Elder Joshua Baxter: February 2017

Hey family!

So last week for P-Day we just went to a church building and played

some sports with the zone. We got some basketball, volleyball, and

soccer in. I was also introduced to a new game called spike ball! It's

pretty sweet! It's kinda hard to explain but all you people in the

outside world can look it up on YouTube! :) This week we finally

taught Javier Orpinela--he's the new referral that we received that

looked really golden. It turned out to be true! He's working on

getting married before he gets baptized. We haven't been able to meet

his girlfriend yet, but hopefully we'll be able to teach her too. He

already knows the lessons pretty well from when some other

missionaries taught him awhile back, so it's just a matter of

reviewing with him and helping him get married! He's sweet. We also

had another first lesson with Carlos Lara, another referral that we

got. He is also really receptive, but didn't understand why he needed

to get baptized if he had already been baptized before. So we

explained more about authority--after a short explanation he said he

had been confused about that for quite some time (he had also taken

the lessons before). So that was good to clear up!

Tuesday we ate our "dinner" at 2 with a Puerto Rican family (aw yeah)

and had a short "lunch" around 5 with the Castro family. They are

always willing to have us over to eat or hang out on p-days. So nice!

We only had one lesson on Tuesday...it was with the Gonzalez family.

They're doing well! We watched the restoration video with them and

talked about how the different principles from that can apply to them.

Sister Gonzalez and Randy the oldest son came to church for the first

time in forever!!! They've never come to church since I got here. That

night we exchanged with Elder Simpson and Vargas out in Magna!! I went

to Magna again and stayed with Elder Simpson there.

Elder Simpson is like 4 months younger than me, and he's from Georgia.

We had fun! I got to see Angel Rodriguez the WML again and the Moreno

family! The Moreno family is pretty much the same, they haven't

progressed too much. It's always fun to go back to Magna though! I ran

into Hermana Flores as well! They're our recent converts. They're

doing super well! But Dayanara and Karla her two girls went back to

Ecuador! That was a big surprise. We also taught the Andrade family!

They stopped going to church for a couple weeks :( we taught them the

gospel of Jesus Christ and got a fire lit under them. I was really

hoping that they would baptized and sealed before my mission ended but

unless they get baptized within the next 12 days it's not gonna happen

haha. But they'll make it sometime. We had a good time hanging out in

their apartment for a little while after the day was over.

Thursday we were supposed to help someone move in the morning, but

then they cancelled last minute, so we went home and did our weekly

planning. The weather has been SUPER nice lately; chilly, but not

freezing like the last couple months. So we came out of hibernation

and did planning in the open air. It was nice! And our planning was

pretty darn good too. Sometimes it's pretty hard to stay focused for

three hours just planning. Three hours! It's pretty crazy when you

think about it, but it helps a lot! I feel like it takes a load off of

my mind to get all the people onto the schedule instead of just

floating around in my mind. We taught the Gil family on Thursday as

well! They're so awesome. He helped with the sacrament for the first

time this week and did great. They're pretty worried about the

intensifying raids because they're not legal right now. It was pretty

sad to see first hand, Hermana Gil broke down into tears just talking

about it.

Friday we went to District meeting out in West Jordan! We ate some

good lunch afterward and ran some errands for the zone. We also had a

meeting with the other zone leaders to plan for zone conference.

Saturday and Sunday...well I don't have time for that right now but

Sunday we had lots of investigators to church! It was awesome!!

Love you all!

Elder Baxter

Today after the hike this morning to ensign peak

?? Goofing around like normal

The city lights from ensign peak! We went to see the sunrise without district.

Time lapse on the way home from the hike :)

Quien sabe que

Hey family!

TRANSFER calls came in on Saturday! I'm staying! But Elder Espinoza is

leaving. He's going to Wendover! Haha wayyyyyy far away. I'm sad to

part ways with Elder Espinoza, but I'm really excited for the new

transfer. My new companion is named Elder Tanner. I've met him a

couple times, but I've never really gotten to know him well. So it

will be fun! Also we're staying in the same area but moving to a new

apartment--which I'm pretty happy about because our apartment is

pretty old a little nasty haha. So the first couple days of the

transfer will be lots of cleaning and moving.

This past couple of days we've been hanging out with Elder Rivera,

rocking the trio game. His companion elder Hurtado left on Saturday

night so he's been with us since then. It's been super fun! It's my

first time living the trio life since my first transfer when we had

elder Fakatou with me and elder Gee.

So Monday we had a super sweet P-Day activity! I'll send a video…

My companion got laid out pretty good and his back and knee were hurting the next day. But after a couple more hours he was good. I put my lacrosse hitting skills to good use. :) That night we just had one lesson with Nora Morales. It went really well though!! We read the Book of Mormon and talked about how it came to be. She loved it!

Tuesday we went and taught the Gonzalez family...they're doing really well, but they're not quite ready to come to church yet. They're progressing realllllll slow. So we're not sure what we can do to help them speed up the process. Their sons are really cool though, and they're willing to come to church. I tried to help one of them with some math homework that I had been doing senior year....and I forgot everything! It was nuts.

Also big news from this week was that the First Presidency and the missionary department of the church changed our daily schedule and p-day schedule! It's a change for all the missionaries around the road It gives us a little extra time in the morning to get ready, we now plan in the morning instead of at night, and lunch got shortened from 1 hour to half an hour. I love it! I feel like it was very inspired. I feel like we plan better, study better and just have more effective days with the changes. Good stuff! That's why we have living prophets. :)

So that was pretty much my week! We had two families that we were working with drop us this week, which was pretty sad. But hopefully we'll find lots of people this coming week!

Anyway, I think those are all the updates for the week! It's gonna be a crazy week this week.

Love you all!

Elder Baxter