Elder Evan Baer: Canada Calgary Mission: Terrible, yes . . . but Great!

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August 21, 2023

Hey! What's cookin' everyone? Have y'all been getting as much cloud cover as I have?

Miraculously, I have in fact "endured to the end" of Home MTC! That's right everyone! I have in fact made it an ENTIRE TWO WEEKS into my mission! That's a W in my book.

The MTC is like the coolest, most psychotic boarding school ever. I don't know how best to describe the MTC other than a pros & cons list as follows:

Pros

The missionaries!! I undoubtedly have the coolest district on campus right now. Elder Sheffield is my companion from Southern California who talks to a lot of people and can solve a Rubik's cube in 12 seconds. He reminds me of a lot of friends from home by the way he names things like the "goofy chairs" the "silly little notebooks" and best yet, android's "funny airdrop." Elder Hart plays cello and he gives you the most "goofy stare" when you're trying to teach him as if he were an investigator. His companion, Elder Logan from Hawai'i, takes at least 3 showers a day and eats an average of 3 plates of food per meal. He's a half inch shorter than I am and absolutely shredded. Elder Groscost can be seen a mile away cause he's huge, and he can be heard a mile away with his iconic laugh which is something like a huge wheeze and then "HEE-HEE-HEE" in pure falsetto. You can also hear him growl out "Fēicháng Bù hǎo" [translation: very extremely not good] with a thumbs down at any time he can -- most often at my terrible puns. Speaking of terrible puns, this brings me to Elder Biggs, our district leader who speaks the exact same "slang" language ["slanguage"] I do and he has officially dubbed me as the funniest man he has ever met (The guy needs to get out more, if that's really true). We can't take anything seriously if we're within 5 feet of each other, it's chaos.
The devotionals are absolutely fire!! We had a killer Devo yesterday that started with hymn 98 I need Thee Every Hour played by a guy who was ROCKING IT on the organ. He has to have been a convert from the baptist church, I'm sure. Then we talked about the difference between testimony and conversion and watched clips from Jeffery R. Holland's talk Lovest Thou Me More Than These? Y'all already know the Elder delivers the power of words like no one else.
The chocolate milk is still king, even though it really does one on your stomach if you drink too much of it. It makes for a great lesson in the law of diminishing returns--but still not as much as Kraft mac n' cheese will.

Cons

The missionaries *insert the Captain Picard facepalm.* I walked in on Wednesday to find that my companion and I were not in the same room as the other four in our district (the room with two empty beds anyway), but in a room full of monkeys, half of them were wearing nothing but their bare undergarments and some others only got half that far (the bottom half, thank goodness). There's the occasional phrase that I would think would stay in the bathroom, but it tends to follow into the dorm rooms. The kind of stuff we hear about that's happened at the MTC is Un. Real. Fistfights, smuggling, sneaking out at night, the unfathomable and more. Elder Logan started one arm wrestle with the district, and within 3 minutes the entire 2nd floor was in the halls lined up for arm wrestles, pioneer leg wrestles, and pull-up competitions. . . . The good news is we now got the OK to move into the same room as our district.
The Cafeteria food. Guys. It's not good. Joke's on me for requesting homemade lasagna and P.F. Chang's as my last meal. R.I.P. my food palate these next 8 weeks :P
Our district goes to the fitness room every day to work out, and I have NO idea what to do in the gym. That's really out of my territory guys, I dunno what to do in there other than laugh at the circle of guys hunkered down doing one-handed bicep curls. We're getting it little by little though, the bike machines are pretty familiar.

We got to go to the temple today and perform baptisms for the dead. We bumped into the Cantonese district that was in our meetings online as well, they're so cool. The Provo temple has some colors that I've seen a lot in other temple rooms (white, green, and gold). I thought that the use of those color patterns was really interesting.

The other best thing outside of the pro-con list is the Enlightenment of the Holy Ghost during study times (He's a little harder to find in the residence halls though, to be clear). Yesterday we had 2 straight hours to study, and I wrote a whole bunch of stuff down that was really helpful. I won't relay all of my writing, but if you can, you've GOT to read the page about Atonement in the Bible Dictionary and in the Gospel Topics and Questions section of Gospel Library. REEEEALLY good stuff there. Reading has helped me immensely to gain a testimony of Jesus Christ, but has also just helped me gain a better perspective of life in general. Consistent prayer and scripture reading are awesome, by far the best way to get direction and make decisions

God be with you,

--Elder Baer

PHOTOS!

Provo MTC