June 9

Hey Family!

Life here is good! I don’t know what I have and haven't told yall so I’ll just go through a few things.

A couple weeks ago we had a visit from Elder Pino of the 70 for President and Sister Irion's departing interview. Just before he came President talked him into speaking at a Spanish conference. So with a couple days notice we pulled together a Spanish conference and arranged to get missionaries here from all corners of the mission (we do a ton of driving) Well my companions went down to Chattanooga to take a big van down and stay down there for the day while the Spanish missionaries drove the van up and I stayed up here by myself to make sure the meeting ran smoothly. It was pretty cool to be able to have some one on one time with Elder Pino but other than that it was 5 straight hours of listening to Spanish. Also the guest speakers would frequently point at me and the whole group would laugh because I was the only one there that didn't speak any Spanish. But all in all it was a neat experience.

We rely mostly on referrals with us being all around the mission all the time its hard for us to be able to do any finding. Being in the young single adults branch is also tough because we are looking for a very pin-pointed group of people. Not the easiest to find especially with the University of Tennessee being out for summer there aren't many students around. Lucky for us though the YSA is pretty good about finding people for us to teach. We have one solid investigator right now that was a referral from our branch president named Chris. He is doing super well and we have a lesson with him tomorrow. He already knew the Book of Mormon was true before our first lesson. RIGHT?! pretty cool. He took the lessons several years ago in South Carolina and wasn't quite ready for it, this time around however he is much more serious and definitely sees this all leading to his baptism in the end. We are stoked about that.

Transfers are next week. Elder Garber has spent the day making airplane sounds and day dreaming... ha not really, its more like we have been teasing him about it for the whole transfer. It will be an interesting transition here. Elder Mumm and I have still only been here a short time, and at transfers Elder Garber leaves (next Wednesday) and then 2 weeks later President leaves. This is going to be one heck of a roller coaster for the last few months here... President Griffen arrives late on the 31st of June and President Irion leaves early the next morning, then that day we have a staff meeting with the new president and a whole mission leadership council. It's exciting for sure.

This week is full of some more Zone meetings like last week. Luckily we only have to go to a few of them instead of all 9... holy smokes that would be killer (and will be killer when we do it with President Griffen next month...) So yeah Zone meetings and basically preparing for transfers. Saturday we will have a conference call letting everyone know if they will be leaving or not, then lunch with Brother R and then we will drive all over the mission moving beds around for the new trios that will be happening for the next transfer.

Well that’s about all I got! Working hard! Life is crazy but it's good.

Love Elder R.A. Bakker

ps! I totally forgot there is this city in Georgia called Dalton and that’s where Elder Dreesen went (the AP I replaced) to finish his mission. Anyways there is a killer taco truck there, it’s out of this world! so we went to Villa Juarez taco truck (its been there so long they literally cemented it to the ground) while we were in town down there and it was some of the best Mexican food I have ever had. Seriously good, then we followed up with some churros from La Esparanza (spelling?) bakery down the street. Can’t forget about that!