December 3

Even missionaries need to sleep

A little bit of Little Dutch Boy right in Super Walmart in Tennessee

 Hey yall

K, so i decided I’ll start sending you Tennessee-isms you have already heard twiced,( they also like to say onced...) so for this week the tennessee-ism is short-britches! ha i heard that one from our good pal Johnny. We go over there eat venison and the best pickled beets I've ever tasted and throw horse shoes. ha what a classy guy. he has been taught by the missionaries before but I think i mentioned this already but we tracted into him and started teaching him again. We are going to invite him to be baptized this week i think. Oh and before I forget yes i have been getting the packages and letters thank you so much its nice to have the support and love!

ok on a more serious note I'll share a little story about following the promptings of the spirit. so in our last district meeting Elder Taylor our district leader (an ex-heavy metal guitarist haha)  challenged us to get 10 OYM contacts a day. an OYM means open your mouth. basically just talking to anyone you run into or meet. So Elder Christensen and I took it seriously and after dinner this last friday we had about an hour left and we had only done 3, so we got in the car and said a prayer. We both felt that we needed to go get gas and I said we shouldn’t go to the one by our apartment and Elder Christensen said we need to head over by the mission office, so we did. On the way over I knew that we had to talk to the cashier. so we get there and talk to everyone we run into, one guy was a local preacher, very nice guy he even gave us some of his own work, ha we each got a copy of his book... anyways then we went to pick up a gallon of milk so we can talk to the cashier. 

Her name is Jen and it turns out she just moved here from minnesota and she has been looking for a church, we gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and exchanged contact info so we can meet with her later this week! So awesome anyways similar story about the next gas station we went to only the cashiers name was Denise and she wants to come to church and she even took a stack of pass along cards to give out to people as they check out! so rad! haha

another cool thing we have been doing is "Living Christmas Cards" its an awesome way to get referals. We tell the ward we are delivering living Christmas cards and they just line up to give us the names of their friends we can deliver them to. What we do is knock on the persons door and as soon as they answer we start singing a Christmas carol (our current go to carol is "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" -solid one) and then say " Is this the Smith residence? oh well your neighbors Mike and Sharon M across the street asked us to deliver this living Christmas card to you". -they almost always say oh thats so sweet of them- then we ask if it'd would be ok if we came in and read them the Luke 2 account of Christ's birth. we say a prayer with them and invite the spirit into their home and ask if they would be interested in hearing more about Jesus Christ some other time and hopefully get a return appointment. pretty simple and it is awesome. I will say though it takes guts. If i didn’t have the spirit with me I don’t think I’d be able to do it.

More about life in Tennessee- We have been lucky enough to have a car the last couple weeks but we have to give it back today, we always get the temporary car since we are so close to the mission office. Yeah we love using the Ensign the talks are always wonderful as well as the pictures, Im making a flip-chart about how the book of mormon came to be and the pictures will help, my doodles can only go so far haha. As far as things I need... Dad i need you to turn our chocolate chip recipe into one we can do with measuring cups as well as using a regular oven and send that to me along with a copy of the original. ( i can cut it in half if i need to). And just FYI ill be buying a fleece jacket or something as a mid layer so i can just use my rain jacket as my coat so don’t be startled if you see that charge.

The work is awesome. good to hear about everyone! love you all!

Love Elder Bakker