Wedding Crashers

Hello everyone, another week goes by and I am still having the time of my life in India!! My companion Elder Rajendran and I are doing very well together and are loving the work. Two more people want to be baptized soon in the next few weeks. That makes 9 people that are going to get baptized soon! They are so happy and so excited. It makes me so happy when I see others happiness. Anyway, we had some great lessons this week and some fun things happen. We were invited to a wedding which was a lot of fun. We also had a big District activity on Saturday which was India's Republic Day. It was a great activity and a lot of people came and me met many new families because of the activity.

So, Priya's sister was getting married so she invited us to come to the wedding! They sure go all out for their wedding functions here. We found the place and just walked right in and sat down then before we knew it, there was like 10 people dragging us to get some food. There was so many people here, they would have no idea if we even knew the bride and groom!! ahahha so if we learned one thing, it is that when we don't have any dinner we just have to find a wedding and walk right in and we will surely be fed! The wedding consisted of live music that was SO loud, a camera man walking around filming everyone, lots of food, and then everyone lines up to take pictures with the bride and groom. There was a huge line so we were just going to leave. As we were saying bye to Priya and her family, they brought us right up to the stage as if we were VIP's! So, us four missionaries will forever be in their huge photo album they will make for their wedding. You're welcome future missionaries in this area.(; 

There wasn't too many crazy things that happened this week, just the same old things to be honest. I don't know, maybe I am just getting used to all the crazy. Yeah, it is definitely just me getting used to it. Sometimes randomly it will hit me that I truly am in India across the other side of the globe sitting on some random families floor eating rice with my hand. Then, you start remembering it is all real and I am not just dreaming hahhah. 

I have found out for myself that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is in fact the only true church on the Earth today. I know with a surety that Jesus Christ is the head of this church and speaks to His prophets. After studying about the great apostasy in history, it just makes sense that God needed to restore His church on the Earth in these latter days. Joseph Smith really did restore the same church Jesus Christ established when he was on the earth and it is available to us to experience the same joy. I know that I have felt this joy and I know that it is also just a fraction of the joy that we can feel as we live eternally with our families in the presence of God!! What amazing hope living this gospel brings to us and our families.

Love, Elder Baker

PS. This little guy came to my computer at the internet cafe and just started watching everything I am doing and now we are friends. His name is Manikandan! 

 Manikandan, my new friend.JPG

 barber shop.JPG

 wedding selfie.JPG

 5 months.JPG

 bowling!! .JPG

Henna

Barber Shop

Manikandan, my new friend

Wedding Selfie

Bowling

5 months!

God's Plan

Hello family and friends, another P-day rolls around and I feel like just yesterday I was here telling you about my week!! Well, this week was so awesome. Even more miracles happened this week. We met some great new people and I  even got played by one guy this week. What I learned is that we should never give up and always have faith and trust in the Lord. The miracles will come after the trial of our faith. We experienced some awesome stuff this week, let me tell you about it.

First story is pretty funny. I got played by a man named Arun Kumar. So, I met him a while ago on a train and he really really wanted me to come to his church and preach. I had to explain to him what we do and that we are not allowed to preach in other churches. He really wouldn't accept that answer and kept asking me to come preach in his church! I told him that we would love to come to his home and share a message or he could visit our church. He finally agreed and said he would call me. Well, that he did. He called this week and asked us to come meet him and come to his home! I made sure to ask him that we were coming to his home and not his church? and he said "Yes! My home, come!!" Well, you won't believe what Arun Kumar did next. We found his home and I kid you not, he brought his whole church to his home!!! HAHA I will give it to him, he wins. Arun Kumar: 1 Elder Baker: 0. I was shocked when we showed up and literally his whole church was there!! I just had to laugh. They fed some pretty good food so it wasn't a waste of time. Plus it's a story, right?

Alright, now to update everyone on Yasmine! The lady we met last week. So, she came to church with her mom and they loved it. She is always super super happy to see us and visit the church. We went to her home to teach her again this week and went in planning to teach the Restoration of the Gospel and talk about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. She had a lot of questions concerning faith, repentance, and even baptism so we changed our whole lesson plan on the spot and followed the spirit. We taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and talked about Jesus Christ's baptism and Yasmine and her mom asked us when they can be baptized. So, Yasmine and her mom are now preparing to be baptized on February 2nd!! They came to church again this week and they are awesome, I can't wait for them.

Now the story about miracles after the trial of your faith!! So, on Tuesday a member invited us to go visit his relatives in the hospital. One lady named Joyce was really sick and had been in the hospital for awhile. We went and visited with her and met her family. We then gave her a blessing right there in the room she is in. It is not a hospital room like in America by the way. It was a big room with about 40 little beds with tons of other sick women. Elder Rajendran and Brother Meshack(the member in out branch), and I all huddled around her bed and layed our hands on her head to offer her a priesthood blessing. With Joyce's family around us to hear the blessing, the spirit was really strong. They all thanked us a lot for coming to visit and give the blessing. It was a great experience. Elder Rajendran and I left that day with a lot of hope and faith that Joyce would feel better and go home soon. The week goes on like normal and on Friday, we received a call from Daniel. He said that the doctor said he is not sure when she will be discharged and that now all of their family is sick now and has a fever. Great... We went and gave a blessing and no progress and in fact, now they are all sick. What did we do wrong?? We could've been mad and decided that God didn't answer our prayers and that our faith and hope was no good and given up. Instead, Elder Rajendran and I immediately went and prayed for their family. The next day on Saturday night, we had a feeling to call them. So, we call and Daniel answers the phone and just says, "Brother! How did you know to call us?! We just reached our home. The doctor said that Joyce is better and can go home." Miracle, but it doesn't end there. We invited their family to come to church in the morning and they all came even though they were a little sick still. After the meeting they came up to us and asked us what they had to do to be baptized. So, we sat down with them and taught them about baptism and now Joyce and her family members are on date to be baptized on February 2nd!! 

I love you all so much!! I hope you have a great week.

Love, Elder Baker

                                        Baker, Beatty and Bananas

                                        Apoorv Singh!

                                         Monkeys straight chillin

                                         Making melted chocolate

I made oreo truffles!

Miracles on Miracles!!

What up what up!!

We officially have a new Tambaram District and two new elders in my apartment. Last Friday, I picked up my new companion Elder Rajendran and then on last Monday, Elder Beatty arrived and joined the squad. Now it is Elder Rajendran, Beatty, Shurtliff, and I and we are doing great! It is a lot of fun here in Tambaram. 

We all visited Sister Kanchana this week and she is a beast. She cooked us up some super good food like always. This time, we had chicken curry and poori and of course rice. Before we start sharing our message, she always likes to start with a hymn even though she doesn't know much English. So, we sang like usual and then we were saying that she was so good that she should sing solo. So guess what she did? Yep, she performed every verse of "I Am a Child of God" for us SOLO. (yes, there is a video below) hahaha It was SO freaking cute. I felt strongly that we are all truly children of God who loves us so much. 

We met a new family this week knocking doors and they asked us to come the next day and teach them!! So, we went to their little home and taught them simply who the Godhead is. After teaching them, Elder Rajendran and I got on our bikes and cycled home. We were passing a house of a different family that I am teaching and I had a feeling to just stop and say hello. So, I just slammed on the brakes and knocked on their little gate. One of the sons in the family named Shankar stuck his head out and the biggest smile came across his face and he said, "WONGA!! WONGA WONGA WONGA!!" which means 'Come' in Tamil. Elder Rajendran's mind was blown that I had a feeling to just stop and knock. He kept asking me, "how did you know that they wanted us to come in??" They were all home and just super excited to see us stop by. I know it was something small but God is speaking to us through the Holy Ghost. It is up to us to act on those promptings. 

We got a call from a Sister in our branch this week and she said she had met a lady named Yasmine and that she wanted us to come over to her home with her. So, we traveled to meet her so that we could go to Yasmine's home together. We traveled like 20 minutes to meet her just to figure out that Yasmine's home is RIGHT next to my apartment... HAHAH oops. So, we traveled all the way back. Anyway we finally got to her home and talked for awhile about who the Godhead is and how they can all help us. She has been struggling with a lot of different things lately and I wanted to explain to her about Priesthood blessings. I know that the Priesthood is literally God's authority that is on the earth today. It is the same power that Jesus Christ healed people and worked miracles when he lived on the earth. I showed Elder Rajendran how to give a blessing because it was his first one that he gave on his mission. He seemed nervous but I know the spirit was super strong in that little room and the words that he spoke really touched Yasmine!! She was just crying the whole time and when we invited her to church she said, "I will come to your church every week!!" I know God lives.

I know with a surety that if "we keep the commandments of God, we will prosper in the land." It has to say that hundreds of times in the Book of Mormon and it is so true. Over and over we see those that are keeping the commandments and heeding to the word of God are the ones that see the miracles and truly feel joy. Real lasting joy comes from loving our Savior. I have already learned so much on my mission, I am so grateful!! I am super grateful for the people in my life that help me and support me. Especially my family!! I love all of you. I love you Dad, Mom, Bree, Bryson, Brinley, and Ellie!! (; I hope everyone has a great week!! <3 

Love, Elder Baker

**Disclaimer: Priya is the girl we are teaching and she is paralyzed from the waist down but she wanted a picture with her standing and without her walker. SO, she leaned against the wall and had to hold my hand to stay up!! Don't freak out mom! Or Ellie! 

                                           Elder Rajendran, my first "son", or trainee

Like father, like son. 

Old school piano!

Priya and the boys. 

The new District

                                         Sister Kanchana sings "I Am A Child of God" to us!

https://drive.google.com/a/myldsmail.net/file/d/1cRuh4GlL-Jy7cUaV4No1wuwrjqRJZUZu/view?usp=drive_web

 Sister Kanchana solo!!.MP4

The Call

Hello friends and family, I hope everyone had a Happy New Year! I am looking forward to see what this year brings. Everyday is another day where we have the chance to strengthen our faith in Jesus Christ and become more like Him and every day we do that will be a good day. I am really excited for this new year. This whole year I have the chance to be serving the Lord in this wonderful place of India. I continually feel blessed every day no matter what happens.

Speaking of new things, I received the long awaited transfer call from mission president on Friday. Here is how it happened starting from the beginning. I woke up with Elder Tolbert just like a normal day in the mission. We got up at 6:30 and worked out, made breakfast, showered, got dressed, and started studying and planning our day out. As we started planning, We had a lot of appointments set for the day! We were to meet with 5 people so we had a pretty full day but we had some free time between about noon-3:30 and we couldn't schedule an appointment. Nobody would answer their phone or they were unavailable during that time. So, we went on with our day and go out for our appointments. After our first one, we get a phone call from President Mortensen and he told me that I will be getting a new companion named Elder Rajendran, who is straight from the MTC and I will be training. He then told me I need to go pick him up from the airport at 2. The exact time we had no appointments on our busy day. We didn't have to cancel with anyone! Okay, this is something small and you can call it a coincidence if you want but God didn't allow us to schedule anything during those few hours so we could go to the airport to pick up Elder Rajendran. God is directing His work here in the mission field no doubt. I know without a doubt that this is God's true church on the Earth today and He is directing my work. 

The people here are awesome and super talented especially when it comes to decorating or art. They like to create masterpieces out of chalk on the ground in front of their houses! I took a picture of a few of the best ones and one that specifically stood out to me because it says, "Happy New Year 2009" Someone is stuck in the past about 10 years. Maybe we will knock their door and ask if they know where they are. hahahah. We also saw a dead rat this week which was crazy, it was so big!! Well, nothing else too crazy happened this week. Thank you everyone for the support and prayers. I am so grateful for all of you. 

Some good things that happened this week: we taught this young man named Arjun. He is the one who rocks it on the guitar. He is super good. We taught him about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. we taught him about the Holy Ghost and in the lesson he says, "my holy ghost is telling me that what we are talking about is true. It feels good!" He is super awesome and such a good dude. He is only like 14 years old and super humble.

We are teaching a couple named Dinesh and Sunita. They have two cute daughters that love to play with me! Anyway, we have taught them almost everything and every lesson with them is super good. This week we answered questions about how to recognize the spirit when it is telling you something. We read Moroni chapter 7:12-13 with her and helped as best as possible. The spirit was strong and they said that they are waiting for the feeling or the "urge" to be baptized. So, I invited them to pray about it and ask God if it is something that they should do.

Another awesome lady is Vinitha. She has known the missionaries for longer than I have been here. She is a super nice lady and everything but wants to be completely sure that she is doing the right thing. We helped her with a concern she had about feeling stressed out about little things in life and I pulled out a string that i made one morning while studying the eternal plan. It is a long string with a super tiny ribbon in the middle. I said to imagine that the string goes forever in both directions and the little ribbon in the middle is Life on earth and before is pre earth life and afterwards is Life after death. Don't worry about the little things because God has a perfect plan in the great view of things. He loves you and knows you personally. We shared some scriptures and the spirit was super strong. She said that our "message really touched her and it feels like there were angels sitting right in front of her delivering the message." It was super awesome. 

These are a few stories of good things this week and to be honest, when you are focused on Christ the good things always out weigh the bad. So I can't even complain!!

Love, Elder Baker

It only allows so many pictures so if you want to see all of my pictures and videos, you can see them in this folder at this link!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oymsu5vHpmlXn7zfjCq18zZ9tBPJxxIo?usp=sharing

 Arjun-Despacito.MP4

 Arjun-Shape of you.MP4

 Arjun- Pirates of the Carribean.MP4

Happy New Year!

                                     My new companion, Elder Rajendran from Benguluru

Cycling in India

Happy New Year 2009!!!!!!

Arjun, The Guitar Master

I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and has a Happy New Year! I had the opportunity to Skype my family!! It was so amazing and I am so grateful for them and all that they do for me. Christmas is always an amazing time of the year and Christmas spirit brings so much joy and happiness in a lot of ways. Most importantly the birth of Jesus Christ. The Savior Jesus Christ offers us so many gifts and I am grateful for that. 

The highlight of my week was definitely skyping my family!! That was the best Christmas present this year for sure. I had to wake up super super early because of the time difference between India and America but we made it work and I got to catch up on my sleep afterwards at our next appointment, don't worry! (; (This is just a joke by the way, we didn't actually fall asleep at our appointment okay dad)

Well, this week was a good week! We had zone conference so that means President and Sister Mortensen got on a plane and flew out to Chennai to see our zone. It was a really good zone conference and I learned a lot. It was good to see the whole zone and hear about the success from our Light The World efforts. Miracles happened and we hope to continue to serve others throughout the whole year. A few missionaries are about to go home this week including one in my apartment and we got to hear each others testimonies and the spirit was super strong. 

On Saturday, we were super busy. We scheduled to meet with six families and ended up meeting with SEVEN! It was a really good day. We ended up meeting with/teaching about 32 people that day. The work here is up and running and I am loving it. The best appointment we had this day was with a (not so) little guy named Arjun. He is 14 years old but he is like 6 feet tall. I met him in an auto and gave him a Light The World pass along card. He went home and immediately watched the videos at lighttheworld.org and then called me back!! Since then, he has called me about 10 times just to say hi and see how we are doing. We went to his home and his mom made us some lunch and we visited with him and his mom and his grandma and even his great grandma! They all live together, all 4 generations. Anyway, Arjun's mom was pretty excited when we got there. She said, "Wow!! It is so good to meet you guys. Arjun hasn't stopped talking about you. I don't know what magic you did to him but he talks all the time now. He has no real friends, just bad friends in his life. Since he met you guys, he tells me you are his good friends!! I almost didn't believe it but here you are!" hahahah she was ecstatic, it was so cool. Then, Arjun BLEW OUR MINDS. He pulled out his guitar and I am convinced that he is the best guitar player in India. Like, the difficulty levels on Guitar Hero would go like this: Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert, then Arjun. Okay, I wanted to get a video but he said next time we can. So, hopefully I will send a video next week.

I love you all, thanks for all the support and prayers. Happy New Years!

Love, Elder Baker

Arjun, The Guitar Master

                                                            The Samuel family