"Christmas Is Carnage"

 [Title references this line from Babe]

December 26, 2023

 

圣诞节快乐!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! AND HAPPY BOXING DAY!! 

The Christmastide season has begun! I just learned this today that Christmas Day is the first of the 12 holy days of Christmastide that continues through the new year until January 6th called “Epiphany,” celebrating the visit and gifts of the wise men from the Orient. (*side note that I think is cool* The magi visited the savior about 24 months after his birth, and the holiday to celebrate is observed about 12 days after the celebration of Christ’s birth.) All that goes to say, feel free to keep the Christmas spirit up for a little while!

Anywho, I sincerely hope all of you had a splendid week and a good Christmas day! It was a good week ramping up to a wonderful weekend for me!

Last Monday my companion reluctantly let us go to Long and McQuade, a music store a lot like Summerhays where I got a new violin case!!! Had a good member meal that night and then practiced a lot for Zone conference the next day, which consisted of some silly games and some good ham.

I had a really uplifting experience on Wednesday at a train stop near our house. We had a huge stack of Christmas pass-along cards that we thought we could start passing out. We ran out after 45 minutes, they were going like candy! Right before we were about to leave, this guy walks up to us and asks us a question on how our beliefs would describe the word “precision.” I didn’t know exactly what he was getting at, so I started making up some random stuff (that was definitely Spirit led) about how detailed and precise God’s creations are, to which he said, “I totally agree! It’s as if….” and continued to tell us cool patterns he found. This was a perfect moment to hand him the copy of the Book of Mormon that Elder Labrum decided to bring, and we told him honestly about how it’s the most correct, most “precise” book on the earth today. He seemed a little bewildered but pretty excited. I ended the day by making some DI-VINE tomato soup!

Friday consisted of basically nothing but random service. We helped one of the branch presidency members clean out junk from the houses of people he’s renting to, and we also sort of helped with a Ukrainian-English class grad party. We found another stack of pass-along cards and handed them out at a different station. This time we were met by quite a few people who looked like they weren’t enjoying life too much and who also made it verbally obvious how much they disliked the Church . . . good to know. Gotta love the mission experiences.

The 23rd (or “Christmas Adam” as I like to call it) was quite slow. Lots of fliers hung up, I made some cookies for the upstairs neighbor, and we snuck a nap in there somewhere. We did have a little lesson with our friend John about the restoration, which was actually our first in-person lesson in about a month. Very good lesson followed by a very good Live Nativity that we walked over to right afterwards. 

We did have a little miracle leading up to Christmas Eve. Our district texted every single person we could find in our “area book” app asking if they wanted to come to church, and the next morning we had TWENTY new people show up!! Really good sacrament meeting for sure. We were invited to a member's house afterwards for some games and more good ham.

Christmas Day was awesome! After shredding open some anticipated packages, a super cool member from Taiwan treated the district to a Dim-Sum restaurant with lots of strange-looking food that usually tasted pretty good! Another awesome Canadian member who served in Taiwan invited us to eat dinner with his family. That was really special to me, the atmosphere there had a truly warm Christmas spirit and it felt as if I was eating with family, friends, and neighbors from home.

Here’s some last little Christmas Cheer for you to enjoy brought to you by Elder Baer’s moments of staring into space. The Live Nativity depicted how Mary took the baby Jesus and “wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.” It reminded me of a favorite bible translation into Pidgin-Hawaiian which defines the manger as “inside one ting fo hold da cows food.” I thought about how being laid in a trough for cattle might be foreshadowing to moments later in Christ’s teaching regarding cattle when he says, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” When we consider ourselves in the place of cattle, we see that Christ offers edification and nourishment as well as a yoke that eases our load. By feasting on His word and “yoking” ourselves with Him (or making covenant ties), we are making our lives easier and happier. The manger also has some resemblance to a sacrament table, where again we are edified and offered a way to lasting change. Perhaps as we enter a new year and wonder what load we will need to carry, we can remember our Savior and his promise, “I will give you rest.”

Big thank you to all of you for the kindness and support you’ve given—through letters, gifts, and especially from just being yourself. You are all an inspiration to me, a “guiding star” that helps me better understand a characteristic of the Savior. Merry Christmas!

–熊长老

photos:

good night and morning views of Calgary

 

bluejays!?

 

big estate on the way to a member meal

 

Nativity

 

Dim Sum with the District

 

Christmas Dinner guests

"I love Democracy"

[Title references this Star Wars line.]

Or diplomacy, rather, since I've been making a call or two for the district to settle disagreements and cancel overbooked meals . . . yesterday was fun like that.

December 18, 2023

大家好！Hey Everyone!

 

Sorry it's been a minute since I've been able to write. Our P-day was changed to Wednesday this last week due to an exciting temple trip! Get some snacks ready for this one though.

Two weeks ago we took a little escapade downtown with the new guy in the district, Elder Scoresby (an absolute stud). We went to Calgary tower to see if we could hike up to the top. Unfortunately they said the stairs aren't open until March so hopefully we'll be march-ing up to the top then. The rest of the week was filled with good efforts met by great opposition. On Wednesday we were having good success contacting people at the University, but that was put to a halt when a security guard told us to leave. (We'll find a better way to explain what we're doing next time.)

December 7th brought us a lovely little gift. I failed to notice that our toilet was clogged and that my flush was unsuccessful, so after a half hour of daily planning we found that our “chamber pot” had been slowly overflowing and flooding the bathroom floor (yucko). The good news is our toilet is now unclogged, our floor is now dry, and only some of our towels have bleach stains after emptying half the jug on the restroom. Gotta love the mission experiences!

Now that you're all done dry heaving, you can hear about the rest of the week . . . mostly uneventful, but we did find a promising neighborhood that has some tracting potential—at least, a little more than most. The gas station signs at this place are in English and Chinese which I haven't seen besides downtown and hole-in-the-wall buffets.

Last Sunday the 10th we went caroling and handed out Christmas pass-along cards. It was a really good idea and a great opportunity to use my newly acquired fiddle to do some missionary work! It also would have been a little more enjoyable if we had sung more songs about Jesus. We'll definitely need to do a new-and-improved run next year. 

This last week I started off with a haircut from a lady who lives on the very edge of town and only speaks Chinese. A fun attempt at speaking the language for sure. Later in the week we continued talking to folks on the outskirts of the University. We've run into a familiar pattern of someone giving us their number to hear more and then proceed to not respond to any calls or texts. We are getting numbers though, which is a lot more than we did my first 7 weeks in the mission!

Wednesday was the long awaited day! We got to attend the Calgary temple with a lot of other missionaries as well as our mission president! The Calgary temple is really beautiful! I learned a lot and gained a lot of comfort. If something's not going well in your life, make some time to visit or walk around the temple. You all know this more than I do, but I can promise you'll feel greater peace and comfort.

My temple-trip high was immediately abased by a district McDonald's run. I did get to try a popular fake order, the “McGangBang” which still had the signature grease per dollar ratio, but it was admittedly the best thing I've had at a MickeyDee’s.

We had a branch Christmas party on Saturday that was really fun! We enjoyed a massive potluck and a staged nativity show from the Primary. We saw our friend Winson there, whom we've only ever seen over Zoom! We're glad that he came, because he's seemed less believing and more cynical in our lessons lately.

In addition to that we have a friend or two that we haven't seen ever since we taught them the Restoration which is a huge dagger. On the other hand, some elders passed off a friend to us, who is one of the most faithful and curious people I've met. Another friend has come to church twice as well as the Christmas party! A big surprise considering how he said he wouldn't be able to make it either Sunday.

And now… some good ol’ thoughts from Elder Baer:

One day in personal study, I prayed about what I should study and what came to mind was a silly inside joke from a good friend about getting “a job”. . . sooo I tried out reading a little from the Book of Job the past two weeks. It’s been hard to understand at first why I should read a book of ancient confusing poetry that mostly says “I wish I was never born,” but I've actually found SO many enlightening things from additional source material I wouldn't have found otherwise. Last year's Come, Follow Me guide has a wonderful introduction to Old Testament poetry that was a HUGE eye opener about parallelism (two different statements with the same meaning, i.e. “His eyes shall see his destruction, and he shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty”). It's now a little easier to understand Job, Isaiah and other Prophets. I've also made a few connections with Job and with other prophets like Joseph Smith, who uses the same type of Old Testament parallel structure as Job while in Liberty Jail when he writes “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?” The best moment so far came in the middle of many chapters of lamenting when Job still declares, “Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book…For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth…yet in my flesh shall I see God.”

We'll soon see it in this book and hopefully as well in our daily lives: our circumstances may be painful, but if we put faith in Jesus Christ he will deliver us. Always.

Hope your Christmas season is splendid! Stay warm!

爱你们！

-熊长老

Photos

bunch of food, goods and bad

new books in the neighborhood library

 

Elder Scoresby is sad he has to back his companion

 

 

a free treadmill we failed to acquire (biggest waste of 30 minutes lol)

 Elder Labrum

 

"Where did he come from, Where did he go?"

[Title references this song.]

December 4, 2023

 大家好！Hey Everyone!

December has Arrived! Which mean snow will also soon arrive . . . I think. The people here say this has been a surprisingly warm autumn so far—we’ve had snow twice (around Halloween) and it’s always melted within a couple days, so I believe it. Logan already has snow right? Weird.

There’s some big news this week! This one was quite a big one so hang on to your rears!

I bought a Violin! I’d been trying some out a week or two ago, and I got too impatient or impulsive or something cuz I decided to buy this ancient fiddle from a Facebook listing that seemed pretty cheap for the instrument quality! It’s not quite what I had at home, but I was pretty satisfied with it, so now it’s at our apartment :)) I’m still missing a bunch of specs like a shoulder rest, rosin, and a case that the bow can actually fit in (yikes), so hopefully I’ll get some of those today.

Transfers were this week. . . aaaand I got a NEW COMPANION!! My trainer Elder McAfee wasn’t too pleased with where he was going with transfers, which is always sad. (I don’t see a transfer outcome that he wouldn’t be sad about though, so hopefully it turns out to be good!) I’m staying in the same area, but I now have Elder Labrum as my comp! He’s a really hard worker and he’s only one transfer ahead of me so both of us speak 不好的中文 (really bad Chinese). We’ve had a couple lessons and English class meetings, and no one can understand us that well…so I’m predicting this is gonna be a really fun/funny transfer!!!

One of my new favorite moments of the mission happened this week when we were teaching a new friend for the second time. We already explained the Godhead to her last week, and we got talking about the restoration and Christ’s ministry. Elder Labrum was explaining how Christ was killed, and then three days later he was resurrected . . . and her eyes got really wide as if to say “He did what?? We will all do that???” It’s no wonder the truth of God is called “gospel” or “good news!”

We’ve also had another Korean Elder join us for a bit this week since his new companion has Covid.  :P  It’s been fun though because we’ve gotten to meet a lot of members he works with. For example, yesterday we had dinner at a member’s house up at the north end of Calgary, and they were absolutely LOADED but they were also super humble and sweet about everything. It was fun to get to know them.

Right after that, we and some older members in the area had the opportunity to watch the Christmas Devotional at a house of 5 Afghan immigrants who just got baptized on Saturday!! They were so polite, so hospitable, and so cheerful! It really added to the messages about Christmas joy.

Somewhat along with that, I found an interesting thought during personal study. Somehow in studying Preach My Gospel, I got lost and found myself in a church pamphlet all about Muslims and Latter-day Saints. I was yet again surprised at how much truth is shared between the two and how many beliefs are similar. Somehow I hadn’t really put into perspective how, just like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Islam also believes in a prophet who saw God and was led to a new book of scripture to clarify God’s word. Right after that I took a look in 2 Nephi 25 based on a comment from our branch mission leader (which was cool since I’ve also been thinking about tackling some Isaiah) and I found a very interesting and helpful point in verse 5: “and I know that the Jews do understand the things of the prophets (Isaiah, etc.), and there is none other people that understand the things which were spoken unto the Jews like unto them, save it be that they are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews.” Nephi seems to say the more we learn about other religions, the more we can understand the truths of this gospel. The more we learn about Judaism, the more we can understand Isaiah’s prophecies for our day. The more we learn about Islam, the more we can understand the Restoration, or perhaps the need for Jesus Christ as our Savior and Redeemer.

A story by Elder Baer. You’re welcome. Hope you guys have a wonderful week prepping for Christmas! Let me know how you’re doing!

愛你們！

–熊長老

photos:

New Fiddle!! (+ Elder Labrum taking a try)

Top Dog getaway driver

I think his name is missing a few consonants

[Related to Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz? A character in the Polish comedy film, "How I Unleashed WW2."  You may want to turn the captions on for this one!]

a good and healthy mission breakfast