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