November 30, 2015 -- "A super great week"

Ahoj,

This was a super great week in the Washington Tacoma mission. Thanksgiving was AWESOME. We went to three different dinners. (No wonder sisters gain so much weight. Ha ha. Thankfully, I still weigh less then I did in the MTC.) The Whitesides, Valentines, and Edwards each had us over for Thanksgiving. 

So our investigator Jim passed his interview!! He is getting baptized next Saturday. It's hard to even say you took part of that work when people are just so prepared by God and other members. I will probably cry. He is such a great human and deserves this so much!  

An amazing story: We got a referral from this member we tried to contact her but she never called us back.. the usual.. But then SHE CALLED US BACK...we went over to her house and got to know her. She mentioned she feels like everything in her life has fallen apart. She said her boyfriend just moved out, and she is lonely. She started getting health problems. I expressed after that I was surprised how much the Lord was working in her life.  Snd she was like "What? Why does it feel like God is punishing me?" My companion turned to Ether 12:27. She read it and said, "This is ME. Why isn't my name in here?" It was so great, and the spirit was there so strong. She didn't come to church on Sunday :(  But we will get her next week for sure!  

I love Washington and being a missionary!

Also watch the new Christmas video it is the cutest!

--

 https://www.mormon.org/christmas?cid=HP_SU_11-29-2015_dMIS_fSPC_xLIDyL1-A_

Save the Trees and Pray Always

Sestra Baxter

November 23, 2015 -- "With beautiful places come beautiful people"

Ahoj--still from Washington State.

Wow weeks go by so fast. I kind of get sad when I think about how I am like three months down. Like what??? Wow, I can not express enough gratitude for the things my Heavenly Father has given me. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY! How awesome that I got called to the Czech Republic by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve then since my visa hasn't come I got a temporary reassignment to Washington by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve in the Pacific Northwest, like one of my favorite places ever. WOW! It is so pretty here. I pray everyday saying that Heavenly Father and Jesus did wonderful, beautiful, AMAZING things to this Northwest state! But along with beautiful places come beautiful people! I love the people of Washington. ( I feel like Oregon, Washington, and Alaskan people are like the same breeds of humans.) The people of Washington are like art. They are fascinating. I love to knock on their doors and observe their homes, yards and decorations and imagine what they look like when they open their doors.  

As a missionary you always hear this word "elect." I HATED that word! Missionaries were always trying to find the "elect." It made me feel sick. I didn't want to label "out" anyone. I finally talked to my companions about it, but they helped me understand more what it meant. They said "elect" were the people the the Lord has been preparing to hear the Go

spel and that doesn't mean that people that aren't "elect" now won't become "elect." It just means they are not humbled yet enough to receive it.  

So I would like to explain my investigator JIM is "elect" as can be! I seriously get teary-eyed every time I think about him. He has been so prepared. God has been so influential in his life. He agrees with everything we are teaching. It makes sense, and he sees are correlation to things. Like even why it would be wise to keep the Law of Chasity and the Word of Wisdom! If everything goes well with his interview, he should be getting baptized Sunday. We also have a sweet family we are teaching, as well as this great guy named Erdie and this super awesome lady from Switzerland. So we might have more baptisms coming up:).

There are so many times I am just like Alma in chapter 29:

 " O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people! Yea, I would declare unto every soul, as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth. But behold, I am  only Sestra Baxter, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me."

I am awkward. I am not good at speaking to people. I say weird things. (Or in the middle of a lesson Czech pops out.) And I am just SO IMPERFECT. I want to be like an angel, but I am a sinner. The past couple weeks I have really been beating myself up about how much I mess up. How could someone like me really wear the name of Christ himself on my chest. I realized I just keep repenting for the things I do wrong and then smile. I can not express to anyone how grateful I am to be able to smile. Every time I feel discouraged I just curve my lips up think about my Savior Jesus Christ and almost instantly I feel better. I hope whenever you are feeling discouraged you smile and look to Jesus Christ because it is only through him we can be made ultimately happy.  He is muje Spasitel and muje Vykupitel!

Hear is one of my favorite videos def watch it!

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-00-1420-because-of-him?lang=eng

Save the Trees and Pray Always

Sestra Baxter

November 16, 2015 -- "Scary roads and wet dresses"

Ahoj to all my favorite pals :)

Washington is as rainy as ever which I am pretty stoked about. But it is also causing a ton of flooding and scary roads and wet dresses. So I told Heavenly Father, even though I love rain so much, to no longer have it come according to my diligence as a missionary.  Ha Ha. 

Well this past week has had its downs. One being, the cutest Korean lady Sally who we met one night knocking a trailer park she could barely walk and speak English let us into her home one night and told us how she loved Jesus and how she prayed every night and talked our ear off about some Korean calendar with babies on them claiming they are her sisters' grand-kids. Ha Ha they were definitely not.  Then we left. Being a greenie, I told my companions we had to get her a Korean Book of Mormon next time we went to the mission office. So we did. When we went back, she got to her door and looking out of it told us, "No." And she didn't want to talk to us so I just left it on the porch. I was heart broken:(   After that, the guy in the trailer next to her came out. I thought, "Oh, maybe he wants to hear the Gospel." Then he told us he was going to call the cops on us.  That was depressing...

 I am like generally a pretty nice human, I would say. But I had the urgency to fight a human because they were just so much like Zoramites in Alma.  And then I would fight him and then he would remember God plan. But thankfully, I didn't. So now he just remembers my companions and me as missionaries who tried to be nice.

On a happier note, we have this perfect boy (I am going to give him a fake name) JIM WHITE. He is sooo ready to go in the water and to come to JEZSIE.  Like wow. I almost stopped believing the field was white and ready to harvest. Jim White is like 23ish years old. I think, due to past transgressions, he will have to do a interview with the mission president and maybe first presidency. But he is willing to do that because he knows how much this gospel will bless him and how much being truly clean by someone holding proper authority to baptize. Literally so stoked for him:)

Oh, I thought I should let everyone know, yeah, Christian Fife from the valley is my zone leader. So that cool. I see him quite a bit and will see him at this Zone activity in like 5 minutes he is a way great missionary!  

So I am pretty sure we can all agree on how the Book of Mormon is the best ever. But I also know how important it is to read it! Literally, I had no idea how wonderful that thing was till I opened the Book and read it? I didn't know like half the scriptures in Alma were about missionary work. Like what!  If I loved Jesus and heard there was another Book about Jesus coming to earth, you know I would be on that!  

I thought I would just add Elder Holland's (who would definitely be a firebender) words on to this because he spits fire:  

"For 179 years this book has been examined and attacked, denied and deconstructed, targeted and torn apart like perhaps no other book in modern religious history—perhaps like no other book in any religious history. And still it stands. Failed theories about its origins have been born and parroted and have died—from Ethan Smith to Solomon Spaulding to deranged paranoid to cunning genius. None of these frankly pathetic answers for this book has ever withstood examination because there is no other answer than the one Joseph gave as its young unlearned translator. In this I stand with my own great-grandfather, who said simply enough, “No wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it, unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so.” 

"I testify that one cannot come to full faith in this latter-day work—and thereby find the fullest measure of peace and comfort in these, our times—until he or she embraces the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it testifies. If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teeming with literary and Semitic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages—especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers—if that is the case, then such a person, elect or otherwise, has been deceived; and if he or she leaves this Church, it must be done by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit. In that sense the book is what Christ Himself was said to be: “a stone of stumbling, … a rock of offence,”  a barrier in the path of one who wishes not to believe in this work. Witnesses, even witnesses who were for a time hostile to Joseph, testified to their death that they had seen an angel and had handled the plates. “They have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man,” they declared. “Wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true.” 

AMEN Elder Holland!

Save the Trees and Pray Always

Sestra Baxter

November 9, 2015 -- "It's heartbreaking, though."

Ahoj Family and Friends,

I hope all is wonderful wherever you are because I know you are in put where you are at for a very certain purpose.  I know God works in each one of your lives and maybe puts us in places or maybe mental places because you have something to accomplish while you are there. I love Washington. I also love the people, and I know God has put me here for a reason. 

I love being a missionary. It is true when they tell you its heartbreaking, though. My companions and I knocked on this one lady's door, and my sweet companion started to talk about the Restoration.  She quoted the first vision, and the Spirit was so strong the lady was brought to tears. I know she felt it, and yet after that she shut the door and said no thank you to our message. Another time we got invited back to this guy's house. He was quite an interesting hunting kind of guy. Also the kind of guy who had a gun sitting under a towel that he whipped out then put away? Thank goodness we brought a member. Anyways, we tried to talk about the gospel and he kept showing us his fishing gear. Finally, we started talking about Church, and it started going alright. He started to express how he has had bad experiences with churches. I pretty much said that is because Jesus Christ doesn't run those churches but he does run The Church of  Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It felt like fire was blazing my body from how strong the spirit was. I saw in his eyes he felt the spirit but then disregard it and started to talk about fishing. House after house people playing video games, watching tv, saying they don't have time? I feel like they are saying they don't have time for their Salvation. I just want them to be saved. It makes my heart hurt so much.

I went to a baptism this week for one of my old companion's investigator. Wow those are sooo special. My companion wasn't crying, but I for sure was! That is such a special covenant. It is amazing! Being free from past sin and transgressions. Wow how happy! I also know each week we can be made clean again too, by taking the sacrament:)

So our investigator well has been pretty dry. Like two people have pretty much dropped us.   So finally we have got three new investigators. So excited to meet with them this next week Yay:)

Always recycle and remember your Father in Heaven loves you!

Sestra Baxter

November 2, 2015 -- "I am literally serving amongst the trees"

Haha. So everyone, you almost heard it right. I have been called to the Washington Tacoma mission while I wait for my visa, just speaking English. So great to be back on the west side of the Cascades again, to inhale the moist air and the smell of rotting wood(including trees and houses) and watch as we pass through endless colors of green. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY  I am literally serving amongst the trees how great is that?

 The morning I left everything went smoothly.Woke up about 2am to get everything ready. Got to the buses and then rode the Front Runner to the airport. Everything was great, but I thought I and my companion at the MTC Jenalyn Thiriot (who was called to Bulgaria) would see each other before we got on our flights. But we didn't. So we didn't even really say goodbye. :(  

Besides that, wow, getting out of the MTC was maybe the best experience of my life. Not in a bad way. It was just time to no longer be in spiritual prison. I got to see buildings and people from the outside world, and most of all eat food from the outside world!

So on the plane, we met some awesome people. This one kid/guy, he was going back home to Fairbanks, Alaska coming from training in Park City for skiing. I told him he can probably expect me to be living in a bus nearby his home a couple years from now (for those who get my Into the Wild reference). Also, I sat by two wonderful humans on a plane. One guy I was sitting by was going to Alaska to work and had a daughter attending Dixie State. He had his headphones in a lot and was watching a gruesome zombie movie to avoid my preaching I think. Ha ha. Anyways, I gave him a list of people I knew at Dixie if his daughter need friends. (You got my back bwest). In the end I think he really liked me and just asked me to please be safe. The other lady I sat by was pretty hard core Catholic. I could also tell she wanted to avoid talking about religion, but she was a flight attendant so she is getting me into flight attendant school when I get back maybe? Also, when she and her husband own a bed and breakfast in Paris along the ocean she said I could stay there so I have her number and everything.

The President and his wife picked me and other fellow missionaries up. On the way to the mission office I looked at the other missionaries faces to see what they thought of their mission. They didn't seem to love it, and if I asked if they liked it they seemed so sad. I just prayed they would love the trees and overcast everyday because I love it so much!

I have such cute companions, Hannah Henderson and Raegan Sasseer. They have been out here for quite a while now, and they are the Sister Training Leaders. I am also serving in the Elma 2nd ward, which covers the four towns of Brady, Satsop, Montesan, Elma. They said that this is one of the most booniest places to serve (which just means it has tons of trees and nature and less buildings). Yay! Heavenly Father knows me so well!! They also said it has not rained a ton till I got here. I kind of made a deal with Heavenly Father. If I am doing a good job, you can send the rain for me and if I am not doing good you can make it sunny. I must be doing pretty good because I has been raining so hard here. I LOVE RAIN!

Knocking doors is quite the experience we haven't been let into one house yet. Once upon a door knocking I complimented this lady on her solar panels and her electric car. She asked if our church was doing anything about global warming. My companions asked what global warming was. I wanted to burst. I was so sad that they gave our church a rep about not knowing about what that is. (I have started a recycling program at our apartment, so all is well) Once upon another door knocking, we talked to some atheist. One was an old man. He was very friendly, and I feel like he just wanted to talked to people. He said he believed in nature not God and he said he wasn't interested. But before we left, I had to say "Richard I know God loves you, and if you look for God's hand in your life you will see it" I hope he calls us soon I have a feeling he will. 

Once upon another atheist's door we knocked on a lady's door she said "with all the bad things that happen in the world there can't be a God." I almost cried as I watched the fight within her, I knew she knew there was a God, but she was just so angry with him or herself. I hope she will find light soon.  We are also working on getting more investigators so I'll write you about them next week.

LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH

-- 

Save the Trees and Pray Always

Sestra Baxter