Elder Evan Baer: Canada Calgary Mission: "Is everybody gone? My cheeks are killing me."

October 9, 2023

你好家人和朋友！

How is everyone? Surviving? I hope so!

Big shout out to all of you nerds who were part of Utah All-State Choir! I still cherish my experience at All-State spending time with a ton of freaking cool people from my school and being part of such a great performance in the Tabernacle. The choir I'm part of now has some different members and the performance venue has some different songs, but I really think the overall message and feeling is remarkably similar.

Quick mini soapbox: Have you ever noticed how the pitch rises at the end of a live piece of music? I thought a lot this week about how similar that is to how smoke rises from the menorah or the tabernacle altars, or how our prayers rise to meet the ears of God. I'm always amazed with the connections between music, psalms, and prayers.

Y'all, we've been having WAAAAY too much fun lately. On Thursday we discovered beach volleyball in the field by Provo temple that the missionaries have access to, and it feels like we've been doing nonstop volleyball since then. We've been playing with a new Chinese district every day, so it's been fun to get to know the Mandarin and Cantonese districts even better. We've also been having too much fun harvesting snacks and other random garbage that the Elders on our floor leave behind. A pair of "drunk" goggles (the kind that mirrors everything upside down and also halves your peripheral) is a particular favorite among our district and friends.

Speaking of being left behind, I was actually talking about ME! Not really, but sort of. We've had a district of Elders going to Samoa on our floor for the last 6 weeks or so, and they just left this week. They really made the residence hall a great place and were really inspiring. I'm gonna miss our friends from Australia, New Zealand, and Green River (and Ridgeline's very own Elder Christiansen)! Safe Travels!

Speaking of traveling, you know when you're about to beat the boss on level 9 and conquer the game, but then the power goes out and none of your progress has been saved? Well that was Elder Logan's experience with the travel office as a bunch of his travel prerequisites were invalid and he had to pay a whopping $500 to get a physical at the Health Department near campus and resubmit a lot of other info including an ecclesiastical endorsement. This included a lot of talking to a lot of different front desks who kept saying "Thanks Mario, but the Princess is in another castle." Amidst all of this he's been temporarily reassigned to Richmond, Virginia, so New Zealand won't come for another transfer. He's such a winner though for his patience and unbreakable cheerful attitude. Our prayers are with him as he ventures into the unknown. We especially pray for his family back in Hawaii at this time.

The Strictly-Chinese Challenge has been slowly taking damage, but the effort is still there! . . . most of the time. If anything, my mouth has started to feel weird from constantly making Chinese mouth shapes.

Our Tuesday Devotional featured Sister Emily Belle Freedman who just spoke in conference. Quite impressive to give speeches back-to-back like that. She had a really cool insight on the word endurance - the prefix "en" often refers to something "within," and the root word "dura" refers to something firm, solid, & steadfast. So when we say we "Endure to the End," We're saying we stay firm, solid, & steadfast within for the rest of our time here on earth (and maybe even after?) She also, like many other devotional speakers, brought up how inspiring a worn out pair of missionary shoes can be and what that represents. Even more evidence that "the worth of soles is great in the sight of God"

Unfortunately, MTC Pasta has continued to disappoint. I don't think the staff knows that penne is in fact not the same thing as macaroni shells *cue Italian dope slap*

I finally found a nice violin!! Elder Hart and I were doing some music in a room we stumbled upon that happened to have a mural from the Washington D.C. Temple? Really strange find. Elder Hart also notified me on Tuesday that he had an audition spot reserved that he didn't know whether it was cancelled or not. We showed up on Thursday with a piece we pulled together the day before, and then they said we were playing for a Sunday Evening Devotional.

We had a really cool experience in a role-play teaching one of our teachers about the law of chastity. It's a really difficult topic to teach, not to mention teaching in Mandarin, but our efforts paid off and all of us as well as our teacher "investigator" could feel a very strong spirit among us.

I got a little mixed up in my travel plans earlier, but I'm LEAVING THE MTC ON THURSDAY! 4:00 AM BABY! As much as I diss on the meals, I am gonna miss it here. The missionaries, teachers, and leaders really make the MTC amazing. I've made so many good memories, from day one when Elder Groscost's belt buckle spontaneously dived into the toilet, to the infamous panoramas of other Elders. I've got good company leaving with me this week, Elder Gilbert and Elder Hopkins leave the same day as I do! (What is the MTC ever going to do without them?)