Elder Braden Baker: "To be honest, I hate Christians"

What the, its August!! Lets just say it is still kinda crazy that I'm writing "Aug" in my journal now. Like, I've written that in my journal before while on my mission about a year ago. My year mark is August 8th. Also, the transfer just ended and Elder Hakanson is getting transferred to my apartment. I'm pumped because we started together at the same time and were friends at the MTC!! I'm crazy excited for this month of August, it should be way fun. We got A LOT of great stuff planned.

I told you before that there are a lot of people in my area that are Hindu and really hate Christians and especially the missionaries. Well, one of these people is the father of a member family! The mother, two daughters, and her nephew were baptized in 2007 and the father allowed them to be baptized but never accepted it for himself. He was raised Hindu and was taught to hate Christians. For the last 12 years, he explains, "Soooo many missionaries tried to get me to be baptized and come to church but they really just irritated me. I let them come to our home but I would leave as soon as they came. To be honest, I hate Christians". Well, obviously he learned a few things in the last 12 years about our church and one of those is about the temple. His family has a dream of going to the temple to be sealed together for eternity. The only thing is the head of the household is an important part of this. He started to think more about the temple and about his family's dream throughout the years. We had no idea it was on his mind.

Anyway, fast forward to now!! Last week, we had our Pioneer's Day Activity and he came. At the activity, we did a little explanation of the pioneers at the Kirtland temple and talked about temples today. We watched the video of Elder Rasband and Elder Bednar give a live tour of the Rome, Italy temple (which is awesome). Little did we know, he really needed to learn about what goes on inside the temple. After that, the spirit really did the rest. Here are his words, "My wife and I came home like usual and had dinner and then went to sleep. We both fell asleep like normal but something woke me up in the middle of the night at about 2 AM. I don't know what happened but I knew that I needed to be baptized. I woke up my wife right then at 2 AM and told her, 'I am going to be baptized. I need to learn the truth.'" Since then, we have been teaching him more and more about the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is preparing to be baptized on August 10th!!

So, this week Elder Rather finished his mission on Wednesday. He had to be at the mission home on Wednesday at about 2 o clock. Well, for the last few hours he had of being a missionary, we went finding. In the morning we did a little exchange so we could go out together and do some work. We got some really good lunch and then went finding. We were pretty pumped to go finding because we are two Americans and I can speak in Tamil and Elder Rather can speak in Telugu, it was the perfect pair. Well, despite our excitement, we weren't having much success and he only had about 30 minutes left as a missionary. I thought of a Christian lady I met at a shop that we could at least go stop by and say hello. We had to walk for about 20 minutes to get there though so this was it. We started walking and I don't know what happened to me but we must've walked right past the shop. Idk if I was blind or the spirit kept pushing me to walk further. We had 5 minutes left. We stopped walking and I apologized to him for not being able to find the shop. His time was up. Right where we stopped walking, there was a road that led to a neighborhood. I was like okay we can at least walk down this road one last time. We went in and it was a dead end... I thought we messed up again. We turned around and started to walk back to the main road, some kids ran out of their house and we started talking to them. Then, their whole family comes out. It was a big joined family and they were all Christian! Only thing is they didn't know English, but we expected this! I was all excited so I asked them in Tamil if they know Tamil? nope... no problem, Elder Rather asks in Telugu if they know Telugu? nope... OF COURSE this family only knew Kannada. (The struggle of so many Indian languages in this mission) Well, what happened next had to be the miraculous work of the spirit because this family invited us into their home and we shared with them who we are and what we do. We gave them a picture of Jesus and said a prayer for their family. They even invited us back to their home on Friday.

What a great testimony I have that we are blessed based on our desires and efforts. Elder Rather was already done! Literally, it was his last day. He could've slept in, got ready, ordered some food, packed his bags and went over to the mission home at 2 PM. Literally not even a full day, just the morning hours. Instead, we got going and were led by the spirit and had the opportunity to teach one more family. Just the night before, we were walking home and a drunk guy grabbed Elder Rather by his collar and was threatening us (that's another story smh). That is how you turn it around, don't give up!! I love you guys and wish you the best!!

Love, Elder Baker