A very hardworking week!

Elder Baird was so busy that he didn't take any pictures this week. These are pictures that Sister Keyes posted on Facebook. It is of his companion, Elder Wilcox and two people that he baptized that Elder Wilcox and he taught before he left the area. He was very happy that they are baptized now. (I need to find out what their names are. :)

I will just start off by saying that this week was a very hard working week. 

Our mission President came last week to ask me personally if I think we should close the area that I am in. I was quite caught off guard with that question. The reason he asked that question is because the missionaries who were here in the past didn't work as hard as they should have so it seemed like the area was having very little success. SO my companion and I said that we are going to work super hard to see if we can get this area going. We worked and worked and worked. Every time a lesson fell through, we would go and knock on gates for houses for an hour. So we were walking and knocking for around three hours each day. We tried and tried to get people to come to church and at the end of the week, we had one investigator come to church. I was pretty sad about that but hey, before we were getting zero. So we are just going to keep walking with faith that the Lord will soften people's hearts and provide a way for them to come.

A cool story that happened this week was on Tuesday. We met a guy for the first time while we were knocking on gates. His name was Julius and he is 20. He seemed interested and he asked some good questions. Then we said we will come back on Thursday. When we called him on Thursday he said that he was too busy working on his brother's house so he had to cancel. Well on Friday, while we were biking around we just stopped by his house to see if he was home. When we came in he said that he had something he wanted to tell us. He told us a story from the day before when we were going to teach him and he was busy. Not long after we had called him he said he had stepped on a nail and it prevented him from being able to work for the rest of the day. He looked at me straight in the eyes and said, "I know that was God telling me that I need to listen to you guys..." I was honestly so shocked. He looked so sincere and was saying that he wants us to come as often as we can because he feels God is telling him answers to his prayers. 

Then on Wednesday, we were biking around and we had like 15 minutes until we were going to take lunch, so we decided we would find one more person to teach. We passed by a shop and my companion stopped and said, "We have to go back and talk to that man." Well I was totally fine with that, ha ha. So we introduced ourselves and then the man said that he knew some missionaries who used to be in this area. I asked for their names and later I learned that those missionaries were here around 2 years ago. He said that they would come and buy things from him but they never wanted to teach him, but that he wanted to learn. So when we came he was super excited about it and he wants us to keep coming because he said he has a lot of questions that he has always wanted to ask. 

This last week was super cool but also super exhausting, ha ha. Someone told me that we needed to take a break and just close early one day. My response was this, " The work of the Lord doesn't stop, so why should we?"  And then I realized how true it was. The work of the Lord truly never stops. It's always going and will never cease even when the second coming happens. I love you all so much and hope you have a wonderful week. :)

Sincerely, 

Elder Baird

Mom's notes:

1. His companion really wants to learn. He is struggling with the food though. He is used to burgers and pizza at home. I guess that Kenya is really modernized. He said that, "My companion likes soccer a lot, ha ha ha. So he is pretty funny because we were told that under no circumstances can we watch it. Even if a member wants to show us, so he is always laughing about it because he just wants to watch it so bad.