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

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

23 September 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

熊长老 Elder Baer

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

CALGARY:

Elder Wilson and Peter's

Natalie and Antoinette

 

CARDSTON:

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

[Cardston Alberta Temple]

[Lethbridge Bridge - railway trestle over Oldman River]

[Cardston environs]

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

[more fields, more view]

Views from/of the house

[the backyard view]

[inside view]

 

 

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

Random pictures of the reserve

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

Cardston and Fort Mac [Fort MacLeod] Districts

"Everyone knows the moon is made of Cheese"

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

16 September 2024

 大家好！Hey Everyone!

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

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

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

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

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

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

熊长老

照片：

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

church friends

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

100 Days, 100 Nights

 [Title references this Sharon Jones song.]

 9 September 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

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

Highlights from this week:

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

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

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

熊长老

照片：

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

[Olympic ski jump site]

 

 

[Chinatown]

 

 

[Cute little roadster]

"Disastah!"

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

2 September 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


照片：

Saturday's greatest success: a made bed

Sunday Pasta

Louie learning to whistle

You are free to eat.

26 August 2024

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

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

Highlights from this week:

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

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

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

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


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

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

Take care everyone!! 爱你们

熊长老


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

He is Rizzin'

Lightning

Ferrari at the gas station

shrimp pesto, anyone?

You had one job.

 [Title references this common phrase.]

19 August 2024

Wowwwwww.  Great News, I fumbled the email. I sold. I done messed up. Here's what happened, Spark Notes edition.

Taught a random lady 2 hours south over the phone, she's now on date for baptism.

Went on a great exchange and learned a lot about being more bold. Also saw some deranged gal in the streets in blackface??? Don't know for sure, very strange moment.

Found some new friends.

Here's the one part I didn't fail at completely! One of the other Elders shared a really cool message the other day! This was a “Hear Him” video from President Jeffery R. Holland, and he extends a great invitation: start your evening prayers earlier and be more earnest in prayer. I'd invite you all to try this with me this week and try praying a little earlier each night than you usually would. I'll get back to you with some blessings next week, but just know that God always wants to talk with you.

Prayers up for Sam, we don't know much about how he's doing right now.

Feel free to reach out - if you want somewhere to vent, I'm happy to listen

Stay cool! 爱你们！
-熊长老

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

 Calgary in the rain

Duck dinner

The Vanishing Man

12 August 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

This whole mission thing is really one of the strangest things ever. Each week feels quicker than the last, and each week I also feel more exhausted than the last. 

Here's a funny/not-so-funny story about a pattern we've noticed. There's a retired couple couple occasionally invites us and the friends we're teaching over for dinner. We always have to leave early for another appointment, and then the friends stick around after dinner. . . And we never see them again… aka they often avoid contact with us…. isn't that spooky! 

This happened to our friend Fred back in February, and it happened again this week to a guy the other Elders were teaching who got so mad about the idea of paying tithes that he told the missionaries he didn't want to talk to them again (yikes). It almost happened to our friend Sam!! He came to dinner with us, and then after we left the dinner, he didn't respond with much to our texts! We were SOOO worried about him! And then yesterday we saw a HUGE tender mercy! 

Sam answered our call, and we had a short conversation about his week, and then he sent us a voice memo saying he was concerned about his son who came to Canada and won't get off his phone! He asked if there were church activities that could help! We're so relieved he still has some interest in church! We have to take him off date for baptism for a bit, because he's not ready to make big commitments yet, so we're going to keep prepping him for sometime later to be determined. Prayers for Sam and his son! I'm pretty confident he's going to pull through soon!

The rest of this week was weird. Elder McAffee kicked the bucket and left for his home in Ohio, so Elder Pace got to hang out with us for a couple days before he got kicked out of Mandarin [district] to be a Zone Leader! Wild. It was a good week of humble tomfoolery and what not.

….okay, I really don't know what else to tell you besides some thought I wrote down in my study notes this week:

“I am the light of the world.”

One of the great discoveries of the 20th century was the dual nature of light over several finds by Einstein and others. It has been determined that light is both a particle and a wave—a paradox in a way, two different states that somehow coexist. Christ then is the same. He is the “Son of God” and the “Son of Man,” He is the “Father and the Son,” the “Alpha and Omega” the one being without sin and the one being who endured every sin. To each individual he brings Justice and he grants Mercy. Christ is dual in nature, that is why he is the light of the world. That may why he can, through his atonement, change us from one state to another if we are willing, from carnal to saintly.

This week I'd invite you to find some trait or some thing about yourself that you really want to improve, and then talk to God through prayer and ask him to help you change it. I'm gonna pray for God to help change my nature more towards tidying up my dishes (oops). If we are willing, God will change our hearts and our natures for greater capacity for joy!

Take care everyone! Stay Cool! Love you all! 爱你们！

-熊长老

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

 

Elder Bang leaving the area

 

Elder McAffee and us at Denny's

 

Some Devious Burgers we cooked up today

 

Didn't expect this here

 

 

 

 

 

Intermission and Poetry

[The title is a cool/terrible dad joke about being halfway through the mission.]

5 August 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

Not gonna lie. . . this week was kinda *gulp* boring. Maybe a little ungrateful of me to say, but there just didn’t seem to be a lot happening for most of the week. Here are some small highlights though:

Sam has had a hard time keeping some commitments as well as he’d like. He has a hard time saying no to his landlord and friends when they’re together and passing around a bottle of beer. Any advice? We changed his baptismal date back a week, but I think we oughta make sure he’s really committed first.
Remember the family that came to church last time? Maybe you do? We taught them a lesson on Tuesday, and when I say we taught them a lesson it was more like they told us all about Joseph Smith’s first vision and the Book of Mormon, and also all about baptism and how they want to become more familiar with the church before being baptized. They showed up with their daughter to Mandarin church this time *oooh, aaaah* and texted us afterward saying they will come next week as well! Super cool!

JOHN GOT BAPTIZED!!!! Y’all don’t really know John and that’s because I never taught him, but basically John is this 16 year old kid who’s been showing up to church for about two years but hasn’t been baptized because his parents haven’t let him. Elder McAffee somehow knew him really well throughout his whole mission, and this July he and Elder Pace both went to visit John every week and help out with random stuff. His Mom then miraculously gave the okay for a baptism for August 4th, and so Elder McAffee got to baptize John on his last Sunday in Calgary!

So now that I’ve written all that, the week looks a lot less boring. Weird.

As of this Tuesday or Wednesday, I’ll have been a missionary for a year. Also weird. The great poet Bon Jovi truly said it it best when he uttered the timeless words, "Wooaaaaaahhh we're halfway there!"

This week I tried to be more open and honest with God in my prayers, and it was actually really good! I received a lot of interesting insights and a lot more emotional help from God. This week I’d invite you all to be really open and honest with God in your prayers; tell Him how you feel, how the day is going. I promise that God will be able to help you better the more you communicate with him. (Then you too can say, as the great poet said, "Oooaaaaaaooooooooohhhhhhh! Livin' on a Prayer!")

Stay cool everyone! Love you all! 爱你们！

-熊长老


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

good food

John's Baptism

"Had us in the first half, not gonna lie."

[Title references this meme.]

29 July 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

So basically this week was long and dry and boring as all get-out until the last two days! Prepare yourselves for a couple f a t paragraphs about some willy-nilly silliness that somehow always works out well and swell which we like to call “missionary work.”

As mentioned Tuesday–Friday were mostly uneventful. There were a lot of miscellaneous finding activities plus a lesson with Sam where we talked once more about the commitment not to drink alcohol.

Saturday was a good day. We did a chapel tour by the temple, and so we got to show a family around the inside of the chapel, as well as around the outside temple grounds. They said they wanted to come to the nearby English ward the next day. We then left that meeting to go play some music for a severely autistic kid named Louie, which was really neat. He had a bad fever and was unhappy, which was less neat, but we got to know the family a little bit and they are really amazing! We're going over again next week.

Sunday was a truly miraculous sequence of tender mercies. We traveled 15 minutes up to the church by the temple to meet THE SQUAD that pulled up! Our friend who was given a church tour brought his wife, his two kids, and three friends?!?! As we walked in with them, we noticed an acute tactical error which we had made by showing up to what was apparently the Young Single Adult meeting with a big family (oops). They all said they didn't understand the meeting (go figure), and so we're hoping to see them in the Mandarin Ward next week. As we said goodbye to the squad, we recognized Leon, a YSA friend from China we recently met, who said he wanted to attend the Mandarin Ward but didn't have a way to get there. We met him just in time to call our bishop, who lived down the street from the building, to give him a ride! As we arrived at church, we bumped into Sam! We worried he wouldn't be coming to church, since he never responded to our invite, so it was a good surprise, and we were able to teach him a short lesson before the meeting. Just as the meeting started, we were given a bag of hot dog buns leftover from a children's Primary activity. After the meeting, we talked to a member of the ward, who told us he has not been paid by his employer for over two months!! (Mega-yikes!) We were able to give him a priesthood blessing, and we also blessed him up with the hot dog buns, which he was really excited about. “I can make a lot of stuff with these!” The day ended off well with all the Mandarin missionaries going to dinner with a member of the Stake Presidency and good friend Brother Hill.

This week's reading for me included some cool ideas, like the idea that we don't need to wait anxiously to see if we can enter God's Kingdom after this life, but we can actually “Build the Kingdom of God” on the earth right now! The two greatest commandments God has given involve improving our relationships, both divine and mortal. The whole reason for Christ's sacrifice of the Atonement is to reconcile the relationship of all mankind back to God. We can truly bring more of heaven on earth by treating others the way Christ would. The Prophet’s invitation still stands, to reach out to the one. This week let's find one thing we can do to improve our relationships with others! I know the more we help others, the more joy we ourselves experience.

Stay cool everyone! Love you all! 爱你们！

-熊长老


照片

Elder Horsley jamming to songs out of season

smoke

don't know where this came from but it's funny to me

Food! (Costco Souvlaki and Chinese cuisine)

games after Sunday dinner

POV you're Louie

 

Cheers for Michael

July 22, 2024

大家好！Hey Everyone!

Big news from this week:

MICHAEL WAS BAPTIZED YESTERDAY!!!

It was a super special day; he told me afterward that he felt very peaceful and somewhat relieved. This is the first baptism out here I’ve seen/participated in where things seemed to go relatively smoothly. There was a miraculous number of people who are being taught that attended too! It’s usually extremely hard to get other friends to attend a baptism.

Elder Labrum and I also felt a bit of opposition leading up to Sunday, which was interesting. After Zone Conference on Wednesday and Thursday, we both felt super poop*d and tired, and on Friday Elder Labrum got super sick and nauseous so we did a lot of online proselyting and studying. By Saturday we were feeling better and actually had a cool experience in the morning by stopping by someone previously taught by missionaries. We were welcomed into their house and had a nice 20 minute chat with a guy named Richard. We have high hopes for future visits!

All of the challenges from this week paled in difficulty to Sunday morning when I tried to stitch up a hole in my pants. It was a fantastic learning experience. I learned that sewing has got to be the most aggravating thing a body can do. Huge respect to everyone out there who can sew.

Tuesday brought a fun surprise with the visit of some neighbors [from home]! I’m always amazed at the familiar faces that pass through Calgary!

I had a cool epiphany during personal study this week. I was thinking about the concept of “Kingdoms of Glory” or degrees of heaven while looking at a few resources referencing revelations recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants that bring this doctrine to restored light. It occurred to me that the word “Kingdom” also applies to animals as a classifier in order to differentiate between them. Likewise a “Celestial Kingdom” of heaven may be more of a class of people—the kind of person we’ve chosen to become—as opposed to an exclusive gated community only for those who've deposited enough good works to enter. Dallin H. Oaks reminds us too, “In contrast to other preaching, which teaches us to know something, the gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to become something.”

This week I'd invite you to think a little bit about who you'd like to become, and identify one aspect or one thing you can do to help you get there. Joy truly does come through growth and achievement, and through the Christ who enables us to do that

Have a great week and stay cool! . . .Actually though it's h*cka hot outside so stay cool for real!

Love you all! 爱你们！

-熊长老

 

[Side note for all email recipients: I'm gonna start putting all my photos in a shared album in the attempt to help everyone's email storage, some earlier photos are kinda scrambled.]

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

照片

Dinner with Neighbors!

Elder Chapman's Last Zone Conference

Leaf?  [Can you find the moth?]

Baptism (featuring 7 year-old Chase)

 

 

 

Tree of Life - Calgary style