Elder Evan Baer: Canada Calgary Mission: Coldture Shock

October 16, 2023

Well folks, I MADE IT TO CALGARY!!! Boy what a week it’s been. I think I’m gonna have to break it down day by day. *gulp* Buckle up everyone, this is gonna be a Dickens-length email, so here goes!

Monday was wild. We finally got a good time to do our laundry! We were in and out within the hour! We most definitely got volleyball in as well (unfortunately I was not smart enough to take any pictures). We were assigned to help out with dinner that evening. My job wasn’t too bad though - Elder Logan and I got to dish out rolls like crazy. Then came…the CLASS PARTY (woot) which was combined with the Cantonese District!! It was really fun to hear their testimonies and also see how much everyone hates post-Kahoot wall-sits (true story).

[Evan's explanation: anyone who wasn't in the top 3 after a round of a quiz game using the Kahoot app, went to do wall sits.]

Tuesday morning gave us a workshop about leaving the MTC. They put on a surprisingly funny play for us about entering the mission field. I got a solid “novice” score on the Mandarin Evaluation aka the “How well can you play Telephone in Chinese?” test. I got an entire 1 bag packed before our devotional (dubs).

Our devotional speaker was none other than ELDER GERRIT W. GONG!!! Some things I learned include:

--Elder Gong really likes dad jokes (a man of my heart)

--In the perfectionist world we live in, we’ll be much happier if we focus on being perfected in Christ, not in the world’s eyes

--Christ was the only one capable of laying down his life and regaining it with a resurrected body (Somehow I had never considered that we can’t resurrect ourselves after we die. I start to wonder now if Christ’s grace and saving power extends beyond this stage of mortal life).

--Jesus Christ makes Happy and Forever possible! Happy is too short if our most cherished relationships end after this life, and Forever is far too long if our pains and miseries continue after this life.

Wednesday graciously treated me with some nice food from the MTC cafeteria. Breakfast was French toast, lunch was beef French dip sandwiches, and dinner was not French but it did have some good chicken and gravy though. This was the second day in a row our morning class was cut short because of departure meetings (R.I.P. Brother Birch’s class, we will always remember the good times we had learning Chinese, playing 二十問題, and doing pushups). The meeting today was kind of a recap of our arrival meeting, but this time they showed a clip of an Elder Holland devotional where he very passionately preaches about how the mission changed his life. Classic, and still cool. I packed yet another whole 1 bag this afternoon and had one last tutoring with Elder Green, our blind service missionary friend from Wuhan. He’s so cool!

Our last class was very bittersweet. I’ll just say there were a lot of little miracles that came out of that class.

I said goodbye to some cool people after class (some I never expected to meet) and commenced the finishing packing…after a little trim and some mild tomfoolery with our good friends going to Hong Kong.

On Thursday I finally finished packing…at 1 AM *tugs shirt collar* which gave me a solid 2½ hours of sleep (woot). I pulled up to our class building to check out around 4 AM, and gave everyone a last little bear hug. I honestly lucked out so hard with this MTC district, and I dunno what I’m gonna do without them. They’ve built me up so much, I’m so indebted to them.

. . .Luckily Elder Logan had the same MTC departure plan as I did, so we had a lot of fun missing the bus together and working our way through the airport (stay cool bro).

The Airport brought me to a remembrance of just how divine food is outside the MTC. Even more of a tender mercy, however, is the fact I got to see Doctor Ellis and his family!! It’s always nice to see some friendly faces at an airport (even dentists).

Our “Take Off” was successful (heh) and two hours later I found myself flying lower over Calgary, which was just as rainy and cloudy as Salt Lake. My prior reading in the Book of Ether about the land of desolation didn’t help any upon arriving among grey skies, dried up grass, and mostly fallen leaves. I was fortunate that Canada’s one border patrol guard let me through to meet up with the other missionaries–who then proceeded to speed through downtown Calgary to meet the mission president. I learned a new equation during that ride:

1 meal + 2 hour flight + back of a crowded SUV = 1 nauseous Elder Baer

This equation was solved with some time in a nice chair and a Subway sandwich, but was promptly unsolved by getting in yet another car peeling out onto freeway exits.

And this is when the real mission begins.

An elder from Park City took me downtown to a homeless shelter, where one of the tenants had recently passed away. Her friend who is a church member and a first nations citizen (has older history on an Indian Reservation) invited missionaries to say a prayer with some candles in preparation for a funeral. This was a real eye opener to the poverty in Calgary and a great first experience for the mission. I had another really authentic mission experience right afterward falling asleep in a stake meeting. We met up at the mission home that night for some taco salad, a questionnaire, and a chance for me to accompany everyone singing “O Canada” (which, to my surprise, does not even mention maple syrup). We hit it big at a Super 8 motel, which brought me to a remembrance of just how divine a pillow and mattress is outside the MTC.

*deep inhale*

On Friday we went back to another church where the mission president finished some interviews he started the night before. I met my trainer Elder McAfee, who’s been in the mission a little over a year now. This is his first time training a missionary and he also just got some privileges back this transfer…so this’ll be a good fresh start for us both.

We had two lessons where I got to meet our friends Jun and Winston. Jun is really cheerful, speaks really good English, and really likes our church. He’s very hesitant to be baptized because he wants to learn more, but it seems like there’s not a lot more we can teach him? I only saw Winston on Zoom and he's pretty busy with college studies, but otherwise doing well. We got my credit card working and bought some meager vittles for the weekend. We ended the day by going to the church to get our [posteriors] whooped in basketball by a bunch of middle-aged Chinese people. (They were cooking at the 3-point line, holy cow!)

On Saturday we set up some chairs and vacuumed in prep for stake conference. Saturday was a little slower–ate some lunch, did some language study, made some weekly goals. We had the brilliant idea to head up to campus to talk to people…but there was no classes happening so no one was there. no one. UCalgary was 100% post-apocalyptic on Saturday. We did see some other people though. This nice Chinese lady talked to us on the phone for 30 minutes when we were making random calls, so that was kinda cool.

Yesterday (Sunday) was nice. I got up early for a nice, quiet study. Stake conference was pretty good–and Jun showed up! That was such a delightful surprise and he looked so happy to be there. At least, at the post-conference luncheon he was pretty happy. We spent two hours outside trying to help a family change all four of their tires, but we ended up standing around not knowing how to help, because a) my companion and I speak about the same level of “novice” Chinese, so we didn’t know what they were saying most of the time, and b) they had two screws break off and get wedged in the same tire bolt, and we couldn’t think of who to call that could help. The family eventually just sent us home–kind of humiliating.

We hung up some fliers for English classes that we teach 3x a week. That seems to be our best resource of finding people interested in Church, since a lot of people who are trying to learn English have very difficult personal/family lives as well. We wish the best for those friends.

Okaaaaay… Welp, after that good novel and a half, I'm sure you're all tired of the sound of my text, so I'll let you get back to it. I hope all of you have a fantastic week! I’d love to hear what’s happening down south in the tropics! Also if any of you in Utah spot Elder Sheffield give him a warm hello for me! He’s the GOAT.

爱你们！下周见!

–Elder Baer

Photos:

Last class pics

Last class with Brother Birch