Something's about to happen.

Hello everyone!

I am officially in my last week at the MTC.  The past couple of days have been crazy, helping people pack and saying goodbye to the friends I have made here at the MTC.  It has been hard to watch everyone go, but I know they are going to do the Lord's work and that is a wonderful feeling.  I am hoping that in a couple years I will see all of them and have the same experience Alma has in Alma 17:2 where he finds that his fellow missionaries are still his bretheren in the Lord.  I love these Elders and Sisters so much and I know that they will find amazing success in their respective missions.

It was especially difficult to see Sister Stevens leave, but I am so excited for her to go to Australia!  Besides, she said she would send me a picture of a koala. :)  She has been an amazing companion for me, though, and I have loved learning and growing with her at the MTC.

I am currently a solo sister, which is super weird.  That means that I do stuff with my district, which only has two other elders in it right now, but all the rest of the time I have a new companion!  My new companion's name is Sister Ashcraft.  She is in the younger generation and is going to Taipei, Taiwan.  We have been running around a lot today, getting my stuff moved over to her residence and finishing up a couple of things around the MTC, but all in all I think we are going to be great this next week.  The younger generation is pretty awesome.  I'm looking foward to getting to know them better.

One of the highlights of my week was on Sunday at Relief Society.  We are so lucky at the MTC to get so many wonderful people who come to visit us and share their experiences!  This week Sheri Dew (!!) came to speak and it was AMAZING.  Seriously, that woman is so strong and so incredible in her faith.  Her main message was focused on who we are and why it matters that we know that, especially as LDS women.  She talked about our relationship wish God and how we are literal daughters (or sons, as the case may be) of a loving father who wants what is very best for us.  She says that she is asked a lot about what it is like to be a "repressed LDS woman."  I loved her answer.  She talked about how within the church women have many responsibilities and opportunities that are not allowed anywhere else.  We lead in the Relief Society, Young Womens, and the Primary.  We are allowed to preach over the pulpit and to teach doctrine in classes, for which many churches require ordination.  We are able to have every blessing that the Lord promises to His children, as well as access to the blessings that come from the power of the priesthood.  I agree with her, the idea of a "repressed LDS woman" is ridiculous.  We are no more repressed than any other woman, and if we are, it is not because of the Gospel of Christ.  This message works to free people, not bind them down.  I am so grateful I get to share it with people in New York!

Speaking of which, the next letter I write you will be from New York.  Since I will be traveling next Tuesday, I won't be able to write a letter.  Know that I love all of you, though, and that I am grateful for all of the love and support you have given me and the other missionaries in the field.  This is a great work, and I am excited to be a part of it.

I love you!

Sister Caitlin Beer

P.S. After the meeting I got to meet Sister Dew.  She looked at my tag and asked "Do people often make fun of your last name" "All the time." "Me too. 'Dew.'"  So.... pretty much it was awesome, and Sheri Dew knows my name.  Also, if you don't know who she is, go look her up.  She's a pretty impressive lady.

This is our district with Brother McLaws (Mu Laoshi), our hipster teacher.  He is very animated in class and yesterday he brought in a glass bottle of water with chia seeds floating in it.  Elder Zavala (Zhai Zhanglao) commented that water must be too mainstream for him.

This is our district again, but with Brother Liu (Liu Laoshi) and Sister Han (Han Laoshi).  They are some of the best teachers I have ever known, and I am going to miss them!

This picture is with Brother Vernon (Wen Laoshi).  He is the one that knows Caitie McKay (Soffe) and is pretty awesome.  So you know, the order of people here:  Top row: Elder Young, Elder Steadman, Brother Vernon, Elder Hare and Elder Hawks.  Bottom row: Sister Stevens, me, Elder Zavala, Elder Murray, Elder Woodward, Elder Tsai.

This is one of Brother Vernon, Shen Jiemei, and me.  I love this picture of us sisters - my companion is adorable. :)

My district had a British day this last week.  It was super fun - we dressed up, spoke in British accents, and played Bocci ball.  I had a lot of fun, and I think everyone else did too!

Elder Zavala got some ties in the mail last week, and he let us try them out.  I'm a fan, personally.  Llamas are pretty cool.

This week's pictures

Elder Young and his Sprite commercial photo. 

Elders Young and Elder Zavala (smiling)

Elders Young, Zavala, Woodward, and Scovel

This hipster guy is our teacher. We all think this picture is really funny for some reason. He looked around the doorframe, saw the camera, and immediately reacted with that face.

Elder Woodward trying to recreate Mu Laoshi's door picture, with a Cantonese elder eating an apple and Elder Young creeping in the background.

Woodward's model shot.  He used to work at Hollister as an in-store model.  For like a month.  Then he quit.

Me wearing the red shirt.  But in black and white.  I look like I have super muscly arms . . . I don't.

All of the Mandarin speaking Sisters in my generation- they are pretty much awesome. :)

Please don't kill the cat

In 14 days I will be on an airplane, flying to my new home in New York City.  :)

First off: SUPER EXCITED for Hunter Hoopes and Stacy Mero getting their mission calls!  You both are going to be wonderful missionaries.

This week was so good!  I feel like as we get closer to the end of our MTC stays, we are all getting more nervous, excited, and dedicated in our study.  I think we are all realizing that in a couple short weeks we are actually going to be teaching people, which is a little frightening and super exciting at the same time.  On Sunday I met another girl going to my mission Mandarin speaking.  She is from Singapore and because she is a native speaker, she is on the international track.  We will be flying out together, I think, and more likely than not she will be my companion at some point on my mission.  I'm happy to say I actually understood most of what she said to me, and was able to respond, even.  Good stuff.

This week was very musical, as well.  I had the opportunity to sing an arrangement of "Where Can I Turn For Peace" (arranged by Michael R Hicks, if you want to look it up) in Relief Society on Sunday.  Elder Murray, the other New York North bound elder in my district, accompanied me.  It was great to be able to share my testimony through music with the sisters at the MTC, and to really think about the words to that song as I prepared and performed.  I would recommend all of you go check out the lyrics of that hymn next chance you get.  It is a wonderful example of how the Savior helps each of us in a very personal way.  It was also cool to listen to the talk that day, given by Renee Hill, the General Relief Society Secretary.  She spoke all about a time when her family needed the Savior and how they were able to turn to Him in order to find the peace they needed.  I don't know if it was planned or not to have those two topics together, but it was pretty awesome.

I also had some other fun music times this week with my friend Sister Emily Brown.  She is going to Russia on her mission, and we met freshman year at Late Summer Honors, a week of classes before freshman year at BYU for overachievers/nerds/pretty awesome people.  Sister Brown is a fantastic musician that plays a lot in Provo, and actually wrote some of my favorite songs in the world.  (Side note - you should all go check out her album "It Goes With Us" because it is AMAZING.  You should also probably check out her new album, too, mostly because I can't and I'm sad about it.)  Any way, we had fun making music and catching up.  It's crazy all the people you see at the MTC.

Some of you may have been wondering what on earth the title of this post is about.  This week we taught Spring, one of our practice investigators.  Spring is an elderly Taiwanese gentleman who is very open and talkative (which is great, let me tell you) and who also is allergic to cats.  This is rather unfortunate, since there is a cat that has been wandering around his neighborhood for the past few lessons.  This last lesson we asked him if his allergies were still bothering him, and he started off about the cat.  After about a minute of explaining that it was loud and annoying because of his allergies, he got this somewhat crazed look on his face and said "Wo yao SHA zheige xiaomao!" ("I want to KILL the cat!")  Accompanying his exclamation was a wringing motion.  It took all of us (we had a couple of elders playing church members this lesson) by surprise and we could not stop laughing for about three minutes.  He then went on to tell us about how he was thinking of paying his son to go find it and kill it, or at least kick it.  We calmed down a bit and told him that he probably shouldn't kill the cat and that we would see if there was anything we could do about it.  As we left, he told us to kick it if we saw it, but I think we are going to tell him that Elder Hare took it home so it wouldn't bother him anymore.  We love teaching Spring.

Last Tuesday Elder and Sister Kopischke of the Seventy came to speak to us.  You could feel how much they loved the missionaries as they spoke to us.  I loved this topic that Elder Kopischke talked about: he spoke about the cleansing and edifying power of the Atonement and how if we use it in our lives we will be we can have a greater relationship with the Savior and will be better able to share this message with others.  We cannot teach and invite others to do what we do not understand ourselves.  He also pointed out that we do not have to have committed a horrible, awful sin to feel the redeeming power of the Atonement. Any sin separates us from God, not just the big ones, and by taking the step and repenting of our sins we can feel the same joy that Alma describes in Alma 36:17-20.  I don't know about all of you, but I want to feel that happiness.

I love you all, and I hope you are having a wonderful week!

Love,

Sister Beer

A glimpse inside the ginger's mission:

English-Speaking Missionary Time

That's right, folks, I am officially on English-Speaking Missionary Time!  That means that three weeks from today (the time that an English speaking missionary stays at the MTC) I will be shipping out to the Big Apple to teach people the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  In Mandarin, no less.  This is some pretty crazy stuff, here.  I'm kind of freaking out about it, but in a good way.

 

This week has been so good!  We had great lessons, wonderful weather, excellent study sessions, and fun times to be had by all the Mandarin speaking missionaries.

 

We have a tradition every week to play what we call "Anything Goes Paiqius," our special version of volleyball where everyone is on the court at the same time and we all just try to get the ball over the net in any way possible.  It's pretty fun stuff, and this week we added a new rule: whenever someone yells "Chinese Fire Drill!" you have to find a new place in the court, while still watching to see if the volleyball is flying toward your head.  Good times on the volleyball court.  Also, as we were walking home after playing it started to rain on us!  The weather that day had been everywhere from sprinkling to sunny, so we were all super excited when the rain started falling (rather hard, actually) and we could hear thunder rumbling in the distance.  I miss Michigan thunderstorms, so it was good to have that for a few minutes.

 

Here's a good funny story for you all:  yesterday our teacher challenged us all to speak more Mandarin.  I had done super well through all of dinner and all the way back to the classroom.  As soon as I got to the classroom door, however, I saw two of our teachers talking to each other.  It was the most surreal experience.  I knew they had never met before, so seeing them together was strange.  Looking back I don't know why I was so surprised.  It's pretty normal for teachers to talk to each other.  In any case, I just stopped at the door, stared, and said "Whoa, this is weird."  Brother Vernon then said "阿！你应該説中文！“ (Hey! You should be speaking Chinese!)  I was a little embarrassed and eventually got over the fact that our teachers were talking to each other.  I still don't know why I was so surprised.  In Sister Stevens words, "She nearly died."  That may be a bit of an exaggeration.

 

Last Tuesday especially was super cool for us all.  What I didn't write about in my last letter home is that last Sunday we were told that the visiting General Authority wanted to speak with all missionaries Mandarin or Cantonese speaking or who were from Mandarin and Cantonese speaking countries.  Naturally, rumors began to fly that China was being opened, that we were all getting transferred immediately to Shanghai or Beijing, all that fun stuff.  Obviously that didn't happen since I am still in the Provo MTC, but what did happen was still pretty cool.  We met with Elder Anthony B Perkins of the Quorum of the Seventy*, formerly President Perkins of the Asia Area Presidency.  When they walked in I thought they looked familiar, and then when President Brown said their names I remembered that Elder and Sister Perkins had served as the mission president in the Taipei mission before my family moved there and had actually given an address for a televised stake conference while we were there.  I remembered hearing about them from the other ward members in Taipei while we lived in that ward, so it was pretty cool to meet them.  He talked about what a gift and a responsibility it is to be a missionary learning a Chinese language.  He told us that what we are learning right now (both language and doctrine) and the work we are doing as missionaries will influence the rest of our lives in ways we never could imagine.  It makes me kind of excited as to what the future could hold for the Mandarin-speaker version of Sister Beer.  

That night at the devotional Sister Perkins said something that struck me.  She quoted her daughter, saying, "You can always be as bold as you need to be when you speak out of love."  As missionaries we have to talk to a lot of people and ask them to do some things that may not come naturally to them. (Like being baptized, for example.  I'm pretty sure that's not high on a lot of people's "To Do" list.)  When we help them understand that we are asking them to do these things because we love them and genuinely want them to be happy, then it is much easier to accept.  Another thing she said is that we as missionaries were called to be ourselves, not some other person's view of a perfect missionary.  I think that extends outside of missionary work as well.  The Lord loves you for who you are, and wants you to be yourself, just a better version of yourself.  That's why He gives us commandments and laws to follow, because He knows that they will help us become better versions of ourselves that are closer to Him.  He does not want you to give up your quirks and qualities that make you an individual, He wants you to develop your talents and become the wonderful, strong person He knows you can be.  Moroni tells us in Ether 12:27 in the Book of Mormon that the Lord shows us our weaknesses so that we may turn unto Him, and then He will make our weak things become strong.  I know that the Lord does this and that He provides opportunities to help us to grow and become better people through Christ and His Atonement.

 

That's about all I have for today.  So you all know, even through my departure date has changed, my address stays the same.  And if you don't know what that means, don't worry about it.  Just use the address on the side of the screen.

 

I love you all and I hope you are having a wonderful week!

 

Sister Beer