Elder Alexander Baker

January 2, 2012

I sent grandpa a happy birthday card, I hope he gets it!! You never know. I sent it super quick by airplane so it could get to him as fast as possible. He can get a season pass for 20 bucks at Alta now that he is going to be 80!!

I forgot to tell you about the letter that emily wrote me for Christmas. It meant a lot to me. But, I gotta tell you that you have to start applying for your passports and all that visa stuff now!! Its gonna be hard to get into Brazil!!

My fridge is seriously full to the brim with candy. Its ridiculous. We bring it to our investigators and they think its all bizarre. We have got swedish fish, reeses, red vine, and m and ms. They love it though and it is great to make them more comfortable with us. But we found a cool family of 5 that we are teaching right now, but they go to another church and the pastor of the church lives right above their house. When we were doing the contact he looked out the window and looked furious..

The english class is getting a little bit better. There are about 3-4 people that go now, and we have already given one a book of mormon. He is really interested. On Tuesday, we had a really important visit scheduled, but it fell through. I was extremely disappointed but I decided to visit another person. I think God had a hand in that, because the 2 people I visited I had been visiting for 9 weeks and they told me they were ready for baptism!! So, on the 31st, we baptized the 2 of them!! It was really cool. We helped reactivate the dad, who was baptized in the 70s. He was the one that baptized them. But, on the day of the baptism, EVEYRTHING went wrong. I was raining really hard, right when I needed the cell phone the most I lost it, the water wasn´t working in the baptismal font, and we were the only people there at the scheduled time. But, in the end, it all went down smoothly and it was a spiritual experience. It was sooooooo stressful though!! hahah.

So I slept for 6 hours today. I have been exhausted. We have been needing more investigators lately, so I have been going out at 10 and doing contacts for 2 hours before lunch. But, I slept really well one, because the weather has been in the low 70s, and two, I fixed the fan that exploded!! Whenever someone´s fan breaks, they just throw it on the side of the road. So, piece by piece, I got the right pieces and put it all together on our broken exploded fan, and now it works even better! But, my comp sleeps with it now, I still am afraid of it exploding.

So holidays are terrible for working in Brazil. Everyone says they are the best on the mission for working, but in Brazil no one even answers their doors. We just did contacts all day on Christmas Eve and New Years day. But thats OK.

I am fascinated about geneology. I have always had a little bit of interest, but the mission has made me want to know more!! I loved the email dad sent me about the journal and letters he found at grandpas house where he was born on the table or whatever in Spring City. I tell everyone that my great greats served missions!

This week I realized that the black little plack that misisonaries wear must have been revelation, because it grabs EVERY single persons attention. And the majority of them look at mine, then look at my comps, and ask, ``are you both named Elder??`` And we have an easy contact. Its really funny. We taught a family of 8 that lives in a house smaller than the TV room in our house and it is gonna fall over any second.

I watched ``The Gridiron Gang`` and Megamind`` Gridiron gang was really cheesy and it swore a lot. I thought it was funny that president let us watch it. Megamind was really funny. at 12 midnight it was like armaggedon in Itajaí. EVERYONE bought cheap little bombs to set off, and right at midnight until 2 the bombs didn´t stop. I took a video I will show you later.

But I gotta go!! I love you all!!

Love Elder Baker