Elder Evan Baer: Canada Calgary Mission: 🎶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)