Holy Week Batman!

 March 25, 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

Happy Holy Week!    

Yesterday was Palm Sunday! Did anyone do anything cool? Read any cool scriptures? Listen to any cool talks? Eat any good food?

Our Palm Sunday was really good! We had two new faces show up to a linger-longer, as you will see:

We met a man named Steve while expanding our tactics at the train stations. He didn't speak a lick of English, but he did come to church on Sunday! He had a ton of questions which I didn't understand, but luckily Elder Tang helped me out. We also taught a lesson to a new friend that the south Elders had met. Somehow, we were assigned to give her an English evaluation, and then we were able to teach her a lesson, and then we saw her at church!

The members were really awesome this week! We had several members talking with these new friends at church and giving rides to some as well! We also had a member volunteer to visit a part member family that hadn't been to church in a long time! The Branch is doing cool stuff!

Ernest said he has been sharing the Illustrated Book of Mormon Stories book with the neighbor kids in the house. He also said he experienced some opposition while doing so, as one of the girls kept interrupting him (I think the struggles children face are often very similar to the ones adults do—mortality is the same no matter what age you are). It’s still incredible how he’s sharing the gospel as a 10-year-old! 

I’ve been thinking about how “Palm Sunday” is a cool name for the day commemorating Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem. Perhaps it’s been said a lot before, but I think it references the cool connection between the palm leaves and the palms of His hands. Just as the palm leaves were placed to provide a way for Christ to enter the holy city of Jerusalem, the marks in His palms are a reminder of the way provided for us to enter the holy presence of God. Palms provide the way for progression.

The rest of this week is Holy Week! This is a wonderful opportunity to study the life of the Savior, especially the events leading up to His atonement, crucifixion, and resurrection. The Church has provided an Easter Study guide that you can look at as well! This week I’d invite y’all to study something in the scriptures about the life of Christ and then do something that He would do. (I’ve stumbled and fallen some on my “no criticism” goal, but I’m gonna retry this week! 6 days! no sweat!) As we keep our focus on Christ this week, we can find a little more joy and meaning even in the mundane routine.

Easter is in 6 days!! Have a fantastic week! Enjoy the surprises that God gives you!

Love you all! 爱你们！

–熊长老

Photos:

 

Welcome Spring :P

Gem from Personal Study

Seniores Donair Pizza with the gang Elders

Costco’s “Vladmir Poutine” as I now call it due to the war crimes it committed against my bowels. Definitely Canada's Greatest Prank so far

The Grind Don't Stop

 3/18/2024

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day yesterday!

Was I the only one who forgot? I feel really bad, I usually look forward to this one a lot. There’s some great music you can find for St. Patty's.

What a Crazy Week!


Quick update on our teaching pool:

    Fred’s baptism had to be moved again since we haven’t taught him the Word of Wisdom yet, so we gotta make sure he’s good to keep that for a couple weeks. He’s making great progress, though, and seems slightly more open and relaxed every time we meet with him!

    Roda brought a friend to church who’s renting in the same house. He’s been in Calgary for 1 week and he’s trying to find a job so he can stay as long as he can. He was very interested in our English class.

    Ernest is awesome, as always.


We had a lot of time at home on Tuesday. I almost burned the house down trying to make cookies. Didn’t know that the butter wrapper had metal on the inside. *gulp*

Wednesday was Zone Conference! Brought to you by the Mandarin District. We set up all the tables and chairs, we provided the musical number, and Elder Liu was playing piano for all the hymns. We had to leave early for some service to help the Orthodox Church move some pallets of food (the wooden kind, not the appetite kind) but they had done it all before we got there. (Fake News strikes again!) Regardless, this was perhaps one of the most thoroughly enjoyable days this month. We talked about baptism and the covenants and blessings associated with it, which was very simple and pretty easy to understand. Then there was a whole section on Companion Unity which was SOO good and exactly what I was looking for!

Then a cool miracle happened after Zone Conference! Our Mission President spoke earlier that day about how every effort is magnified by the Lord, no matter how great or how small. My companion said he wanted to go hang up fliers so we did that. I was feeling a little discouraged and was praying that our small efforts would be magnified. A few minutes later we got a call that the weekly in-person ESL [English class] needed Mandarin missionaries to come quickly, so we drove back down to the chapel. As we were walking across the parking lot we saw this guy walking our way, and we told him about our classes and asked him if he wanted to see what was going on inside the church. . . and he said YES! One of the Bishops got his number too!

We had an exchange with the zone leaders on Friday. I was with Elder Horseley who used to be in the Mandarin District! We were grinding some finding at the train stations. I also saw JingJian! He came to church a few times in November, and I was thinking about him a lot recently, and then he showed up to the T&T when we were handing out fliers! It was so cool to see him again!

Yesterday involved even more tracting. There was a cool moment, though, where a girl answered the door, and we didn’t know how old she was, so we just started saying the usual stuff. She wasn’t interested in church, but was really interested in the Book of Mormon, despite her dad telling us to go away from upstairs. Super cool.

Remember last week when I was talking about fasting from criticism? I had an epiphany on Tuesday that self-criticism can be, perhaps, just as poisonous. The devil’s ambitions are to make men and women miserable like he is. Criticism is an easy way to become miserable, whether by fostering anger toward others or by demolishing our own divine, inherent worth. So I'm continuing my fast these next few days, and I'm putting self-criticism on the altar as well. Feel free to join! If you can, find something you like about yourself every day this week and give God a quick thanks. When you start to see how valuable you are to your Father in Heaven, you will be able to help your peers see it too. Or in St. Patrick's Day terms: once you get the snakes out of your island, the grass will seem a lot greener. 

(yup. that's a grood anagoly :] )


I, unfortunately, didn't put many good scripture references in this time, but feel free to find some yourself! Y'all are awesome!

爱你们!

–熊长老 (Elder Baer)


Photos:

Elder Bigler and I last P-day “up the river”

 Sunrise

 Zone Conference

 Chinese Crepes that a member bought us! 非常好吃！

 Monkey see, Monkey do

Down By the Riverside

 [Title refers to this folk song.]

3/11/2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!


*Quick tangent time*

Not gonna lie everyone. . . looking back, this week was incredibly difficult; perhaps among the most difficult weeks I’ve had (with the exception of finals week, of course :P). Study and experience remind me, though, that these periods are crucial for our joy and well being. This is when we grow the most. This is when we do the uncomfortable in order to experience greater comfort.
. . .mmmokaythanksthatsalltheendamen.

I hope everyone else had a fantastic week, though! The weather's been super warm in Calgary which has been cool. We're getting a ton more sunshine now which is super nice! Or, at least, we were. (Confound you, Daylight Savings!)

Experiences from this week:

Fred finally returned our call on Sunday! We hadn’t had a lot of response from him this week, but he answered yesterday, and we’ve got an opportunity to teach him this week. I’ve stumbled a little bit in my worry for him, but my companion has helped me remember to have hope and faith.

We got lectured by two different people this week! Both happened shortly after we gave them a copy of the Book of Mormon, and both responses were that Elder Bigler and I need to read the Quran. I honestly think it would be a cool experiment to read and pray about it’s truthfulness, just like I do with the Book of Mormon, and see what answer comes to heart. One guy told us, though, that the English translation doesn’t do justice to the original Arabic, which makes me really grateful that the Lord has allowed the record of the Ancient Americas for “all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people” to receive revelation.”

Cool Tender Mercy! A great song came to mind several times that I’ve been whistling and singing during rough moments. American Spiritual “Down by the Riverside” has a surprisingly uplifting tune and some simple yet profound lyrics, implying themes of baptism and the Atonement of Jesus Christ. (The Spirit was so nice as to remind me of that!)

Easter is in 20 days! Surprise! On a related note to the point above, I’ve made a new challenge for myself, now that we’re halfway through Lent (aka prep-season). My challenge is to go these next 20 days without saying a word of criticism. No pointing out flaws. No “talking smack” about anyone. Our prophet, President Nelson, said this perfectly, “‘If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy’ that we can say about another person—whether to his face or behind her back—that should be our standard of communication.” Looking back over this email, I can see there’s already a long ways to go (apologies, Daylight Savings), and there’s gonna be some mistakes, but it is possible! I extend the same invitation to all of you beloved fellow friends, to join me these next 20 days in “fasting” from words of criticism and laying them down by the riverside. The great promises of peace and good cheer will be fulfilled as we do this.

Stay awesome!

爱你们!

–熊长老


Photos:

Post DCM study group???

Chinook arch? Or just March I dunno.

"Youuu got to gooo dig those holes"

[Title refers to this song from the movie Holes.]

3/4/2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

It’s March Already! Crazy how that happens!

Remember that time that I was mocking the snow in Logan? I spoke too soon. The weather was about -15 Celsius and somehow still managed about 7 inches of snow! On Saturday afternoon we had planned to hand out some fliers, however we could see that that wasn’t going to happen with the storm we were experiencing. (I wish I had a picture of a phantom car or two we saw on the side of the road. . . scary.) Instead, we decided to drive around a neighborhood and see who was shoveling and then hop out and help them. Boy, was it a lot of shoveling! (I had the holes soundtrack playing in my head the whole time. . . odd.) That then gave us an opportunity to place two Chinese copies of the Book of Mormon!

We had some member meals this week!! (miracles do happen) I tried Hot Pot for the first time! A retired couple in the branch made a bunch of stuff for us to try Hot Pot, and it seemed pretty cool. It’s a lot like pho that you make for yourself at the dinner table. We had a meal that was about a half hour north of us in Airdrie, but it was surprisingly nice to get out of Calgary. I never knew I would miss empty fields of cows and hay that much.

This is usually the part where I would write some inspiring scripture message or some cool invitation that’s helped me be happier. . .Today it’s more of a rant on an earlier idea. Remember when I was talking about action/inaction a few months ago? Well I’m pretty darn sure now action is always better than inaction. Inaction most often seems to give up our agency, our God-given right to choose. The thing I think causes inaction the most is worry and fear. The devil is the greatest proponent of fear, and God is most often inviting us to combat “What if” with frequent direction to “Fear Not.” The phrase  “take no thought” from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount has been on my mind lately in relation to worrying or anxiety as we would call it now. I’ve always had the tendency to worry, perhaps thinking that more concern would prevent bad circumstances from happening. But that rarely actually helps. What does help is having confidence -- having faith (an attribute that implies action). As Christ said, we “cannot add one cubit” to our situation by “taking thought” or worrying about something, the only thing worry does is make us unhappy. I’m hoping to internalize this a little more and take more steps to develop faith instead of anxiety. I’d invite y’all next time you’re in a “But what if…” situation, say a little prayer to gain some confidence and faith to say, “No worries, It’ll be okay.”

A Story by Elder Baer. You’re Welcome. Stay cool everyone! Enjoy some 27 Days ‘till Easter!

爱你们!

–熊长老


Photos:

Dinner up north 

Blurry photographic evidence of the white witch continuing her magic

Last week's finalists on Survivor  [referring to the branch hike to Nose Park Hill - see last week's post]

🎶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)

Carrots

 

Us finishing street contacting at the UofC

 

Ginormous "Buffalo" chip

 

food from Thursday

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.