing the right thing, even though we didn't know exactly who we needed to talk or what we needed to do. We ended up having a great night!

Thats about it for the week! Haha I just realized that I never sent the address for this apartment. Oh well! My new address is 8543 S. Elk Run Mountain Rd. Magna Utah, 84044 Apt. #619 

Love you all! Keep it real!

Elder Baxter

We got pranked...the house looked like it got robbed :)

My companion reading the "short" list of possible side effects of a medicine :)