Week 8

Hey everyone!!

The mission is absolutely flying by.  I got my Zimbabwe visa so I will be heading out there next Wednesday!  The Utah Layton mission is an incredible place to serve and I'm going to miss is a lot.  So grateful for this last week and a bit to forward the work here!

When I got to this mission there were about 180 of us.  And now we're down to around 160 because everyone is leaving to their original assignments.   Some sad goodbyes happened this week but I'm so excited for everyone!  Just found out that this mission isnt getting any more missionaries until September which is crazy!! Its just gonna keep shrinking haha.

I wrote about this past Monday in my last weekly but on Tuesday not a whole lot out of the ordinary happened.   President Johnson came to our house in the morning to talk haha so we all had a conversation with him.  That was fun!  We have transfers next Tuesday and so we were talking a bit about that and he was telling my companion that she's getting a new comp obviously haha.  So I'll be trioing with them for less than a day before I go.  President Johnson goes "Sister Baker I hope you're all right with sleeping on the floor."  Hahaha so that's gonna be awesome to do that the night before I leave.  We all laughed though.

On Wednesday while we were out we found a new "friend" and set up a return appointment!  Really excited about that.  Later in the day I got my first door slammed in my face.  He opened it and aggressively pointed at the No Soliciting sign and slammed the door.  Everyone in Utah has a No Soliciting sign including our stake president so they mean nothing to us.  It was kind of funny though.

Every Thursday in the ULM we have a Gospel Scholarship which is where someone comes and speaks to us for an hour on a certain topic over zoom.  We've had people like Brother Wilcox,  Brother Corbit and others.  This past Thursday we had Brother Miller.  He used to be a preacher in the Baptist church until recently when he was picking a new podcast to listen to and accidentally clicked on the Book of Mormon audiobook.   He told us his conversion story and it was incredible!  Then our district got to go to the Bountiful temple!!  It was amazing.   I love the temple. 

On Friday it was POURING rain and we got absolutely soaked.   It was also freezing cold but we still had fun.  Our lesson with Delilah got cancelled because she stayed home from school sick but then when we were walking around in her ward we saw her playing basketball outside.   So that was awkward for everyone involved haha but we're excited to meet with her this week!

On Saturday my comp and I wrote talks for Sunday because we were asked to speak with the high councilman over missionary work.  Then the mission secretary took us to Sandy because I had to get a new pair of shoes for Africa.   That was craaaaaazy.  It's only 45 minutes away haha but there are three missions in between mine and the one that Sandy is apart of so that was unheard of haha.

Sunday we gave our talks in the first ward we went to.  I do not like giving talks.  Love writing them but giving them terrifies me.  So I get up there and I'm on the second paragraph of my talk and my phone shuts off.  I didn't have a way to print it so I had to read it off my phone.  Anyway,  my phone shut off and wouldn't come back on for a solid minute.   Probably the most awkward and terrifying thing to happen to me so far.  It's fine though, eventually it came back on.  We then went to two more sacrament meetings and had a lesson with Sister Smithy!  I had to say goodbye because we won't be teaching her again before I go.  Didn't think it would be that sad to say goodbye to someone we're teaching.  When I got home last night I walked into the kitchen and the STLs and ZLs were having a call to plane zone council for Tuesday.   I walk in right as one of the ZLs say "Sister Munk can you ask Sister Baker to play the piano?"  Hahaaaa looking forward to finding out what they're gonna do when I leave next week:) life is so good here!

Let me know if theres anything I can do for you:)

Sister Baker

Pics:

-temple

-Sister Pun and Sister Munk are learning Chuukese and they taught us one word in it.  Nakitch which means rat...  so Sister Pun made us rat cookies