July 28

Hey there! 

So sorry I didn't get to email last week! Life has been crazy! Transfers are coming this Wednesday and there is a lot to prepare for! Its the biggest transfer the mission has seen to my knowledge. 19 missionaries going home Thursday (6 more in a couple weeks for school) and 16 coming in. That's quite a few people to worry about. Its doubly crazy because it's president Griffin's first transfer. I enjoy helping, but its a big responsibility for sure. 

We are doing great in our area! We had 4 investigators at church last week and 3 this week. There are 2 on with a baptismal date: Chris on the 23rd and Andrew on the 29th of Aug. We are tearing it up out here. 

You know its pretty funny to see the work ebbing and flowing like it is and does, it seems to go however the Lord chooses for it to go. I have felt like an obedient diligent worker my whole mission and sometimes there is success to be had and sometimes there isn't. That's a striking part of faith, its not been about all the things you do to "earn the Lords blessings," rather its about our trust that the Lord knows what he is doing. We are obedient and diligent because we love Him and we try to qualify for the Lords blessings, and when it is right we receive. Its been a theme of my mission. 

Well all is well here and the days keep flying by. 

Thanks for everything!

Love ya! 

Elder R.A. Bakker

At a ball game for a YSA activity

July 14

Hey!

Great week this week! We did a lot of traveling, we only slept at our apartment 2 days the last 7 days, every other day we were on the road staying with other Zone Leaders. We attended 5 zone training meetings this week and 4 last week. Pretty fun, I not only gave another on the spot 20 minute training, but the zone leaders stole our training we gave at mission leadership training so I had to write a new one from scratch during the meeting. It was kind of fun actually, the missionaries really seemed to enjoy it, I trained on "Becoming a Master Teacher." - I love it. So that was pretty good. I'm as tired as all get out from all these meetings. I was able to spend quite a bit of time with the Griffins this week especially, the youngest, she is like my baby sister. We played a lot of "princess pet shop" while I was timing and rotating missionaries out for interviews in the hallway during the meetings, the sisters in the mission tell me that I will make a great dad and that this is "good training" for me. The Griffin girls are all a lot of fun and and Elder Mumm and I have been adopted into the family. We even had Sunday dinner over there tonight and are having ableskivers for breakfast in the morning. YUM! 

For our investigators this week we were only able to see two of them. Chris was at church today and we had a great lesson with him and are anticipating his baptismal date of Aug 23rd. The other investigator was a kid named Andrew. He is kind of an interesting guy, but very intelligent and quite interested in the church. We are looking forward to several lessons this upcoming week with other investigators. 

Hmm other random things of the week. I broke a sisters hand in a zone activity game... that was rough. She seems to be doing ok though considering, and isn't too mad at me, apparently I owe her Panda Express (a Southern delicacy that you can find in Farragut) so maybe that will alleviate some of the hard feelings. And I can officially dunk a basketball again. I could a little bit at the beginning of my mission, but I'm getting back into shape a bit so basketball is way better now. I'm coming for ya in October Jack.

Life is good, time is moving fast, busy as a bee, being blessed, and loving every minute.

Love ya 

Elder R.A. Bakker

July 7

Hey!

Sorry I wasn't able to email last week! I had no idea how crazy life would be now that we have the new president in. President Griffin is great! It is interesting to see the vast differences between President Irion and President Griffin. They are both absolutely perfect for this mission.  I feel very fortunate to be so closely associated with both of these supreme examples. I have the unique opportunity to learn closely from both and the lessons just seem to continue to flow. I can't hardly keep up with it! 

 

We are always on the road and always busy. Our investigators are doing well, Chris has a baptismal date for the 23rd of Aug. the day before Alyssa's birthday, so that should be exciting. He is ready to go now, I suspect he will move it up. Oh Elder Christensen (Mike J.) is back in town for a few days I had dinner with he and his family as well as Brother R this evening. And another cool thing, I was sitting in a Zone meeting this week and Elder Williams one of my old companions was in charge of the meeting looked at me (Elder Mumm was in the hall helping President with timing for interviews) and said "shoot this meting is going to run short, will you give a 20 minuet training?" haha so I did with minuets of notice. They all seemed to like it, in fact several members of the zone came up to me and thanked me saying it was their favorite training of the meeting. Never thought I would be able to do things like that, just goes to show that the power of the atonement not only helps cleanse us, but it empowers us to become better and stronger than we could ever imagine, especially when it comes to blessing God's children.

It was a good week! 

Thanks for everything love ya! 

Love Elder R.A. Bakker

June 23

Hey there! 

Everything seems to be coming along swimmingly in preparations for President Griffin to arrive on the 30th in the afternoon. We just had a lesson with our most progressing investigator C, super good lesson, anyways Pres Griffin might be able to come to our lesson with us the night he gets out into the field, that is if he isn't too busy going over things with President Irion before he leaves the following morning. We are as always just running around trying our best to get everything ready for all of that to take place. 

In other news we have been greatly blessed (special assistant blessings of finding when you can't really even work in your area) with 5+ really solid referrals this last week. We are real excited about that. We have found some new investigators and potential investigators from tracting (in the 30 min or so we were able to do it total the last couple weeks we had 2 great sit down lessons, which like never happens). 

Sorry I'm so scattered, but back to C. We had a great lesson with him tonight about baptism, he loved it and is looking forward to being baptized himself in the near future. We don't have a date for him yet unfortunately, but that will come soon. He has more real intent than nearly any investigator I have ever seen. Plus he actually studies. He is a mechanical engineer and is contracted out in Oak Ridge at ORNL, but is originally from South Carolina and travels there quite frequently for business and pleasure. Things are going really well how could I complain?

Love Elder R.A.  Bakker

Ps- side note about the maxwells their cousin is in my mission. Elder Macduff... Oh boy what a kid. One of the funniest people I have ever met, you will have to tell them that I know him well and have several hilarious stories about him. 

June 16

I honestly dont even know what to write about. We are still super busy preparing for transfers which is on Wednesday.  Elder Garber goes home on Thursday morning, then Elder Mumm and I are officially on our own here with President and Sister Irion for 2 weeks before the Griffins come in. The Griffins seem great. I was able to talk to him on the phone today and he mentioned that he called you all and got ahold of Alyssa and you would be returning the call shortly. I like what I hear about him and from him so far! Hoping for a fairly seemless transition.  I am excited for it however. The harder you are able to work the faster time seems to go... It's all a blur. It feels like 2 weeks have gone by since I moved to Knoxville. Its been 6... I have a short time left and I feel like it is going to feel even shorter. All is well, I'm working hard and trying to learn as much as I can all the time. Thanks for the love and support, and sorry my emails are short and dry haha.

Love Elder R.A. Bakker

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!

June 2

Hey not much time this week. I'll try to check in better later this week. Lots to do. We had a spur the moment Spanish conference where I got to meet and talk with Elder Pino of the 70. Awesome experience. We have another mission leadership conference tomorrow so that should be good. I'm busy as ever and working hard! 

love ya! 

Elder Bakker

4: Garber Waring Woolums Froelich Garcia McRae 3: Olson, Adamson, Gerig Mumm Sorensen Searle Livingston Bakker Larson Hagans Shaw Hansen Hart 2: Paxton Wheelhouse Clove Ogdens Irions Taylor Tomlinson Huntsman 1: Brown Nelson Wynn Colwell Steiner Goates