Elder Evan Baer: Canada Calgary Mission: 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”