Pictures! 4.1.13

3.28.13

Hello!! 

I am here in Idaho safe and alive! Don't worry, I got here safe and alive two days ago... I am serving in the Nyssa, Oregon area and am living in Parma, Idaho. It is extremely rural and everyone is very kind. My trainer is Sister Dickie from Ohio, she is #8 of 16 children and is a great teacher and companion. We visited a few investigators and less active members yesterday and did A LOT of training/planning stuff today. I am loving it here and trying to get used to the slow, casual, friendly country lifestyle. I am loving the people so far and am excited to meet more! Everyone is very humble-I went into some homes yesterday that were smaller than my apartment in Phoenix. But they all love the missionaries and everyone wants to chat forever. We are living with a member whose name I don't know--we are only allowed to call her Grandma. She is a really sweet old lady. I hope everything is well at home! I am loving the work and am so blessed that the Lord sent me where He did. I love you all and pray for you every day. Keep up the work at home, too.

 

Your Sister,

 

Madison Baker

 

Sister Baker with her new companion, and her Mission President and his wife! 

(It's cute that she thinks weather in the 50's is cold enough for a scarf :)) 

3.21.13

Hello!

 

It is finally P-day! This week and a day has been soooo long but also really fast at the same time. I have been learning and studying like crazy. The MTC is good, but I am ready to get out of the concentration camp, as Jason calls it, and get into the field! I only have 4 more days!!! We have been learning how to teach and learning doctrine and how to present it. We practice on actors and volunteers pretending to be investigators and also on our teachers. This is cool but sometimes a little bit hard. The other day we practiced teaching a lady who really is a less active member ad had a really great experience. I am really excited to get out there and teach real people. The MTC is a pretty cool place, as it was described in the devotional on Tuesday by Elder Scott Whiting of the 70, the MTC is an incubator--a controlled environment with conditions made to be ideal for growth and development. I really do feel like I am a baby chick under a warm light who is just about ready to hatch. I am so exited to be in Boise not just to teach, but to not have to eat the food here any more... It is like disgustinggggggg. I really miss cooking and eating good food. The food is really the only bad part of the MTC though. I have a really great district and an amazing companion. Today we are fasting for an elder in our district who went home early. This was really sad and really hard on us as a district. I has made us all reevaluate how we see our missions and our purpose here as missionaries. I am so grateful that I am a missionary and for all of the love and support that I have. I am really experiencing something that I have never experienced before. I am growing closer and closer to my Savior daily and understanding conversion in a way that I never knew possible. I am so blessed to be a part of this marvelous work! Don't worry, I am still hilarious and send my district into tears laughing at all of the weird things that I say. The term 'struggle bus' has started to catch on in my district and it makes me miss home a bit.  I have been pretty good about not using the batman voice though ;)... I love to get dear elder letters every few days, they seriously keep me going and keep me sane! Meredith, your letters crack me up and keep me happy. I miss you like crazzzzzzzyyyyyzzz. I don't know your Fredline-y email address though, so sorry you are not getting a personalized email... Love you all and I hope to hear from everyone really soon! Please send me more dear elders!!

 

Your Sister,

 

Madison Baker

MTC!!!

This afternoon we dropped Maddy off at the MTC! After a fun lunch at Zupa's, we said our goodbyes. Since they had us kick her to the curb, we didn't have much time for tears until after we drove away. It was probably better that way.

Before the goodbye.

Walking away.

Even though I will miss Maddy, I know she will be doing great things, and we will be blessed for her missionary service!

-Meredith
p.s. keep checking the blog for her weekly letters!

Cupcakes are Good. So is Pot Roast. Yum.

Life is a beautiful thing. It is a crazy, wonderful, intense journey along a path only enlightened by patience and perseverance. There are so many roads to take and lessons to learn, I am literally in awe as each new adventure unfolds and how they all seem to lead you to the next place perfectly. I could spin off all kinds of sappy stories about all of the happiness and heart break I have had since the birth of this little blog, but I wont. Instead, I shall simply put it this way -- oh man, but God knows what he is doing. I am a pretty blessed lady ( and I will never stop saying it). 

Anyways, as much as I know there is a plan, sometimes I feel like I am living in total anarchy... Okay that is a little extreme. But things can get pretty random. I just have a really awesome and hilarious family (ten year old brother wandering around in Ugg boots, entire family bursting into song at any given moment... you get it). I love them though, and I think they like me enough most of the time too. It is especially awesome when Jake the Bake "helps me make cookies". This consisted of him wandering in and out of the kitchen, cracking one egg, and making some weird faces. That kid is awesome. I also have a really cool job. I am super excited to wake up early in the morning to go to it *insert mild sarcasm here*... I really do love it though. I get to do fun things with fun people all day and try really hard (not very successfully)  not to eat my weight in delicious rolls. 

Well, this post has pretty much no direction and I have not even thought of a random food-related title yet... I am maybe just a little blog rusty. At least blog rust is rainbow and sparkly and just like there is some extra glitter stuck in the blogging corner of your brain and not brown and scratchy like actual rust. I suppose I will work on organizing my sparkles... Here is to a New Year and plenty of new adventures (and hopefully a few more posts about them than last year).

Tortilla + Pizza Accouterments = Pizzadilla

I don't write very often. I usually only write when I feel like I have something worthwhile to say or birthday wishes to send. Well, I was reprimanded by my awesome friend upon about 1 hour of his release from serving a full time LDS mission. How are my children and generations worth of posterity supposed to know all about me if I do not update my blog more than once every several months... That being said, along with every other blogger out there, here's to posting more often and preserving proof of my actual existence... Or something like that.

On a completely unrelated note--

I had a profound experience today. I was having a conversation with an older woman, someone whom I admire and respect greatly, and we began talking about work and service. She expressed to me some level of discontent with her job situation and wished she could give her life to service and charity.   Hesitantly she disclosed this wish to me and her desire to do something that could make a difference and make her more happy. Granted, she is one of the most upbeat and positive women I know--she makes a difference with just a smile and sincere 'how are you?'. Warm, charitable, serviceable, fabulous does not even begin to describe this lovely friend of mine. But just as everyone else in this wide world, she, for just a moment felt small.

I learned a few things from this brief conversation:


No matter where we are in life--no matter how successful, beautiful, powerful, what have you--we may be, it is still possible to feel small.


Do things that make you happy, and if you are not happy--FIX IT! 


 Life constantly happens, and it takes a lot to not just let your life happen to you. 


Most importantly--I've said it before and I will say it a million times over--life is all about choices. We choose what we do and we have to choose to accept what comes of it. Happiness is a choice (probably one of the hardest ones to make). Kindness is a choice. Being present in your own life and in the lives of those around you is a choice. We choose how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves. Every action we take, we are making a choice to be the best we can be or to maybe not be as great as we could be.


 Faith in the ability to daily improve is what drives me. I believe in choosing my own attitude towards life and I know that I am not always very good at making the positive choice. But I know that I am in control of myself and through self control and positive choices and a good attitude, I may just have the ability to turn someone else's frown into a smile. And that, to me, is worth it. 

Cucumbers and Sunshine

Guess what! Today is a very special and wonderful and stupendous day. Exactly nineteen years ago on July 16th, my soul mate was born. My longest and very best friend, Anna Elizabeth Lewis--more affectionately known as Anna Banana, Anne Banann, Anna Bear, or Sunshine--is celebrating her birthday today. I could say a million things about how utterly amazing she is. She is my rock. She is beautiful, and happy, and more kind than anyone I know. Although we do not live near to one another (we have not lived in the same state since we were 7) she is always a phone call away to laugh, cry, sing, or just be quiet with me. I see this lovely lady about once a year--and always have since she moved away many many moons ago--and we can always pick up from right where we left off the year before just as if no time has passed at all. Like I said, she is AMAZING. If I were as cool as her I would have included a bunch of photos of us growing up together (just in case you were wondering, dear, you don't have the 'awkward stage' pictures because they just happen to be in my possession.) but I am not that tech savvy, and really the only photographs that I have are not publicly acceptable. Anyways, she makes my heart smile and our souls know each other. Anna, you have blessed my life in more ways than you know. I love you forever, and cannot wait to grow up one day and live next door to one another so our darling and perfect children can be soul mates as well. Happy Birthday to the very best!!! I love you!!