Wednesday, December 27, 2023

"Christmas Is Carnage"

 [Title references this line from Babe]

December 26, 2023

 

圣诞节快乐!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! AND HAPPY BOXING DAY!! 


The Christmastide season has begun! I just learned this today that Christmas Day is the first of the 12 holy days of Christmastide that continues through the new year until January 6th called “Epiphany,” celebrating the visit and gifts of the wise men from the Orient. (*side note that I think is cool* The magi visited the savior about 24 months after his birth, and the holiday to celebrate is observed about 12 days after the celebration of Christ’s birth.) All that goes to say, feel free to keep the Christmas spirit up for a little while!


Anywho, I sincerely hope all of you had a splendid week and a good Christmas day! It was a good week ramping up to a wonderful weekend for me!


Last Monday my companion reluctantly let us go to Long and McQuade, a music store a lot like Summerhays where I got a new violin case!!! Had a good member meal that night and then practiced a lot for Zone conference the next day, which consisted of some silly games and some good ham.


I had a really uplifting experience on Wednesday at a train stop near our house. We had a huge stack of Christmas pass-along cards that we thought we could start passing out. We ran out after 45 minutes, they were going like candy! Right before we were about to leave, this guy walks up to us and asks us a question on how our beliefs would describe the word “precision.” I didn’t know exactly what he was getting at, so I started making up some random stuff (that was definitely Spirit led) about how detailed and precise God’s creations are, to which he said, “I totally agree! It’s as if….” and continued to tell us cool patterns he found. This was a perfect moment to hand him the copy of the Book of Mormon that Elder Labrum decided to bring, and we told him honestly about how it’s the most correct, most “precise” book on the earth today. He seemed a little bewildered but pretty excited. I ended the day by making some DI-VINE tomato soup!


Friday consisted of basically nothing but random service. We helped one of the branch presidency members clean out junk from the houses of people he’s renting to, and we also sort of helped with a Ukrainian-English class grad party. We found another stack of pass-along cards and handed them out at a different station. This time we were met by quite a few people who looked like they weren’t enjoying life too much and who also made it verbally obvious how much they disliked the Church . . . good to know. Gotta love the mission experiences.


The 23rd (or “Christmas Adam” as I like to call it) was quite slow. Lots of fliers hung up, I made some cookies for the upstairs neighbor, and we snuck a nap in there somewhere. We did have a little lesson with our friend John about the restoration, which was actually our first in-person lesson in about a month. Very good lesson followed by a very good Live Nativity that we walked over to right afterwards. 


We did have a little miracle leading up to Christmas Eve. Our district texted every single person we could find in our “area book” app asking if they wanted to come to church, and the next morning we had TWENTY new people show up!! Really good sacrament meeting for sure. We were invited to a member's house afterwards for some games and more good ham.


Christmas Day was awesome! After shredding open some anticipated packages, a super cool member from Taiwan treated the district to a Dim-Sum restaurant with lots of strange-looking food that usually tasted pretty good! Another awesome Canadian member who served in Taiwan invited us to eat dinner with his family. That was really special to me, the atmosphere there had a truly warm Christmas spirit and it felt as if I was eating with family, friends, and neighbors from home.


Here’s some last little Christmas Cheer for you to enjoy brought to you by Elder Baer’s moments of staring into space. The Live Nativity depicted how Mary took the baby Jesus and “wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.” It reminded me of a favorite bible translation into Pidgin-Hawaiian which defines the manger as “inside one ting fo hold da cows food.” I thought about how being laid in a trough for cattle might be foreshadowing to moments later in Christ’s teaching regarding cattle when he says, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” When we consider ourselves in the place of cattle, we see that Christ offers edification and nourishment as well as a yoke that eases our load. By feasting on His word and “yoking” ourselves with Him (or making covenant ties), we are making our lives easier and happier. The manger also has some resemblance to a sacrament table, where again we are edified and offered a way to lasting change. Perhaps as we enter a new year and wonder what load we will need to carry, we can remember our Savior and his promise, “I will give you rest.”


Big thank you to all of you for the kindness and support you’ve given—through letters, gifts, and especially from just being yourself. You are all an inspiration to me, a “guiding star” that helps me better understand a characteristic of the Savior. Merry Christmas!


–熊长老



photos:

good night and morning views of Calgary



 

bluejays!?


 

big estate on the way to a member meal


 

Nativity


 

Dim Sum with the District


 

Christmas Dinner guests






Wednesday, December 20, 2023

"I love Democracy"

[Title references this Star Wars line.]

Or diplomacy, rather, since I've been making a call or two for the district to settle disagreements and cancel overbooked meals . . . yesterday was fun like that.

December 18, 2023


大家好!Hey Everyone!

 

Sorry it's been a minute since I've been able to write. Our P-day was changed to Wednesday this last week due to an exciting temple trip! Get some snacks ready for this one though.


Two weeks ago we took a little escapade downtown with the new guy in the district, Elder Scoresby (an absolute stud). We went to Calgary tower to see if we could hike up to the top. Unfortunately they said the stairs aren't open until March so hopefully we'll be march-ing up to the top then. The rest of the week was filled with good efforts met by great opposition. On Wednesday we were having good success contacting people at the University, but that was put to a halt when a security guard told us to leave. (We'll find a better way to explain what we're doing next time.)


December 7th brought us a lovely little gift. I failed to notice that our toilet was clogged and that my flush was unsuccessful, so after a half hour of daily planning we found that our “chamber pot” had been slowly overflowing and flooding the bathroom floor (yucko). The good news is our toilet is now unclogged, our floor is now dry, and only some of our towels have bleach stains after emptying half the jug on the restroom. Gotta love the mission experiences!


Now that you're all done dry heaving, you can hear about the rest of the week . . . mostly uneventful, but we did find a promising neighborhood that has some tracting potential—at least, a little more than most. The gas station signs at this place are in English and Chinese which I haven't seen besides downtown and hole-in-the-wall buffets.


Last Sunday the 10th we went caroling and handed out Christmas pass-along cards. It was a really good idea and a great opportunity to use my newly acquired fiddle to do some missionary work! It also would have been a little more enjoyable if we had sung more songs about Jesus. We'll definitely need to do a new-and-improved run next year. 


This last week I started off with a haircut from a lady who lives on the very edge of town and only speaks Chinese. A fun attempt at speaking the language for sure. Later in the week we continued talking to folks on the outskirts of the University. We've run into a familiar pattern of someone giving us their number to hear more and then proceed to not respond to any calls or texts. We are getting numbers though, which is a lot more than we did my first 7 weeks in the mission!


Wednesday was the long awaited day! We got to attend the Calgary temple with a lot of other missionaries as well as our mission president! The Calgary temple is really beautiful! I learned a lot and gained a lot of comfort. If something's not going well in your life, make some time to visit or walk around the temple. You all know this more than I do, but I can promise you'll feel greater peace and comfort.

My temple-trip high was immediately abased by a district McDonald's run. I did get to try a popular fake order, the “McGangBang” which still had the signature grease per dollar ratio, but it was admittedly the best thing I've had at a MickeyDee’s.


We had a branch Christmas party on Saturday that was really fun! We enjoyed a massive potluck and a staged nativity show from the Primary. We saw our friend Winson there, whom we've only ever seen over Zoom! We're glad that he came, because he's seemed less believing and more cynical in our lessons lately.

In addition to that we have a friend or two that we haven't seen ever since we taught them the Restoration which is a huge dagger. On the other hand, some elders passed off a friend to us, who is one of the most faithful and curious people I've met. Another friend has come to church twice as well as the Christmas party! A big surprise considering how he said he wouldn't be able to make it either Sunday.


And now… some good ol’ thoughts from Elder Baer:

One day in personal study, I prayed about what I should study and what came to mind was a silly inside joke from a good friend about getting “a job”. . . sooo I tried out reading a little from the Book of Job the past two weeks. It’s been hard to understand at first why I should read a book of ancient confusing poetry that mostly says “I wish I was never born,” but I've actually found SO many enlightening things from additional source material I wouldn't have found otherwise. Last year's Come, Follow Me guide has a wonderful introduction to Old Testament poetry that was a HUGE eye opener about parallelism (two different statements with the same meaning, i.e. “His eyes shall see his destruction, and he shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty”). It's now a little easier to understand Job, Isaiah and other Prophets. I've also made a few connections with Job and with other prophets like Joseph Smith, who uses the same type of Old Testament parallel structure as Job while in Liberty Jail when he writes “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?” The best moment so far came in the middle of many chapters of lamenting when Job still declares, “Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book…For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth…yet in my flesh shall I see God.”

We'll soon see it in this book and hopefully as well in our daily lives: our circumstances may be painful, but if we put faith in Jesus Christ he will deliver us. Always.


Hope your Christmas season is splendid! Stay warm!

爱你们!


-熊长老


Photos


bunch of food, goods and bad


new books in the neighborhood library


 

Elder Scoresby is sad he has to back his companion

 

 

a free treadmill we failed to acquire (biggest waste of 30 minutes lol)



 Elder Labrum


 

Sunday, December 10, 2023

"Where did he come from, Where did he go?"

[Title references this song.]

December 4, 2023

 大家好!Hey Everyone!

December has Arrived! Which mean snow will also soon arrive . . . I think. The people here say this has been a surprisingly warm autumn so far—we’ve had snow twice (around Halloween) and it’s always melted within a couple days, so I believe it. Logan already has snow right? Weird.


There’s some big news this week! This one was quite a big one so hang on to your rears!


I bought a Violin! I’d been trying some out a week or two ago, and I got too impatient or impulsive or something cuz I decided to buy this ancient fiddle from a Facebook listing that seemed pretty cheap for the instrument quality! It’s not quite what I had at home, but I was pretty satisfied with it, so now it’s at our apartment :)) I’m still missing a bunch of specs like a shoulder rest, rosin, and a case that the bow can actually fit in (yikes), so hopefully I’ll get some of those today.


Transfers were this week. . . aaaand I got a NEW COMPANION!! My trainer Elder McAfee wasn’t too pleased with where he was going with transfers, which is always sad. (I don’t see a transfer outcome that he wouldn’t be sad about though, so hopefully it turns out to be good!) I’m staying in the same area, but I now have Elder Labrum as my comp! He’s a really hard worker and he’s only one transfer ahead of me so both of us speak 不好的中文 (really bad Chinese). We’ve had a couple lessons and English class meetings, and no one can understand us that well…so I’m predicting this is gonna be a really fun/funny transfer!!!


One of my new favorite moments of the mission happened this week when we were teaching a new friend for the second time. We already explained the Godhead to her last week, and we got talking about the restoration and Christ’s ministry. Elder Labrum was explaining how Christ was killed, and then three days later he was resurrected . . . and her eyes got really wide as if to say “He did what?? We will all do that???” It’s no wonder the truth of God is called “gospel” or “good news!”


We’ve also had another Korean Elder join us for a bit this week since his new companion has Covid.  :P  It’s been fun though because we’ve gotten to meet a lot of members he works with. For example, yesterday we had dinner at a member’s house up at the north end of Calgary, and they were absolutely LOADED but they were also super humble and sweet about everything. It was fun to get to know them.


Right after that, we and some older members in the area had the opportunity to watch the Christmas Devotional at a house of 5 Afghan immigrants who just got baptized on Saturday!! They were so polite, so hospitable, and so cheerful! It really added to the messages about Christmas joy.


Somewhat along with that, I found an interesting thought during personal study. Somehow in studying Preach My Gospel, I got lost and found myself in a church pamphlet all about Muslims and Latter-day Saints. I was yet again surprised at how much truth is shared between the two and how many beliefs are similar. Somehow I hadn’t really put into perspective how, just like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Islam also believes in a prophet who saw God and was led to a new book of scripture to clarify God’s word. Right after that I took a look in 2 Nephi 25 based on a comment from our branch mission leader (which was cool since I’ve also been thinking about tackling some Isaiah) and I found a very interesting and helpful point in verse 5: “and I know that the Jews do understand the things of the prophets (Isaiah, etc.), and there is none other people that understand the things which were spoken unto the Jews like unto them, save it be that they are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews.” Nephi seems to say the more we learn about other religions, the more we can understand the truths of this gospel. The more we learn about Judaism, the more we can understand Isaiah’s prophecies for our day. The more we learn about Islam, the more we can understand the Restoration, or perhaps the need for Jesus Christ as our Savior and Redeemer.


A story by Elder Baer. You’re welcome. Hope you guys have a wonderful week prepping for Christmas! Let me know how you’re doing!

愛你們!


–熊長老




photos:


New Fiddle!! (+ Elder Labrum taking a try)



Top Dog getaway driver



I think his name is missing a few consonants

[Related to Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz? A character in the Polish comedy film, "How I Unleashed WW2."  You may want to turn the captions on for this one!]


a good and healthy mission breakfast







Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Happy Spanksgiving!!

November 27, 2023

感恩節快樂!

How was Everyone's family get together? I always love the end of the year because of how much we gather as families, most times over some delicious food. We couldn't find a good turkey dinner here so our district went out for Vietnamese food which was a yummy substitute. I think the spirit of joy is often felt most easily when there's good food and good music shared among good friends/family. That's also what makes Church so cool because it often has all three!

This week was epic! We found two new people this week that both seemed really happy and interested in the Church! We had a good introductory lesson with one of them and another one came to a cool stake event! (More on that event later.) Our friend Jing has started bringing his daughter to church, so we hope the branch is a good environment for both of them! Jun said he would pray this week about a baptismal date which is huge ‘cause he's been so hesitant for so long! (Hopefully he actually follows through with that though and actually prays about it)

On Friday I got to do small exchanges with one of the APs!! (Assistants to the President.) I went with Elder White and he is by far one of the most fun missionaries I've met in the mission! He was super relatable as far as his taste in movies and music, but more than that he was really personable and a pretty disciplined hard worker. He put some true principles in a new perspective for me when he would say silly things like, “Satan is such a punk, isn't he?”  I learned a lot and had an absolute blast!

Last night we invited some new contacts to the Calgary Stake Extravaganza featuring some sing alongs, instrumental numbers, stake choir numbers, and some songs from the University of Calgary mixed and chamber choirs??? They were pretty good, low key though USU choirs are definitely better (and maybe even Ridgeline's choirs too 👀) but they might not have prepped a ton for this performance. Highlights include "Glow" by Eric Whitacre and a children's chorus of "Still, Still, Still" (but without any interrupting singers this time).

We're getting transfers this Friday! Some cool things I've learned looking back at this transfer include:
  • While circumstances may be difficult, our misery is largely our own choice. If we choose to do things that make us miserable, we will be; but if we choose to focus on things that bring us joy, we can find it.
  • Somewhat related to the point above, I actually do like cooking!
  • There is always something in common you can find with someone else, always.
Other than that there's not much to write home about. As I was philosophizing this week though, I thought a lot about prayer and got thinking about how Jesus gave us good examples of prayer, and then I thought, “Wait, did Jesus ever pray for divine help for himself?” And as far as I can tell he rarely did, so I wondered if we too should only pray for others since our “Father knoweth what things [we] have need of, before [we] ask him.” . . .after about a day of trying some mostly selfless prayers I stumbled upon other scriptures about how “God will give liberally to him that asketh” or how we also ought to “cry unto him over the crops of [our] fields, that [we] may prosper in them.” So even though we are trying to become more like Jesus and develop his selfless character, it's apparently still important to pray for our own wellbeing.

Welp, that's this week! Let me know if you had any fun Thanksgiving happenings, or not fun happenings either way. December's almost here! We can make it!
愛你們!

–熊長老


Photos:

Pho with the district
AKA Thanksgiving Dinner



Peace bridge + another good sunset view



Some almost failed alfredo



Subs with Elder White!


Some funny stuff I found on Family History

Related to Amenhotep?  How cool is that?

Nice photo of Adam!  Sadly, the memories tab is empty.

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Organized Chaos

November 20, 2023

大家好!Hey Everyone!

I just looked at my calendar and noticed that I’ve been a missionary for over 3 months! I completely missed the 1 month mark, and the 2 month mark, and I didn’t realize the 3 month mark had passed until this week. Wild.

Anywho, This week was pretty good and it seemed to go by faster than last week which was good. We’re gonna try going day by day again in this letter. Let’s check it out:

Last Monday we got a bunch of Denny’s gift cards from the German family we helped move, so most of our zone went to Denny’s (except the Zone leaders—they were feeling lazy so they didn’t leave the house at all on Monday). My Avacado Turkey club betrayed me very quickly, but I came out on top in the end. I also found my scarf that I lost at a different chapel! Miracles are real everyone!

Tuesday was a STACKED DAY! Buckle up everyone! The same “most of our zone” at Denny’s is the same most of our zone that also came to our DCM (our Mandarin district, two Ukranian Elders, and two English Sisters) followed by the usual caravan to Seniore’s for some epic pizza. While at Seniore’s I lost my missionary bag!! I set it down at the bar by the window, and then I didn’t carry it with me to talk to some other missionaries and when I looked over again it was just gone! The workers had no idea where it went. The most valuable thing was the just the bag itself, and I’m really lucky I didn’t put my 3 column Book of Mormon in there. I’m keeping my eye out for it next time I’m in there, but I also know all of the stuff in it really belongs to the Lord and he probably has better purposes for it than I do. We’ll see what happens. 
 
Anywho we returned to the church so that we could film a Chinese chapel tour video which should be dropping sometime soon-ish. After filming that forever, we set up a branch FHE activity with ping-pong, badminton, and pickleball. . .aaaand not many people showed up. still fun though. And THEN after we cleaned that up we got back to our Apartment to find out that our apartment door was locked. And we didn’t have a key. And the lady upstairs who would help us is in Honolulu for 10 days. And we don’t know her number. SO we called the handyman senior missionary who was so kind and drove to the mission office to pick up a copy that they luckily had. Meanwhile we crashed at the Ukranian Elder’s place close nearby, where the first thing we witnessed was Elder Hulldin cracking open a cold one in front of us—a Non-Alcoholic (0.0%) Corona “beer.” Boy, let me tell ya. . .that stuff’s not very good at all 😂 I think I’d be very difficult for me to become an alcoholic. All ended well though, we got our apartment unlocked and got to sleep in a familiar spot.
 
Nothing happened Wednesday…OTHER THAN I started trying out some violins I found on Facebook. That’s been a fun side-quest so I’ll let you know how that goes later on (I’m trying one today too.)
 
On Thursday we filmed some stuff in the Calgary Central Library. The downtown library is a really impressive architectural structure and it is also a really depressing collection of books. I was unsuccessful in finding any Shakespeare, I only found 1 title under Victor Hugo, and all the shelves were only three feet tall and 8 feet apart from each other. Not cool. Later, we got a few flyers out and a few conversations going at a train station in the evening which was nice.
 
We’ve been doing a mission-wide fast this month so different districts fast on different days. Friday was our district’s day to fast, and I got to enjoy some extra study time because of that. No instant miracles, but I’m glad I could participate.
 
We ate dinner at a member’s house on Saturday and they fed us some pretty good stuff—beef stew, rice, shrimp, Costco fruit salad. While we were eating though, they were prepping a different meal where they were using LIVE BLUE CRABS!!! That’s gotta be one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever seen, rinsing off palm-sized crabs and then putting them in a pot and hoping they don’t just crawl out. wild.
 
Sunday was our Branch Primary Program. One of our friends came to church for the second time with his daughter. . . and hopefully he wasn’t just completely lost, this one was really chaotic and wild lol.
 
We had got a new member of the branch who was baptized after church! It was a really cool experience and it's really fun to chat with other members and nonmembers attending. We unfortunately didn't see any of our friends at the baptism which is a bummer because one of them had some really good questions about it and seemed excited to see one in person.
 
We're gonna skip the Philosophy and wrap up quick this week, BUT I hope you all have a great week and a great Thanksgiving!! I'll see you all around next time.
愛你們!

-熊長老


Sorry, not a lot of photos. I'll do better next week

blue crab



funny baseball sign



me in shades






Sunday, November 19, 2023

The Hero Gothenburg Deserves

 [The title references Elder Hulldin's hometown, Gothenburg, Sweden.  Apparently everyone mistakes it for Batman's "Gotham".]

November 13, 2023

大家好!Hey Everyone!

Happy Veteran’s Day on Saturday! I hope y’all had a good weekend remembering those who’ve served to protect Free Country USA! In Canada, we celebrate Remembrance Day which seems to me like the more solemn and sad version, but everyone wears poppies as reference to Flanders Fields which is kinda cool.

This week was, in fact, another week. Crazy how that happens! This week definitely felt a lot more bland and uneventful, even though that wasn’t necessarily so.

This is usually the paragraph where I would say something about how our friends are doing. . . but our friends haven’t responded to any of our texts and calls and we didn’t see any of them at church on Sunday ;(  That’s not entirely true:  Stone came to church for 5 mins at the beginning of 2nd hour, and we also met another lady who lives nearby and came with him. We were back to our regular two Friday lessons this week, and they honestly went pretty well. Jun says he thinks it’s time to decide which church he wants to join. We’ve encouraged him to sincerely pray about it and keep reading the Book of Mormon with Brother W. We’re praying for him a lot! We read the intro of the Book of Mormon with our other friend Winson, so hopefully he understood that more and will open up a little more to the Book of Mormon. I easily forget how good the introduction is—definitely worth a re-read.

I had my first Zone Conference on Tuesday! It was a grand ol’ time. We had a cool section with a half hour of silence in the chapel as they played slides with scriptures about repentance (‘cause it’s never a bad idea to repent, I guess). They also had a slide show with recent baptisms, but no sound was working—so naturally I was called up to play piano during it like the good ol’ antique silent films. We ended with a  l o n g testimony meeting from departing missionaries, and It was cool to see how much people had matured in 2 years. In all the conversation commotion afterwards, I heard a missionary saying he wants to tell everyone in his last zone conference how the mission was so long and how much he hated it . . . which words were said right in front of the Mission President’s wife (oops!). I also went to Ikea for the first time after Zone Conference and tried some Swedish Meatballs (Courtesy of Elder Hulldin, Ukrainian speaking Elder from Sweden). Ikea's a pretty magical place . . . and it's also impossible to escape :P

The Ukrainian Elders Called us up on Thursday asking if we would help set up for a donations gig at the church. We set that up, and then sat around and talked for an hour, and then went for an expensive burger and shake at Peter’s (pretty famous in Calgary). My Trainer found a high-end batman mask at a shop around the corner, which was then followed, of course, by lots of tomfoolery driving all four of us around town and staring down other drivers (their worst nightmare). Not our most productive day, but good to get some wiggles out.

That’s right everyone. It’s time for some Philosophies of Men

Two more things I’ve been thinking about this week from Zone Conference.

  1. Repentance has a lot to do with offering. The law of Moses had a day of repentance which consisted of making offerings, or sacrifices, symbolic of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Christ is literally “offered himself as a sacrifice for sin” (2 Ne. 2:6-7) and he did that so we could repent. When we repent we offer up a “broken heart and a contrite spirit” (3 Ne. 9:20). We offer to do our best to change our thoughts and our feelings. Sometimes we may feel like we can’t change, or that we’re stuck; but Jesus is always offering to help us and make us whole. Lots of intertwined thoughts there. For more info see the Bible Dictionary entry on “Sacrifices

  2. Many people’s departing testimonies included phrases like, “I can hardly believe I’m here already” or “two years went by fast.” I got thinking a lot about relativity, and how that is often dependent on our attitude and our focus. Do you want days and weeks to go painfully slow? If so, then focus more about yourself and less about others; focus more on what’s difficult and frustrating; neglect the simple things like prayer and scripture study. Do you want days and weeks to go by fast? Focus on others and their needs; focus on blessings God has given you; consistently remember the simple things like prayer, scripture study, and small ways to serve others. As often quoted, our prophet says “the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.” I’m glad I can practice focusing my life on Christ, as well as helping others do the same.


That’s about all this week, besides the usual hanging up flyers in sketchy parking lots and tryna perfect my poached eggs for breakfast (not simultaneously, of course).

Hope things are going well with all of you. It’s always good to hear from you!

愛你們!

-熊長老

Fotos:

Bat-McAfee


 

My weekend makeshift salad


 

Good ol' view of Calgary



Elder REX???   

[Link: ten years ago, Evan's sister Noelle created cartoons as a way of involving 8-year-old Evan in his brother Brennan's mission experience.  The cartoons are posted in reverse chronological order on Brennan's blog; you can scroll to the bottom and click "Newer Posts" to see even more of Elder Evan and Elder Rex.]



Swedish Meatballs and DAIM CAKE (so good!)



Peter's