"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!