Christmas in NYC

So...Christmas in New York City is probably one of the most magical things ever.  I have had the most wonderful week!

Last Friday was our Mission Christmas Devotional that I got to organize.  It went very well.  People all seemed to really like it, and the musical numbers all sounded lovely, especially Elder Murray's piano solo and the flute/piano duet Elder Foley participated in.  The speakers were great as well.  Sister Morgan read The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, which some of you may remember I was in a stage production of last year.  As she read the story I kept seeing Annadee and David Morgan acting out the parts of the Widow McDowell and Jonathan Toomey.  It was awesome.

At the Devotional, I saw some awesome people, including Elder Witbeck from my BYU theater days, and Sister Broderick, who is one of the coolest people ever.

My favorite talk was by President Morgan, however.  He spoke about the gifts that were given to Christ by the Wise Men when they found Him in Bethlehem, but he did it in a way that I had never heard of before.  He compared the three gifts to three of the crucial gifts Heavenly Father has given to all of us.  The gold, which must be purified for it to be of value, is representative of Jesus Christ, the pure Son of God.  Frankincense can be compared to the gospel.  It is derived from the sap of a tree that can grow on anything, even solid rock.  We have been told today that the gospel of Jesus Christ will never again be taken away from the earth.  Myrrh is representative of the Atonement.  In order to make myrrh, sap must be taken and dried from the myrrha tree.  It has to be cut to the very center, and a deep red sap emerges from the trunk, which reminds us of the suffering of the Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane.  It was a really cool talk.  I love hearing President Morgan speak.  Every time I do it reminds me of what I need to become as a missionary and who I want to be long term.

Last Saturday I went tracting for the first time on my mission!  (That's right, I have been in the field for three months, and it was my first time knocking doors.)  The Elders invited us to go caroling with them, and Sister Liu and I were more than happy to join them.  We handed out Joy to the World DVDs and had a lot of fun talking with people about the Church and our beliefs.

Monday was awesome.  I will admit I have been a little worried that it wouldn't feel like Christmas, since I'm not at home this year, but when I woke up on Christmas Eve, the feeling was still there.  What's more, it was stronger than I had felt it before.  I was so excited, and the rest of the day just made everything better.  Because we didn't have a Christmas dinner appointment, a companionship of Elders, Sister Liu and I went with the APs (Assistants to the President - a companionship of Elders that help President Morgan with administrative work) to dinner at this wonderful French woman's house.  She fed us a fantastic dinner, then afterwards we had cheese (SO GOOD) and "sweets" (yule logs are going to have to become a thing at my Christmas dinner).  She was wonderful, her friends were wonderful, the food was wonderful, everything was wonderful.

Christmas Day was fantastic as well.  After opening some presents in the morning, and an awesome personal and companion study on service, we went to a member's house so I could skype (!!) with my family.  I love them.  They are so great.  Afterwards we went to a dinner with the temple missionaries that we were invited to Sunday night (after we had already been invited to the other dinner) that was just lovely.  I talked with some of their family, and out of the three young women who were return missionaries there, one had actually served in Taiwan!  We are hoping she will be able to come down to Chinatown and have lunch with us sometime next week.  It was another French style meal, and I have decided that I really like French food.  And cheese. Cheese is good.

The day was pretty magical, and we were able to find ways to serve people along the way.  I am so grateful to be serving a mission in New York, with the people I serve with here.  It is wonderful.

I love you all and hope you have had a wonderful Christmas.  Continue to enjoy your holiday season!

Merry Christmas from the Chinatown Missionaries!

Love,

Sister Beer

Of Music and Miracles

[Disclaimer: Sister Beer wrote this last Wednesday, so her performance has already happened. Her sister is slow and just barely got this posted.]

So, this week was awesome.

This upcoming Friday is our Mission Christmas Devotional, in which several of my district's elders are performing.  (Remember when I told you that we have a piano and a flute performance major in our district?)  I have been enjoying listening to them practice and work on their respective numbers over the past week and a half.  On Saturday I received a call from President Morgan asking if I would conduct the music for the program.  I was told to go to Scarsdale on Monday for rehearsal.  He ended the call by saying "I hear you have a flair for putting these things together," and then said goodnight.  I didn't think much of it.  Perhaps I should have.

When Sister Liu and I got to the rehearsal on Monday, we sat with the other performers and President went around introducing each of us and the part we would play in the program.  When he got to me, he said that I would be leading the music in addition to organizing the program! 

At that moment I realized that I should probably be taking notes.

Over the course of the next few hours, I listened to music, talked with President about speakers and topics, organized, directed, and went through the easiest blocking and tech rehearsal I have ever attended.  It was awesome!  I was actually using the training I have been receiving for the past three years to put together a program that will (hopefully) enrich the lives of the missionaries in this mission.  I am so excited to have been a part of it all, and am looking forward to Friday!

In keeping with the Christmas Spirit our Zone made cookies yesterday that we will be delivering to apartments in our buildings we live in.  It was fun to get together and have a Christmas experience.  Cookies are a huge part of my family's Christmas traditions, so I was glad to be able to make them on my mission!  (For those who are interested, we made gingersnaps, chocolate M&M cookies, peanut butter blossoms, and fudge.)

In other news, after a drought of new investigators, Sister Liu and I decided that something needed to change.  After a few companion studies and an awesome companionship inventory, we decided that we needed to pray for faith to find new investigators.  We started working on that, and after a few days, we found one!  We were so excited.  The next day, another one popped up, and the next day there was another.  By the end of the week we had three new investigators, more than we have had in weeks, and two of them were member referrals.  It was incredible, and we know that the Lord answered our prayers.

I'll let you all know how the program this week goes.  Since it will be after the 25th next time I write you (6 days!!), Merry Christmas!

Love you!

Sister Beer

Kids are the best. No, but really.

Mosiah 3:19 tells us "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."  Children are such awesome examples to all of us.  They want to please their parents, their teachers, and the Lord.  This week we had a couple of pretty awesome kids talk to us.

On Thursday we were out contacting and a family walked by.  When we tried to talk to the dad, he just waved us off and was just a little bit rude to us.  His son came up to us, though, intrigued by the two women standing in skirts on the sidewalk.  He talked to Sister Liu:

"What's that?"

"It's a paper talking about Jesus?"

"Jesus?! Whoa, cool! (Grabs paper.) Dad look, it talks about Jesus!"

We didn't talk to the family, but it was cool to see a boy who recognized something his dad missed.

Then again yesterday, we were out contacting and a boy came up to us and told us about how he went to our church before with his aunt and that he like it, and then his dad called him away.  I hope that these kids can someday make contact again with the Church.

The Christmas season is here!  In honor of the season, last night for our weekly District Unity we made gingerbread houses.  I haven't made a gingerbread house in ages, and it was fun to work with Sister Liu creating our masterpiece.  I'm pretty pleased with the finished product.  I think my favorite part is the Abominable Snowman chilling in the backyard.

That's all for this week.  Remember how awesome kids are.  They are such an important part of Heavenly Father's plan, and He loves them very much.  I love you all!

Love,

Sister Beer

P.S. Good luck to all of you people in school with finals. You're almost to Christmas break!

Welcome to the Chinatown Ward!

That's right, everyone, we are officially a ward!  This is a big step for us, since we have been a branch (a smaller congregation) for about 10 years. We are the first Chinese-speaking ward in New York, which is pretty awesome, and we are looking forward to lots of growth in the future.  In Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, President Buckner (our stake president) challenged us to grow a stake from our new ward.  Can you imagine that? A Chinese-speaking stake in New York City!  That would be awesome.  We have a lot of work to do before that can happen, but we are ever hopeful.

Other fun things that happened this week:  Brother Wang was confirmed a member of the Church on Sunday, we had a zone conference this week, and we got to hear the Christmas Devotional on Sunday as well, which was excellent.  If you haven't had the opportunity to hear it, I would highly recommend going to www.lds.org and checking it out.

Zone conference yesterday was awesome.  Elder Paul V. Johnson came to speak to us, and gave some great counsel on how to be more effective missionaries.  One of my favorite things he talked about was becoming a low-maintenance, high-yield missionary.  As we learn to solve problems on our own and receive personal revelation from the Lord, we become more effective missionaries with stronger testimonies, who see more success as we work.  This applies to any member of the Church (or any person, really); there is nothing a church leader likes more than to see someone actively working to strengthen themselves and magnify their calling.  As we do so we also have opportunities to serve and build up the people around us as well.

Something I have been thinking a lot about recently, what with the surge in new missionaries we are anticipating (we will have increased our numbers from 150 missionaries to 250 missionaries in the field by the end of my mission) is that I will probably be training someone in the near future. Training a new missionary is a bit of a daunting task, in my opinion.  As a trainer, you are the first companion a missionary has in the field. You are the one they look up to to know how on earth they are supposed to do missionary work in this new, not-MTC environment.  Yesterday President Morgan addressed us on this subject.  He told us that it is likely that we will all train, possibly multiple times, on our missions.  He asked us to prepare ourselves for this work, to fill our proverbial lamps (see Matthew 25) now with charity, love, service, and obedience.  I want to be the trainer a parent prays their child will have.  After yesterday I am more excited to have the opportunity to train, and I hope that I am preparing well to do so.

I hope you all are having fun gearing up for the Christmas season.  Good luck to all you university students on your upcoming finals.  Remember that even though school is hard, the Gospel is still true. :)

Love you!

Sister Beer

"Great week!" says Sister Liu

That's what Sister Liu said my post title should be this week.  So it is.

And it has been a great week!  We have had Thanksgiving dinners (that's right, multiple ones), a baptism, I cut Sister Liu's hair, and as always, we saw miracles every day.

Thanksgiving was awesome.  Our branch had a Thanksgiving dinner (their first one ever) and the missionaries put on a Music and the Spoken Word style program at the end. Lucky for us, we have an eloquent elder to write the words, two music majors in our district (piano and flute performance), a professional violinist in our branch, and... me.  So I had fun doing music things with the experts, and the program went very well.

Our second Thanksgiving dinner was with the district.  One of the counselors in our branch gave the missionaries a turkey and asked Sister Blair to cook it for us, so we just decided to have a little potluck to go with it.  I made Grandma Beer jello salad, which was received very well by the district.  Great-Grandma Beer knew what she was doing with that one.

The other big thing from this week is that one of our investigators got baptized!  Brother Wang is from Mainland China, and is pretty awesome.  Sister Liu actually met him back in May, but he wasn't ready at that time and decided to stop meeting with the missionaries.  Months later, about three weeks after I arrived, he showed up at English class and asked when we could meet with him again to talk about the Gospel.  We started teaching him, and now he is baptized!  We are so happy for him and the choice he made, and  know that it will bless him as he learns more and continues to progress.

As we attended Brother Wang's baptism, I thought about my own baptism and how it made me feel.  I remember just being so happy the entire time, like I was light as air, because I knew that I was doing something God wanted me to do.  Now as I look back, I recognize that happiness comes from obeying God's commandments and from being worthy to be in his presence.  It is a feeling that I will always strive to have.

Love,

Sister Beer

I got a new nametag a few weeks ago and forgot to show you!  It has both of my languages, so now everyone can know my name and what organization I work with.  We special order our tags from HK so we can have the dual language.  Cool, eh?

I found Apple Sidra in Chinatown!  I'm pretty excited about it.  It's in my fridge right now.

At Rockaway Point doing service.  We saw one of my former students and older MTC generation missionaries, Elder Liston!  The people in the picture are Sister Liu, me, Elder Zander, Elder Liston, Elder Blonquist. (Elder Zander and Blonquist are in my district, but were in the MTC at the same time as Elder Liston.)

That is us with Brother Wang.  He doesn't smile for pictures.

So Much to be Thankful For

I really do have a lot to be thankful for in my life.  Today's post will be dedicated to the blessings I have observed recently in my life.

1. I have the best family.  No, but really.  They are so wonderful and supportive of the choices I have made, especially the one to serve a mission. (Plus, I have an awesome sister who runs this blog for me.  Thank you, Annie.) [Editor’s note: I did not write that one, folks. It was from Sister Beer—I swear.]

2. Right now, I am full-time sharing my deepest beliefs with people and seeing the wonderful effect the gospel has on their lives.  It's awesome.

3. Not only do I get to do missionary work, but I get to do it in New York City, which is possibly one of the coolest places in the world.

4. I have a second chance to learn Mandarin.  Not many people get that.  And it's getting better!  Yesterday I translated an entire lesson for our senior couple.  We were teaching a recent convert and the Blairs came along to meet her, but since they don't speak any Mandarin, I was the bridge between them and the sister we were talking to.  It was pretty cool to be able to help them understand her needs and concerns, and to help her understand what they wanted to do to help.

5. This week I left my mission for the second time since coming here.  Now, most missionaries don't ever leave their mission boundaries while they are out, but this week we had the awesome opportunity to go to the New York South mission and help clean up and provide relief from Hurricane Sandy.  While I was there, I also got to see Elder Liston (who was one of my Bio 100 students at BYU) and Elder Steadman (who was in my district at the MTC) who were both helping with the project that day.  The South missionaries have been serving almost nonstop since the hurricane hit, and the people of Long Island are thankful for it.

6. I am part of a church that, when a disaster like Hurricane Sandy hits, organizes relief efforts quickly and quietly.  We serve where we can and hope that the people benefit from it.  I love it.

7. This week, after a long contacting drought, we got four numbers in one night, and three of them were former investigators from years ago!  It was a huge miracle for us.  We have recently had a difficult time finding people who are interested in our message, but these people seem prepared and ready to listen and learn about the gospel.

8. I am a part of the best district and zone in the New York North mission.  My fellow missionaries are obedient, diligent workers and I love it.  They set such a good example for me and for other missionaries in the mission.

9. Because I serve in Chinatown on Manhattan, I get some of the best food ever.

10.  My companion is wonderful.  She is loving, compassionate, patient, and loves what she is teaching.

The list goes on, but I'll stop there.  I am also so grateful for all of you and the support you have given me and other missionaries around the world.  I appreciate the contact that I have had with many of you over the past four months.  Thank you so much for your love and prayers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sister Beer

That one time I translated Sacrament Meeting . . .

Yeah, that happened.  And surprisingly, it wasn't all that bad.  This week Sister Liu and I were assigned to translate Sacrament Meeting (our Sunday service).  When I found out, I kind of freaked out.  Like, about a half hour of "WHY did they assign us to translate??" freaking out.  Since I am the native English speaker in the companionship, and my English is better than Sister Liu's, I was the logical choice to translate. Except for the fact that I usually can only understand other people's Mandarin when they speak really slow and say it more than once.  Luckily I have a very patient and spiritually sensitive companion.  After a few talks with Sister Liu, she reminded me of the power of faith and that if we trust the Lord, we can do anything He wants us to.  Partway through the week we found out that it was the Primary Program this week, and that a majority of the meeting would actually have to be translated from English into Mandarin for the congregation.  We decided that I would do the Chinese-->English translation, and Sister Liu would do the English-->Chinese translation with help from me if I felt comfortable.  After a few intense language studies and a LOT of praying the day came and the meeting happened, with a flawed, but passable translation on my part.  (Sister Liu did an amazing job, by the way.  Her English comprehension is awesome.)  There were a few times when I had to turn to the English speakers and say "I have no idea what they just said," but for the most part I was able to get the idea across.  That experience done, one of my new goals is to be able to translate in meetings by the end of the cycle.

In other news, Sister Liu and I have started running.  Take as much time as you need to pick your jaw up off the floor.  Despite my long-lived abhorrence of running and everything like unto it, running is one of the only options of exercise left to us now that our downstairs neighbors have objected to our morning exercise, using words like "moving furniture."  Yeah... I'd rather not have my movement compared to a sofa, thanks.  But, out of respect to them and respect for our bodies, we are now venturing out into the world for our daily exercise.

A thought before I leave you: this week we had two member present lessons.  This is a pretty big deal for us, since it is very difficult in Chinatown for people to find time in their schedules to come to investigator lessons.  Can I just say how much I love having members at our lessons?  It brings a wonderful spirit and a great resource for the investigator to have a friend they can talk to, and someone besides the missionaries testifying of truth.  I challenge any who have the opportunity to go with the missionaries and share their testimony.  You have no idea how much good you will do in helping that person as they come closer to Christ.

That's all I have for you this week.  I love you all!

Sister Beer

Back to normal?

大家好,

Post-hurricane life is... cold.  As with many storms, this one has left a chilly aftermath, including a Nor'easterner coming in tonight.  There is already snow falling from the sky, which I have mixed feelings about, and I am beginning to wish that Sisters could wear pants.

The work, however, is doing great.  One of our investigators is preparing for baptism, and he's fantastic!  We taught him lesson 3 yesterday, all about the Doctrine of Christ.  The Doctrine of Christ includes five steps:

1. Faith on Jesus Christ and His Atonement

2. Repentance

3. Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins

4. Receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost

5. Enduring to the End

As we were teaching him about these principles, he just understood.  There is no other way to describe it.  The hardest one to teach in my opinion is the last step, about enduring to the end.  Often people look at baptism as a thing that finishes the conversion process.  On the contrary, baptism is only the beginning our discipleship to Christ and is a gateway to the path leading us back to our Heavenly Father.  When we asked our investigator his opinion about if we need to continue building faith after baptism, he looked at us and said (I'm translating) "Of course!  We need to continue to learn more."  I was SO happy to hear that.  He gets it!  As he takes these steps to grow closer to Heavenly Father, he is only going to see more blessings in his life.  That's true for all of us, by the way.  As we continuously try to better ourselves and become more like Jesus Christ, we see more blessings and experience more happiness in our lives.

Now that I have talked about that for a bit, let me inform you about how the hurricane affects my mission and our work here.

We are still waiting to hear about when we can go to help the New York, New York South and New Jersey, Morristown Missions.  At this point there is not enough of an organized effort for missionaries to go down to help right now.  There are many areas of the city that are still not open to civilians and many still without power.  Luckily we in our mission have power (the only on who doesn't right now is the mission president, and that's because of all the trees down around his house) and we have been able to return to proselyting work until we are called to serve other places.  We also have been actively looking for service opportunities in our area and have had a few chances to work distributing food and water, as well as helping people fill out forms for replenishing food stamps.  They were very grateful to have some Chinese speakers around to help!

Ah!  I almost forgot.  Today was transfers, and we lost two of our district.  Elder Huang and Sister Gao have returned home, bringing the Chinatown district down to 12 missionaries.  Because Sister Gao left, Sister Chueh has now switched over and is Sister Khong's new companion.  She will finish training Sister Khong, and Sister Liu will finish training me!  I am so grateful to have the opportunity to be trained by Sister Liu.  She is so happy and such a good missionary!  I also am hoping that my Mandarin will improve lots over the next six weeks, since SIster Liu doesn't speak much English and we need to communicate somehow!  We use her electronic dictionary a lot to translate things, and so far, it has been pretty great.

To start off our cycle, we went to the National Museum of Natural History and checked out the Dinosaur Exhibit!  It was pretty awesome.  I like dinosaurs. :)

That's all the time I have for today.  The Blairs have invited us over for dinner, so we have to get going.  I love you all!

Love,

Sister Beer

P.S.  I got to go stay for a couple days up in Harlem (while we didn't have power in Chinatown) with some sisters there, and it was super fun!  Also, I can say now that I have been to Harlem, which is pretty cool.  While I was there, I was looking at pictures on the wall and who should be smiling back but one Kirt Davis!  It makes sense, he was an Assistant to the President (AP) in this mission for a while, but I forgot that people here knew him.  Kirt, you are still remembered and loved by many here in New York!

My Date With Sandy

Hello, all. 

I am happy to inform you that we did not blow away in the storm!  And by storm, I mean hurricane.  Who knew New York got hurricanes?  (Actually, I heard they had one last year, but it's not really a place that you think of getting hurricanes!)  We did, however, lose power, so I am actually writing this post from the mission home in Scarsdale.  We have been having a good few days in our apartment in Chinatown, but since we have been without power for a couple days and there was no way to write home, they had us come up here so we could communicate with you all.  I will say that I am now very familiar with our area book, and I have learned how to light a gas stove without an automatic starter.  Good skills to know, I think.  The one thing is that since we have been in the apartment, we haven't been able to meet with many investigators this week, so that has been a little frustrating, and our plans for a hot-pot and pumpkin pie night for our departing Sister Gao have been cancelled.

In other news, we have new missionaries in our district!  The Blairs are a senior missionary couple (that's just what it sounds like, an older couple who chose to go on a mission) that have been assigned to our little branch.  Neither of them speak Mandarin, but Elder Blair spent ten months of his mission in the South East Asia mission in Hong Kong.  They live in our building, right next to one of the companionships of elders downstairs.  We love them already and know that they will be an excellent contribution to our district and our branch.  One good about this hurricane is it has given us more of an opportunity to get to know them.  On Monday they and the elders came up to our apartment to help us put up our blinds.  Afterwards, since we couldn't leave our apartments, we ordered a couple of pizzas, went to the Blairs' apartment, and had a little family night. 

This whole hurricane deal has really reminded me how wonderful it is to be prepared.  The Church encourages all of its members to prepare food and water in case of emergencies, as well as any other supplies they may need.  The same goes for missionaries, and before the storm hit we were reminded to get everything we need.  We then were given the excellent opportunity to serve our ward, especially our recent converts and less active members.  We called all of them to remind them to prepare themselves, and to tell them how much we and the Branch Presidency loved them.  Many of them were grateful for the information and to hear that we wanted them to be safe.  We will follow up with them soon (once cell phones are working a little better) and see how they weathered the storm.

I am grateful for a mission home that still has power and internet, a mission president that thinks to send updates to my family, and for an awesome district that is so willing to serve each other.  it has been a pretty great couple of days, all things considering.

We'll see how this next week goes - I have a feeling we are going to be helping out a bit with cleanup.  I'll let you know.

Love you!

Sister Beer