March 6, 2017

Hey family!

So Monday we had a pretty nice p-day. We spent the morning doing our

house/laundry/shopping stuff and also just chilaxin a little bit.

Elder Espinoza came back into the valley from Wendover as well so we

spent some time just relaxin with him. At two we had a zone activity

and played some capture the flag! It was nice to change info up and

not play futbol for once haha. We had a good time! Later on we went to

the Castro family's house for dinner and ate some mojarras! I sent

pictures last week. Also, the Castros have a traditional prank they

like to play on the missionaries, so I'll send some videos of that. It

was pretty fun! Then we found out that someone in our zone left their

phone and our church keys in elder Espinoza's car, so we ended up

having to drive out to Stansbury Park to pick it up for them. That

ended up taking most of the night. Once we got home we finished making

preparations for zone conference and hit the sack!

Tuesday was the first day we didn't go to the gym all transfer!

Honestly it felt so nice haha, elder Tanner likes the gym way to much

😂 Zone conference usually tends to take up most of the day, so we

were at the mission office from 9:30 to around 4! Yikes! It was a

really good zone conference though. It was kind of a chastisement for

not being obedient. I guess the whole mission has been in need of a

little chastening, so everyone's zone conference was based around the

white handbook. It was really good though. We also talked about the

atonement, and President did his usual rant with a chain of scriptures

he's got on his mind. Good stuff! Everyone sits up a little when he

talks. One of the things he told us was that when we are disobedient,

thinking that no one will see or hear about it, we are just showing

that we don't have faith in a living, all seeing God. Ouch... That

night we found a less active that we've been trying to contact for a

while! He got baptized with his family a couple years ago, but his

parents both died and so, now living with his aunt, he went less

active over time. We shared the restoration with him and told him we'd

get him an English BoM from the car but then we forgot and drove away!

Ugh. We haven't been able to get a hold of him since.

Wednesday we started off the day doing some service for someone in our

ward. It was good! It was kinda funny...there were two other guys that

the member had asked to come and help and so I though I would try and

talk to one of them. Well we got to be pretty good friends and so I

asked if he had ever met with missionaries before to see if he would

be interested in having us come over. But it turned out he was a

member. Oops! Haha. We did some baptismal interviews that night and

had some lessons cancel, as usual.

Thursday, every missionary's favorite day, weekly planning day! ....

We had a lesson with Javier though! This brother knows how to talk!

It's crazy! He almost doesn't breathe, so it's hard to get our word

in! He's working on getting his marriage license so he can get married

and then he'll pretty much be ready for baptism. He's a stud! He's

going through tons of problems, yet he's super positive and he has so

much trust in Gods plan for him. It's truly impressive. One thing that

I've really learned, especially this past week is that God truly only

desires our happiness and growth. We always think we'll be happier

doing our own thing but it doesn't compare to the joy and happiness we

would have by just following the gospel of Jesus Christ. I've really

understood that more this week. We did another baptismal interview in

Magna on Thursday--it was really fun! I got to interview someone that

was about the same age as my grandparents! So that was kind of unique

and interesting to do. He was a golden find though.

Friday we went on exchanges with the APs. It was really fun! I went

with Elder Maldarizzi to their area. Elder Maldarizzi is from Italy,

so I got to learn a little bit of Italian :) we went out to Tooele for

a district meeting in another zone to start of the day...it was weird,

cuz ever since they split the mission into Spanish and English zones I

hardly know any of the English Elders which is kinda sad. After that

we came back into the valley and visited a couple of people. We taught

one guy about repentance. We read the Book of Mormon with him and

invited him to talk to his bishop for help. It was something he wanted

to but he didn't feel like he had the strength to do it. It was a

really good lesson. In the end he said he would do it and so hopefully

that's something that will help him.

Saturday we had a member baptism during which the bishop asked us to

share the message of the restoration. It went really well! We took

some time to help them clean up afterward as well. The dad of the

child that got baptized isn't a member so we've been trying to

develope a good relationship with him and we feel like that helped a

lot! We had a lot of lessons planned that day but most of them got

cancelled. :(

Sunday we had lots of people at church again it was awesome! But they

all left after the first hour. We ate some bomb Chilean empanadas with

a family in the ward for lunch, had a stake meeting, taught some

lessons, saw green lightning (a snow storm came in and blew up some

transformers) and then drove home in the snow! It was a solid day. We

came home and our landlords invited us to come upstairs and see some

pictures form their daughters mission en Armenia..it was super cool!

Love you all! Thanks for all the love and support. Talk to you next week!

Elder Baxter

We did a carne asada today with the zone :)

Top golf this morning. The elder with the golden tie is elder Maldarizzi from the exchange on Friday.

After the storm