Hello! Ding dong!
My name is Elder Baird
(ding dong)
And I would like to share with you The most amazing book.
Hello! (hello)
My name is Elder Tan.
It's a book about America
A long, long time ago.
It has So many awesome parts You simply won't believe How much this book can change your life!
(ding dong)
If you get it you win.
This has been my week. Testifying of my favorite book, a book that has so many awesome parts and can change your life.
But like, I've learned just how important this is to me. Not just this work, but this message. I love the work. But this message is sooo much more than just the work. But at the same time the message is the work. Pretty trick huh??
SUBJECT LINE
So you may be asking yourself, how did Elder Baird burn his face? Isn't he stuck in side? Locked away from all the sun? Suffering from vitamin D deficiency? Slowly losing his islander (and missionary white shirt) tan? How could he burn his face?
I feel asleep with my head sticking out of the window.
Just kidding hahaha
So I went to my favorite place (the Taiwan dermatologist) and they gave me some new medicine. Stronger medicine they said would do the trick. Stronger medicine to fix my face they said.
Well, turns out that when I put said medicine on my face with the other medicine they get me (they told me to) my face caught on fire (no flames were used in the production of this email)
So yah, my face is read now and I'm peeling... Does acne medication burn turn into tan? Cause I guess that would be nice...!
Won't help my vitamin D deficiency though... Oh well. I'll go sleep on the roof.
Wow guys it has been a great week and let us get into itttttt! Monday we went up to the mountains to walk around. Felt great to get outside (this was before my burnt face so pretty nice)
I caught a butterfly! See video below 
Yah that was pretty much it.
Tuesday I read Alma 5:28-31 and that was a slap in the face. All of my 3 biggest sins and weaknesses in as many verses telling me I couldn't go to the celestial kingdom.
Was I sad?
Nope. Maybe the slap was a little stingy, but it actually brought me soooo much hope! Because the whole chapter is about how we can change through the atonement, and I realized that I myself cannot be saved, but through Christ I can do all things that strengthen me! And I can get over my weaknesses and me made strong, even unto the sitting down with my father in heaven. Go take a read okay?
Read the book of James. Good stuffs.
One of the STLs shove mango pie in my face during district council. That was fun. Yummy too!
Then I got to go on exchanges and it was pretty fun. Got to meet a new elder that I hadn't met before. Elder Zheng is so great. Fun times. Met with a member who said he would cut my hair for free so that is pretty nifty.
Then we biked to their house, it was like a 30 minute plus bike ride which was pretty great. I love biking. But it was a little long. Makes me wonder how I used to do hour plus races... Pretty great.
Also I talked to a guy on the street and he set up. He didn't show up the next day, but it's the thought that counts right?
On Wednesday I didn't write my journal. But I know that we finished exchanges and had English Group... Honestly I can't remember. But I'm sure it was a super awesome day!
Thursday we threw away a lot of trash. Studied about the atonement and read all of the different new testament gospel records of the atonement. It was actually pretty epic and I was a huge fan. Definitely go and do it. You really start to realize the pain that was experienced, then you add on accounts in the book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants and wow. I'm so grateful for the atonement.
Then I went on exchanges with my Elder Elder Lal from the MTC. The one and only Fijian in Taiwan (probably)
We had a great time, and honestly we had some of the funniest lessons of my whole life. From meeting with a guy who said he wouldn't talk to me because I was too tall, to singing songs with members, to one of our friends trying to sell us Dottera products and saying he could fix my face (this was after burn so I was quite tempted mind you, but still you shouldn't take up all the time with the missionaries doing your sales approach, the missionaries are trying to do their sales approach. You can't out-sales eternal life mind you.)
I just used mind you twice. I don't think I've used that in two years.... And to be honest I'm not sure if I used it right... Oh well!
Then we went to the roof and looked at the city lights at night. Pretty chill.
Got up early the next day to play Frisbee with the bois.
Then we missed our train by literally 5 seconds. 5 seconds people???? I could have saved those 5 seconds in soooo many places and we still missed the train. But that is okay. No use in crying over missed trains. There will always be another one.
Made fried rice.
Contact. Lessons. Met with a guy who actually had questions and seemed interested??? That would be nice!!! Met with another guy we are working on helping to go on a mission!
Saturday we had great lessons. Can't really share about all of them but they were great. Some good friends progressing.
Good member lessons. Yah pretty much it
I really just want to get to the something about socks!
Sunday was good. We had 4 friends come to church which was awesome, and we set a baptismal date with one of our other friends and so that was also great.
I spent a lot of time studying and it just makes me happy. Also got to have a great experience with personal Repentance, and Boi am I grateful for that!
Are we done yet???
Fine sure.
Love you all so much! You're running out of time to send me an email :))))))
Love,
Elder Baird
Something about Socks... Finally!!!!!!
Okay, so I listened to a talk the other day (link in the description)
(where is the description part of the email??)
Let me quote it, you all know it. Elder Hollands
“An High Priest of Good Things to Come”
Sooooo
"Thirty years ago last month, a little family set out to cross the United States to attend graduate school... they drove exactly 34 miles up the highway, at which point their beleaguered car erupted.
Pulling off the freeway onto a frontage road, the young father surveyed the steam, matched it with his own, then left his trusting wife and two innocent children—the youngest just three months old—to wait in the car while he walked the three miles or so to the southern Utah metropolis of Kanarraville...
After more than two hours of checking and rechecking, no immediate problem could be detected, so once again the journey was begun. In exactly the same amount of elapsed time at exactly the same location on that highway with exactly the same pyrotechnics from under the hood, the car exploded again. It could not have been 15 feet from the earlier collapse, probably not 5 feet from it!...
Now feeling more foolish than angry, the chagrined young father once more left his trusting loved ones and started the long walk for help once again. This time the man providing the water said, “Either you or that fellow who looks just like you ought to get a new radiator for that car.”...
“How far have you come?” he said. “Thirty-four miles,” I answered. “How much farther do you have to go?” “Twenty-six hundred miles,” I said. “Well, you might make that trip, and your wife and those two little kiddies might make that trip, but none of you are going to make it in that car.” He proved to be prophetic on all counts.
Just two weeks ago this weekend, I drove by that exact spot where the freeway turnoff leads to a frontage road, just three miles or so west of Kanarraville, Utah.
Yet in my mind’s eye, for just an instant, I thought perhaps I saw on that side road an old car with a devoted young wife and two little children making the best of a bad situation there. Just ahead of them I imagined that I saw a young fellow walking toward Kanarraville, with plenty of distance still ahead of him. His shoulders seemed to be slumping a little, the weight of a young father’s fear evident in his pace. In the scriptural phrase his hands did seem to “hang down.” In that imaginary instant, I couldn’t help calling out to him: “Don’t give up, boy. Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it—30 years of it now, and still counting. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.” "
Sorry it's a long quote, but I read this the other day and boy did it hit me.
I recently started reading my journal from the beginning of my mission. I felt that now is as good as anytime to go and look back on those experiences of the past. I've been amazed going back and looking at it, seeing what I had went through and some of my challenges and fears and depressions and happiness and successes. It's been eye opening.
But the one thing that has amazed me the most is the change.
As I've gone back and read the words of Spencer past, I can still feel the fear and sorrow that were connected with them. Lookin forward on two years of which, at the time, was misery. Wondering if I would ever find the promised happiness in the work. Wondering if it would change me. Wondering if it would ever actually become the "best two years"
And those feelings were real. The anxiety is in the words I wrote.
But as I look back on those times and read those words, I kind of feel like Elder Holland. Looking back at myself from under two years ago, seeing where I am now and just wanting to tell my past self, "Just keep going! You have so much happiness and joy ahead of you. You just don't know it. And it will be everything that you have wanted it to be and more. You will have struggles but you will come out so much better. And you'll be so much prepared for the future."
I can't help but just imagine me telling my past self that.
And I'm so grateful to my past self for sticking it through.
But how often do we need to remember this? That there is good to come. Maybe we should just imagine it, right now, our future self thanking us for enduring right now. For making it through the hard time. Us from the future telling current us to keep going. Because if we do, there will come a day where you look back and say those things to your past self.
So why not get that encouragement now?
I'm going to end with Elder Hollands testimony because he says it soooo much better than me!
"I testify that God lives, that He is our Eternal Father, that He loves each of us with a love divine. I testify that Jesus Christ is His Only Begotten Son in the flesh and, having triumphed in this world, is an heir of eternity, a joint-heir with God, and now stands on the right hand of His Father. I testify that this is Their true Church and that They sustain us in our hour of need—and always will, even if we cannot recognize that intervention. Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. Of that I personally attest. I thank my Father in Heaven for His goodness past, present, and future, and I do so in the name of His Beloved Son and most generous high priest, even the Lord Jesus Christ, amen"
Pictures!!!
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