Jacob - May 30, 2016

Hey mom, I'm glad you had a good week. Hopefully this week will also
be good, but you'll have to forgive me because I got a headache so
I'll just send the stuff that I wrote earlier, it goes a long the
lines of this... This week went by pretty well. It's been a little
tough finding people to teach. E get usually a good amount of street
contacts per day, but we only receive a few addresses from those and
then when we do stop by, not many people are home. So it's tough to
find those people that are prepared. Fortunately we had a meeting with
the Bishop. We pretty much asked what we can do to best work in this
Ward. He mentioned a lot about visiting members and it's something
that we're going to try out. But hopefully we'll find a balance
between teaching the members and finding new investigators. That's
pretty much how the work went this week. We also had an activity that
was pretty fun. It was designed for the Primary so there was tons of
little games. And also for Saturday's dinner we went to the Galvon's.
Oh man it was so tasty. They cooked a cow, but they did the method
were they buried it underground. It was super tender and they also had
a bucket down there to catch all the liquids. So we had a soup thing
and then super good barbacoa. Also they made tacos and it was just a
blast. I think overall the week went pretty well. I was also able to
go an exchange with Elder Castillo again. We went over to his area and
we had a good time. We weren't able to have a lot of lessons, but we
were trying our best to fulfill our purpose. For some reason I feel
like this transfer has been a lot about patience... I'm not completely
sure why, but we aren't having the success we would like to have or we
don't have a ton of people that we are teaching. Even though,Newell at
least to me, we are trying our best. So idk what's up, but I just hope
to keep a good attitude through out it. Missions definitely have ups
and downs, but I think a lot of it just depends on how we look at
what's going. But anyways I think that's mostly went down for this
week. I love you & hope you have a great week!

Jacob - May 23, 2016

Hey everyone! Sounded like it was a great week. I'm pretty sure
Lexie's wedding was the main event, but that's way cool. I don't have
a lot of time so I'm not sure how long this email will be. But this
week went well. We weren't able to teach a lot of people so we have
been street contacting like crazy. It's pretty fun and I'm starting to
be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. Also I went on an exchange
with a ZL named elder cottam. He's a really cool missionary and gave
me a lot of advice. He also showed me a few different ways that I can
street contact. Something I hope to do this week is read more
scriptures as I street contact. I got that idea from Christ reading
the scriptures with his apostles as he walked with them. It's
somewhere in Luke I think. Um also we had zone conference and that
focused on us using the key indicators a little more wisely. Using
them as a way to see the progression of who we teach rather than a
rating system for missionaries. Also we went over a lot about
conversion. Something really cool and interesting. That was mainly the
highlights of the week. But I love you all and I hope you have a great
week!

Elder Baer

Jacob - May16, 2016

Hey everyone, sounds like you are all having a good time back at home.
It seems like the main topic is Lexie's wedding, pretty crazy that
it's happening this week. Hope fully it all goes well. But anyways
this week was good. I had an exchange with an Elder named elder
Castillo. He's a pretty sweet guy. We are a lot a like as far as music
taste and what we did back home. So it was a lot of fun and we saw a
ton of miracles. We taught a guy named victor, he's a brother of one
of the sisters in my ward. But he's really cool and has a great desire
to change his life to be a better example to his family. He's got a
date at the moment for the 5th of June. Also we saw a lot of small
little things that led us to see miracles. For example instead of
visiting with a member family we thought we should try and work, so
that led us to meeting a guy that also wants to change his life. We
haven't had a lesson with him, but he's in our thoughts. Oh and this
week the mission had a "power week," we saw a lot of cool things. The
other elders in my district ended up casting out an evil spirit too,
haha lots of cool things. I'm not sure what else to really write this
week. But I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Jacob - May 9, 2016

Hey everyone, so it was super good seeing you guys yesterday! I'm not
sure what to say in this email because I probably said it to you guys
already. But I love you all and hope you have a great week. Take care.

Elder Baer

Jacob - May 2, 2016

So this week is transfers so I don't have enough time to write each of
you a personal email.. Hope you don't mind. But this transfer is a
little crazy. From what I've heard it seems like a lot of district
leaders are just moving around. My companion, Elder Fonnesbeck, is
going to Garden Grove to be a DL over there. My new companion is Elder
Mark and he's pretty cool. It's his first time being a DL, but he's
pretty excited and I am as well. I'm also a little nervous because I
only have 6 weeks here and I'm pretty much leading it now... So
hopefully I can do a good job of showing him around. As far as
stories.. Um idk. Not too much happened this week. We've been having
more street contacts, but we still don't have a ton of investigators.
Right now we are teaching an old lady, but she is having a tough
understanding what we teach... So we're going to continue try helping
her. Oh I just remembered we had a nice encounter with a homeless
man.. Haha he had some crazy ideas for what religion was suppose to
be. But other than that I can't think of much. Everything is good
here. Spanish is coming along, I'm still trying to figure out what
people say sometimes. But I am on page like 100 in the libro de Mormon
so that's exciting. I can usually understand the stories as I read
them. But that's it for now. I love you guys and hope you all have a
great week. Take care!
Elder Baer

Jacob - April 25, 2016

Heavenly Father knows what he's doing. It reminds me a little bit
about a talk that I read a few days ago. It was by Elder Bednar and
how not shrinking is better than surviving. It was really good and
changed my perception on the work here. I think a lot of missionaries
expect to have results, but from what I understand.. We're suppose to
have faith to find and to teach, the faith or I guess the hope that
everything will turn out awesome. But after reading the talk, there's
another part that I think people will sometimes overlook, not just
missionaries but everyone. Out here, no matter what happens, it's all
up to Heavenly Father. I think rather it's important to develop the
faith in God and to succumb to his will, but at the same time
understand that whatever happens is and will always be for our
benefit. Which reminds me of The opposition talk from elder oaks. Man
I could probably go on this for a while. There's so many cool things
I'm learning and experiencing. But this week was pretty good. We had
president interviews which were awesome! We talked about President
Monson's talks and the commitments he extended us. Also we talked
about things that I can do to become better which included putting my
thoughts towards others and avoiding casualness. Really good stuff. Um
a crazy experience I had is that I was almost attacked by a dog. That
was crazy, but I'm fine. Nothing happened. But I'm having a tough time
of thinking about what else happened this week... We've been doing a
lot of finding lately so it's tough, but I'm enjoying it. Anyways I
love you mom, hope you have a great week!

Elder Baer

Jacob - April 18, 2016

This week was good. My comp and I are have
been doing a lot of finding. It's tough, but we are staring to get
better at street contacting and some other things. Um something that I
did this week was the attributes of Christ activity in PMG. One thing
that has been on my mind this week was faith. I've been studying it
quite a bit and it's a pretty interesting principle. I think it's cool
how the scriptures say what can come when we have faith, but from what
I could tell, there isn't a lot of scriptures that say exactly what we
have to do in order to increase it. It's something that is different
for everyone I guess. But that's my opinion, I could be completely
wrong for all I know. Anyways there are other things I need to
improve, but it's pretty cool how Heavenly Father has been providing
me experiences where I can become more like the savior. I have been
starting to notice a lot more miracles and tender mercies as I have
focused on bettering myself. I can't think of too much that happened
other than trying to improve myself, but my comp made the nice comment
of how many Christlike attributes that I do have at the moment. That
was really comforting. It's good to know I'm doing something right.
Anyways this is mostly what I can think of now at the moment.
Hopefully it's enough for you guys to have an idea what's going on.
But I love you all and i hope you have an awesome week!

Elder Baer

Jacob's first baptism. He's a giant! Pretty awesome!