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.

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

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

Water You Wating For?

[Does the title reference this?]

November 6, 2023

大家好！今天的戰鬥進行得怎麼樣？

Hey Everyone! How was the week? Did you get to do any fun family stuff? I luckily found some time to do some indexing this week, and I tried out some family recipes as well.

Side note: It’s amazing what a day of 10½ hours of sleep (set my alarm wrong) followed by Daylight Savings can do! I feel unusually energetic right now! (as evidenced by this email's silly formatting)

Alright, on to the good stuff. . . starting with a quick update on some friends here, of course:

Yesterday was a H*CKIN’ good day! Our friend Jing made it to church yesterday, so I got to sit by him and attempt to explain what sacrament was and also pretend like I knew what he was saying (oh, what fun). I don’t know if you remember the other guy from last week who came to church before we taught him (his name’s Stone). He came again this week with his son! AND he’s been telling some other friends of his in our area about church!!! What a legend!! We thought we’d see another couple people at church from other lessons, but alas, it was not to be. Hopefully we can meet with them again next week.

Jun was (as he always is) open to everything we were teaching and reading about this week, and he now accepted an invitation to a member participating in our lesson to meet together and read twice a week from the Book of Mormon! We hope he enjoys that!

In talking with Winson this week he said he doesn’t understand scripture that well, and he just feels weird when he reads it. We may just switch over to reading some scriptures with him during our lessons if nothing else works better.

This last P-day and this Thursday we helped unload moving trailers for the old German lady, her husband, and her family. They were using some trailers from a new neighbor. I got to see some really funny stuff with this experience, like how grumpy the missionaries were about working on P-Day, and how close the husband was to punching his neighbor who just kept flaming him with sassy comments.  (Moral of the story: don’t insult the German-speaking Scandinavian head of the household. . . not a great plan.) I think they’re having us over for dinner at their house this week as well, so that should be fun.

We couldn’t do much proselytizing on Halloween (go figure), but we did have a good meal at a branch member’s house. I got my fair share of spooky when I tried to figure out how to eat some whole crawfish on the table in front of me. I luckily figured it out and didn’t have to go Mr. Bean style. I never got around to the crab legs though. . . (spooky)

I got to try my first time tracting on Wednesday! Aaaand we found a total of 1 Chinese person who spoke fluent English and said he already knew Jesus and wasn’t interested. We did find two places that definitely have Chinese speakers, but they weren’t home/didn’t answer. We’ll see what happens with that.

On Thursday I hopped out of the shower and saw that the shower basin was all flooded and the drain was clogged. Pretty cool. It’s always good to turn back time to the stone age and live with no showers and no bathroom sink for 24 hours. . . .

Luckily we were introduced to civilization again when the mission handyman, Brother Brimhall, came with some equipment and unclogged our shower so we could see ALL the SIN that had been washed down there. (Who knew, my Scottish Spring does work.)

I’ve decided that my emails every week are not long and boring enough, so in order to make them more long and boring I think I’m gonna add a lil’ Philosophy Corner to make them longer and more boring for you :)) (feel free to skip to the pics at any time)

Philosophy Corner - (Name subject to change)

Here are two things I’ve been thinking about WAAY too much this week:

1. Action or Inaction? - What is the greater risk to run? : doing something with the possibility of better consequences but the risk of poor consequences and making a situation worse; or not doing something and thus avoiding the possibility of your actions making things worse, but also risking the possibility of missed opportunities for the better? I’m still tryna figure this one out, so I’m gonna try a bunch of things in the next couple weeks and let you know how it goes. You let me know any thoughts you have on your end as well.

2. On a much LIGHTER note, yesterday was fast Sunday! (I suppose I do feel lighter when fasting.) Have you ever considered how much of a paradox fasting is? We say “It's fast Sunday” but the day always seems to go so slow. There’s also the paradox that when we fast, we wait and refrain from filling ourselves with life-sustaining food and water, yet instead we are filled with gratitude, with faith, and with the Spirit—we are filled with things that are eternal-life-sustaining. See John 4:13-14 for reference.

Alright, that’s enough School of Athens for one day. Keep with it everyone!

愛你們！

-熊長老

fotos:

fun family foods

Honey-Dijon Ham & Swiss Chicken

 

Eggs Benedict

 

my Halloween candy I bought for myself

sin incarnate

That's not a sunset. That's at noon.

funny sign and cool car while hanging up fliers

black widow or imposter???

 

Dracula Just Wants Your Maple Syrup

 October 30, 2023

你們萬聖節快樂！

Happy Hallowe’en Everyone!

 

Anyone got any fun plans? You don’t have to go trick-or-treat in the snow do you? Lucky. We got a bunch of snow at the beginning of the week. (It made for some good sledding last P-day )

We’re just starting to see the fruits of our labors this week! We’ve got a lot more requests to join English class this week! 

We had two introductory lessons this week with Mark and Jing. Both of them seemed interested in coming to church. Jing was especially interested in learning about prayer. 

We had an English evaluation last night with a guy from Guangdong who had really good English already. At the end we tried to transition to talking about the gospel as usual by saying “You may be wondering why we teach a free English class…” And the guy straight up was like “Yeah, you’re missionaries right? Yeah, I’m curious about you guys and your church.” . . .He seems pretty with it, and hopefully this week’s lesson with him goes well. 

A new friend in our area came to church yesterday with his son, which was really impressive since we haven’t even met with him or taught him anything yet! 

We made a bold move by teaching our friend Jun about the Word of Wisdom, and much to our surprise he was very willing to start living by that standard! He often made comments along the lines of “If God says we shouldn’t drink this, then I won’t drink it anymore.” We’re really proud of him and where his life is going!

Our other friend Winson has a little different story -- we read some scriptures about faith with him and he kept telling us he doesn’t think it’s possible to prove the scriptures are true. It’s a little frustrating right after reading a scripture that basically says, “This is how to test the truth,” and then seeing how he’s not that interested in trying. We’re praying for him, and we hope he’ll take a look at the scriptures (at least the ones we text to him).

I went on my FIRST EXCHANGE on Tuesday/Wednesday with Elder Labrum! I learned a lot from this exchange, like how you actually sleep at another Elder’s place, and how I was supposed to bring some of my food with me as well (oops). It’s alright though since Elder Labrum’s companion kindly let me make some toast with his Nutella without me even having to ask him! (What a pal!) Elder Labrum also taught me a lot about routine, comp study, and ways to do mission work. He’s a hard worker and pretty energetic, so it made for a really fun exchange!

Thursday brought me a little tender mercy as we were making phone calls to random people. My companion has been doing most of the phone calls since he’s got some experience with it. But on Thursday I did my first one, and I called a college student who said she was studying marketing and was interested in learning more with us! WOOT! . . . She proceeded to cancel our zoom meeting on Sunday ‘cause she was at a friend’s house, but that’s still a Big W in my book.

Saturday was HIKE DAY! The branch goes on a hike once every month, so this month we did an 8k hike to a frozen waterfall which was really cool! The hike there was SO quiet–you sometimes forget what true silence is until you’re in the mountains in winter. 

We also had a fun time waiting in the car for the family who’s carpooling us to come back (8 km is hard with smaller kids). We also had a baptism right afterward which I may or may not have been late to. . . and may or may not have still been in my boots and hoodie :)) I made it just in time to play the opening hymn though, so I’m sure it’s fine.

Other silly things from this week:

• Wendy’s in Canada ain’t got the $5 Biggie Bag, but they do got Poutine! It’s surprisingly not that bad!
• We attempted to teach English to some immigrants from Rwanda. . . Only one person spoke English, and the rest hardly understood anything since they’d only been here for about 4 days. It was a fun challenge!
• Our neighbor upstairs brought us some cheesecake as a thanks for shoveling the sidewalks! (What a saint!) It does a dirty one on your stomach but it’s so worth it.

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT for the day:

Soooo, maybe you’ve guessed from some previous emails that I’m growing to like holidays a lot–especially obscure holidays. These next 3-4 days are STACKED with celebrations from all around the globe—Hallowe’en (aka Samhain), All Saint’s Day, All Soul’s Day, Day of the Dead, etc. But whether they’re Christian holy days or pagan rituals, they all have one thing in common. ALL of these festivals come from a multi-cultural belief that the veil between the living and the dead is thinner at this time of year, that the saints and family ancestors who have passed are closer to us. My invitation to you this week as you prepare to celebrate is to learn just a little more about the history of one of these holidays if you can, and then think about what you can do to gain a closer relationship with your family–those in the spirit world or those in this world.

Happy Holidays Everyone! 愛你們！

–熊長老

 

Photos:

 

Exchange at Timmy's

with Elder Labrum

 

The Dark Knight Returns

 

A baunch of pics from the hike

 

Blood Moon Rises *Checks for re-spawned Monsters*