Merry Christmas yesterday and Happy New Year!

My Mission President gave me some steaks to grill while staying in the mission home. :)  I have to say, I made them nice! :)

Well hello everyone!! 

I hope you all had a good Christmas because I sure did! I got to talk to my wonderful family! I will be honest though, it's not easy saying goodbye to them. You don't realize how much you miss your family until you have to leave them for 2 years. This is a time to be with family everyone and keep them close to you because when we pass on, they are the ones we are going to be with forever.

First African tie :)

This last week was pretty rough though ha ha. I was in the mission home all week from Monday until Saturday. I was doing tests in the hospital because they thought there were some issues in my heart. Well, after all the tests they found that nothing was wrong with it so thank goodness for that! So I am doing OK! 

....and my second African tie. :) I might come home with a lot of these ha ha!

After being gone all week, we had a bunch of our investigators checking up on me and they were wanting to see if I was OK. When we got back we had one of our investigators feed us Saturday, Sunday and Monday! They are just so good to us here and it is so amazing to experience! The love that the Africans have for the missionaries is just unreal! 

My Christmas presents under the tree. :) Special thanks to my brothers who wrapped all of them and to my wonderful family for thinking of me! :)

Well, I don't have much to write about this week and I don't want to burden you guys with a long letter. But I just wanted to give you all a small message. With the new year coming up I want you all to kind of do a self evaluation of your year. What did you accomplish? What do you wish that you accomplished? What do you want to work on this next year? Ask yourself questions like that.

OK they sent me all of my favorite things! They love me way too much. :)  I had a very enjoyable time opening them all! ha ha!

My investigator who I am baptizing this week told me that she is so happy to be baptized on the last day of the year because she gets to start off the year clean. She wrote us a list of all the things she wants to change for this next year as her baptism is coming up. After you think about that look at the sacrament the same way as your baptism. The sacrament renews the baptismal covenant. So when you take the sacrament, think of this last year and then the new year to come. Start clean. You can start fresh and new by partaking of the sacrament going into 2018. 

As you can see I'm happy with my food!  ha ha

It's crazy to think how time is flying by. I love you all and I hope you have a good week and a good end of your year. Let me know how you feel this Sunday after thinking of my small message. :)

I love you all so much! Thank you for all you do!

Sincerely,

Elder Baird 

I found out that one of the hair trimmers with my set had an adjustable setting and it had a 6 on it so that's what this cut is. (He was going to use a 3, this is pretty short as is.)

Mom's notes:

Landon won a washer! He said, "Mom, you know how you always call me lucky? (Actually, I called him my Lucky Bug because he always gets picked for things and wins things) Well, guess what? They had a drawing for a washing machine and I won it!" He was really happy because doing wash makes his knuckles bleed. He will have to leave it in the apartment when he gets transferred but he gets to use it at least one transfer because he is staying where he is. 

He gets a new companion today, Elder Bidi who is from the Ivory Coast. Elder Baird has taught with him once before so he knows him already. 

Elder Sebuliba (his current companion) is going to be the new zone leader. The Dzodze branch is now the zone headquarters and also where they have baptisms. So they will both be at the baptism on New Years Eve this Sunday.