Elder Evan Baer: Canada Calgary Mission: "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