Elder Watkins/Elder Bakker

Hello,

I am very aware of how weird this is to anyone who is still following my blog I stopped from last semester, but nevertheless, I'll explain.
I was just randomly google searching my name and then my mission name, Elder Bakker from when I served almost a year ago in the Brazil Goiania Mission. However, the Elder Bakker that actually showed up was a trainer and companion of a certain Elder Watkins who is keeping a blog of his mission.
I am "following" him now only because I have no other idea of how to find out how to get into contact with this Elder Bakker to find out if by some chance he is related to me. I mean, I haven't done all of my genealogy, so I guess there's always a chance, right? I don't know...
Anyways, if anyone who knows Elder Watkins or Elder Bakker, let me know because I think that'd be cool to find out. Thanks.

-(Jon) Erick Bakker
of Bellflower, CA (but currently attending BYU-I in Rexburg, ID)

THOUGHT I WOULD POINT THIS OUT:

JUST TO MAKE A POINT IN MENTIONGING THAT IF ANYTHING POPS UP WHEN TRYING TO VIEW MY PORTFOLIO BLOG, IT'S JUST ASKING FOR YOUR TWITTER INFO SO IT CAN UPLOAD THE TWITTER FEED I HAVE ON MY PAGE. THAT'S ALL! THANKS!

Listening Challenge

During the course of this past week and a half or so that I have been at least aware of this assignment, I started to reflect to some degree on how much I actually listen to people as opposed to trying to get them to listen to me. I have felt for the longest time (anywhere between most of my life and several years, to be exact) that very few to no one at all really listens to me. But as I have been reflecting on this lesson on listening, perhaps I should be doing a whole lot more listening than I really do and in doing so, stop being so selfish and altogether stop thinking only about myself so many times.
Since I seem to be so horrible at listening to other people and try to get so many others listen to me without any good motive for them to do so anyways, I tried to not only focus on just one person. At the same time, I didn’t even know of just one person that was close or important to me in person here in Rexburg. I’ve only been here a couple months, so I couldn’t get too close to anyone in so little time other than a couple roommates and friends I just made recently.
Nevertheless, I pursued my goal to seek to listen much more to these fantastic individuals. However, as I sought to do so, many of them seemed to close up a lot more than they would normally do so, as if they had picked up on my trying to listen to them more and made things more difficult for me to understand what had happened to them, what they thought, etc. I found that people seemed to answer the questions I asked as a good listener to understand what they were saying didn’t lead to further discussion of their thoughts and feelings and to clarify the message they meant to get across. I found out instead that these people gave off short answers that cut the discussion much shorter than it usually would have and brought it altogether to a halt.
The majority of these negative side effects that I have discussed with Sister Embree have resulted in the conclusion that perhaps many of these individuals much prefer to keep to themselves and are more comfortable at being the listeners. Another factor I came to was that the things they have talked about in this past week weren’t all that important to them to go into such large detail other than normal day-to-day activities that in general aren’t too interesting to many people to discuss – no matter what conditions they went through or felt perhaps. I also figured that I simply make big deals of such small things or that I, compared to many other people, love to talk about every little thing in my day and how I feel just about all the time. Perhaps the people I have come to love around me have adapted to this and have accustomed somewhat to being the listener.
I especially do try to listen to people when the circumstance shows obvious seriousness. Very few opportunities gave way to my efforts at bettering my listening skills this week. On both short occasions with two different people, I would try out the listening methods taught in the video by asking clarifying questions, stop day dreaming (which I do all too often to the extent I seriously think I have A.D.D.), and make sure I didn’t hoard the conversation or make it about me like Brian Reagon’s “Me Monster.” I made sure the person was acknowledged, appreciated, valued, and understood. I made sure I understood what they had meant to get across and that I was sure I knew how to answer their questions they meant to ask – whether they were content or relational messages they meant to get across.
I found out that it was extremely hard to not to “hoard” the conversation and make it about myself. I found out that I have such a tendency to try to relate to the person with my own personal experiences to help them not feel alone in their circumstances and help them in their situations as I have been helped. I found out that I go off on many different tangents in doing so, telling stories, telling jokes to cheer them up and help them understand what happen and what to expect. I discovered that when I do that it helps sometimes, but that’s more when the person is just as well willing to listen, but it’s hardly ever the case when someone is distraught over something they just went through which is more often the case. I found I need to hold my tongue a lot more and listen much more than I actually do. I found people ask for my advice and help much more often when I do that and I understand much better their dilemma and how to better condense my answers to address their needs.

Tongue of Angels

I believe the power of language in a relationship is very strong. I know this from experience within the relationships within my own life in which I have communicated either very well or very poorly with one or more people and seen the consequences of these excellent or horrible choices. I’ve also seen these effects when they’ve been positively or negatively conducted towards myself from others that I either know very well or I don’t know at all. The language we use often conveys our own opinions, our ideas, our values or lack thereof, our intentions, our mood/attitude/emotions/feelings, and it can ultimately define the relationship we choose to build or destroy with one another. To make our language more closely resemble the tongue of angels, we must first learn to love ourselves in thought, speech, and deed so that we may be better able to love one another and show it through our choice of words as we speak to them.
All too often is the case we either say something sarcastically, jokingly, or any unintentional conveying of strong feelings or emotions and the listener or recipient of the message misinterprets it entirely to a different message than it was actually intended for. Such cases are when one can say, “What are you doing here?” “Who invited you?” “When are you going back home?” “Are you seeing anyone?” The emphasis, tone, speed of the speech, or lack of any of these things and much more can influence the language conveyed in the message and thus impacting a different attitude towards the relationship.
Elder Holland spoke of the way husbands speak to wives and how wives speak to husbands and just as well as how to speak to the children. He didn’t go into too much depth as to how abusive or bad the language really can relate to each other within the bonds of marriage and families, but I have experienced these profound teachings in my own life.
My father grew up in Panama with a father who later separated or divorced and had been in the military and on top of it, was originally from New York. My mom was born and raised in the neighboring country of Costa Rica and had a decently peaceful youth except for being orphaned, but nonetheless had a calm upbringing to the best of my understanding. My father grew up being yelled at, seeing his siblings beaten for misbehavior, and took up a career as a policeman and was baptized a convert in his early twenties.
My father’s choice of language is completely different than that of many members of the Church and he recognizes his weakness, yet it still affects the environment of the home greatly. It truly can make or break the Spirit within the home. Too many times has it been broken, driven away, and left a sickly and ugly feeling about the home to the extent one wants to leave yet has nowhere to go. Too few are the times the home has the sweet Spirit abiding in abundance where one never would want to leave.
We all realize we need to make changes here and there. I love how Elder Holland said that never should a sweet spirit of a woman ever use her angelic voice to dare utter such shrill and harsh words with the tongue, neither the priesthood bearer who through the same mouth gives blessings dare utter similar lashings of the mouth. I honestly know that if we think better of ourselves, think better and look for the better in other people, we really will see it in ourselves and in others. We can learn to love ourselves and others and our language really will change. In Brazil, I never knew any of the Portuguese curse words for the longest time. Why bother learning them if I’ll never use them? Nevertheless, someone had told me some anyways, but I didn’t care to know! It was a wonderful time to use the tongue of angels to spread the message of angels. This is the best message the world has to offer, to share, to pass along. Why would any of us resort to harsh language if we all strive to better ourselves? Let us start with the tongue. As Elder Holland said, we’ve learned how to master just about everything in this world – the earth, the wind, the water, and fire. But the tongue we have yet to master. By starting to love ourselves and one another, we will master the tongue that we have poorly chosen to master us. I know we can. It wouldn’t be commanded of us to be of good cheer if we couldn’t accomplish it.

Buckets and Dippers

As I came to reflect on the analogy of the Buckets and Dippers, I thought considerably about the way I unfortunately so often feel many times throughout my days, weeks, and months. I regret to say not much of my behavior has improved during the course of my life unless I count perhaps the course of my mission when I had learned to be so much better and learn how to evaluate my performance and become a better person. Nevertheless, I have been less enthusiastic in my attempts to accomplish such goals since I have returned.
I mean to say that when I perceive others recently, I have resorted back to how I acted at a small degree to what I behaved like before the mission. I look on others with buckets of emotion – differing from more or less than what I have. On some occasions, I find that what I have is extremely little in my bucket and if anyone comes along seeming like they have intentions of taking from my own, I can have the habit of the natural man and retrieve my bucket from their thirsty grasp as they attempt to take some of my water out with their dipper.
How selfish! How sad! How often do I react to others in this selfish, cruel manner? Behavior like that leaves them without any more water and if at all, perhaps even less in their bucket for their receiving such harsh and inconsiderate treatment that will no doubt leave them feeling even worse.
When participating in this activity in class, I remember reflecting on the relationship I have with my roommate. When I came back from the mission, I started going to the singles ward in a ward where I met him and we got to talking and I found out that he was working on his application to BYU-I. I told him that I was already accepted and I was going up there and sure enough, he was accepted and started asking for help for housing. Naturally, I suggested he be my roommate and gave him all the information I could and now he’s here as my roommate.
I, however, have many values and pet peeves that he tends to touch upon very often and I go very quiet when things like that disturb me and I can’t bring myself to correct others all too often in fear of offending them. Nevertheless, when I do this, I give the silent treatment which is actually worse than telling them how I feel! Recognizing this destructive behavior only growing worse between us, I decided to call it to an end on one of my better days I had last night and we somewhat resolved the issue that I have a hard time correcting him.
He has expressed often that he feels very alone up here since he doesn’t know anyone or anything and I have a semester longer here than he does. I never knew his bucket was so empty! I didn’t know that he was trying to get some of my water out for himself!
My perception changed quite a bit after recognizing this and after reflecting on this on and on again, I realized it’s not that he’s a bad person and intends to actually take pleasure in making me feel uncomfortable and just enjoy my small suffering, no. He unintentionally had/has habits that are completely contrary to my own personal values that just make me tick and he couldn’t know any better unless I told him.
How different things have become to a small degree since that little conversation we two had last night. Not to make it sound like I demean his intelligence to the level of a child, but how different is the child that learns from his or her parents the right from wrong? How different would life be if our Heavenly Father didn’t bless us with the gift of the Holy Ghost to tell us right from wrong? I think back through my life and wonder if I have ever really felt offended from having a correcting experience that fills my bucket up a whole lot more when I felt guilt from sin, temptations, and other inappropriate thoughts, actions, or words. I realize its actually the love our Father has for us and a small portion of what we can do for others - fill their buckets.

Recognizing My Emotions

To tell the truth, I am actually pretty aware of my emotions all too often already without this exercise. When I am angry, upset, mad, sad, or anything that can be generally altogether be considered a negative attitude, I absolutely hate it and that fact that I realize it and know I’m upset makes me even more mad because there may or may be something that is making me feel that way and I may or may not know what it is that is making me feel that way. I will immediately start thinking through to perceive what is making me feel mad or sad to resolve the problem and start feeling content once again. Should the same occur for positive feelings, I always make a point to recognize what is making me feel this way through what I believe to be cognitive process. I do this so I can search for more opportunities in the future to spend time with that person, thing, or event so that I can feel that way more often. I believe we all to some degree do that and perhaps subconsciously too, no doubt, but I feel that I recognize it more often.
As I have tried to keep track of my emotions to some degree, I found just as everyone is mentioning to me that I am extremely emotional. But I already knew that. I knew already that my mood changes all too often. I pay so much attention to how odd it is that I can just switch like a lit match to a burnt match to a wet match in a matter of minutes or even within the process of a couple days. I’ve always found these alterations in emotions so peculiar and possibly inappropriate that the mind can be so indecisive and so like a child, seemingly. I felt that something should be understood about it, so I pay attention a lot to my emotions. Nevertheless, I haven’t been very productive in finding anything out because my emotions are just so confusing all too often.
I don’t have a determined emotion throughout the day. When my family, friends or other anyone else ask me how I am doing, how I am feeling, how was the day, I thoroughly and honestly contemplate the question before answering. It is in part, possibly my paranoia of being so used to being specific in English classes and from the mission, but I feel its also in part trying to honestly answer the question with how I am actually feeling. All too often I respond with a confused answer trying to describe as best as I can that the day wasn’t horrible or bad to any degree, but since it wasn’t the best day in the world or great it wasn’t necessarily a good day either. It’s just any other day!



How tiring is it to me to have such intensely mixed emotions throughout the day! I normally start my days not hopeful, but not dismally discouraged to the extent I would rather stay in bed, but I just see it as any other day. Perhaps that influences things? I know that when I am mad, sad, or tired, I basically shut down - socially. I don’t talk. I try not to show any reaction of emotion of any kind. Nevertheless, we learn we communicate nonetheless when we talk or not and others perceive it. That’s when I start to recognize my own behavior and wish to change it and seek help, share feelings, or just try as best I can to forgive or just be better understanding and be happy.
Most often, when someone smiles or laughs, I give in and do so as well. Who else can help but give in to the temptations of such contagious behavior? I wish these events were more frequent. I seek almost every time in every place in every opportunity I can get to make someone smile, to make them laugh. I do this because I know I love to make people feel better and a lot less like I all too often already have and most often do - just neutral, existent, content, mediocre - blah. I hate having mixed and confused emotions! I want them declared and declared happily! Knowing smiles, laughter, and happiness are all too contagious, I am doing favors for others as well as for myself knowing I’ll enjoy making them happy just as well as I will be happy just seeing them happy. This is why I try to better satisfy myself in my emotions and the emotions of others. It’s a very gratifying experience I look forward to each day and why I try to stay out of my constant blah zone. No one deserves to be in that zone. It’s too sad there. It’s… blah!

And Nothing Shall Offend Them - Reflection

In all honesty, I can’t remember when I first read or heard this, but it was a very profound talk (as is most of his talks). I do remember however the impact it had on me in remembering that from then on I never had the right to be offended by anything or anyone anymore. Nevertheless, of course, I did choose to be offended every now and again, as we all are mortal and tend to do that.
All of us choose to take offense in many things, so I gained a very different concept and perspective of things when I heard that. I don’t remember having that kind of idea presented to me before. I think that is why I remembered it for so long after he had given that talk originally.
Having remembered that, I taught that every now and again to investigators, less actives, and recent converts on the mission who felt they had been offended not necessarily in the Church, but in any way that they felt that they didn’t have the strength to go on. I felt so much compassion for these people because I was always picked on when I was little for being that quiet distant kid that always did good in school, wore the same sweatshirt hoodie every day and was just there. I remember always feeling offended and the wave of all the other emotions that entailed it. Granted, I don’t remember ever crying about it, but I had friends that did -best friends.
I remember that after feeling so much compassion for these friends of mine as well as myself that I didn’t want anyone else to feel it. How often had I come home to have the loving comfort of my parents to welcome me, embrace me, build me up with love and support and encouragement telling me how great I was and the potential I had and that the opinion of jerks and bullies really doesn’t matter in the long run.
My father told me earlier in my life how he had and always has and still is very curious and likes to learn. So when my father was baptized in the Church, he had a lot of questions about Church doctrine and their explanations. Later on, he found out that the book Answers to Gospel Questions would help him a lot more than his elder’s quorum president. Nevertheless, he asked questions openly and freely in class and it happened to often that the men in class would scoff, sigh, and complain and his consistent curiosity to the extent that my father chose to not go to Church anymore.



Thankfully, a concerned and considerate home teacher of my father’s recognized my father’s absence at Church and came to his house on a certain day to see him and wonder why he had stopped. My father explained what was going on and how he felt in regards to the other brethren in the priesthood quorum that had been upsetting him. Understanding this, the home teacher considered this a minute and replied in the same extent of words that Elder Bednar had explained that just because of someone else he was losing blessings. He asked my dad why he chose to go to Church. My father replied to learn about Christ and return to Heavenly Father. He then asked my father if anyone had told him to stop going if he would stop. My father declared he certainly wouldn’t. The home teacher then point out to my father that was exactly happening right then at that moment. He was choosing to let someone else stop him from going to Church as his own choice and not because it was something literally stopping him from going. My father realized this and decided to come back to Church quickly and has been faithfully active since then.
Knowing these things that my parents had taught me and had made me feel (on top of growing up and getting bigger in size and height than the bullies) on top of hearing Elder Bednar’s talk when he first gave it, I kept these feelings in my mind when I was on the mission teaching these people. These precious children of great worth of our beloved Heavenly Father didn’t know their great potential and how they chose to let themselves fall into despair and discouragement because of the actions of someone else. They were literally being acted upon as an object. As I helped them try to understand this, they would make the change in their mindsets just as Elder Bednar had said and most of them decided to give things in Church and life another try.
I’m glad I know these things that I have learned, the same that I have taught and that I can still remember by the power of the Spirit, in the case that I should forget and choose to give in to the temptation of being offended. Surely, it seems just so much easier to let things be and be angry, bitter, sad, and overall offended from someone or something said or done. I believe this principle definitely should be taught and remembered more often. I believe much more can change in the behavioral patterns in social interaction and cultures to make things a lot more positive. I believe we’d be able to learn a lot this way and love one another a lot more than we really do right now. I feel that that is how the Savior and our Heavenly Father would really want things and how we can actually establish a true Zion here on the BYU-I campus and accomplish not only our goal, but that of our Heavenly Father of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of men. How great would that day be when we all can recognize that and choose to not take offense and really love one another.