Dear Mom,
We have had a great week! First of all, we have a
new investigator officially, named Sachi. She is 20, and is from Bahrain
(over in the middle east somewhere). Anyway, she just moved here a few
months ago, and is on her own completely. She has a house that her
dad bought here in St. Marys, that she is kinda holding down the fort
in until her family can all gather here in Ohio. Two cool things
about her house, 1) the bidet and 2) the cat with two extra thumbs!
Ha! She is so sweet, and has a muslim, Buddhist, Christian background and
just believes in being a good person at all times. I love her a
lot! We got to talk about our faith, and help her see
moments where she could see God's love for her in her life. She really
liked what we had to say. She accepted the invitation to be baptized, and
asked us after the lesson if she could see the church right away. How
cool is that? So prepared! She had to come all the way from Bahrain
to hear about the gospel.
We had a great great great lesson with the F’s this
week! I love them so much! We taught Heather the Plan of Salvation,
and Dane and Robyn were able to share their favorite parts of the plan of
salvation. Dane and Robyn are going to the temple! We talked about
them coming out to visit Utah next year sometime, and Sister Chapman will come
down from BYUI and we will all go together to do sessions. How cool would
that be??? Dane told us that he has this huge desire to go to Utah right
now, and see more of the history. I have never seen anyone progress on my
mission as fully as they have. They even brought their granddaughter,
Emma to church with them (she is only 6 months younger than Heather), so they
are both old enough to be baptized!!
Josh seems to be doing really well. We had a mini
lesson with him at his mom's old place. He just got a promotion, and will
be staying a little longer here in St. Marys. He opened up a lot to us
outside about the church. He told us that he still believed in the
church, but just hasn't been. He really enjoyed the Easter Brunch (which
I will talk about), and said it felt good to go back. We invited him to
Easter church, and he wants to come. He even said the closing
prayer. Hopefully this is all a good sign of future progress.
The other great part of our week was the Easter Brunch
this Saturday. We had more people come to that than we have on
a good day of church. We convinced Josh to come out, even
though it was early in the morning, and we had a lot of less-actives
come. One lady, Tammy, came to the church building for the first
time in maybe 10 years with her nonmember husband and son, and after she
told us "it feels like coming home." The F’s made an
appearance, and they seemed as though they hadn't even missed a beat when it
comes to church functions. Everyone had a great time!! Sister
Chapman and I prepared an Easter Message on the Easter Media Initiative the
church is doing. I don't know if this is nation wide or not, so I will
talk a little bit about it. We have been asked by the Missionary
Department in SLC to invite anyone and everyone to check out www.mormon.org/becuseofhim.
This website was made by the church, and went live last Sunday. It
has a video about our Savior, and that video will be the main
banner on Youtube (the silent film that shows each day that you can click
on) one day this week. They are
asking us to invite everyone to put this on their social media and share it
with their friends. They also have #becauseofhim for us to use to link
all these posts on social media together. So for example I could
say, "I will live with my family again #becauseofhim."
How cool is that? Anyway, it has been a huge success so
far. If you can, maybe post that on my blog so that people can see it and
it will spread. Also, have everyone in the family do
it. We are going to take over the internet and help people remember
the true meaning of Easter, and our Savior's Atonement. So awesome!
I even got to make up pass-along cards for this one. We have
been using them like candy out here, and people are loving them! They
want to hand them out to all of their friends.
I am so grateful for my Savior, and
his sacrifice for me. For the gift of repentance and
forgiveness. I know that they are real, and that we can be
cleansed. Happy Easter!
Love,
Sister Bakker
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