hey family!
 All is well in the land of Tennessee, not a whole lot has changed. This may be my last full week in Farragut, I don’t know but I find out Saturday what’s going down for transfers the 24th. I will miss Farragut dearly if I leave. This is a place I could come back to and live. I really love it here. I love the people and its just a great place to be.
I don’t know how much I have told you about Brother M, but he right now is our most progressing investigator. He has been 6 days with out a cigarette and is preparing for the 27th of this month for baptism. He is a really nice guy. He works 2 full time jobs at Walmart and jewelry television and his wife is physically pretty handicapped. He only listens to Christian music and is really progressing well. So any prayers for him to overcome his smoking would be much appreciated.
As far as Robert B goes, he is on fire. He wrote a letter to Elder Oaks after he came for the stake conference, telling him about his situation and how he now knows he has found the lords true gospel, and also talked about how he wanted to wait for his son to be back from military training in August. Well just before Conference Elder Oaks responded and told him to tune into his talk for some pertinent info and also he thinks he is making the right choice to wait for his son’s return. Robert gave his son and daughter a Book of Mormon and they are reading it. He is one of the best missionaries in the ward. haha and he isn’t even in the ward yet!
The S parents, not a lot of new stuff there. They have been out of town for a while, they like to take off to the beach, but all is still well there.
Well I love you guys :) talk to you soon!
Love elder bakker

so I’ve recently put together a list of things I’ve gained an appreciation for on my mission:
scriptures
g. conference
perrier
almond pasteries
jaffa cakes (from inessa in ireland)
ties
dark choclate
uplifting music
sleep
basketball
the word yall
boiled peanuts (very southern)
pickled beets
pickled eggs
and the desert air

Mon April 8, 2013 hola madre, all is well here in the east. conference was awesome my favorite by far was elder oaks! he spoke to the world and told them the bible says we are right and everyone else is not even close. also L. Tom Perry shook the whole church with his sternness. love that guy. Elder Holland as usual showed us the fire. and elder Bednar really gave us some sweet sound doctrine on chastity its going to be a new classic talk often referred to i think. Also two women prayed in conference. That’s new, women haven’t prayed in conference before. Not a whole lot of updates however we do have a sweet new investigator. His name is reb. He has like maybe 15 or 16 teeth. We are helping him achieve peace in his life and we can see his life really turning around. he gave me a bunch of classic small historical confederate flags ill send home for y’all to show your southern pride. remember its the war of northern aggression not the civil war haha. but yeah all is well, not a whole lot of updates with the sextons they are still rolling along. the dutch guy hans (brinker) v i met, we went by and gave him some salted licorice and shared a little thought with him and he invited us to come to their catholic mass yesterday morning, so we went... boy that was different, stand, sit, kneel, stand, kneel, stand, kneel, recite prayer, kneel, recite prayer again. it was quite foreign. we invited him to our service afterwards and because he’s a stubborn dutch-man he says "nope" haha i told him he is stubborn and he says "what do you expect i'm dutch?" haha so that’s the updates. love yall! till next time elder bakker

Easter Sunday

Mon, April 1, 2013

hey hey fam

Sunday was an awesome day. Easter was great, being a missionary on Easter is exciting, I loved going out tracting sharing the message of the resurrected savior this week. In fact there is one cool story I’ll share from the week. We had an extra 15 minuets before a dinner appointment so we decided to knock a few of the neighbors doors. The first door we knocked on I saw a jeep in the drive way with an NL sticker on it. I had a clue there that it may be interesting. We knocked on the door and the man said through a familiar accent, "guys unless you want to talk about becoming catholic we don’t have a whole lot to talk about." I asked him where he was from and he said Holland. He looked at my name tag and I told him I was Dutch and he said " oh yes Bakker that means baker or bakery. We talked about Amsterdam, Kroquettes, Salted licorice, almond pastries, and so on. He invited us in and gave us a coke and talked a bit and we prayed with him. He told us we could come back sometime, and we will. Elder Arnold couldn’t get over it he thought it was so funny how excited he was to talk about Holland. I proceeded then to explain the Phrase "if ya ain't Dutch ya ain't much"

Just one of many cool experiences I've had here lately we are really working our butts off, I love it. I'm convinced no one else in the mission could have gotten in that door, and we have met some people really only Elder Arnold can touch. We are called where we are for a reason and I know that it is divinely inspired.

Well all is well love ya! Elder bakker

Hola madre

So it's so awesome here. Tennesseeism of the week- kept/keep: to babysit or tend children. "... boy that ole' lady kept us for years growing up"
We recently had a zone training meeting and the zone leaders challanged the whole zone to find 7 new investigators this week, and it seemed like a really tough goal. We worked really hard this week to try and work through the members to find new investigators and we did a little tracting, and by Saturday we had 4 new investigators. 4 is good, thats actually a lot for a week, but we really wanted to achieve the zone goal of 7 so Elder Arnold and I fasted and prayed that Sunday, in our 2 hours we had to go find people, we would be able to get 3 new investigators. We set up to go out tracting with a priest from the ward and we were praying and I knew we needed to get one more priest and do splits tracting to find heavenly fathers children that we were promised we could find. So we called up one more priest and "luckily" he was able to come out with us. We prayed about where to go tracting and we had the priests pick where to go and they picked a couple streets so Elder Arnold took one and I took one and we went off to find. We ended up finding those 3 new investigators and taught 9 lessons between us in those 2 hours. Boy the priests had an awesome time super spiritual and boy my faith has sure strengthened in the power of prayer and fasting.
The S parents came to church on their own yesterday and no body was speaking or invited them! We called to set up a time to do lunch and a spiritual message and Jane said "Alrighty boys, I'll see you at church tomorrow." They are doing so awesome! They are doing family home evening every monday with the S and everything. This week FHE is at the S parents house. ha imagine that. I love them, and Elder Arnold is going to start getting to know them and I'm sure they will love him too. He is a sweet guy.
We are teaching a lady tonight named Cheryl.  She really likes us and is cooking us her famous pizza tonight and has said she will let us teach her the restoration, and is actually way excited.
Well Elder Arnold and I are tearing it up here in Farragut all is going well and we have a bunch of solid investigators now its just time to get them to have a date for baptism. That's this weeks focus so any extra prayers for our investigators would be awesome! Love you and talk to you soon! Happy Easter!

Love elder bakker

E Lynn S Bowman Day E Anderson; S Cady Sloan Neil Horkley Weirich Gotchy Whatcott Thiriot Preston Malloy Jones Hollis S&P Irion; Kesler Lutu Becker Mills Pierce Grabinger Bakker Eckery Chell; Shumway Southard Ward Snow Pectol Babbitt LeSueur

March 18

March 18, 2013

hey madre and fam

The work here is wonderful. Tennessee-ism for the week is Maryville, which is a city here in Knoxville. (now say it in your head) you pronounced is like mary-ville. Yup you're not from the south. The correct way to pronounce it is murrvull. Haha well like I said all is well here across the country!

Sad to see Elder Christensen go, but Elder Arnold is awesome, he hails from San Diego and even played a year or two of water polo, so that’s cool. If there was a mission wide water polo tournament our district would win, my district leader played in cali too, and I believe that’s everyone in the whole mission who played.

Well anyways there’s not a whole lot more changing around here. We are really locking arms with the members and striving to be better missionaries together with the ward and they are pretty excited for it. Almost every family in the ward has a couple, if not more, families they are working with in helping share the gospel with them. We even got to meet one family this week that was found by a family in the ward from the ask in faith program. The P family, and they invited us to dinner.

Kind of a cool story there in the making. We were out tracting and offering blessings on peoples homes and we decided that the street we were on was the wrong street, but we felt like we shouldn't move on quite yet, so we knocked on a few more houses, got told off by a couple people and decided well I guess now its time to leave. So we hopped on our bikes and felt like we should go the long way back to the apartment and I felt like, hey we need to set up an appointment with the B family so we can go over their "Ask in Faith" program with them a little more. So we rode up their drive way and who should be playing basketball in their drive way? The P family, who we've been trying to meet with along with the B's forever. They said that the B family would be back shortly they just went to pick something up from the store. We chatted for a little bit and they invited us to dinner! ha the Lords hand is in his holy work. We are meeting with the B family tonight and Wednesday to talk about what we can do for the P's and next week I believe we will meet with the P's for dinner.

Little miracles that help you know that the Lord is intimately involved in our lives. He has a plan for all of us, and we have to have the faith that if we can follow the spirit and do the right thing he will in fact lead us in the way that is right for us. It may not seem right at first (ex: getting cussed off a porch) but the destination is where you want to end up (meeting the P's at the perfect time). I love the mission and don’t ever want to leave the people of Farragut haha even though I'll probably get booted end of April. Love you, and it's real simple. One of the most common (if not the most common) promise in the Book of Mormon is for the first time found in 1 Nephi 2:20 "And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper..." until next time.

Love you,

Elder Bakker

March 18

hey hey mom

so its been one of the coolest weeks of my mission. hands down. So Elder Christensen and I have really been working our tails off here in farragut. We strive for exact obedience and don’t settle for less than our best efforts here. Jeanne and Mackenzies baptism was the first baptism here in a solid year. The ward is on fire now. We have been in almost every home helping them with their missionary work with the "Ask in Faith" program, and now just about every family in the ward has specific goals to help their friends come to a knowledge of the truthfulness of the gospel. We honestly have more work here than we have time and for the first time we probably are going to soon need another set of missionaries in the Farragut ward.

Miracles are happening here and soon there is going to be a huge increase of member work and excitement, from one catalyst in particular. So Brother S (I've mentioned that we are teaching his parents) has really been working with us with his parents. We have grown a relationship with them and consider them to be family as well as they consider us to be their sons or grandsons. However I don’t know if I've ever really relayed the miracle behind this relationship. So, roughly 20 years ago when brother S joined the church his parents disowned him. In fact I don’t know if they spoke to him for like a solid year. Also they turned the whole family against them. He told us he couldn’t go to any family gathering with out someone pulling him aside  and trying to save him. long story short, it was a very bad situation. Now their relationship is pretty good and his parents are close with brother s and his family. And now it is the perfect storm. Brother s’s son Trey is on a mission in Australia, and that has really opened them up. And every missionary in the past that has gone through the area wasn’t right, but everything worked out and brother s felt that he should have us teach his parents. And well they have done like a complete 180 and yesterday we went over to their house and talked a bit bore testimony brought the spirit and I'll tell you there was not a dry eye in the room, and then brother s invited his parents to be baptized. it was a truly incredible experience. There is nothing happier than missionary work. The whole ward pretty much knows the situation with the s's and once they see the miracle of the s's being baptized the missionary excitement is going to explode.

oh also borther s and his dad took us to the last UT basketball game and we sat 6th row at half court and got to see them with their last regular season game! (president gave us special permission to go) it was so sick! haha weird though everyone got a good stare at the mormons! haha but anyways i love the mission and wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.

until next week! 

Love ya! ELDER BAKKER