"Riddle Me This. . . What Just Happened?"

[Title references Batman's The Riddler.  We prefer the 1966 version.]

23 September 2024

That is exactly what I said on Monday after a surprise call from president, where he said my mission [should I choose to accept it]. . . .  He told me I'm going to be DL [District Leader] in an undisclosed location for an unknown amount of time…and then said that the phone recording would self-destruct in 30 seconds…jk   The next day was largely uneventful and mostly consisted of me definitely not stressing about where and who I was going to go with. It’s kind of weird experiencing for the first time what most missionaries experience every six weeks. They’re also mashing my Calgary west area with the north east area into one, so this is kind of the second time that they’ve “whitewashed” the area after I’ve been there. (Now we know what we always knew, as stated in the ancient psalm, “I’m the problem, it’s me.”) I then found out that I was being booted out to Cardston, Alberta, where I would cover three wards and the Blood Reserve of the Blackfoot nation. [Editor's note: it appears to be the Kainai Nation.]

Wednesday was a wonderful mix of pure chaos and also living the principle “Endure to the End” (R.I.P. my dear Mandarin West area, I really tried, I promise). Elder Wilson took us out to Peter’s since this might be the last time I see him ever…. before I inevitably bump into him at BYU lol. We had a great dinner with Natalie's family, all of whom we’ve been teaching, as well as their octogenarian friend from Lorraine, who introduced them to the church. Right as we were wrapping up our spiritual thought, Natalie burst into tears and told us all about how scary and lonely it was to move into Canada, and Antoinette was making helpful comments such as, “You need to have more faith! You can’t go back!” So we delicately tried to share a helpful scripture and pray and then leave to go visit our dear member friend Lucia, who is moving to Colombia due to an order from her work. I’ll miss her a lot.

Thursday involved a lot of running around frantically, shoving stuff in the car, and making our apartment ““spotless”” (R.I.P. my dear Mandarin West Apartment, I really…didn’t actually try that hard). Before I knew it, I was in a truck for two hours driving through the wilderness to Lethbridge, where I met my companion Elder Kim, who was also booted out of the Korean branch three weeks earlier. I later found out that he and one other missionary were assigned to Cardston three weeks before, and that we were all brand new, because that whole part of the Mission basically got nuked by Pres, due to some ““Medical issues”” 😏three weeks prior.

So long story short, Thursday afternoon was when I entered….The Village. (if ya know, ya know.)

The apartment we live in is an old pioneer home that’s all one floor and right next to the temple. Super nice. We have a truck that’s reliable to get us to any appointment we have, which is usually 30 minutes away on a gravel road. For example, we went out to the Blood Reserve on Friday to stop by a new friend, Cody, who requested to meet with missionaries. He lives in a cool looking shack and has a long history with missionaries before. We were there again after our 5 hours of church to drop off some food for the guy. This is a super intriguing community, and the dynamic is really strange, but the countryside views are STUNNING! I’m loving it so far, and I haven’t even been shanked yet, so things are looking up.

I know the prophet was just talking about this recently, but if there’s anyone near you who seems really different or unfamiliar, I’d invite y’all to pray about a way to reach out to them. I’ve been really touched by the care in the community here, and how they put aside differences.

I'll try to add some more details next week, but until then, have a flantastic week!

熊长老 Elder Baer

照片：
https://photos.app.goo.gl/yBaTy1Mc3BcoogrG6

CALGARY:

Elder Wilson and Peter's

Natalie and Antoinette

 

CARDSTON:

Random pictures of Cardston area [zoom in to see the temple]

[Cardston Alberta Temple]

[Lethbridge Bridge - railway trestle over Oldman River]

[Cardston environs]

[fields outside Cardston, and view of Waterton Lakes National Park of Canada]

[more fields, more view]

Views from/of the house

[the backyard view]

[inside view]

 

 

[kitchen window view -- it's a Northern Flicker, just like a regular visitor to our yard in Providence!]

Random pictures of the reserve

Weird store we came across [best eats on the reserve]

Cardston and Fort Mac [Fort MacLeod] Districts

"Everyone knows the moon is made of Cheese"

[Title may reference this scene from Wallace & Grommit.]

16 September 2024

 大家好！Hey Everyone!

We get transfer news tomorrow which is pretty exciting! My companion is pretty checked right now after being in the same area for four transfers and a little more, if you count the English area that covers the same chapel. Prayers up for him for the next day or so till we get news.

What do I even say in emails anymore? I can’t be certain, but here are some good moments as they come to mind:

We had a potluck after church and a BUNCH of people showed up. The second hour had a class for new members and people being taught, and it was chock full of people!! Crazy.

We met this new family of three. The mom’s name is Natalie, and she’s pretty committed to reading the Book of Mormon! Super cool! They go to an English ward at the moment with some Mandarin speaking members, and the English Elders were trying to help them out, but had a bit of language barrier and didn’t realize that we already gave them some copies of the scriptures.

We had an English class party, and a bunch of people came to that as well! It was a good opportunity to relate well to a lot of the students.

Tomorrow is the start of Mid-Autumn Festival! This happens when the moon is at its most full in the year, and the Chinese believe that the round shape of the moon represents unity and harmony, especially family unity. To celebrate a little, I'd invite all of you to think of something you can do for your family, whether that's something you can give, or some time to spend with them, etc. Harmony in the family brings harmony to all other aspects of life. Also check out some moon cakes if you can!

熊长老

照片：

https://photos.app.goo.gl/yBaTy1Mc3BcoogrG6

church friends

random vid I submitted for the mission talent show, you're welcome

100 Days, 100 Nights

 [Title references this Sharon Jones song.]

 9 September 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

P-day got munched by a bunch of cleaning and also by the Prophet's 100th BIRTHDAY!!! This may have been written [with little P-day remaining] after watching the celebratory broadcast, which was *spoiler alert* pretty cool. Y'all should give it a watch if you haven't already.

Highlights from this week:

• Shoveling rocks out of a church members’ backyard—again
•  Talked to a Chinese Muslim lady in the park for an hour, super epic! We actually tried to teach her a few weeks ago and she didn't want to meet anymore, but we got a text on Friday from her and she said she had some thoughts recently she wanted to share, and my companion and I still didn't understand a lot of what she was saying besides that the people at Christian churches are more friendly…. She didn't want any books of scripture still, but we'll let her keep thinking about it
•  A family came to church on Sunday and seemed to really enjoy it; they said “see you next week,” so we really hope that's true
• Saw some crazy old cars, pretty cool

If you haven't watched the birthday broadcast, I'd suggest you give it a watch! It was pretty cool! I was reading over his talk “Peacemakers Needed” again, and I found a cool footnote that said “Being a peacemaker does not require us to agree with the beliefs or ideas of others” …kind of an eye opener for me.

Hope you all have a fantastic week! And remember 没有任何的家庭都不能你不成功的失败 [translation: "no family can fail if you don't succeed" -- a terrible mistranslation of "no success can compensate for failure in the home."]

熊长老

照片：

https://photos.app.goo.gl/yBaTy1Mc3BcoogrG6

[Olympic ski jump site]

 

 

[Chinatown]

 

 

[Cute little roadster]

"Disastah!"

[Is the title possibly a reference to Gordon Ramsay?]

2 September 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

Kinda weird week, but also really cool week -- here’s what happened:

Zone Conference happened. I thought a lot about how much I’m prioritizing God in my life and “Letting God Prevail.” Immediately after Zone Conference we had a big party for the church's in-person English classes.

I went on an exchange with one of my Zone Leaders this week! Elder Taylor is super cool! We had a good time in the YSA ward where 7 lessons didn’t go through, and the one lesson that did happen was with a guy that said he didn't want to meet anymore. New high score! We were working pretty hard throughout the day though, so it was a good day.

Louie learned how to whistle! Louie is the severely debilitated kid that we go over to play music for. His mom said he was always so jealous of people who could whistle, but yesterday he finally figured out how to blow through a plastic whistle. He was SO excited!

We just received a referral named Alice this week from some other Elders. She texted us asking what to do with a guy who is renting her basement and keeps damaging the property, to which we said. . . “*confused head scratching noises* how about prayer?” And then a few days later she called us and said, “I think prayer is the best thing to do, I need God's help.” It was shocking to see faith like that come out of nowhere! We'll be praying with her this week for sure.

We had a wild and somewhat discouraging day on Saturday when my Comp was sick for a lot of the day, and then we had a disastrous miscommunication with the English class, which resulted in 4 people at our church who thought there was a party and 6 people attending class online. The people at the church were pretty angry at us, and it was extremely Awkward to say the least….oops I guess! You live and you learn. ¯\_(ツ)__/¯

There's a talk called something like “Unconquerable” that Hank Smith gave, that my district was looking at a lot this week, that talked about how determination and spiritual resilience can help us get through challenges in life. One of the examples he gave was of Ernest Shackleton, and man is he just the coolest (literally). He was in charge of a disastrous voyage into the Antarctic and made some incredible feats to get all 28 of his crewmen back home safely after their boat sunk and they were stuck on an island for several winter months. I highly recommend you look into this story; it's incredible! It makes me think a lot about how I can be more resilient and courageous in my life, and I hope it helps you find more in your life as well.

That’s all I got for this week! Take care everyone!! 爱你们
熊长老


照片：

Saturday's greatest success: a made bed

Sunday Pasta

Louie learning to whistle

You are free to eat.

26 August 2024

 “Am I!?” I don't know anymore what's going on with the food in Canada but my stomach has followed the bold example of Captain Moroni in “throwing up banks of earth” as it were. On Tuesday we went to get sushi with a member at a restaurant where the menu was only found online. I learned two things during that meal: 1) Sashimi, raw fish, and raw beef do not in fact fill my bowels with mercy, they only empty them; and 2) the menu website actually had side scrolling features, So we didn’t need to spend an hour and a half stuck on the same page of said raw beef. It's okay though because our district is going for more sushi today. I'm well prepared now that I've already practiced losing my entire breakfast this morning. This time I'll let you guess the culprit: was it the maroon colored bacon that was in the fridge for a week? Or was it the four scrambled eggs that were cooked in the bacon grease? Or was it the pan that may or may not have forgotten to invite dish soap to its not-so-thorough washing? The mystery continues….

Ooookay that's way too much Stephen King stories for one day. ✨️Anywho,✨️ 大家好！Hey Everyone!

Highlights from this week:

    Scott! Scott is a friend we met on the train station at the beginning of the month. He goes to a different church, but he likes to meet with us and he's got great questions! We met this week and he was in awe at the idea that his grandpa who has passed away could hear about Jesus Christ and accept his gospel right now in the spirit world! We hope he continues to grow in understanding and faith in Christ!

    Wan came to church for the first and possibly last time. He is a guy that signed up for our English class, and he's got to have been born in the Song dynasty. In any phone call or zoom meeting, he only shouts in enthusiastic, broken English. This has gotta be one of the funniest guys I've ever met for real!

    Michael and John got the Priesthood! They both got to bless the sacrament on Sunday!

    Cool moment in church! Kato is the guy who translates the meeting for everyone. Brother Hill in the Stake Presidency had Kato come up to the pulpit and translate a talk that I'm confident was directly for him and his situation. It was pretty powerful for the members.


There was a huge lightning storm on Friday night that I caught some pictures of through the window. And then I also made this cool connection! When seen in super slow motion, a bolt from the heavens searches it's way downward for a point of contact with the ground. Meanwhile some sparks appear from the ground and work their ways upwards slightly. The lightning strikes when both bolts meet, and the resulting burst of light is quite literally earth shaking. Covenants with God can bring the same power into our lives. God is in constant pursuit of us, and as we reach up to come close to God by making and keeping covenants with Him, he gives us power and light as strong as lightning.

The invitation from last week still stands…I didn't do so good, so I'm going to recommit to say my evening prayers earlier, but if anyone has any good experiences with this, you're welcome to send them over. I'll let you know how it goes next week for sure.

Take care everyone!! 爱你们

熊长老


照片：https://photos.app.goo.gl/yBaTy1Mc3BcoogrG6

He is Rizzin'

Lightning

Ferrari at the gas station

shrimp pesto, anyone?