Uhhhh...pdate :)

Hey family!

How's everything going? We had a good week! It felt long though since

our P-day was today instead of Monday. It's been freezing! Thank

goodness for some good old long Johns. We've found a lot more people

to work with and so our teaching pools are filling up! Maybe people

feel bad for us so they let us in more often haha. :) We had some hard

days, just like every week, but things always turned out alright.

Overall it was a fun week! Here's the essay:

So last Monday we weren't allowed to do any extra activities because

of some projected icey roads, so we pretty much just did our shopping

and haircuts and then cleaned the house for the rest of the day. It

was a good day though. The roads didn't end up being very icy but it

was nice to have a more relaxed p-day. But then we got so caught up

cleaning that I still didn't write until the last minute hahaha. That

night we didn't have any lessons planned...we contacted a reference

that we got from a member a couple days before. They answered the door

and basically asked us how they can get baptized! So that was sweet!

The hermana was previously baptized FLDS in her foster family, but she

ended up leaving them when she was 18, so she will have to get

interviewed by an area seventy which will make the process a little

bit longer, but she's really solid, so we're not worried! We also had

an impromptu lesson with a guy named German. We knocked on his door

and after talking to him for a bit found out that he was struggling

because he wasn't working very much and so he wasn't able to support

his family in Guatemala. So we offered to say a prayer and then

eventually went inside and shared some scriptures from the Book of

Mormon with him. It was really cool!

Tuesday was a pretty good day. We had a lesson with the Gonzalez

family that went pretty well. We found out that the reason the hermano

Gonzalez doesn't want to come to church. We talked about it but he

says he just doesn't feel ready to come back. He believes it's all

true, he is just holding on to past hurt. It's hard. Their family is

awesome though, we really want them to come back so that they can go

to the temple eventually! Our other two lessons that day fell through.

:( That night we started exchanges with Elder Pech and good old Elder

Page! I went to their area with Elder Pech for all of Wednesday. It

was really fun! They have one of the brand new 2017 Chevy

Malibus....it's super nice. It has a feature that makes it basically

autopilot. If you let go of the steering wheel it will automatically

keep you centered in your lane. It's the future! We did a lot of

walking though because they don't have a lot of miles. It felt nice!

We got to talk to lots of people en camino so it was fun.

Thursday we went and had lunch with Elder Page and Pech and then we

went home and had some good old weekly planning. We had some

unexpected car checkups we had to get done though so our weekly

planning got really interrupted. We had a lesson that night with Nora

Morales in the Bautista family's home. It went really well! Hno

Bautista the member shared a really powerful testimony and was crying

during the lesson. Nora came to church on Sunday so it was awesome!

She has a baptismal date set for the 18th of February

Friday we went to district meeting in Magna! It was fun to hang out

with the old crew. and then we went to rancho market and ate some

tortas (it's like a Mexican style sandwich on a roll). After that it

was a pretty boring day...we had some lessons cancel so we did some

improvising and ended up having some good visits with some less active

member. Sometimes unplanned visits are a little awkward, but it went

alright.

Saturday morning we started off doing some reports for the ward and

stake leadership...that's always fun. Then we went to go coordinate

with our blind friend Edgar (who is our assistant ward mission leader

and effective ward mission leader since the WML has been out). After

the meeting we took him to a lesson we had with a less active we're

working with, but he wasn't home! (What's new?) So we contacted some

old investigators with Edgar before taking him home. That night we

knocked on an old investigators door and the person had moved but the

new owner of the house who was named Mario let us in and showed us

around his house! It was pretty sweet, we love it when people just let

us in just like that :):) we shared the restoration with him, and we

could tell that it made sense to him and that he believed it. But he

told us it wouldn't just be that easy to change religions with his

wife being Jehovah's Witness and everything...but we'll keep visiting

him and see what happens.

Im gonna just summarize some highlights from the rest of the week:

-On Sunday the we had an awesome lesson with the Juarez family! In

past lessons they've said they're not really ready to come back...but

this time we were asking them some questions during the lesson and

they told us they felt they really needed to come back. We were like

yes!!!! They're a super fun family, we always laugh a ton during their

lessons. Their a younger couple and so it's really fun.

-doing family history work with a less active! She loved it. She is a

pon older single sister and so we were able to teach how to do family

history work so she has something to do at home!

- we did a ton of street contacting yesterday cuz we didn't have any

lessons until late. I love street contacting :). We had an awesome

conversation with an atheist guy on the street. He was really nice and

we had a great, uplifting conversation. He knows a ton about the LDS

cuz he investigated in the past. We invited him to pick it up again,

but he declined. But it was just a good conversation!

-creaming elder Espinoza every time he tries to wrestle me.   but

he's a little skinny guy, so it's not too much of an accomplishment.

-the temple today! We went to Oquirrh Mt.

I think that about sums up the week! Sorry it's so long haha! Hope

everyone has an awesome week! Love you all!

Elder Baxter

Espinoza and me today at the temple 

And one with mijo!

This was from zone conference! Hopefully I didn't send this before...

The MLC pic :)

Week one of 2017!

Dear Family,

How are you all? Life is good here on the west side of the valley :)

We had a good week with lots door knocking and teaching and meeting

this week! It has been sooooo busy lately. And the weather has been

pretty crazy all week! The roads have been terrible up until the melt

today! But it made things a little more fun and interesting. The slick

roads have made it easier to turn around without having my comp get

out and back me up :) Here's the sum up of the week!

On pday last week we went on a hike on the East side! It was really

fun! It was snowing a ton but it was a lot of fun. One of the elders

in our zone has a go pro so we got some good coverage of the event,

but I dont have the fotos yet, so I'll send them out when I get them!

It was a busy day so I kinda sent just a lame email but with lots of

photos to make up for it :) That night we had a great lesson with the

Gonzalez family who are less actives. They're super awesome though and

we're going to try to pout them on date this week for reactivation.

One of their sons has tons of great questions so it makes the lessons

fun. The rest of the night was just spent trying to contact/visit some

other people since our two other lessons canelled.

Tuesday was a pretty similar day. We had several lessons fall through

and so we contacted a bunch of references we got from an english

member and did some finding as well. We did have someone we contacted

invite us in and so we shared the 4 minute restoration with him! He

had talked to missionaries in the past and told us that he didn't mind

having us over but he didn't want to talk about religion. Then he

proceeded to talk about is own religion and beliefs. It was pretty

funny :). But we were able to share the restoration with him, so we

were happy about that.

Highlights of Wednesday: we did weekly planning because Thursday we

had MLC. Then that night we had a lesson with our recent converts the

Gil family! It was great. Those were pretty much all the highlights of

the day.

Thursday...MLC! It was a long day of meetings but it was really

uplifting. We talked about the Restauración of the gospel as well as

love (in the gospel sense). There was a recent convert that got

invited to that who shared her conversion story with us. It was really

powerful. She was one of the only grandkids in her family who hadn't

been baptized in the catholic church and so her family was extremely

disappointed in her for choosing to get baptized in the LDS church.

She was basically disowned by her grandparents but felt like her

grandparents would thank her in the long run. It was really powerful

to hear her testimony. It was the plan of salvation for her that

really helped her realize it was true.

So we had to take the things from MLC and make a training for the zone

out of it. So we met with the Sister Training Leaders after MLC to

discuss the training for the next day, and got things sorted out that

night. We had to rush to dinner right after all that so it made for a

crazy day. The training the next day went great! We focused on some

skills from preach my gospel (asking inspired questions) and the

sisters focused on love and prayer. It was all put together last

minute but we did the best we could with what we were given and it

came out great! I felt like we were blessed greatly for it all to come

together so well.

Saturday we had lots of lessons cancel but we had one of my favorite

lessons of my whole mission with a less active family, the Flores

family that night. We had a different lesson plan to start off with,

but when we got in we realized that their concerns were with the book

of mormon and faith! So we impromptu changed the lesson and read Alma

32 with them. The spirit was there incredibly strong and all of us in

the room felt the confirmation of the spirit that the book of mormon

was true. It made me and the brother we were teaching both tear up! It

was one of my favorite experiences so far of my mission. The Book of

Mormon is true.

Well I'm out of time but I love you all! Hope you have a good week!

Elder Baxter

MLC :)

¡Feliz Nuevo Año! Update from WVC

This is from January 2nd. Sorry I forgot to post it.

Heyy familia!

This week was great! We worked really hard and did tons of finding pretty much all week! It was hard not having many lessons but it felt good to knock so many doors. And on Sunday we found two new prepared families so we reaped the rewards! :)

We had exchanges with the Magna Elders on Wednesday! I went with my son Elder Rodriguez back to Magna and we got to help Hno. Carrasco deliver a couch! His bigger car wasn't starting so we just threw it on top haha :)

(I think Joshua forgot to attach the picture that went with this)

We make fun of my comp for being skinny haha.

(again I think Joshua forgot to attach a picture)

Gloria's baptism a couple saturdays ago! She made some blazin hot pozole (a stew type of dish) 

afterwards :)

This is our blind friend named Edgar. He served a special mission in his home stake and now he is basically our ward mission leader :) he's super funny, he goes to work out with us in the mornings. 

Now that I've introduced Edgar...here's a video from Christmas morning on our way to the baptism...we thought it was pretty funny.

Stuff you would only see in a Utah Walmart 😏

Love you all talk to you next week!

Elder Baxter

December 19th Letter

Monday - my last day with Elder Rodriguez! We did our shopping in the morning with Brother Young, a member of one of the English wards here. I've gotten pretty close to him over the 6 months that I was in Magna. He's a funny guy :) We went to lunch with him and then came home so I could get packing. I'm still a slow packer hahaha. At around 4 we went to the zone activity and played some games. Someone in the zone made a zone video with different footage and pictures throughout the transfer so that was pretty fun. That night we had one last lesson with the Flores family before I left. We played red light green light and applied it to agency and the atonement. It was super fun. I stayed up late packing so that I would be ready to go in the morning, but I had a good time talking with my son Elder Rodriguez :) Tuesday - transfer day! It's always kind of a crazy day. Elder Espinoza came to pick us up at around 8 then we went to drop off Espinoza's old companion, Elder Hurtado, and Elder Rodriguez. At ten we went to a church building where everyone in the zone met up to switch companions. After transfer stuff was done Elder Espinoza took me around to meet the bishop and some other people in the ward. We also had a temple square appointment with one of our investigators Vanessa, but she cancelled on us! It was disappointing. Wednesday we spent most of the morning helping people move stuff (bikes, beds, desks). The after quake of transfer day is also pretty crazy haha. We got to take the mission's F-150 pickup, which is the best ride in the mission though, so it was alright :) After that was done we did some daily planning, and then made some visits that night. Thursday we spent most of the day in meetings...MLC was from 10-3:30 and then we had a meeting with the Sister training leaders to plan zone conference. In MLC each companionship was assigned a different person or object involved in the nativity scene to study and share some of the symbolism behind each topic. It was pretty neat! There is some really neat symbolism there. We talked about gold and it went pretty well. After planning zone conference with the sisters We went to dinner and finally got to go out and work that night. Friday - we had zone training! It went really well. We started off doing something really similar to what we did in MLC and we assigned some other missionaries to talk about the symbolism behind the different people and objects involved in the birth of Jesus Christ. It was really nice to focus on Christ and talk about the symbolism involved in the nativity scene. After that we showed a cool video about the importance of having a "why" behind all of our actions and talking about making Jesus Christ our "why" by using his atonement. Everything went really well! We all went out to buy lunch afterward and brought it back to the church. I officially ran out of money for the month :) You definitely spend more money when you have a car haha. After that we had to drop off our car at a car shop to get its inspections done. We asked some other elders to take us to the mission office so we could grab the van and make it to a baptismal interview in time. The interview was with Gloria Grajeda!! She was getting baptized the next day :) It was good to see her and her kids again. We found out that we had been saying her name wrong the whole time. Instead of Grajeda we had been saying Trajera hahaha. It sounds pretty similar though with a Spanish pronunciation. She thought that we just couldn't pronounce it the whole time :) Elder Espinoza did the interview since I had taught her, so Elder Rodriguez, Elder Simpson and I all chilled in the van with some hot chocolate while the interview took place on the front porch (the people that Gloria is living with still don't want missionaries in the house). She has the coolest story. Her husband was very abusive and she had been married to him for a long time. She had some friends come and tell her that they would kill him for her if she would just tell him where he lived. Instead of doing that she chose to abandon all she had and flee Mexico to the US illegally. I don't remember exactly how but she passed through some kind of checkpoint and was let through despite super low odds of her being allowed to pass. She arrived here to Utah and came to church which is where we met her. She told us she had been to church twice in Chihuahua and asked us to teach her (this was when I was with Elder Page). We set up some appointments but then she never showed up and we lost track of her for about two weeks since she still didn't have a phone. She also couldn't give us her address because the people in her house where slightly hostile towards missionaries and mormons in general. Then she showed up at church again and had a phone! We were super excited to see her and to know that we would be able to communicate with her haha. And so to see her getting baptized now is awesome :) we're going to the baptism on Saturday. Anyway, after the interview we went back to pick up the car and went to dinner. We were pretty late because we had to take Simpson and Rodriguez so we could get the van back to he office and then go all the back to Magna to drop them off again. Then after dinner we made a couple visits to and had a short lesson with a recent convert. Saturday - we had a nice little ward Christmas breakfast today. Then we went to the Hna Grajeda's baptism! It was great. I forgot that I was speaking on baptism, so I got to wing it and it went really well! Haha it's a little easier to give a talk when you teach that stuff all the time. It was fun to be in Pleasant green 2nd again :) After the baptism we went back to our area and did some work. That night we had planned to go to luz de las naciones with Vanessa but she cancelled again at the last moment!! We were scrambling to try and find someone else to take because the ward had front row tickets but our attempts were unsuccessful :( it was super disappointing cuz it only happens once a year. But oh well. We ended up making some good visits instead. Sunday was good! I was just trying to meet as many people as I could and try to remember their names. We didn't have any investigators come but a less active family did make it to sacrament. Church here is at eleven which is a nice change. We visited a family after church and found out that they wanted to go to luz de las naciones! We were upset that we didn't know about it hahaha. We had a delicious dinner called Navajo tacos. Best thing in the world. Then that night we had some good visits with 2 different families, and then went home for numbers. It's been a good week! I'm still trying to get to know the area, which is pretty big, but I'm hoping it will come quick. :) Merry Christmas everyone! Family, I'll see you on Sunday! :) I'm so grateful for this time of year and for the extra opportunity to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Love you all! Elder Baxter My new companion and I at temple square! Elder Andersons of the twelve apostle's car! We ran into him on the way in and then we took a picture on the way out.