Groomin'

Feburary 19, 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone! 

How has everyone been! Enjoying Lunar New Year? I knew it! 

We’ve been meeting with a new friend named Fred, who was passed off from the South area. He’s an amazing piano player! He’s also looking for a job right now so we’re hoping and praying for him that he can find something. 

God was really merciful to me this week and gave me a really nice Valentine's Day gift in the form of an exchange with ELDER CHAPMAN!!! Elder Chapman is one of our Zone Leaders in the mission and also a pretty tight friend. He taught me a lot of super cool stuff! It was a super fun day! It was also good to be back with Elder Bigler afterward and see how much he enjoyed his first exchange of the mission. 

Found a new Vietnamese sub spot where sandwiches are $8.00 CAD! That's like 5 buckaroos in the US! Super good deal. 

We spent about 5 hours this week trying to record a number for a zone conference slideshow…all of which did not yield any fruit. We’ll see what happens. In other news, I did do a musical number on Sunday, which now means I’m most likely doing every musical number in the month until I get yoinked from the Mandarin Branch. 

We were invited to dinner on Friday by the same family that had us for Christmas Dinner, and yet again they made some amazing food and a lovely atmosphere! Brother Hill is SO good to the missionaries! 

That dinner actually got me thinking a lot about Christ’s Second Coming and how often it’s related to a wedding (an event with my three favorite things: great food, great music, and people you love). A title for Christ is “The Bridegroom,” and as any bridegroom would do, he is inviting everyone in the family to prepare themselves to attend the feast (see Matthew 22 & 25). That led me to a few verses in Jacob 5, which I think I oughtta study a little more sometime soon. Verse 71 talks about the promises of gathering Israel, “and the season speedily cometh; and if ye labor with your might with me ye shall have joy in the fruit which I shall lay up unto myself.” The next verse has some imagery that really touched me, “And it came to pass that the servants did go and labor with their mights; and the Lord of the vineyard labored also with them.” Jesus is laboring with us. Essentially, when we help to “gather Israel” by sharing the gospel, and when we “Let God Cook”/”Let God Prevail,” we’re promised an amazing feast from the fruit of our labors. I’m glad I can be a part of the Lord’s Vineyard -- His vineyard makes the best grape juice. 

Great news everyone…Easter is in 41 DAYS!! While we’re trimming our lamps for the wedding feast, we can also prepare for Easter! I’d invite y’all to read Elder Stevenson’s April 2023 General Conference talk and then find something small you can do every day to prepare for Easter. It’ll make your holiday even better. 

Transfers are this week so I'll let you know what happens. Keep it up everyone! 

 爱你们! 

 –熊长老 

 

Photos: 

P-Day on the SkyTrail 

My Garlic, nourished by the word (Alma 32) 

 

Musical Number, More Holiness Give Me 

 

 

 

 

Now all of China knows you're here

[Title references this clip from Mulan.]

February 12, 2024

农历新年快乐！HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!

Congrats everyone, We’ve now made it to the Year of the Dragon! If you haven’t already, go treat yourself to some good Asian cuisine and celebrate!

Great news everyone…

RODA WAS BAPTIZED!!!!  Boy, it was stressful and chaotic, but it turned out really well! She was SO cheerful yesterday! We’re so proud of her and her great faith in the savior Jesus Christ.

We had a pretty epic Chinese New Year party on Saturday! There was a ton of cool random food as always, and a bunch of people came, which was really cool to see. Our district was in charge of doing the Dragon Dance, a great Lunar New Year tradition that the branch always has the missionaries do. This year, however, the dragon was slain by a mighty warrior, one with great skill for being 1 foot tall and 3 years of age. The dragon finished the dance despite its wounds. Most definitely one of the funniest experiences I’ve ever had!

 

God manifests his love in so many ways! I was able to see quite a few of those this week! For example, on Wednesday I was having kind of a rough morning where I felt really alone and overwhelmed. We were driving to a market to hand out some English class fliers, and suddenly I heard a piece of music I recognized from a BYU music festival this summer! (Edvard Grieg’s string quartet.) I don’t know what it was about hearing this, but it felt like just a helpful nudge to keep going and know that things would be okay.

We also found a new favorite spot for donair/döner that’s right by our house! There’s a little hole in the wall place where this really nice guy makes a wrap for you!

Remember my challenge to look closely at art and scriptures? Well, unfortunately, I don’t have many insights from the scriptures this week (oops), but I do have one from some art! I checked out “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” this week, and I found some cool new symbols in there. Somehow this was the first time I noticed the boats in that painting, carrying some very frightened and distraught looking faces as the wave in the foreground is looming over them with claw-like sea foam curling over the top. Far in the background, however, there's a mountain that's calm, the one place of familiarity and stability in contrast to the boisterous ocean. This made me think a lot about Christ calming the storms of Galilee, and about the storms in our life. They sometimes feel so overwhelming, as if we’re going to drown for certain. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is always visible for us as a sure place to rely on in the midst of the storms. Times may get gloomy, but so long as we, like Peter, keep our eyes fixed on Christ, we’ll make it okay.

I’ll be sure to get some more scripture references next time. That’s it for this week! Happy New Year!

爱你们!

–熊长老

Photos (yikes I need to take more photos):

Roda's Baptism

Let God Cook

February 5, 2024

大家好！Hi Everyone! 

Wait a minute guys, this week went Fast! That’s crazy! What’s also crazy is that as of this next week, I’ll have been a missionary for 6 months! Which seems a little bit inaccurate -- to me it feels like I’ve either been a missionary for 3½  years or for 2 weeks   :P

Highlights of this week was mainly helping our friend Roda prep for receiving baptism next Sunday! We’ve made some miraculous progress so we’re just praying that we’ll be able to wrap up some of the last few small logistics this week! 

We also had Zone Conference this week! That was a blast! We had a very cool opening activity that involved a half hour of silence and some provided scriptures on a theme of “How do we deepen our relationship with God” -- more on that in a minute. The rest of the conference was good. There was a good example of how to plan out the day in the mornings, which made me want to improve the way we do it as a companionship! Hopefully we see some progress.

We had some wild service opportunities this week. The last three weeks we’ve been helping the same member move all of their stuff out of their house into a storage unit… and there is SOOO much stuff for a house that size! We then went in this week one day to help clean some floors and walls. . . although they were hard to get to because of the sheer amount of rat poop that was also found in the house (yucko). On the other hand we did get to help a different lady move into a different apartment downtown, and she was very clean, organized, and also kind of interested in the Church! We gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon in Traditional Chinese and promised the joy that comes from reading it, and she said it sounded really interesting! We’re hoping we see more of her soon!

We tried street contacting at a different university that is in the very south of our area. There weren’t a lot of people around that we were able to talk to, but there was a very fancy performance hall! Brought back a lot of memories for sure of different places I’ve performed, which was pretty cool!

Our car was parked on Saturday, because I didn’t update the log of how many kilometers we had driven, so we did a lot of walking around in the rain putting up English class flyers close by. A little unusual day, but it was really nice weather (at least, I think so).

Okay back to “How do we deepen our relationship with God.” There’s a lot of resources about this, specifically some words of our prophet Russell M. Nelson in speeches like “Let God Prevail” (or “Let Him Cook” as today’s slang might put it). One of the resources that I found was an article in last month’s Liahona magazine about “Slow looking.” This is a term used a lot by museums to try and encourage a new way of viewing art. I think we’ve all been to a museum and rushed through trying to look at every piece of art for a few seconds, but “Slow Looking” is a different approach: picking a very few artifacts and studying them for 5-10 minutes. This was really inspiring to me since I know there’s a lot that I learn about God from studying good art, but I don’t often take the time to do so. Similarly, we spend our scripture study time reading through all the material, but we don’t often spend a lot of time internalizing those scriptures and letting them sink in, and we may miss learning some valuable information. This week I invite you all to do two things that could help deepen your relationship with God. First, pick a piece of art in a style you like and find 10 minutes to really look at it and find some new truths about the Savior. Then, I also invite you to do the same with a few verses of scripture. I can promise that when we take time to slow down and look at the fine details, we’ll have an easier time seeing the hand of God as well.

Hope you all are doing well! We’re enjoying a lot of snow in Calgary right now, so let us know if you need some!

爱你们!

–熊长老

Photos:

rain :))

Elder Bigler and I at Mount Royal Performance Hall

What car is this? [it's a Porsche 911 Carrera 4S]

My celebratory Frosty after cleaning poopy floors for an hour

Sine Waves

January 29, 2024

 大家好！Hi Everyone!

W O W ! This was one of the most wild weeks I’ve ever had! Or, as the understated snob in me would put it, this week had quite the emotional amplitude! 

Let’s start with the highlights:

The Big news this week. . . RODA IS ON DATE FOR BAPTISM!!!! We met with her on Wednesday and she started asking some questions about baptism, but they were questions like, “So will the church provide a hairdryer or will I need to bring my own?” She has amazing faith and we are SUPER hyped for her! We’ve got a baptism lined up for about two weeks from now, and we are also kinda stressed because we still have a lot of principles to cover before baptism, so we’re praying we can pull it off!

A friend we stopped teaching earlier said they now had a driver's license and wanted to come to church! They were present at sacrament meeting, and I talked to them briefly before they were helping their son to Primary, but I didn’t get to see them again. Hopefully we can get some more contact with them again and see what their interests in the Church are.

I had a cool conversation with a guy named Benjamin at the train station who received a copy of the Book of Mormon, and had some interest in coming to church in a week or two once he’s done with some tests. At the same station we met an older lady who was super cheerful and so happy to talk to us (and maybe a little bit high on something?)

We had the thrilling opportunity of serving at the Calgary Food Bank, where we showed up quite a bit late due to a prior lunch appointment, which meant that we had to wait an hour for some people to get out of a meeting so they could tell us some “Safety Protocol” (aka don’t use your phone when you’re serving). I don’t know about my companion, but I thought it was kind of cool when all was said and done–which is great because we’re serving again this week (woot)

Remember the amplitude I talked about earlier? These past few weeks I learned a fun fact: training is kinda stressful, *insert Pablo panic attack from Backyardigans*, and I was definitely feeling a lot of that stress these past few weeks. However, I had a really cool epiphany during our last District Council that was super impactful to me. We occasionally hear a phrase in the Book of Mormon referring to us as members and missionaries as an “instrument in the hands of God,” and I've been worrying so much about whether I’m being an effective instrument or not. Then I realized a truth I’d been missing: a musician can play the same music on a $1,000,000 Stradivarius as they can on a $250 factory-made violin. Even though a cheaper violin doesn’t yet have the same capabilities as the Strad, that doesn’t prevent the musician from creating beautiful music for his audience. Similarly, it’s unnecessary for me to worry about if I’m a good enough instrument. God is an omniscient, omnipotent “Musician,” if you will, and no flaws in an instrument can prohibit Him from performing His music, which is perhaps the “Song of Redeeming Love.”

[....also another fun fact, the Mission President said I needed a chill pill in an interview, so I assume he'll be sending me some now :]

That’s all I’ve got for now.

[Many prayers for the Beazers from Southern Alberta]

爱你们!


Photos:

Lunch with some epic members

Elder Bigler, MVP

Rosemary Chicken

Chinook in the morning, sailors take warning

Our looney district

Gotta love the Chinese Christian radio :P

Facebook Video

Click to visit Elder Baer's recent Facebook video: Wanna Know 5 Fun Facts About Me?

published January 24, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

Supplies!

[Title possibly refers to this joke.]

January 22, 2024

 

大家好！Hi Everyone! 

Great news, I have efficiently procrastinated my email until the end of P-day. Hooray me.

Highlights from this week include:

• A lot of people who joined our English class; we don’t know how many are actually interested in learning the gospel because we’re struggling to make return appointments
• We helped the same member as last week move his stuff to a storage unit
• Two people invited us to come into their homes!!!!!! One of them was a recent convert who we didn’t know very well, and the other was someone who had met the missionaries before; we tried to share a scripture with her but we couldn’t understand her, and she couldn’t understand us, and her dog was barking at 80 decibels in the background. Super chaotic, very funny time.
• First time trying Dairy Queen ever???. . . I’ve had the Blizzards before but I think this was my first DQ burger. Not too shabby, had some chonkin’ onion and tomato which is pretty cool. We also found a Vietnamese Sub sandwich place that was pretty cool.
• Our friend Roda brought two friends to church yesterday. I’ll be shocked if I find another person learning about the church who progresses the Lord’s work like she does–she is somehow doing a lot of missionary work.
• Cool songs on the radio this week:
  

• Oskar Wilhelmovitch Boheme [Unclear if this should be the trumpet concerto or the brass sextet, by Oskar Bohme.]
  

• Pejacevic Quartet Op. 58 mvt 3 (Reeeally good)

• Godfrey Ridout: Ballade n.1

I've been thinking a lot lately about the element of Mystery that the future holds. We never really know exactly what tomorrow will look like, and that can often be very frightening. However that can be kind of exciting and fun, too. I've been trying to enjoy more of the mysteries of the future and viewing each day as a day of pleasant surprises rather than unexpected dangers. Elder Gary Sabin says it pretty well: "When nothing is expected and everything is appreciated, life becomes magical"

Thanks for tuning into the fun chaos of this week! It’s still getting a little warmer here, and hopefully the skies will clear up as well. Stay warm everyone! And if you can't stay warm, stay cool!

 爱你们

-熊长老

 

Photos:

 Vietnamese Sub

 

Me attempting to smile next to "The Great L Log of Calgary" -- 10/10 recommend  [we recommend viewing Photos AND Google Reviews, right side of screen!]

 

 Elder Bigler Master Chef in the making

 

 I don't know who took this but they are a real artist

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Himalayas!

[Title references this clip from Monsters, Inc.]

January 15, 2024

 大家好！Yes Everyone! I’M STILL ALIVE!

Temperatures have been brutal this week but even that unhallowed hand cannot stop the good work! Not gonna lie though, there were some close calls this week. We tried putting some fliers on people’s windshields when it was between -25 and -28 Fahrenheit. The job was about 7 minutes. I made the grave mistake of wearing fingerless gloves ‘cause I thought I would grip the fliers better. Within two minutes my fingers were numb. Within six minutes the very tips of my fingers started turning a slight shade of white, at which point I said, “hmm, that ain’t right” and jumped back in the car. Luckily I didn’t contract frostbite and my fingers warmed up just in time to get beat up at basketball on Friday :] Still better than Elder Scoresby, who got his tongue stuck on a pole yesterday. Classic.

We taught a kinda sloppy prayer lesson last week to our friend Yinli, and we couldn’t tell if he really understood prayer. We followed up with him about that in our lesson this week, and he said he’s been praying before dinner EVERY DAY!! What a guy! Good things are ahead!

Transfers were this week! We lost Elder Labrum, who is now serving English-speaking (in the exact same area). I’m staying in the Northwest, and I got out of training just in time to train Elder Bigler. The last couple days have been a little difficult adjusting to new ways of missionary-ing, and I’ve been told a lot of my imperfections. However I think we’ll adjust well in the next week or two. I’m excited to see how this transfer goes.

In other news, we helped a member move a bunch of random stuff from his house to a storage unit. There’s been some messy stuff with changing houses and he’s somewhat homeless for the moment, but we’re pretty sure things will work out in another week or two.

On Sunday we were encouraged by the mission president to stay home from church because of the terrible weather. Thus we had an opportunity to watch sacrament meeting from home, where we saw the rest of the district there *d'oh*

A fun miracle happened with my mission card! I lost it about 10 days ago and this last week after I put it on hold I was looking for it. I was praying and looking in a lot of places. We looked at Walmart since that was the last purchase I made, and I said a little prayer before pulling in and kinda had an inkling that if it was anywhere it would be here. We went to customer service and they didn’t find anything. Bummer. My inkling might’ve been wrong. We went home and I searched the car some more, and then 10 minutes later Walmart called and said they found it!!! God does answer prayers everyone! Never really in the ways we expect, but they are always answered. It’s also nice that God gives us some common sense and some agency, to help answer our prayers and our questions.

That’s mostly it guys. This week is warming up, so Hopefully we get to see a lot more people! Either way, stay warm everyone!

爱你门!

–熊长老

照片：

Me making the “how do I take a selfie” face while helping a member move

 Arrabiata :)  [try the recipe! video demo]

 

turkey club from Tim's

 

yikes. Just yikes.

 

 

 

 

"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