"There Is Now a Level Zero"

 [Title references this line from Kung Fu Panda.]

 

January 8, 2024

 

大家好！Hey Everyone!

Canada really made a comeback this week with the cold. About an hour ago it was -19°C/-5°F and it’s only gonna go downhill this week. The tropical December weather was nice while it lasted, but now the Great White North seems to have changed its attitude saying, “No more Mr. Nice Guy, eh?”

We got a new missionary this week!!! Elder Bigler came on Thursday, a week earlier than transfers. He’s joining our companionship for this week until we hear about what’s actually happening to him, but that meant we got to go to lunch with the APs and the Mission President when he came in! Elder Bigler is really cool; he’s very nice and very quiet. We’ve been throwing him into a bunch of missionary situations, so he's getting a trial by fire right now -- pretty epic.  I’m excited to see the “dragon warrior” he develops into with us over the next several months.

This week consisted of a lot of handing out English class fliers and a little more door-knocking than usual. We started putting some fliers on people’s dashboards by grocery stores or restaurants where we think the Euro-Canadians wouldn’t go as much. We went knocking on doors for an hour on Friday because we didn’t have anything better to do at that time. It didn’t go so well until we had looped back around to where our car was parked and we knocked on a door. . . and we had a REAL CONVERSATION with a guy!! He stepped outside for a minute and made a somewhat cynical joke, and then we just talked for about 5 minutes about work, neighborhoods, weather, all of that stuff. He said he had met with missionaries before and had friends who were Latter-day Saints. I tried to ask him more about his experience but couldn’t actually get the full question out, and he seemed a little hesitant to talk about it. I was glad I could talk to him though! If he has good friends like he said, then he’ll be in good hands when he really wants to find more truth.

Yesterday we had a very cool, Spirit-led lesson with an old man who signed up for English class and agreed to meet with him again. During the prior English Evaluation, he said he did a road trip in the States and was really impressed by the temples in Utah and Montana. He was curious about what made the Church different from others. On Sunday we made a big plan to teach the Restoration and we prepped some scriptures, but when the time came we found that we needed to talk more about temples and God’s plan. He seemed very interested and eager in learning about eternal families, and we set up a chapel tour with him. We look forward to sharing more with him (and maybe some friends that he brings as well!) That’s now one of my new favorite ways to approach lessons—prepare well beforehand, then improvise in the moment.

Concerning some of our friends:

• Roda is perhaps more active than a lot of our members, and she asks really good questions. She said she wanted to read the entire Book of Mormon before receiving baptism, but lately she said she’s not so sure if she should wait anymore. One of her best friends has been telling her bad stuff about the church, but she seems pretty well grounded, so hopefully there will be some more understanding there.

   

• John (or Johnson?) hasn’t met with us for a bit since hearing about the Restoration, but he’s very responsive to our texts, which is nice. He starts a new job today requiring some heavy machinery, which he’s a little nervous about, so we’ve been trying to send some encouragement his way.

I learned some cool things this week include the following:

1. A “French Vanilla” is in fact a type of coffee, not a hot chocolate (huge bummer).
2. There are few things that make me feel more racist than doing a role play with a companion, exemplifying a Chinese person trying to learn English.
3.  I've had a hard time appreciating a lot of songs on the Church music app. However in exploring a little bit, I found an occasional gem, such as a cover of "I Stand All Amazed" on an album called Praise! Such a banger. It also had another fairly decent track of "I Need Thee." The USU choirs singing "As Shepherds Watched" is always a favorite, too.

 I had a little moment this week when reading something about the gospel and lasting happiness, and I thought, “wait a minute. . . What does lasting happiness actually look like on Earth?  There are so many ups and downs every week, how do you make happiness something that lasts?” While stewing over that this week, I found a Gospel Topics entry on the subject that had some interesting concepts, like how “even the opportunity to experience adversity” can be considered a blessing for our lasting happiness. My paradigm is shifting somewhat from viewing happiness as an object we can’t quite acquire for long enough, to a cycle of good and bad moments that build us up to be better people. The scriptures are full of verses explaining how miserable moments have potential to bring great joy: “And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you” (John 16:22); “because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy” (Moses 5:10)' “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so… righteousness could not be brought to pass” (2 Nephi 2:11).… Soooo if you’re having a rough minute, there’s good news! Good moments are ahead, and Jesus’ grace will help you when you open up to him. That’s my mini testimony for the day, enjoy the cycle.

Stay warm everyone! Have a grand ol’ week.

爱你们！

-熊长老

Epic personal study of Lehi's dream

 

Dumplings we made with a member on New Year's Day

 

 

 

What are you doin' New Year?

 [Title may reference this song.  Hard to tell.]

January 1, 2024

 

新年快乐！Happy New Year Everyone! Yet another year in the bag! Which bag? I don't know. (The Krampus bag, perhaps?)

Does anyone have any cool traditions? In talking to a lot of people here, it seems like Canada celebrates the New Year strictly at the pub. I suppose that would be a good place for the other two common traditions I can think of—watching a flat screen TV late at night and setting fanciful wishes to forget the next morning. Vienna might have my favorite celebration so far with their Philharmonic Concert.

Fun Fact, missionary work takes a little while to kick back into gear after a three day holiday. So, while we were doing stuff this week, it felt a little slow and unproductive. . . here’s a little update on some friends though.

• Rhoda invited our whole district to lunch on Wednesday as well as two of her friends. It was a really powerful discussion and it seemed like everyone went home a little better. Her friends also attended church for the first time this Sunday.

• Our friend John, who we took to the nativity, met with us online this week. We made an attempt to explain the plan of salvation to him in Chinese, and it sure was an attempt! He’s been reading the Book of Mormon a lot which is really cool! He says the stories are really interesting.

   

We met a guy at a train station Saturday night who my companion said could’ve been Joe Rogan. I don’t know about that one, but he seemed like an interesting guy—a traveling comedian who was a huge fan of Larry Bird (noice!) and who had a degree or two in theology. He said he was a little angry at God for some tragic stuff that happened to his family. I couldn’t find a good response or a good moment to respond, but I hope at least talking basketball was somewhat helpful for him.

Interviews with the Mission President were on Thursday. It went well, he had some good pointers for feeling inadequate early in the mission. I’m always surprised at how aware he is about the missionaries and their well-being. I’m really lucky he’s our Mission Leader.

Aight, here’s the idea I’ve had regardless of how much I’ve been mocking resolutions. The Lord made an earth for us that is full of change. Seasons change, leaf-colors change, the position of the sun changes throughout a day and throughout a year, animals change, MOUNTAINS change. If all of these can change, then think of what that means for you and me. We too can change, and Jesus Christ has offered the way for us the quickest, most lasting change. I hope you are as excited as I am for this year, to see how we can become better through the experiences God allows us to have as well as the choices we make.

That’s about all there was from this week. Hope the holidays treated you well! Happy 2024! And Enjoy the Christmastide!!

爱你们！

-熊长老

(I sure was slacking this week with the camera, soory)

 

Boxing Day at the mall.

 

 

 

 

"Christmas Is Carnage"

 [Title references this line from Babe]

December 26, 2023

 

圣诞节快乐!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! AND HAPPY BOXING DAY!! 

The Christmastide season has begun! I just learned this today that Christmas Day is the first of the 12 holy days of Christmastide that continues through the new year until January 6th called “Epiphany,” celebrating the visit and gifts of the wise men from the Orient. (*side note that I think is cool* The magi visited the savior about 24 months after his birth, and the holiday to celebrate is observed about 12 days after the celebration of Christ’s birth.) All that goes to say, feel free to keep the Christmas spirit up for a little while!

Anywho, I sincerely hope all of you had a splendid week and a good Christmas day! It was a good week ramping up to a wonderful weekend for me!

Last Monday my companion reluctantly let us go to Long and McQuade, a music store a lot like Summerhays where I got a new violin case!!! Had a good member meal that night and then practiced a lot for Zone conference the next day, which consisted of some silly games and some good ham.

I had a really uplifting experience on Wednesday at a train stop near our house. We had a huge stack of Christmas pass-along cards that we thought we could start passing out. We ran out after 45 minutes, they were going like candy! Right before we were about to leave, this guy walks up to us and asks us a question on how our beliefs would describe the word “precision.” I didn’t know exactly what he was getting at, so I started making up some random stuff (that was definitely Spirit led) about how detailed and precise God’s creations are, to which he said, “I totally agree! It’s as if….” and continued to tell us cool patterns he found. This was a perfect moment to hand him the copy of the Book of Mormon that Elder Labrum decided to bring, and we told him honestly about how it’s the most correct, most “precise” book on the earth today. He seemed a little bewildered but pretty excited. I ended the day by making some DI-VINE tomato soup!

Friday consisted of basically nothing but random service. We helped one of the branch presidency members clean out junk from the houses of people he’s renting to, and we also sort of helped with a Ukrainian-English class grad party. We found another stack of pass-along cards and handed them out at a different station. This time we were met by quite a few people who looked like they weren’t enjoying life too much and who also made it verbally obvious how much they disliked the Church . . . good to know. Gotta love the mission experiences.

The 23rd (or “Christmas Adam” as I like to call it) was quite slow. Lots of fliers hung up, I made some cookies for the upstairs neighbor, and we snuck a nap in there somewhere. We did have a little lesson with our friend John about the restoration, which was actually our first in-person lesson in about a month. Very good lesson followed by a very good Live Nativity that we walked over to right afterwards. 

We did have a little miracle leading up to Christmas Eve. Our district texted every single person we could find in our “area book” app asking if they wanted to come to church, and the next morning we had TWENTY new people show up!! Really good sacrament meeting for sure. We were invited to a member's house afterwards for some games and more good ham.

Christmas Day was awesome! After shredding open some anticipated packages, a super cool member from Taiwan treated the district to a Dim-Sum restaurant with lots of strange-looking food that usually tasted pretty good! Another awesome Canadian member who served in Taiwan invited us to eat dinner with his family. That was really special to me, the atmosphere there had a truly warm Christmas spirit and it felt as if I was eating with family, friends, and neighbors from home.

Here’s some last little Christmas Cheer for you to enjoy brought to you by Elder Baer’s moments of staring into space. The Live Nativity depicted how Mary took the baby Jesus and “wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.” It reminded me of a favorite bible translation into Pidgin-Hawaiian which defines the manger as “inside one ting fo hold da cows food.” I thought about how being laid in a trough for cattle might be foreshadowing to moments later in Christ’s teaching regarding cattle when he says, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” When we consider ourselves in the place of cattle, we see that Christ offers edification and nourishment as well as a yoke that eases our load. By feasting on His word and “yoking” ourselves with Him (or making covenant ties), we are making our lives easier and happier. The manger also has some resemblance to a sacrament table, where again we are edified and offered a way to lasting change. Perhaps as we enter a new year and wonder what load we will need to carry, we can remember our Savior and his promise, “I will give you rest.”

Big thank you to all of you for the kindness and support you’ve given—through letters, gifts, and especially from just being yourself. You are all an inspiration to me, a “guiding star” that helps me better understand a characteristic of the Savior. Merry Christmas!

–熊长老

photos:

good night and morning views of Calgary

 

bluejays!?

 

big estate on the way to a member meal

 

Nativity

 

Dim Sum with the District

 

Christmas Dinner guests

"I love Democracy"

[Title references this Star Wars line.]

Or diplomacy, rather, since I've been making a call or two for the district to settle disagreements and cancel overbooked meals . . . yesterday was fun like that.

December 18, 2023

大家好！Hey Everyone!

 

Sorry it's been a minute since I've been able to write. Our P-day was changed to Wednesday this last week due to an exciting temple trip! Get some snacks ready for this one though.

Two weeks ago we took a little escapade downtown with the new guy in the district, Elder Scoresby (an absolute stud). We went to Calgary tower to see if we could hike up to the top. Unfortunately they said the stairs aren't open until March so hopefully we'll be march-ing up to the top then. The rest of the week was filled with good efforts met by great opposition. On Wednesday we were having good success contacting people at the University, but that was put to a halt when a security guard told us to leave. (We'll find a better way to explain what we're doing next time.)

December 7th brought us a lovely little gift. I failed to notice that our toilet was clogged and that my flush was unsuccessful, so after a half hour of daily planning we found that our “chamber pot” had been slowly overflowing and flooding the bathroom floor (yucko). The good news is our toilet is now unclogged, our floor is now dry, and only some of our towels have bleach stains after emptying half the jug on the restroom. Gotta love the mission experiences!

Now that you're all done dry heaving, you can hear about the rest of the week . . . mostly uneventful, but we did find a promising neighborhood that has some tracting potential—at least, a little more than most. The gas station signs at this place are in English and Chinese which I haven't seen besides downtown and hole-in-the-wall buffets.

Last Sunday the 10th we went caroling and handed out Christmas pass-along cards. It was a really good idea and a great opportunity to use my newly acquired fiddle to do some missionary work! It also would have been a little more enjoyable if we had sung more songs about Jesus. We'll definitely need to do a new-and-improved run next year. 

This last week I started off with a haircut from a lady who lives on the very edge of town and only speaks Chinese. A fun attempt at speaking the language for sure. Later in the week we continued talking to folks on the outskirts of the University. We've run into a familiar pattern of someone giving us their number to hear more and then proceed to not respond to any calls or texts. We are getting numbers though, which is a lot more than we did my first 7 weeks in the mission!

Wednesday was the long awaited day! We got to attend the Calgary temple with a lot of other missionaries as well as our mission president! The Calgary temple is really beautiful! I learned a lot and gained a lot of comfort. If something's not going well in your life, make some time to visit or walk around the temple. You all know this more than I do, but I can promise you'll feel greater peace and comfort.

My temple-trip high was immediately abased by a district McDonald's run. I did get to try a popular fake order, the “McGangBang” which still had the signature grease per dollar ratio, but it was admittedly the best thing I've had at a MickeyDee’s.

We had a branch Christmas party on Saturday that was really fun! We enjoyed a massive potluck and a staged nativity show from the Primary. We saw our friend Winson there, whom we've only ever seen over Zoom! We're glad that he came, because he's seemed less believing and more cynical in our lessons lately.

In addition to that we have a friend or two that we haven't seen ever since we taught them the Restoration which is a huge dagger. On the other hand, some elders passed off a friend to us, who is one of the most faithful and curious people I've met. Another friend has come to church twice as well as the Christmas party! A big surprise considering how he said he wouldn't be able to make it either Sunday.

And now… some good ol’ thoughts from Elder Baer:

One day in personal study, I prayed about what I should study and what came to mind was a silly inside joke from a good friend about getting “a job”. . . sooo I tried out reading a little from the Book of Job the past two weeks. It’s been hard to understand at first why I should read a book of ancient confusing poetry that mostly says “I wish I was never born,” but I've actually found SO many enlightening things from additional source material I wouldn't have found otherwise. Last year's Come, Follow Me guide has a wonderful introduction to Old Testament poetry that was a HUGE eye opener about parallelism (two different statements with the same meaning, i.e. “His eyes shall see his destruction, and he shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty”). It's now a little easier to understand Job, Isaiah and other Prophets. I've also made a few connections with Job and with other prophets like Joseph Smith, who uses the same type of Old Testament parallel structure as Job while in Liberty Jail when he writes “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?” The best moment so far came in the middle of many chapters of lamenting when Job still declares, “Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book…For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth…yet in my flesh shall I see God.”

We'll soon see it in this book and hopefully as well in our daily lives: our circumstances may be painful, but if we put faith in Jesus Christ he will deliver us. Always.

Hope your Christmas season is splendid! Stay warm!

爱你们！

-熊长老

Photos

bunch of food, goods and bad

new books in the neighborhood library

 

Elder Scoresby is sad he has to back his companion

 

 

a free treadmill we failed to acquire (biggest waste of 30 minutes lol)

 Elder Labrum

 

"Where did he come from, Where did he go?"

[Title references this song.]

December 4, 2023

 大家好！Hey Everyone!

December has Arrived! Which mean snow will also soon arrive . . . I think. The people here say this has been a surprisingly warm autumn so far—we’ve had snow twice (around Halloween) and it’s always melted within a couple days, so I believe it. Logan already has snow right? Weird.

There’s some big news this week! This one was quite a big one so hang on to your rears!

I bought a Violin! I’d been trying some out a week or two ago, and I got too impatient or impulsive or something cuz I decided to buy this ancient fiddle from a Facebook listing that seemed pretty cheap for the instrument quality! It’s not quite what I had at home, but I was pretty satisfied with it, so now it’s at our apartment :)) I’m still missing a bunch of specs like a shoulder rest, rosin, and a case that the bow can actually fit in (yikes), so hopefully I’ll get some of those today.

Transfers were this week. . . aaaand I got a NEW COMPANION!! My trainer Elder McAfee wasn’t too pleased with where he was going with transfers, which is always sad. (I don’t see a transfer outcome that he wouldn’t be sad about though, so hopefully it turns out to be good!) I’m staying in the same area, but I now have Elder Labrum as my comp! He’s a really hard worker and he’s only one transfer ahead of me so both of us speak 不好的中文 (really bad Chinese). We’ve had a couple lessons and English class meetings, and no one can understand us that well…so I’m predicting this is gonna be a really fun/funny transfer!!!

One of my new favorite moments of the mission happened this week when we were teaching a new friend for the second time. We already explained the Godhead to her last week, and we got talking about the restoration and Christ’s ministry. Elder Labrum was explaining how Christ was killed, and then three days later he was resurrected . . . and her eyes got really wide as if to say “He did what?? We will all do that???” It’s no wonder the truth of God is called “gospel” or “good news!”

We’ve also had another Korean Elder join us for a bit this week since his new companion has Covid.  :P  It’s been fun though because we’ve gotten to meet a lot of members he works with. For example, yesterday we had dinner at a member’s house up at the north end of Calgary, and they were absolutely LOADED but they were also super humble and sweet about everything. It was fun to get to know them.

Right after that, we and some older members in the area had the opportunity to watch the Christmas Devotional at a house of 5 Afghan immigrants who just got baptized on Saturday!! They were so polite, so hospitable, and so cheerful! It really added to the messages about Christmas joy.

Somewhat along with that, I found an interesting thought during personal study. Somehow in studying Preach My Gospel, I got lost and found myself in a church pamphlet all about Muslims and Latter-day Saints. I was yet again surprised at how much truth is shared between the two and how many beliefs are similar. Somehow I hadn’t really put into perspective how, just like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Islam also believes in a prophet who saw God and was led to a new book of scripture to clarify God’s word. Right after that I took a look in 2 Nephi 25 based on a comment from our branch mission leader (which was cool since I’ve also been thinking about tackling some Isaiah) and I found a very interesting and helpful point in verse 5: “and I know that the Jews do understand the things of the prophets (Isaiah, etc.), and there is none other people that understand the things which were spoken unto the Jews like unto them, save it be that they are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews.” Nephi seems to say the more we learn about other religions, the more we can understand the truths of this gospel. The more we learn about Judaism, the more we can understand Isaiah’s prophecies for our day. The more we learn about Islam, the more we can understand the Restoration, or perhaps the need for Jesus Christ as our Savior and Redeemer.

A story by Elder Baer. You’re welcome. Hope you guys have a wonderful week prepping for Christmas! Let me know how you’re doing!

愛你們！

–熊長老

photos:

New Fiddle!! (+ Elder Labrum taking a try)

Top Dog getaway driver

I think his name is missing a few consonants

[Related to Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz? A character in the Polish comedy film, "How I Unleashed WW2."  You may want to turn the captions on for this one!]

a good and healthy mission breakfast