Revlon Run/Walk for Women

 We went to Times Square last Saturday to help with the Revlon Run/Walk for Women as volunteers.  It was super fun, and I loved everything about it!!  Except for the embarrassing story that will be included in a future blog post... but more about that later.

Elder Murray was a great sign-hander-outer.

[Sister Beer promises a letter will be coming shortly.......]

The Area Book, and other short stories.

Yep, the Area Book.  That's what I'm writing about this week.  We have had some awesome experiences this past week directly related to our area book.  For those of you who don't know, every companionship on a mission has an area book that allows them to keep track of information about investigators, people we meet, mission information, and other things that help keep us informed as missionaries.  The area book is essential to keeping our areas organized, and keeping the work going.

I love the area book.

This may surprise people that knew me before my mission.  I was not a particularly organized individual in my pre-mission life, and records were not really my strong suit (unless you count vinyl...wait, those weren't either).  As I have been on my mission, though, I have learned that by keeping a record, we show our love not only for our former and current investigators, but also for missionaries that will eventually enter our area.  Sister Liu and I have set a goal to update our area book so that if a companionship were to whitewash our area (or come in without anyone who knows the area), they would feel comfortable working there.  It's been a good thing for us to see how we need to change our record keeping.

The other thing I have been thinking about a lot recently is the importance of having members involved in missionary work.  As I was reflecting on this thought, I remembered that the reason my dad's family started investigating the church is because of a family that started inviting him and my aunt to Primary activities with them.  This family was highly involved in their conversion process and helped them answer questions about our religion.  They were there when the missionaries were busy to support my dad's family.  I don't know the names of the missionaries that taught Dad's family, but I know the name of the family that brought them to the church.  Member missionary work is essential in our church in helping people stay active after baptism.  I invite you to look for people you don't know in our church meetings (or just in your everyday lives) and talk to them, become their friends.  You have no idea the influence for good that you can have on them.

We had our last day of service at Far Rockaway this week.  It was great to go down and help serve the people there.  There are still so many that have so little - it is great to be able to help out in any way we can.

I love all of you, and I hope that you are enjoying new semesters, work, and new years.

You are great!

Love,

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!

One month!

Shiqing shi zheyang de (and it came to pass), I have been here at the MTC for over a month!  Sunday was the one month mark, and we all were amazed that it had been that long!  The MTC is a strange place - it feels like we have been here forever, but at the same time it feels like we just got here.  It was good to hear from my parents about the Safsten Family Reunion this week.  It sounds like it was lots of fun!

To celebrate one month of being on my mission, I was asked to accept the assignment of Relief Society Coordinating Sister within our zone.  For those who may not be so familiar with mission hierarchy, here's how it goes: each missionary has a companion that they stay with at all times.  Companionships are put into small groups (usually around 5 companionships) called districts.  While at the MTC, your district is who you study with, who you spend time with, who you teach with, all that fun stuff.  Each district has an Elder called the District Leader that reports to the next higher authority, the Zone Leaders.  ZLs are a companionship (two) Elders that report to the Branch President, the head of our congregation, about the welfare of the Zone.  However, because of the rules that surround the interactions between Elders and Sisters, the Sisters do not directly report to the District leaders.  Instead, they talk to the Coordinating Sister (that's me) and then she reports to the Branch President.  What this means is that I get to visit the sisters in my zone each night and talk with them about how they are doing, see what they need, all that sort of thing and then I talk to the Branch President about what is going on within the female portion of the zone.  I go to a couple extra meetings, but it's not too much time.  This assignment (it's not a calling since we are missionaries) will last three weeks.  Because of the timing, however, this also means that I get to be one of the first people to meet the new generation of missionaries coming in next week, and I will be one of the first missionaries they talk to!  It's a little intimidating, but super exciting at the same time.  I'm looking forward to getting to know this new group.

The older generation of Mandarin speakers all left this week.  They have gone off to places like New York, California, Taiwan, Australia, and England.  It is inspiring and kind of heart-wrenching to see them go.  We have become good friends with many of the Elders and Sisters in that generation, and it will be strange to be at the MTC without them.  Also, it will be strange when the new generation comes in next week and suddenly WE will be the older generation.  Elder Wade also left this morning to go to the Brazil training center, and Elder Barfuss leaves pretty quickly here, too, to go to Thailand.  It was awesome to see the two of them here and to be able to represent the Plymouth Ward so strongly in the MTC.  I am sad to see them go, but excited for what they get to do!  I am SUPER excited for my cousin Micah to come in tomorrow!  Even though he won't be here long, it will be nice to see another face I know in the MTC.

The elders in my district were super nice to me this week - I had a pretty bad cold and was feeling gross and yesterday I walked into class and there was an Emergen-C, pack of tissues, and bag of pretzel M&Ms sitting on my desk.  It was so thoughtful of them, and I greatly enjoyed the M&Ms.  I am feeling much better now, don't worry, and am grateful for it!

Last week when Sister Stevens and I were going to the temple we invited the Elders to sit with us afterwards and ponder the session, maybe write a couple letters or in their journals or something.  The quick response from an Elder: "No, we're going to go do manly things, like burping, picking things up and setting them back down again."  That, of course, invited some amount of laughter from the district and we set off toward the temple.  As it turns out, Sister Stevens and I didn't have much time for writing anyways.  We hurried back right after the session to go sing in the MTC choir, something that we have been doing every week.  It is a wonderful experience, and we enjoy it.  Today we went to the temple in the morning, and it was so nice to sit in the quiet and feel the Spirit that is there.  If you haven't been to the temple recently, go!  There is nothing better than going and feeling what is there.  If you don't know what a temple is, then go find a Mormon friend to explain it to you.  I wish I had the time here, but my computer time is limited.  You can also go and feel the Spirit that is there, even if you don't go inside.  I love the temple and the experiences I have there.

One of my favorite experiences I have had on the mission is while listening to a musical number that one of my district members accompanied.  The piece was called "The Prodigal" and one of the lines said, "Make of me a miracle for someone’s wand'ring child."  This line reminded me of one of my goals here at the MTC, to turn out to others when I want to turn in.  As I wasn't feeling well this week it was really easy to just think about my needs, what I wanted, and how I could get better.  However, the work did not stop just because I did.  I found that as I turned out, I was happier and better able to cope with what I had.  It was pretty cool, actually.  I would encourage all of you to turn out when you want to turn in.  As we serve others we can lead more fulfilling and happy lives.  Service is the quickest way to loving others and developing charity, which is crucial to our progression and improvement.  Moroni 7:46 states that "if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth."  This is so true.  As we turn out we can be happy, and we can help the people around us be happy, too.

I love you all and I hope you have a wonderful week!

Much love,

Sister Beer