Sister Baker in Brazil: January 20, 2014 Awesome Week!!

Hey there hey!

Hope everyone's had a good week over yonder. It's been a pretty awesome week over here in Salem YSA. Ok, for one: I LOVE YSA! It's great. The bomb-diggity. Awesome possum. It will be weird to be in a family ward after this.

So street contacting is fun. You meet some interesting people. Sister A hadn't been tracting or street contacting or anything the first week, and she definitely needed that experience. So we decided to go down this busy street called Commercial. We prayed beforehand and all got different promptings. I felt like we should turn right out of this gas station, Sister P felt like we should turn down a street and stop, and Sister A felt like we needed to walk back to the busy intersection. So we did all three! We walked back on the street and started talking to people at a bus stop. The first person I talked to was on his way home from work and when he saw my nametag asked if I know the Templin family. Uhhhh... YEAH I DO! What?! Crazy crazy! We would go over to the T Family's house on a regular basis! I didn't get a chance to ask him if he was interested in learning about the church, but he told me to add him on facebook. You betcha I did. Then I sent Rachel (the daughter) a message about him. So we'll see where that goes. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. There are no coincidences, folks.

The YSA branch presidency got all shaken up the week before I got here, and now the presidency member over missionary work is totally on the ball. This past week we had a correlation meeting (apparently the first one in a long time) with all the ward missionaries. It went so well. We have a big list of less-actives and so the ward missionaries have an assignment to go out in pairs and visit two people a week. Seems like a great idea to me. We'll see how it goes!

We helped out a less active in moving and that sure was an interesting experience. It was like half of the house was packed and the other half was just sitting out. So that was a little bit awkward. But we helped them out the best we could. I also may or may not have played a mini-prank on her boyfriend. I hid in our trunk and Sister P asked him to get something out of the car. And I freaked him out. Good times, good times. Who says you can't have fun on a mission? In a dignified way, of course. I also hit my shin on the trailer hitch and got scraped up pretty well. Battle wounds.

So we've been working with this less-active member. He's really good friends with a ward missionary named C who just got back from her mission in St. George. They're super opposite and it's funny to see them interact. But he is pretty reserved and quite sarcastic, so lessons are always interesting. This past week we had an amazing, totally Spirit-led lesson. We read through Alma 32 together and talked about it every few verses. It was the first time he really opened up and we got to understand his concerns. We were talking about having a particle of a desire to believe and C asked him if he had that desire. B just looks at her, blinks a few times, and says, "No... I just meet with missionaries for fun." I just about peed my pants! So funny!

We also went up to the Portland temple visitor's center!! It was so awesome! Let's just say we had a 12 passanger van full of ward missionaries, recent converts, less actives, and investigators. We even got a new gator out of it! Righteous! Righteous!

Also we went to visit a potential investigator and met his pretty cool roommates. And one of them looks like the lead singer from 1 Direction. It was weiiiiiiiird. Oh Lorenzo, I know your true identity...

And Sister A committed one of our investigators to baptism!! YEAH BUDDY! Her name's E and she's a sweet heart.

So that's what's going on over here in Salem. Never a dull moment!

Keep it real, folks!

Remember who you are and what you stand for!

Sister Baker