May 16

Hey Family! 

So I forgot my planner at home so I am going to try to give you a run down of the week by memory so we will see how this goes! 

Wednesday: I got to see some past companions at lunch so that was super cool! I saw Toby Prettyman, Phillip Hayes, and JP Nielsen. It was awesome to see them! The rest of the day we just did the normal missionary thing. 

Thursday: So Thursday we help build parts of a  bike path at a local elementary school. Elder Nygren and I built a balance beam which was so cool to see after we were done. After that we again went out proselyting. 

Friday: So Friday is known as the "Dog Miracle Day" So Elder Pike and I were knocking on some doors. At this one door the lady answered. She was super frustrated and said, "I am not interested right now it is been a bad day. I have lost my dog" Well we offered to help find it. Her response was, "I don't need to your help but if you are working the area and see a dog that is a gray terrier then that is our dog" Elder Pike and I walked off the door step both knowing we needed to find this dog. So as we are walking down their driveway elder pike and I pray that we can find this dog. Well we hop in the car and I just start driving around in the neighborhood wherever I feel like we need to go. After about 10 minutes we see this dog that matches the description. We decided to just not steal a dog that is outside of a house. So we run up and knocked on the door of the house that the dog was in front of. We asked the lady if that dog was hers. She said it was. So we said we were looking for a dog and wondered if she had seen one. She said she had not but that her neighbor had found a dog early that day. We got super excited and ran over the neighbors but they were not home. So we ran back to the lady that told us to go there. We asked her to call her neighbor to see if she was home. She called and found out that her neighbor had actual given the dog to a lady down the street name Mary. So we were directed to Mary's house. We went to Mary's house and asked if she had a dog that was found this morning. She did and she reluctantly gave it to us. So we jump in the van with this dog on the floor of the passenger side licking Elder Pike's fingers and feet while we are laughing. We are laughing at the possibility that this might not be their dog. In all the excitement of finding a  lost dog we failed to truly analyze  to see if the dog fit the description we were given. Well it did not. The dog we had was more brown then gray but it did have some gray. We were laughing at what we would do if this was not their dog. Well we showed up to the house and we jumped out. The father was outside and yelled, "You found Buddy!!" The family was so happy! We relayed to the family the story of us praying and finding their dog. The mom's answer was, "Usually when I see people like you I don't listen and just try to get them off my porch as fast as I can. But you found our dog so I will listen to whatever you want to tell me!" Well we taught her and the daughter about the Book of Mormon and got a return appointment for this week. Looking back at it I felt kind of like Ammon. Ammon rejoiced in the scattering of the flocks and honestly as we were walking down the driveway to find the dog I was glad. I was not glad that they had lost their dog, but I was glad that the opportunity came for us to be instruments in the Lord's hands in helping someone in need. The Lord does answer prayers! 

Saturday: So on Saturday as some of you saw we did what was called the social media split day throughout the mission. In a nutshell this means the whole day we were to have a member who was tech savy and is on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram. We had like 4-5 members for the whole day. The member takes pictures and posts between 4-2 every hour. The goal is for the members friends in the ward to repost it. It was so fun. We had 2 chapel doors and some studies in which awesome members were with his. Plus we were to topped liked picture on the mission Facebook page and one of the top liked on Instragram under #socialmediasplit. You should look #socialmediasplit on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. It was super cool! 

Sunday: Mother's Day was pretty awesome! Mainly cause I got to talk to y'all. But it was fun for other reasons. We got to take over in Senior Primary which was fun. All the women of the ward had a huge combined relief society so they asked the men to help in Primary. In which we volunteered to do music and sharing time. It was pretty fun! We also went over to the Nilsen's for a BBQ which was super tight. All the past missionaries that are working for the pest control company Greenix were there. After the dinner we had a lesson. After the lesson we returned to the Nilsen's. For mother's day for Sister Nilsen we wrote her a song. So we all performed it that night for her. She said it was the best mother's day present any of her children have given her. 

Monday: This day we had to do alot of stuff to prepare for transfers. Make sure all the cars were ready for new areas. It was a busy morning preparing for transfers. Then we rest of the day we proselyted. 

Tuesday: Most of the day was spent in the office. Early that day we got a call from President that the transfer board was done. So we started on working on all the things required for transfers. Which I found out is a lot! 

Wednesday: It was preparation day so in the morning we cleaned the apartment while Elder Kujanpaa and Nygren packed to leave. That afternoon we went over to Presidents and finalized the transfer board. We then helped make leadership and training calls. After that we went to the airport to pick up new missionaries. That was super cool! I love picking up new missionaries! We then all went to President's home and did a bunch of training and welcome stuff for them. It was super cool. Also during this whole training there was a massive tornado watch for most of Ohio. So during the whole training we are also communicating to all the Zone Leaders that all missionaries need to be in their apartments asap! So that was super fun to do as well! 

Thursday: This was the day I was dreading all transfer. It is a great meeting. There were so many extra members there because it is that awesome of a meeting. If the mission you live has a transfer meeting totally go to it! But I was dreading this because this means that Elder K and Elder Nygren leave. I love those two! They did the most evil thing in the transfer meeting. In whihc all the departing missionaries come on the stand with us and every stands and sings "God Be With You Till We Meet Again". It is liking slowly ripping off a band-aid. It is set in for me how long I have been on my mission when missionaries I have known for almost 10 months to a year that are best friends and past companions are going home. It is super weird. After transfers we did post transfer damage control. 

Friday: We took the departing missionaries to the airport in the morning to go home. The rest of the day was again doing post transfer damage control and just finalizing everything after transfers. After that we were able to do some proselyting.

Hope you all had a great week! Love you!! 

Love,

Elder Baird