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

Week Four: In Which an Apostle Visits and the Missionaries Go to a Farm

Yep, you read that right. D. Todd Christofferson came to visit our mission on Saturday!  Having an Apostle come to speak is pretty much like Christmas for missionaries.  It was awesome to feel the spirit that accompanies an Apostle and to feel how much he loved us and our mission.  He told us about how the Lord asks us to call people to repentance, and that repentance will bring them joy.  When we sin, we are separated from our Heavenly Father, and that separation brings sadness.  I know from experience that when we truly repent we have joy.  The Lord wants to bless us and wants us to be happy.

In other news, we went to a farm this week!  

Our ward went on a special trip to a farm outside the city.  It was awesome!  Once you leave the metro area, it's easy to see that fall has come to the Northeast.  

We bought apples, I ate a cinnamon sugar donut, and we looked at pumpkins. All around a great trip, I think.

Afterwards we went to West Point Military Academy, an Army school located in New York.  It's pretty old and pretty famous, and I actually had a friend in the MTC who was enrolled there.  They have a museum there dedicated to military history in America that was interesting.  Our ward is great.  The members are wonderful, and so humble.  I am blessed to be working with them.

Also, I would like you all to know that coming on my mission has not stopped me from baking!  I was a little scared that I wouldn't have time to bake, but as of yet I have made banana bread twice, so it's all good. 

I'm looking forward to other cooking adventures soon... :)

I have the opportunity today to go to the temple, which is great.  We get to go once every transfer, and this time around this is the week our District chose.  

The Manhattan temple is unique, however, in the fact that half of the building is temple and half is a meetinghouse.  As of yet I have only gone to the meetinghouse portion, so I am super excited to go to the temple today!

Because we are downtown for P-Day, I was able to fulfill a life dream.  For lunch Sister Gao, Sister Khong and I (I am on splits right now) went and bought some soup at a local supermarket and sat in the plaza in front of the temple to eat. 

 Growing up, that's kind of what I imagined New York City was like, sitting outside, cars driving by, sipping your hot chocolate or soup, and thinking about whatever people in New York think about.  Now I can check that off my bucket list.

That's all I have time for today.  Thank you for your prayers and your missionary efforts at home.  I had a friend tell me once that miracles happen every day, and if we don't see them, we aren't looking hard enough.  Have a great week!

Love,

Sister Beer