5 W's and lots of sweat

Hello from the other side of the world! Literally though, I was looking at a globe this week and Utah is like directly on the other side of India. I'm as far away from home as I could possibly get. For example, we were at the beach for P-day last week and we started digging a huge hole trying to get to America. Zero success though.

Anyway, life in India is going great so far! I am just finishing my 5th transfer in the Tambaram area which is right outside the main city of Chennai. Chennai used to be named Madras in the past and it is a big city on the east coast of India. It is getting really hot and way humid. One day this week, we went out finding in the morning from 10am to about 12:30 and my shirt was completely soaked in sweat! There was literally no dry spots. We came back to the apartment for lunch and I had to hang it up on my drying rack and turn the fan on high. It's also quite interesting here how the people feel about the sun. They're terrified of it. They hate the sun! Its funny, everyone here wants to be more white and everyone in America wants to be more tan! When I tell people that in America, people lay outside in the sun on purpose to get more tan, they freak out and don't believe me. In America, they sell tanning lotion and here in India they sell whitening lotion. The grass is always greener on the other side.

So, the wonderful morning of the soaked shirt. We prayed for a specific area to go finding in the morning and decided we would go to Mappedu which is pretty close to our apartment. We went out and walked there. I told Rajendran to try and listen to the spirit and act on anything that might be a prompting. I was going to let him lead us out this morning on where to go. We were walking down the main road and we just kept walking and walking and walking. We were passing street after street of houses and people. It's pretty easy to "go finding" in India because you literally just have to be outside of your apartment and there is hundreds of people around you at all times. It also makes it hard sometimes on who to talk to so we leave that up to the spirit and God directing us. After walking for awhile, Elder Rajendran pauses and points down this street to our left. I turned pretty dang quick considering how long we walked straight. Hahahah we then started looking for Christian homes to knock or people to talk to or help. About halfway down the street, there was a big group of ladies underneath a tree. Turns out, there was something happening this morning and every person that lived on the street was meeting together under this tree. It was the fastest I ever "door knocked" a whole street! They were some wonderful people and showed some interest. We were able to share about families living together forever as they all had families. Specifically Mathu and Abee, who are a young couple who just had their first child. I hope to share how living the gospel of Jesus Christ can help them be strong as a family! I'm grateful for prayer and I know God is leading His work. 

This week was the long anticipated apartment inspections. I am coming off of 4 wins straight since I got here so we made sure to clean our apartment way good. We went all in and it looked beautiful. Thank you Mom and Dad for teaching me how to work and clean, I really appreciate it. Anyway, I was pretty confident that we had the W before Elder and Sister Gibson came so I prepared a plate full of Oreos and milk for them as they came inside. Long story short is we win again. I'm proud about it too hahaha. 5 in a row. Thank you mom and dad for teaching me how to work hard and how to clean. Once again, you guys were right. My advice to all kids out there that might be reading this is to listen to your parents!!! Mother knows best, listen to your mother!

Also, happy birthday this past week to my man Jed on the 25th. Jed, you're a stud and I'm grateful we are best friends, love ya man! 

Finally, happy birthday to my girl Ellie today, the 29th! She is the most thoughtful girl I've ever met and I'm so lucky to have met her. I love you!

I hope everyone has a great week! Love you all. Until next week.

Love, Elder Baker

Walking a street in India

Chicken foot for dinner

The ladies under the tree

Ramesh Anna, my favorite man ever

Elder Beaty and I eating beef briyani

Happy Easter!

வணக்கம்! எல்லாரும் எப்படி இருக்கீங்க? For those few of you who don't know Tamil, that says "Hello! How is everybody doing?” I hope you all had a great week and a happy Easter! I'd like to give a special thank you to my mom who sent me an Easter package full of candy and Easter eggs. That was fun trying to explain what Easter eggs are and why I got them in a package to my Indian roommates. In the end, they didn't worry too much about the tradition and just liked to eat the American candy. Thank you Mom, I love you!!

Well, today we are going to go play some kabaddi on the beach! Kabaddi is an intense Indian sport that is super fun. It's like a crazy mix between tag, wrestling, and capture the flag. I don't know how to explain it so if you're interested to see it, please Google it. I really want to play with my friends back home, I feel like we would love it. 

Okay, so I actually really enjoyed this week as we celebrated Easter and focused on the events of the last week of Jesus Christ's life. For the last month, I have studied Jesus Christ's life in the New testament and in The Book Of Mormon when He visits the Nephites. I am grateful for everything that he did. I am grateful for what is possible because of Him. There are two things that every person will do in this life on Earth. Everyone will die, and everyone will sin. Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days. These two issues of physical death and spiritual death can be overcome because of Him. Because Jesus performed the atonement, we can be forgiven of our mistakes when we repent. Because Jesus was resurrected and overcame death, everyone will also be resurrected! Knowing these two things can help everyone in their life. Just knowing this gives us hope, peace, and joy when we think about our future especially after this life on Earth. God's Plan of Salvation is absolutely perfect. It is beautiful and I'm so grateful for it. If you don't know about The Plan of Salvation, I suggest you learn more about it right now and I can promise it will bring more hope and joy in your life as it does for me in my life.

This also rings true for Arjun and his mom. We taught Arjun and his mom this week the Plan of Salvation. Their whole family is full Hindu which is completely different beliefs obviously. One belief being in reincarnation, which is after death you are reborn in the world as something else like an animal. We taught them where they came from, what their purpose is on Earth, and where God wants their family to go after Earth. After we had a good discussion about life after death and their family living together forever, Arjun pondered for a minute and asked, "But how is all of this possible?" Well, it goes back to what I just talked about. It is all because of Him. God's perfect plan would not be perfect if Jesus Christ did not come to Earth and suffer, die, and come back to life. He lives today, like right now! Anyway, the lesson went pretty good with them! Nothing against the Hindu religion at all, but if I knew nothing and was learning about life after death and wanted to choose what I wanted to believe. I would rather live with my family forever knowing complete happiness and joy in the presence of God and Jesus than being a cow. 

Yet another week down, it feels like these weeks are just blowing by. Thanks for all your support and don't be afraid to shoot me an email every once in awhile. I think about you guys often and want to know how you're doing. I love you all! 

Love, Elder Baker

எல்டர் பேக்கர் 

Tambaram Branch Squad

Easter Concert thing we were invited to! 

Easter Day brings out a lot of Christians

Sister Mary

Cleaning the church

"Uhhh, how do you eat this?"

I finally got to watch General Conference this week and I absolutely loved it! This is my second General Conference on my mission and last time I said that it is 100 times better as a missionary. Well, this time I realized the actual truth. The fact that conference is so much better now has nothing to do with my calling or being set apart as a missionary. The difference is that I actually prepared for the last few weeks and really studied, pondered, and prayed about personal questions that I am seeking answers for.  Then, I listened to each talk with full faith knowing that I just asked the one man that is inspiring these men and women to talk to me and that He will answer my prayers through His chosen leaders. I can promise and I know that God hears and answers our prayers! I know this because He has literally answered mine and brought immediate peace to me. I'm really sorry I lied to you 6 months ago saying that conference is only 100 times better when you're a missionary. But, good news! Conference is 100 times better when you prepare yourself spiritually with full faith knowing He will answer your questions regardless of who you are.

Wonderful family, sub-par food is the worst combination when visiting a family here. I love this family sooo much and seriously love to visit them, see the cute little girls, read the scriptures, talk about the Savior, and feel the spirit in their humble home. They are so kind and want to show their love to us Elders and the way they show their love here is through food. This week, they cooked a lot for us and all non-veg: beef, mutton, and fish(and of course rice)! Alright, you're probably picturing a nice meal full of good meat and fish... Well, I will say it wasn't bad until they plopped three fish on my plate. I mean, the whole fish like head, tail, scales, eyeballs, bones, everything! It's like they pulled it straight from the dirty pond and tossed it on the pan with a whole bunch of masala of course. I looked at Elder Rajendran, "Uhhh, how do you eat this?" He picks up one by the tail and puts the head in his mouth and bites off a piece, chews it, and swallows. I was a bit shocked hahahah. I couldn't believe he just did that. So, I talked myself into it and I also picked one up and took a bite. *crunch* I bit right through the thick spine bone and the little bones. I managed to finish 1 of them even through all of the crunching and poking in my mouth and throat. It was pretty terrible, I'm not going yo lie. That's one thing I can go without doing again in my life. I told Elder Rajendran that I already have enough of my own bones in my body, I don't need any more.

Jothi and Basker are progressing well! A miracle happened as we have been teaching them and as they continue to accept and apply the restored gospel in their lives. Jothi is working hard to support her family with many jobs. Unfortunately, her schedule now is to work all day Sunday. She asked for her work off on Sundays but they wouldn't let her. They only allowed one Sunday off, but she took advantage and came to church! She and her husband said she felt good and like this is where she needs to be. The only problem she was having is her work schedule on Sundays not allowing her to come to church each week. Last week, they accepted our invitation to be baptized and really want to be baptized. Still, the problem remained the same. Even if she were to be baptized, she couldn't attend church and partake of the sacrament each week. We kept praying for her to get a better job and not even a week after she committed to being baptized, a new job opportunity came to her out of nowhere. She is having an interview this week so please pray for Jothi! This is a great example of taking a leap of faith into the dark knowing that Jesus will be the light to guide you along your way. I look forward to Jothi's baptism and her start on the covenant path. 

One thing that I felt a lot during conference is that God truly loves all of His children. I just had a desire to go and tell everyone I know that I also love them and I know that the Lord loves them so much. I can truly feel that immense love from God for His children by serving them and I invite you to continue ministering and serving His children and think of how much love God truly has for ALL of His children. I love you all, have a great week.❤️ 

Love, Elder Baker

I'm only smiling on the outside, trust me hahah

White rice, curry and the fish.......

This is right after we played an intense game of kabaddi on the beach

My daily banana man

WONGA! WONGA!

This week was great! We were able to invite two more people to be baptized and they accepted and are preparing to be baptized soon. Everything seems to be going great right now on my mission and I'm loving it! I'm learning more and more Tamil every week. This week, we met a couple and I started talking to them in tamil. Turns out that the guy didn't even know Tamil but the girl did. So, after I was talking a little bit in Tamil, she was getting angry at her boyfriend because I knew better Tamil than him! Hahah it was really funny. She said, "He has only been here for 6 months and he is speaking way better Tamil than you!" I was pretty honored. (; Not like speaking Tamil will be useful for much longer because as soon as I get transferred, the people will speak a different language. It's good for now tho! 

Anyway, this week we were crazy busy planning and having our branch Easter open house activity and it was a lot of fun but exhausting! Yeah, you might be a little confused why we had an Easter activity way before Easter. Well, somehow there was a miscommunication between our zone leaders and the mission president so we planned for April 6th and we were supposed to have the activity on April 20. Since we already started advertising, we had it on the 6th but now we will just have it twice! So, we had to get a lot of supplies and stuff ready for the activity. Then, we were at the church setting up and decorating the church ALL day on Friday and then we were there for the actual open house all day Saturday. What we did was set up and decorated 5 different rooms like the final events of Jesus Christ's life and took people on a tour through each room teaching them more about Him. It was great! 

So during the Easter open house, not a ton of people came right away, so we decided to just go out on the street and start talking to people. Elder Rajendran was SO pumped to bring people in the church. The first guy we talk to, Elder Rajendran starts talking to him in Tamil and then like 20 seconds later, "WONGA WONGA!" which means "COME, COME" and we brought him up and taught him all about Jesus Christ's life. It was awesome. Many more people like this came in and learned and felt the holy ghost so strongly. There was a mom and her son that we were talking to and initially she said she has no time at all! She was walking to the train station and had to catch her train. Finally she agreed to just come see and also to come into the AC(which was a good finding idea) because it was so hot outside. After seeing each room and feeling the spirit, she sat down in the chapel and watched Bible videos for the next 45 minutes. It was so cool to see the spirit touch many people including myself! I know Jesus performed the atonement and died for all of us. I know He was resurrected and lives today. I know he visited the ancient people in the Americas and I know he is the head of the church today and speaks to His prophet Russel M. Nelson.

Speaking of the prophet, I hope everyone had a great experience listening to general conference this weekend. Because of the time difference in India, we will watch it next weekend and I am so excited. Apparently, having a church meeting at 1:30-3:30 AM is frowned upon or something idk. I had no say in that decision. But, next week I will be able to hear all the talks and I couldn't be more excited. I've heard great things! 

One experience I want to share is a lesson we had with Vidubala. She has had a lot of trials in her life and health issues the last few years. We have been meeting with her for awhile now and usually the lessons would go like this: 90% of her telling us all her problems and 10% of us sharing a quick message to try and help. This time, we taught her the gift of repentance and baptism and how amazing it is that Jesus let's us change over and over and always repent each day to become more like him. We shared the scripture Alma 13:28 and told her that she won't be tempted above which she can bear. She won't have any trial harder than she can handle with Jesus Christ. She really felt the spirit and I felt to invite her to be baptized. I told her that Jesus Christ has his hand out to grab her and help her up to her full potential but she is the one that has to grab his hand. If she never grabs on tight to His hand, then He can never lift her up. It often takes a small leap of faith to jump out of the darkness and into the spiritual light. Vidubala understood and really felt the spirit and now wants to prepare to be baptized. 

Until next week everyone, love ya bye!

Love, Elder Baker

Crazy little boys

Resurrected Jesus outside the tomb

The Garden of Gethsemane

How they cook chicken for the Shawarma

Craziest auto driver I have ever met named Raj

 Jesus visits the Nephites in America.JPG

 Homeade whip I made out of a belt and crown of ...

 After hours and hours telling people about the ...

 Natasha and Evangeline, the cutest little girls...

 Shawarma is freaking GOOD.JPG

 Nails and sponge of Vinegar.JPG

 Elder Beatty had a birthday!.JPG

The Swee Doctor

I am alive! I got super sick last weekend with the flu and I had a really high fever for a few days. This week, I thought I was getting better and then just crashed again. One night, my fever shot up to 103 and I thought my head was going to melt into my pillow. I really didn't want to go to the hospital but I was in a lot of pain so the next morning, I went to the hospital to see if it was anything serious. Fortunately, it was just the flu so there wasn't much to do to help. The doctor made sure to give me a load of pills to take. I was supposed to take so many so I was confused what they were all for. So, I googled what the pills were and one was for stomach ulcers so idk why I had that one... Another was a narcotic and the last ones were an antibiotic. Now, I'm not the doctor but I know that antibiotics are to treat bacterial infections and don't really do anything for viral infections like the flu. Like I said, I'm not the pro but idk about this hospital I went to. It was a little sketchy hahah. The doctor also told me to do weird things like sleep with cotton balls in my ears. My companion told me, "you have to take what the doctor gives you! Whatever it is, she knows best. If the doctor gives you poison and tells you to eat it, you got to eat it!" Bottom line is I didn't listen to the doctor or my companion here. Bottom bottom line is I am all better now so don't even worry! I'm doing great and back out teaching these people about the restored gospel.

So, Jothi and Basker have been improving and progressing so well recently. They really loved coming to our church and Jothi is doing everything she can to try and change her work schedule so she is available every Sunday morning to come to church. This is a really big thing to do as she is supporting her family right now. She believes that this is the true Church and wants to do anything she can to come. We taught her this week about the Plan of Salvation which is one of my favorites to teach because I LOVE IT. We invited her family to be baptized and she said "kandippa!" which means 'definitely!' in Tamil. Oh, it was such a good lesson. I love being able to share my testimony of living with my family together forever and how excited I am to get married and sealed together with the person I love forever and ever. It's also such a blessing to know and understand where we came from before this life on Earth, what our purpose on Earth is, and where we will go after we die. These restored truths have brought me so much joy and hope in my life and that is one of the biggest reasons I like sharing it with the people of India. Everyone deserves to know about the restored gospel. So, if you don't know about God's Plan(not Drake's version), then I invite you to learn more about it now, I promise living according to the plan brings joy. I have seen it happen! I know that families can be together forever. I know we will all overcome death and be resurrected and have the chance to live with God and Jesus Christ and the people we love most again!

It was the end of a transfer last week, but in the India Bengaluru Mission the transfer news is always about a week late. The reason is because every transfer is by plane so the mission president has to arrange everyone's plane tickets and all that stuff. So, after being in my first area for about 6 months now, I was thinking it might be my time to pack my bags and get on that plane and transfer. Lucky me though, I am staying another transfer!! I actually couldn't be happier when I found out I was staying. In fact, everyone in my apartment is staying this transfer, no moves from the Tambaram district. So, for at least another transfer I will be living with Elder Rajendran, Elder Beatty and Elder Singh. We are crushing the game right now and loving while we are doing it. I am really grateful to be serving around such great people. I am also really grateful for all of you and your support! Thank you so much for the prayers and love, I love you. Especially you family and future family like Els!

With romba love, Elder Baker

So, on P-day we visited this place called St. Thomas Mount. It is this big church and worship place that they built here on top of a mountain because it is where they claim the apostle Thomas was killed. Idk if it is true or not but it was cool to visit the place haha. Enjoy the pictures.

PS. There are lots more pictures and videos from my whole mission at this link.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uN5PsSQ80xv0xcAHxAQXzJvGRwl_1I1u

                                                    I love the view and I love this guy

                                                   Chennai from St. Thomas Mount

St. Thomas Mount

St. Thomas Mount Church