Happy dia de Halloween!

Deaaaar family and friends,

How is everyone? We have an all day P-day today, so that's why the letter's coming in late. Here's what happened this week:

 Tuesday was a pretty normal, uninteresting day. We had a lesson with Hermana Andrade...I can't tell with her. I'm not sure if she's ready to commit to the gospel or not...sometimes she seems ready and all about it, but other times it seems like she's not interested at all, which is pretty sad considering all that Jose did to give her an example. She told us he went to church EVERY SUNDAY all the way up until he died. That last few weeks he had to bring an oxygen tank to church and couldn't even make it up the stairs to the stage to bless the sacrament. He was the best example of enduring to the end that I've ever seen. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We had one lesson with a new guy that we found on Monday! His name is Ramón...we were just walking down the street on Monday and we saw him and went and talked to him, and he said we could come back the next day. So Tuesday we taught him the restoration and invited him to be baptized. He accepted! It was awesome.

Wednesday we had splits with Elder Jacobe from England...he came to our area with me and Elder Page got to go with his MTC companion. Funny thing is that Jacobe sleeps super deep, so it was a struggle to wake him up. Putting ice on his feet ended up doing the trick  we had a couple good lessons...in the morning we stopped to talk with someone and they invited us up on to their porch without us even asking. It was a guy who had just got out of jail and his wife. We shared a short message out of the Book of Mormon with them and made sure the missionaries where they lived were taking care of them. It was a pretty cool, random teaching moment. We also taught Ramon again. He is super hungry to learn...he didn't even know how to pray before and he's pretty excited to be learning all of this stuff. Elder Jacobe also fell asleep in the middle of a stake correlation picture is below, because you know I can't pass up an opportunity like that.

Thursday we had a lesson with my boy Juan! I need to get a picture with him some time. He is doing really well, but he has tons of questions still. We had to tell him that we haven't been able to teach him the things we need to teach him with all the questions and other random research he always brings up. On the bright side he told us that he knows without a doubt that the Book of Mormon is true. So that was awesome. We put him on date to be baptized as well. Weekly planning went pretty well. I'm letting Elder Page lead the lessons and planning sessions now so he can keep learning and get that experience under his belt. He did a good job. We taught Ramon for the third night in a row! He's on fire. We also did a lot of finding that night.

Friday we had a big district meeting! The ZLs and the APs were there, so it was fun to have a big group. It was a little hard before the APs got there, cause people weren't participating that much. But Elder Whitehead and McGirr were good about bringing in the fire, and they helped get everyone else answering and participating, so I was grateful for their presence. We went to Ramon's house again for the lesson, but he wasn't there! We were disappointed. Also the lady that showed up randomly to church last week and wanted to be taught didn't show up to either of the lessons we had scheduled. She doesn't have a phone either, so there was no way to contact her. But we feel pretty confident about finding her eventually, so it's all good.

Saturday we went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders! Elder Espinoza came to our area with me. We had a fun day together. There were lots of people out in the trailer park to talk to so we went ham talking to everyone and found a couple people that would like us to come back and teach them. We also had an impromptu lesson with the Saavedra family! This was such a miracle. We had contacted them once before, but she didn't seem very open to us. But we just happened to be passing by and we saw them all outside so we went and talked to them and they let us teach them a short restoration lesson! It went really well with Sister Saavedra, and pretty well with Brother Saavedra. The only problem with him was that he was knocking back beers like crazy. Despite that he payed considerable attention and participated as well. We set a return lesson, so we'll see how it goes!

Yesterday we had a good Sunday. After church and ward council we had our weekly lunch with Hermano Carrasco. We ate some eggs and beans. Classic hermano Carrasco haha. He always cooks it up real good. We had a lesson with Jose Andrades dad! That was a first for me. He was in tears a lot of the time. It was a good lesson, but it was also really crazy. Well meaning Hermano Carrasco had some good things to say, but then wouldn't stop talking. We got lots of good practice tactfully inserting ourselves, but the lesson was still super hard to control. It's also hard to have comp unity in those kinds of situations. But he told us that he knows we have the true gospel because he can see it the way we act (he also has some friends and his boss that are LDS and have had a positive impact in his life). It was very frustrating though because he recognizes that he's far from where he needs and so he's too discouraged to start. But we have a lot of hope for him. We also had some good lessons with the Cáceres family and Marquez family, both of whom are returning less active members.

Today has been a fun day! We started off with shopping and cleaning and other p-day stuff. Now, since about 3:30 we've been here at a church building hanging out with the zone. We played some soccer earlier on and now we're about to have a little costume party. I'll send some pictures.

Love you all! Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Baxter

Elder Jacobe Sleeping :)

-The Phone Call

Our district at the zone costume party:

We bought red shirts and the sisters painted them for us

Just bailando y contactando :)

(just dancing and contacting)

Perros, bicicletas, y bautismos: Week 28?

(the title means "dogs, bikes, and baptisms")


Hey family and friends!

How is life outside of Utah? Things here on the inside are doing great. Its been getting pretty chilly, but its been a super nice change from summer. Its hard to believe that we're already almost done with this transfer. I'm hoping that Elder Page and I both stay here...we've been having a blast and getting some solid work done. Anyway, here's what happened this week!

This morning we woke up extra early to get our studies done early enough to go and help the Gunns (an ex senior couple here that help us a lot) move their furniture back into their house for the first time since their ceiling caved in. Then we went home, changed and showered, and went out for lunch and shopping. He accidentally left his iPad in one of the stores while he was looking for a new jacket, but after a silent prayer from both of us we were able to locate it in the lost and found! Someone was honest enough to turn it in. That, or they realized it coded and locked down by the church :) we played volleyball for the zone activity, then came home and got ready for the evening. We were on foot, cuz Elder Page's bike is broken. We just had one lesson with the Moreno family. They said the reason they didn't come to church was because Brother Moreno woke up sick. So we're really hoping hey make it this next Sunday!

Tuesday:

After studies we started off the proselyting day with tons of finding! We didn't have any set lessons until after dinner, so we went to work in the trailer park!  Miracle story there was that we decided to knock a random house to see if by chance it was the one we were looking for (a couple trailers didn't have numbers). It wasn't the person we were looking for, but we found a member who just moved in a while ago and has been looking for a ward in Spanish to go to! So we gave her the address and time and set a time to come back to get to know her. It was pretty cool :)

Wednesday:
We did service allllll morning. We were helping a family in our ward move, and we were the only ones there because everyone else is always working on Wednesdays in the morning. When we came back home we had to dress up fast and run to a stake coordination with the English sisters and a senior couple in the stake. Then we went home, ate some Little Cesar's pizza that a member dropped off for us, and ran to a lesson all the way at the bottom of our area. That lesson was a no show, so we did a little bit of street contacting, then at 7 rode all the way back up the hill for a lesson with Sergio. That lesson was super good! We're teaching the after baptism lessons, so he already has a pretty good understanding which means we can talk in a little more detail. It hit me how greatful I am for the Plan of Salvation...

After the baptism! Happy family :)

Left to right: Elder Page, Carlos, Dolores (wife of Carlos who was already a member), Dayanara, Karla, Hermana Garner (Dolores' sister...the Flores family is living with the Garners right now), Hno. Garner and me

The little girl is Maria Jose (aka Majo), their youngest daughter. She was also baptized.

 Zone Conference Pic

Our lil district! Elder Jacobe from England, Elder Griffin from South Carolina, Elder Page from Arizona, me, Hermana Avalos from Chihuahua Mexico, and Hermana Martinez from Distrito Federal, Mexico

One of our ward member's halloween decorations haha

Baptisms next weekend! :)

Dear family and friends,

Here's my week:

Monday--I got a haircut finally! Then we went and did our shopping and other normal P-day activities. We played volleyball and soccer outside to take advantage of the good weather while we have it. I played goalie! It was rough. That night we didn't have any lessons, just some visits and contacting.

Tuesday--after doing studies we had service! We went and helped someone clean out their storage shed. He bought us lunch afterward at PizzaRev, a create your own pizza place. It was soooooo good. Then we got home and had to deal with some bike stuff. The bike I used to use while I was here is being used by its owner now...so the new bike that I was going to use was a mission bike and was getting repaired, so I had a super crappy loaner bike for a while. Both of the tires kept going flat and so we had been doing a bunch of walking. But on Tuesday I finally got a good bike :) walking is nice for a break from biking, but I'm glad I don't have to walk all the time. So after going to the mission storage shed to get the bike, we went out and worked (mostly contacting/finding) until dinner. Two of our three lessons that night cancelled. But we did finish off the night with an awesome lesson with Hermana Andrade. We taught her about the spirit world, and she was very receptive. We've been stopping by every day lately just to have daily contact and show our support and love. Also on the way home this nonmember gave us a bunch of this delicious soup called Pozole, and a bunch of other food she just grabbed off her dinner table for us. It was super generous.

Wednesday -- we had a lesson in the morning with Juan. He is still taking tons of notes about the Book of Mormon and has been praying sincerely about it. He asks tons of good questions, but it's starting to prevent us from teaching the other stuff as well. So we're gonna work on that for next week. He's pretty busy so we can only meet with him once a week. We also made cookies and wrote thank you notes, had a coordination meeting, and took Sergio Arroyo to a temple chapel session at our stake center.

Thursday -- it was a pretty good day today. We had our normal studies in the morning, then weekly planning for 3 hours. Watched endless "I'm a Mormon" videos during lunch and we were dying laughing about some of them. The humor continued into weekly planning, so it was a pretty good time, relatively speaking. :) We had some lessons cancel, contacted several people and were able to drop and add some people to our are area book. It was a pretty productive evening. Then that night was super crazy because we had to go on splits, but one of the other members (a young men's aged kid) had to be picked up kind of far away from the appointment...and we were running kind of late, so we had to leave elder Page at the members house where we were going to have the lesson, then Hermano Carrasco and I went to pick up the young man from the other side of town and run to a lesson. When we got to the house the gate was locked and we couldn't get to the door, but we could tell they were there. so after calling them didn't work we resorted to throwing pebbles at the window. But sadly that didn't work either...so we made a couple of visits instead and we got to see the Tamayo family! I haven't seen them in a long time, so that was fun.

Friday--we had district meeting! It went well. One of the Elders in our district had to go to the hospital because of stomach problems, and the only other missionaries in our district are sisters, so we almost had to improvise and do district meeting over FaceTime. But luckily the zone leaders were able to come and save the day. Also, cool story of the day: we decided to say a specific prayer to be able to find someone that was ready to hear the gospel-- if we talked with literally everyone we saw. So we did it and we ended up finding 3 people that were either ready to start coming back to church or be baptized. It didn't come in the way that was expected, but our prayer was answered.The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.

Saturday:

We did service in the morning and then had a couple lessons/ visits. At the end of the day we taught the Moreno family, who are on date to be baptized but aren't coming tu church, and helped them clean their house so that they could get to bed on time and make it to church at 9. Then on Sunday they didn't end up coming. Sunday was a good day despite that, but we were pretty sad they didn't come. Dayanara and her family came, and their all set and excited to get baptized next weekend!

Well love you all! Hope you have a good week!

Love,

Elder Baxter