Training Again!

Sister Braz Sister Baker's new companion

Well, yup i’m training again. I have another child. This happens sometimes. Sometimes there are sisters who don’t train and sometimes there are sisters who train a whole heck of a lot of children. I have 2. I don’t want to have another but I’m really happy that i get to help this new sister. I’m content. 

   My new comp´s name is Sister Braz. She is from Minas Gerais in brazil. She is very cool. I like her. We get along great. I just need to learn to have patience. ha ha. That would be great if i was perfect on this whole patience thing, but I’m not so i guess i will have to learn it. 

   It was a bit hard to work this week because i had to travel to Natal and stay there for a few days to get my kid, so when we got back we had lost 3 or 4 days of work and we had to do everything in 2 or 3 days. So it wasn’t very productive, but I’m sure that we will be able to have a more productive week this next week. 

   A good thing that will happen is that we will have a conference this next week with all the missionaries in the interior. I’m suuuper excited to see all my friends. Man a mission is a wonderful thing. I’m encourage everyone to serve a mission. It’s a blessing. 

   One thing that was cool this week is that i felt the spirit when i talked about the plan of salvation. We explained the plan of salvation for a couple of families and as i tried to explain I realized that it all makes perfect sense. I’m really grateful that families can be together forever. 

I love you all and i’m very happy to be here on the mission. 

Have a wonderful week. Thank you for you love and support

love, Sister J. Baker

A part of a letter to Mom ~Momma Baker

Yup we are all training. Me and Sister Brown and Sister Hernandes. It was suuper fun to travel with them to natal and have a sleepover. It’s a blast. You know mama, i have been so blessed to serve a mission. I wrote a list of goals when i hit 9 months and i have completed almost every single one. and i am feeling like a whole new person. I still have a long way to go for me to feel accomplished on my mission, but at least I am on my way. It’s a good feeling. 

I love you mama and im soo happy to hear that what i said was what you needed. I always want to help.

I love you sooo much

love, sister j. baker

Mark asked her what she eats everyday, how she knocks on doors and who does the dishes???  This was her response:

Hey dad I’m soo good. It’s good to hear from you. I’ll answer a few of your questions... 

I’m eating beans, rice, noodles, and chicken. every. single. day. and sometimes lasagna (its different than utah lsagna) We eat at members houses sometimes. Because this ward is so little that we go without sometimes. Sometimes i do the dishes but i don’t like to in our house. Just in the members houses. ha ha. I hate doing dishes. There are sooo many. Be grateful for the dishwasher alright!!!!! When we knock on doors we clap our hands and sometimes we yell someones name. It’s a little bit more friendly to yell...  i will send you a picture of a house so that you all understand why we have to .

But hey my time is up and i will have to send you a longer email next week. i love you sooo much!!!!!!!!

love, sister j. baker

I told them I knew how to cut hair!

 Well this week i turned one year old on the mission and i counted and i have 5 months left!!! WHAT! just 5 months? Yes that is correct because september is almost over and i will go home in the beginning of March so March doesn’t count either. so October, November, December, January February. and im home!!!! woah!!!! 

   This week was suuuper great. We found a family that is suuuper elect and ready for the gospel we marked their baptism date. They just have to get married. and also 2 beautiful young women who are ready and waiting for the gospel and who will be baptised this upcoming week. I am very excited for them. 

   Also this i told people that i knew how to cut hair! What a joke! So i cut an elders hair and a little boys hair and another kids hair. It turned out pretty good. not perfect, but pretty good. ha ha ha. It was suuper funny because they believed me and asked me to cut their hair and so i said sure of course i will and so i did. and i just winged it and prayed that it would turn out ok! ha ha. It did. It wasnt perfect but it was good. ha ha  (Momma note: I taught her how to cut hair before she left, but she has only cut one person's hair, her best friend Jake, now Elder McKee serving in the Santa Maria Brazil mission.  She cut his ear and her finger when she cut his hair!  Brave souls!)

  Well i love you all. Have a wonderful week and be good. 

Thank you for your love and support

love, sister j. baker 


Momma note: The next 2 parts are in response to Marks letter and my letter.  Mark asked her what a typical day in her life in Brazil looked like, what she eats, studies etc.   I asked Joci in my letter if she had any spiritual experiences this week that strengthened her testimony and if she could share them.    The first is her response to Mark's letter, the second is the beautiful experience she shared in response to my letter ~Momma Baker

Hey dad! Lemme tell ya. I am working a lot but I’m not working as much as i should. This area is known as the hole of the mission but surprisingly I am getting a lot of work done here, the only thing is, if i worked harder i could get a lot more work done. We wake up at 6:30 and then i drink a glass of juice (its really and honest and truely from the fruit. sometimes i make it directly from the fruit. its really good) and sometimes i make tapioca or bread and cheese and then we study for and hour. Personal study. Right now i am studying Jesus the Christ. I am almost done. It’s a wonderful book. I love it. Then we do companion study and share what we learned and stuff. I stopped doing language study at 6 months because our mission president said that if we felt like our language is good we need to leave the house and do work. So then we leave the house and do work. But sometimes if lunch is really far away we don’t have time to do work and we have to go straight to lunch. Then we work the whole day and return to our house at 9:00. We talk with everyone and we have about 40 or 50 lessons every week. It’s a lot of lessons. Sometimes we have less, like 25 but this week we had 43. You have to have at least 25. 

Well thats a typical day. It’s pretty great. i like it. ha ha

Of course i can share my testimony. It’s one of the things i like doing the most. You know i know that Heavenly Father loves every single one of us and that His plan is a perfect plan. This week something suuper cool happened. We met 2 young girls who are really ready for the gospel. You can tell when they are ready by the look in their eyes. They are very pure and ready and willing to follow what God tells them to do. I love it when i find people like that. We started to teach them the 1st lesson about the restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith. We taught about Prophets and how God loves all of us so much that He sent prophets to help us and guide us. and how Jesus established His church on the earth and that it fell after Jesus and the 12 apostles died because no one had authority to lead the church and then how Joseph Smith asked God which church he should join. At this moment i told them about the first vision and i used the same words that Joseph Smith used. At this moment the spirit was so strong. like a blanket that fell over all of us and we couldn’t hear anything that happened outside of the four of us because the spirit was so strong. The two of them had tears in their eyes and they looked at me and said "why do i feel like i want to cry?" and i asked them if they felt something in their heart and they said that they felt something so strong in their heart and I said that that is the Holy Spirit and that they felt this because Heavenly Father wanted them to know that this really did happen and that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ really did appear to Joseph Smith and that all of this is true and i said do you believe this is true? and they said Yes i believe that it is all true. I know its true. All of this makes sense! It was a wonderful experience. and that helped my testimony grow because of that experience i know that Heavenly Father appeared to Joseph Smith and that THIS is the true church of Jesus Christ. I love this gospel. I am learning a lot about my Savior and my Brother Jesus. I don’t even have words or how to describe how I feel about him. Get closer to Him and you will be happier. The more you know about Him the better off you are. You have to know more about Him. I want to recognize Him when i see Him. I want to see Him and know who He is. I want to be able to feel His presence. I love you all. Please get to know your Savior a little bit more. This is very important. 

I love you

love, sister j. baker

Baptismo!

Fransisco's baptism

 Wahoo! Well this week was good. We had Fransisco´s baptism. It was pretty great. He is a good man and my goodness, he is huge. He´s like 60 years old and he can beat up anyone that he wants! We had a hard time getting a baptism jumpsuit to get over his shoulders. one almost ripped! ha ha ha. He is half made of iron as well. Listen to this. We had his baptism marked for Friday but he couldn’t make it because he had some health problems. A couple months ago he went out to kill a chicken with a shot gun but when he shot it, the bullet bounced off a tree and went into his forehead and now he´s got a bullet in his head that they can’t take out. But he couldn’t go to his baptism because his nose started bleeding because of the bullet in his head and he had to go to the hospital. WHAT! I know thats crazy. and also get this, He is president of half of Caico, but some people don’t like him very much so when he leaves his house he has to go the long way around because the other way has bad guys who sit on the top of hills and watch for people that they don’t like so that they can kill them and he is one of those people so he can’t go that way. He is crazy cool. I love that guy. ha ha. 

   Also its suuuuuper dry here. Like really really suuuper dry. We have water until December and after December we don’t have water. Pray really hard that it will rain. We need it.

    Well, thats all I’ve got for today. I love the mission. 

I love you all! Thanks for your prayers and your support.

love, sister j. baker

Momma Note: Sister Baker loves music.  She plays the guitar, violin and piano. She has a beautiful voice that makes everyone want to listen.  Music is a big part of her.  I have had several people ask me recently if she uses music on her mission.  I asked her and the following was her response.  ~Momma Baker

 I am using music but not as much as i would like. I want to use it every moment of every day, but i use it and when I see someone in the street playing guitar I ask to play it and it has gotten a lot of new investigators like that, but I would like to use it more.

Happy Birthday!  

The shirts are from the McKees.  Meant for her and her companion,
but don't they look great on the Elders??

About being 20...

 Well, turns out i’m 20. That’s new. It’s a whole different experience. I don’t quite know how to handle it. It’s crazy all this maturity and stuff that just naturally comes when you are 20 years old. It’s really overwhelming. lololol. 

    For my birthday all of the elders and sisters (except my comp and i) had to go to the capital for a meeting. In my district we have 2 sister training leaders, 2 ZL and 2  DLs and me and my comp so we were left alone for my birthday, but everyone called and wished me happy birthday and an investigator made me a cake and we celebrated and we got to do something suuuuper unusual.... PROSELYTING! what!!! But thats ok because we accomplished something really great in our area. 

    This Zone and this area is known to be the "hole" of our mission. But we were able to double the amounts of marked baptisms, lessons and visits that are required of us and we will have 2 baptisms on friday!! wahoo! God is making miracles in this area because this isn’t done a lot especially in this area. I’m very happy to be blessed in this area. It makes me really happy.

    So we have a lot of new investigators that are excellent. The 2 people that will be baptised on Friday are wonderful people. They were ex-investigatores of sister Leal and sister Moraes that were working in this area before i got here but he didn’t accept baptism because he wanted more time and he thought that they were forcing him into baptism so they cut him. But then i thought maybe we should return there and start teaching him again. The first time his wife lied and said that he wasn’t there because he didn’t want to come talk to us but then he came out and talked to us and it was wonderful. He got the same feelings that he used to get talking to the missionaries and started feeling the spirit again and now he wants to be baptised. Man the Lord is doing great things in his life. But he has some great stories. I will tell  you in my email next week. but well. I love you guys a lot. Thank you for your prayers and your birthday wishes. I got all the packages from grandma and the Mckees and you too. I got the shoes. They are wonderful. 

I  loooooooove you soooo much you are a blessing in my life. 

love, sister j. baker

Happy Birthday!

Momma Note:  This week there isn't a main letter.  Joci wants to thank everyone for the Happy Birthday Emails!  She feels so much love and support!  She said that she got 40 emails wishing her a Happy Birthday!  That is the reason for no main letter.   She tried to respond to each one but wanted me to tell everyone thank you.  Thank you from Joci!  Thank you from our family!  I included Mark and my letters from Joc.  ~Momma Baker

Thanks mama. i love you so much. You are an angel in my life. I’m sorry that i didn’t send a regular email this week. I had 40 emails to respond to this week. Man I feel so much support and love. I love my family and friends. You all are soo wonderful. I have 5 packages in the office that i will get on Wednesday. I’m sure that they are from you, grandma and the Mckees. 

i sure love you. Nothing much happened this week. Just a lot of drunk guys tried to kiss me. But don’t worry, they can’t run after you, they’re drunk. Ha ha. 

I love you

love, sister j. baker. 

ps. You are wonderful and i love you.

love, sister j. baker

Daddy, 

I sure love you. Sometimes i don’t want to grow up. But i’m glad i can still be your little girl. Even when i’m 20 yearms old. (oh my gosh im sooo old) and living in Brazil. This week was different. It’s rough starting completely over again in a new area but its ok. We will get the work done here that needs to be done. I love you and i’m sooo happy to hear about our family. I love my family so much. I can’t wait to give you all a giant hug. Hey, sorry my email isn’t very long. I had 40 emails wishing me a happy birthday. I feel so loved and blessed to have soo many people supporting me. 

Thank you soo much for everything. 

I love you dad.

love, sister j. baker

Here are some pictures from friends and family wishing Sister Baker a Happy Birthday!  These are just a few!  So grateful for the love and support of so many wonderful people!  Grandmas and Grandpas, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends!

Cousins "The Baird kids!"

Friends "The McKees!"  The big head is an Elder McKee impersenator!
The real Elder McKee is in Santa Maria Brazil on his mission.

Birthday wishes from Grandma and Grandpa!