Holy Week Batman!

 March 25, 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

Happy Holy Week!    

Yesterday was Palm Sunday! Did anyone do anything cool? Read any cool scriptures? Listen to any cool talks? Eat any good food?

Our Palm Sunday was really good! We had two new faces show up to a linger-longer, as you will see:

We met a man named Steve while expanding our tactics at the train stations. He didn't speak a lick of English, but he did come to church on Sunday! He had a ton of questions which I didn't understand, but luckily Elder Tang helped me out. We also taught a lesson to a new friend that the south Elders had met. Somehow, we were assigned to give her an English evaluation, and then we were able to teach her a lesson, and then we saw her at church!

The members were really awesome this week! We had several members talking with these new friends at church and giving rides to some as well! We also had a member volunteer to visit a part member family that hadn't been to church in a long time! The Branch is doing cool stuff!

Ernest said he has been sharing the Illustrated Book of Mormon Stories book with the neighbor kids in the house. He also said he experienced some opposition while doing so, as one of the girls kept interrupting him (I think the struggles children face are often very similar to the ones adults do—mortality is the same no matter what age you are). It’s still incredible how he’s sharing the gospel as a 10-year-old! 

I’ve been thinking about how “Palm Sunday” is a cool name for the day commemorating Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem. Perhaps it’s been said a lot before, but I think it references the cool connection between the palm leaves and the palms of His hands. Just as the palm leaves were placed to provide a way for Christ to enter the holy city of Jerusalem, the marks in His palms are a reminder of the way provided for us to enter the holy presence of God. Palms provide the way for progression.

The rest of this week is Holy Week! This is a wonderful opportunity to study the life of the Savior, especially the events leading up to His atonement, crucifixion, and resurrection. The Church has provided an Easter Study guide that you can look at as well! This week I’d invite y’all to study something in the scriptures about the life of Christ and then do something that He would do. (I’ve stumbled and fallen some on my “no criticism” goal, but I’m gonna retry this week! 6 days! no sweat!) As we keep our focus on Christ this week, we can find a little more joy and meaning even in the mundane routine.

Easter is in 6 days!! Have a fantastic week! Enjoy the surprises that God gives you!

Love you all! 爱你们！

–熊长老

Photos:

 

Welcome Spring :P

Gem from Personal Study

Seniores Donair Pizza with the gang Elders

Costco’s “Vladmir Poutine” as I now call it due to the war crimes it committed against my bowels. Definitely Canada's Greatest Prank so far

The Grind Don't Stop

 3/18/2024

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day yesterday!

Was I the only one who forgot? I feel really bad, I usually look forward to this one a lot. There’s some great music you can find for St. Patty's.

What a Crazy Week!


Quick update on our teaching pool:

    Fred’s baptism had to be moved again since we haven’t taught him the Word of Wisdom yet, so we gotta make sure he’s good to keep that for a couple weeks. He’s making great progress, though, and seems slightly more open and relaxed every time we meet with him!

    Roda brought a friend to church who’s renting in the same house. He’s been in Calgary for 1 week and he’s trying to find a job so he can stay as long as he can. He was very interested in our English class.

    Ernest is awesome, as always.


We had a lot of time at home on Tuesday. I almost burned the house down trying to make cookies. Didn’t know that the butter wrapper had metal on the inside. *gulp*

Wednesday was Zone Conference! Brought to you by the Mandarin District. We set up all the tables and chairs, we provided the musical number, and Elder Liu was playing piano for all the hymns. We had to leave early for some service to help the Orthodox Church move some pallets of food (the wooden kind, not the appetite kind) but they had done it all before we got there. (Fake News strikes again!) Regardless, this was perhaps one of the most thoroughly enjoyable days this month. We talked about baptism and the covenants and blessings associated with it, which was very simple and pretty easy to understand. Then there was a whole section on Companion Unity which was SOO good and exactly what I was looking for!

Then a cool miracle happened after Zone Conference! Our Mission President spoke earlier that day about how every effort is magnified by the Lord, no matter how great or how small. My companion said he wanted to go hang up fliers so we did that. I was feeling a little discouraged and was praying that our small efforts would be magnified. A few minutes later we got a call that the weekly in-person ESL [English class] needed Mandarin missionaries to come quickly, so we drove back down to the chapel. As we were walking across the parking lot we saw this guy walking our way, and we told him about our classes and asked him if he wanted to see what was going on inside the church. . . and he said YES! One of the Bishops got his number too!

We had an exchange with the zone leaders on Friday. I was with Elder Horseley who used to be in the Mandarin District! We were grinding some finding at the train stations. I also saw JingJian! He came to church a few times in November, and I was thinking about him a lot recently, and then he showed up to the T&T when we were handing out fliers! It was so cool to see him again!

Yesterday involved even more tracting. There was a cool moment, though, where a girl answered the door, and we didn’t know how old she was, so we just started saying the usual stuff. She wasn’t interested in church, but was really interested in the Book of Mormon, despite her dad telling us to go away from upstairs. Super cool.

Remember last week when I was talking about fasting from criticism? I had an epiphany on Tuesday that self-criticism can be, perhaps, just as poisonous. The devil’s ambitions are to make men and women miserable like he is. Criticism is an easy way to become miserable, whether by fostering anger toward others or by demolishing our own divine, inherent worth. So I'm continuing my fast these next few days, and I'm putting self-criticism on the altar as well. Feel free to join! If you can, find something you like about yourself every day this week and give God a quick thanks. When you start to see how valuable you are to your Father in Heaven, you will be able to help your peers see it too. Or in St. Patrick's Day terms: once you get the snakes out of your island, the grass will seem a lot greener. 

(yup. that's a grood anagoly :] )


I, unfortunately, didn't put many good scripture references in this time, but feel free to find some yourself! Y'all are awesome!

爱你们!

–熊长老 (Elder Baer)


Photos:

Elder Bigler and I last P-day “up the river”

 Sunrise

 Zone Conference

 Chinese Crepes that a member bought us! 非常好吃！

 Monkey see, Monkey do

Down By the Riverside

 [Title refers to this folk song.]

3/11/2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!


*Quick tangent time*

Not gonna lie everyone. . . looking back, this week was incredibly difficult; perhaps among the most difficult weeks I’ve had (with the exception of finals week, of course :P). Study and experience remind me, though, that these periods are crucial for our joy and well being. This is when we grow the most. This is when we do the uncomfortable in order to experience greater comfort.
. . .mmmokaythanksthatsalltheendamen.

I hope everyone else had a fantastic week, though! The weather's been super warm in Calgary which has been cool. We're getting a ton more sunshine now which is super nice! Or, at least, we were. (Confound you, Daylight Savings!)

Experiences from this week:

Fred finally returned our call on Sunday! We hadn’t had a lot of response from him this week, but he answered yesterday, and we’ve got an opportunity to teach him this week. I’ve stumbled a little bit in my worry for him, but my companion has helped me remember to have hope and faith.

We got lectured by two different people this week! Both happened shortly after we gave them a copy of the Book of Mormon, and both responses were that Elder Bigler and I need to read the Quran. I honestly think it would be a cool experiment to read and pray about it’s truthfulness, just like I do with the Book of Mormon, and see what answer comes to heart. One guy told us, though, that the English translation doesn’t do justice to the original Arabic, which makes me really grateful that the Lord has allowed the record of the Ancient Americas for “all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people” to receive revelation.”

Cool Tender Mercy! A great song came to mind several times that I’ve been whistling and singing during rough moments. American Spiritual “Down by the Riverside” has a surprisingly uplifting tune and some simple yet profound lyrics, implying themes of baptism and the Atonement of Jesus Christ. (The Spirit was so nice as to remind me of that!)

Easter is in 20 days! Surprise! On a related note to the point above, I’ve made a new challenge for myself, now that we’re halfway through Lent (aka prep-season). My challenge is to go these next 20 days without saying a word of criticism. No pointing out flaws. No “talking smack” about anyone. Our prophet, President Nelson, said this perfectly, “‘If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy’ that we can say about another person—whether to his face or behind her back—that should be our standard of communication.” Looking back over this email, I can see there’s already a long ways to go (apologies, Daylight Savings), and there’s gonna be some mistakes, but it is possible! I extend the same invitation to all of you beloved fellow friends, to join me these next 20 days in “fasting” from words of criticism and laying them down by the riverside. The great promises of peace and good cheer will be fulfilled as we do this.

Stay awesome!

爱你们!

–熊长老


Photos:

Post DCM study group???

Chinook arch? Or just March I dunno.

"Youuu got to gooo dig those holes"

[Title refers to this song from the movie Holes.]

3/4/2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

It’s March Already! Crazy how that happens!

Remember that time that I was mocking the snow in Logan? I spoke too soon. The weather was about -15 Celsius and somehow still managed about 7 inches of snow! On Saturday afternoon we had planned to hand out some fliers, however we could see that that wasn’t going to happen with the storm we were experiencing. (I wish I had a picture of a phantom car or two we saw on the side of the road. . . scary.) Instead, we decided to drive around a neighborhood and see who was shoveling and then hop out and help them. Boy, was it a lot of shoveling! (I had the holes soundtrack playing in my head the whole time. . . odd.) That then gave us an opportunity to place two Chinese copies of the Book of Mormon!

We had some member meals this week!! (miracles do happen) I tried Hot Pot for the first time! A retired couple in the branch made a bunch of stuff for us to try Hot Pot, and it seemed pretty cool. It’s a lot like pho that you make for yourself at the dinner table. We had a meal that was about a half hour north of us in Airdrie, but it was surprisingly nice to get out of Calgary. I never knew I would miss empty fields of cows and hay that much.

This is usually the part where I would write some inspiring scripture message or some cool invitation that’s helped me be happier. . .Today it’s more of a rant on an earlier idea. Remember when I was talking about action/inaction a few months ago? Well I’m pretty darn sure now action is always better than inaction. Inaction most often seems to give up our agency, our God-given right to choose. The thing I think causes inaction the most is worry and fear. The devil is the greatest proponent of fear, and God is most often inviting us to combat “What if” with frequent direction to “Fear Not.” The phrase  “take no thought” from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount has been on my mind lately in relation to worrying or anxiety as we would call it now. I’ve always had the tendency to worry, perhaps thinking that more concern would prevent bad circumstances from happening. But that rarely actually helps. What does help is having confidence -- having faith (an attribute that implies action). As Christ said, we “cannot add one cubit” to our situation by “taking thought” or worrying about something, the only thing worry does is make us unhappy. I’m hoping to internalize this a little more and take more steps to develop faith instead of anxiety. I’d invite y’all next time you’re in a “But what if…” situation, say a little prayer to gain some confidence and faith to say, “No worries, It’ll be okay.”

A Story by Elder Baer. You’re Welcome. Stay cool everyone! Enjoy some 27 Days ‘till Easter!

爱你们!

–熊长老


Photos:

Dinner up north 

Blurry photographic evidence of the white witch continuing her magic

Last week's finalists on Survivor  [referring to the branch hike to Nose Park Hill - see last week's post]

🎶We've Got to Make it Through the Winter🎶

[Title references the song from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.]

February 26, 2024

The winter up here has been really warm actually, There’s a lot less snow than I hear there is in Logan (count your blessings :P )

大家好！Hey Everyone!

Yet another 168 hours in Canada gone by, in which I learned that I am going to be training Elder Bigler another 6 weeks. He’s pretty lucky he gets to tolerate me for another few weeks :P 

Some wild stuff happened this week though:

Our friend Fred got a job interview! …He hasn’t heard back yet, but we’re hoping for some good news.

We had a couple people check out the Church! Responses varied, ranging from “Where can I get some scriptures to read” to “I need to pick up my…uh…I gotta go” It’s amazing how the influence of the spirit is different for everyone. lol

We had some exciting dinners this week. We drove 2,000 leagues south to the Branch Mission Leader’s house where a different member was invited over to cook. I then got grilled by the cook about my Chinese, my confidence, and… how young I am??? weird.

Our branch planned a hike at Nose Hill Park (you heard me right) on Saturday morning. We started off with about 25 people. 30 minutes later we had 6 branch members and 3 missionaries who were still hiking. It was worth it though and made for a great excuse to get hot chocolate from “Timothy's.”

Thursday was really eventful (as you shall soon see). Thursday evening we pulled into the church and saw two trucks with guys organizing stuff. We asked if we could help and they instead gave us a bunch of food to take home. Cool blessings I suppose!

–Everyone buckle up. It's about to get Ca-razy up in here–

We got an emergency call on Thursday to make a visit to the children’s hospital and give a blessing. The situation was really frightening—a fourteen year old girl had OD’d in an attempted suicide and was still in limbo between life and death. Elder Bigler and I gave her a blessing (This was his first time saying one in the mission!), as well as her step mom who was looking after her and relayed to us a lot of crazy history about family trauma related to parental drug use.
…
On Saturday we received notice that she was awake!!! We were told she still had some off-perceptions of reality, but she was able to eat and drink. I was impacted by two really important truths from this:

• Never EVER do anything to give up the great gift of life that your loving Father in Heaven has given you. The “slings and arrows” of life can be excruciating, but God has promised incredible blessings as we Endure to the End (D&C 63:20)
• The authority of the priesthood has real power to enable the will of God to take place on Earth. This power, when truly experienced, is substantial proof that Christ's original church has been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith – no other church can claim this same authority. What a great gift that God has given to bless his sons and daughters.

That's it, thanks for flying “Baer Canada” Hope to have you aboard again soon!
爱你们!

–熊长老


Photos:

Yesterday's dinner (Anime filter included)

Carrots

 

Us finishing street contacting at the UofC

 

Ginormous "Buffalo" chip

 

food from Thursday