Elder Braden Baker: Raised from the dead

Hello everyone!! A mind blowing miracle happened this week as you can tell by the subject title of this email. Okay, not really but now I totally have your attention. The funniest thing happened to Elder Rajendran and I this week. We we're laughing so hard and felt pretty dumb afterwards. So, one day we went finding all day because we only had 1 set appointment in the evening. As we were walking, we come up to this hospital and right outside there was a lot of people banging on drums and it was super loud. There was also tons of flowers on the ground everywhere and people around an ambulance truck type of thing. So, in India this is what a funeral looks like. When someone dies, they put the dead body on a little table thing and put it in the back of a truck and they drive down the road. People all surround the body and play lots of drums and throw flowers everywhere. So, we are walking by the hospital and this is the situation we see. So, out of respect we stopped walking for a minute and stopped to see. Right then, they walked out of the hospital with a body on a gurney looking thing. Elder rajendran said, "oh no, look there is the dead body." We were watching and then the supposedly 'dead body' moves! Hahahahaah we we're shocked because we actually thought he was dead and then he moved. We then continued walking and were just laughing at ourselves...

We had an awesome zone conference this week! Elder Homer, a general authority, came to India to teach us and talk with us missionaries. He is a total stud and really helped me a lot. I learned so much from him and loved the way that he taught us. Actually, before we started President Mortensen chose one companionship to be interviewed by Elder Homer and he chose Elder Rajendran and I. Elder Rajendran was shocked and wayyy nervous because he is still new. It was a really cool experience to sit down and talk with him. He taught us how to teach repentance because that is what we all need to do every day. We learned that gaining a better or more complete understanding of God, ourselves, or the world is repentance! When we do learn more about God and ourselves, we will want to align our will with His. Finally, when we do, we are repenting! When we look at repentance like this, it is a happy thing that brings us joy. We will want to keep the commandments because we understand who God is and who we are and why we are on Earth.

What I learned at zone conference really helped our teaching so much as we taught repentance to a family this week. We met with a new family we are teaching and taught what we learned from zone conference. The father has some health problems where he can barely walk and he actually randomly lost his voice a few weeks ago. He woke up one morning and just couldn't speak. Soon after is when we started teaching him and his family. As we taught them the gospel of Jesus Christ, we saw their desire to be more like Jesus Christ increase so much. They have so much faith and even better they acted on that faith and made a big step and came to church this week even though it was hard for them to travel to the church with his health. But, they came! They told us they felt like they were at home and wanted to join the family. There is a lot of potential with this wonderful family.

One last proud story from my roommates and I. Friday was our apartment inspections. So, Elder and Sister Gibson(the elder couple missionaries) come to our apartment and check and make sure we are keeping it clean. Anyway, we went in and cleaned our apartment so well Friday! They came and said that we win again. This is the 4th time I have won since I got to the apartment so I am pretty proud. Our apartment was the cleanest out of all the missionaries in the whole Chennai zone! I'd like to thank my mom for making me do chores and clean the house every day growing up, I really really appreciate you and love you Mom. ❤️

Love, Elder Baker