Spring?

Dear all,

It was really warm this week. Like, above freezing warm, which means that there were people in shorts and t-shirts jogging outside. It was wonderful. The snow is starting to melt, and there's even some really sad-looking grass exposed. Everything is just really wet and dirty, but at least it's warmer. 

Good news! Three flying port-a-potties are a traditional sign of the coming of spring here in Montreal.

More important that the weather, Yang Yuan Lan got baptized on Saturday. She was really ready for it, and it was cool to see her finally take that step. She comes to church more regularly than the majority of the members of the branch, so hopefully she'll be a really solid member now.  Elder Tsai got special permission to come back for the day so that he could be the one to baptize her. It was good to see him again, and I think he was really happy he got the chance to actually say goodbye to everyone. It was a good day.

Here's a really bad picture of a really cool place. This is St. Joseph's--a really, really big building.

Since Elder Leung is our district leader, Elder Lehnardt and I had to go on a weird trio exchange with the zone leaders this week. The two of us went with one, while the other stayed in the Mandarin area with Elder Leung. Elder Lehnardt and I basically just took over their apartment, cleaning out the junk in their fridge and cupboards, and cooking Chinese food for all our meals. I hope they appreciated it. 

Transfer calls came on Saturday night. A lot is changing in the branch. I'm getting sent back to Central, the area I was in before, to be with Elder Furnesse, who's only a couple transfers older than me, and has been in Ottawa his whole mission. It's gonna be interesting just having two new missionaries running a really busy area, but I'm sure we'll make do. Elder Furnesse is at least partially from Taiwan, so his Chinese is better than mine. Elder Leung and Elder Lehnardt are staying together in their current area, and the other area in the branch is getting shut down. Elder Saunders and Elder Hsiung are both going to different areas, leaving us with only four missionaries in the branch. It's going to be a really interesting transfer. 

Here is my collection of name tags. I still need to get an English one to make the collection complete. 

(Yes, the Chinese ones on the left are different from the one on the right.)

That's pretty much it for me this week. Love you all,

Elder Hadden

新年快乐 (Happy New Year)

We stopped by Chinatown this week. Here's a picture of the Chinese thing there.
And the backs of Elder Lehnardt and Elder Leung's heads.

Dear all,

I got back to the Branch just in time for Chinese New Year. As far as I've been able to tell, or at least as far as anyone has told me, Chinese New Year is really, really big, but the only thing people do to celebrate it is eat lots and lots of food. It's like Thanksgiving, if Thanksgiving were a ton bigger and lasted for an entire week. We had a dinner appointment with ShenBo, the first councilor in the branch presidency, on Thursday. His wife made us a ton of really extravagant, very northern Chinese food (pictures included).

New Year's Dinner with ShenBo.
The brown stuff to the left of the fish is meat Gelatin.
It tasted all right, but was really gross-looking. 

I ran into Elder Amichia and Elder Reynolds today and got a great awkward picture with them.

He told us all about how they celebrate the new year up in the north of China, where he's from.

On Saturday, we had our branch New Year's party (pictures also included. You're welcome). There were people in the chapel making dumplings for about 4 hours before the party actually started, and then everyone who came brought a huge dish to share. There was a ton of food and a ton of people. A fair amount of non-members showed up, but I didn't get to talk to any of them because Alice was talking to me pretty much non-stop the whole time (she talks a ridiculous amount).  The missionaries got asked to sing a song for everyone, so we sang some traditional (?) New Year's song in Chinese, and then a hymn. It was a pretty bad performance, but no one expected it to be good. It was good fun all around.

Branch Party

Here's Alice and Elder Hsiung at the party.

We got  to visit Yang Yuan Lan this week, to help her prepare for her baptism, which is this Saturday. She's really, really ready to get baptized, so there wasn't a whole lot we could do for her. We ended up sharing the story of Moses with her and some other bible history just to help her understand the scriptures. It's surprising how much scriptural knowledge I have that I just take for granted, and how important that is to understand so many other things in the church. We had a good time explaining it to her and sharing scriptures.

The main investigator we focused on this week was Jia Ying. She was the first investigator I taught after I got here, but she's from Canton and prefers to be taught in Cantonese. Elder Leung has been teaching her. She speaks Mandarin fluently, but Cantonese is a lot easier for her. She's about 25 and has been investigating for around 6 months. She has a baptismal date in May, comes to sacrament meeting every week, and is progressing slowly, but surely. She's really funny, but a little immature at times. Lessons with her are a weird mix of Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. Elder Lehnardt and I just try to keep up as much as we can. 

We taught her a couple times this week, mostly just answering questions she has from the scriptures, and giving her conference talks to read. More notably, we taught her the law of chastity. We all knew that she definitely doesn't have any problems with chastity, but we have to teach it to her anyway. It went pretty well until she didn't know what masturbation was, and poor Elder Leung had to awkwardly explain it to her in Cantonese. I didn't understand it, but I could tell it was super awkward. Elder Leung told me it was the worst Chastity lesson he's ever taught. She didn't have any problems committing to follow it.

Life in the Chinese trio is super fun. Elder Lehnardt and I are learning a bunch of Chinese together being the only white missionaries in the branch. It's a party every day.

That's all for me. Love you all,

Elder Hadden

Lastly, another cool picture of downtown Montreal in the snow.

Some Short Conversations

Below are a couple of short email conversations I had with Elder Hadden today:

Mon cher Elder Hadden

Did you have Nathan Chen in your classes at West? Maybe he was an ELPer with you? Good skater?

He’s competing in the Olympics tonight! He went to West. Having a little trouble, but HEY! He’s there!

He took fourth in men's figure skating!

M.

******

Elder Hadden replied:

I sure did know him. I've been waiting for 7 years to hear how he does in the Olympics. Thanks for letting me know.

________________


Mon cher Elder Hadden,

Actual plastic DL sent today, Saturday, 10 Feb, to arrive Monday, 12 Feb. FedEx tracking # 789684814803.

!!!!!!!

If the mission office staff doesn’t give it to you, be sure to ask them for it.

. . .

M.

******

Elder Hadden replied:

I got it. Thank you.




ELPer - The ELP program seeks to serve those students at the high end of the range who possess unique gifts and abilities to succeed in an academic setting. West High School provides magnet ELP services to 7th and 8th grade students. Those who are identified receive specific curriculum and instruction that includes both increasing a student's access to knowledge through increasing depth and complexity, as well as acceleration when appropriate. Our task is to create opportunities for all students to learn something new every day.
Affectionately known as ELPers, these 7th and 8th grade students take core courses with their grade level peers, but also mingle with high school age youth in developmentally appropriate elective classes, and are an important part of the West High School history and culture. The program is designed to support students through this developmental stage while challenging their minds to learn and grow.  

I was a zone leader...?

Seriously. Not like the AP thing.

Dear all,

This week has been REALLY interesting. Perhaps a little too interesting. To start off with, I got transferred! Or rather, Elder Tsai got transferred, and I just got put somewhere else because I didn't have a companion any more. 

Here's what happened: On Friday morning, President told Elder Tsai to pack up all his stuff and told me to pack for a few days away. We both did, and President picked us up at our apartment. He took me to the mission office, and Elder Tsai to.....somewhere. I'm honestly not sure where he is. At the mission office I got picked up by Elder Amichia and Elder Reynolds, the Zone Leaders from the neighboring zone. I spent about 3 days with them working in their area and being their third companion. 

Their area is essentially the same geographical area, they just work in the English YSA branch. So I got to do weird stuff like contact white people, teach lessons in English, and even hear the sacrament prayers in English (the first time since I left home). I also had to go to special Zone Leader meetings and help with the weekly Zone Leader calls. It was a weird and totally unexpected couple days, but it was pretty fun. Elder Reynolds and Elder Amichia have both been out for a while. They were both very relaxed while still being very focused and hard-working, and they were both really funny. Elder Amichia is a big black guy from France whose English is pretty good. Elder Reynolds is a 24-year-old, short, really zen guy from LA. They're a fun duo, and their senses of humor played of each other in really interesting ways. 

I stayed with them from Friday evening until last night, when President told me that I'm going to be spending the rest of the transfer with the Mandarin West team (Elder Leung and Elder Lehnardt.) So they picked me up at the Zone Leader's apartment and took my back to the Mandarin Central apartment so I could pack up my stuff and close down the apartment. 

So, now I'm in my third tripanionship so far, and my last area is totally shut down. President told me that this kind of thing pretty much never happens, but he had an impression so he followed it. So I guess I'm special or something. Pretty crazy.

As far as people in the branch go, I'm not super sure how they're all doing. Everyone in our area was pretty concerned that we didn't answer any of their calls after Friday, so I had to spend a while on the phone with each of them trying to explain what happened in Chinese. I think they understood. According to Elder Leung and Elder Lehnardt, the whole branch was pretty confused why Elder Tsai and I weren't at church on Sunday. No one really knows why anything happened, including me.

Anyway, That's been my week. I hope It's been just as exciting and full of the hand of the Lord as mine has.

Love you all. Talk to you next week.

Elder Hadden

P.S. I should add, I'm still in Montreal in the Mandarin branch. just in a different part of the island.

Mormonspeak

AP:  Assistant to the President:  An Assistant to the President, or AP is the highest level of organizational leadership within a mission next to the Mission President, as the name suggests. This is an assignment from the mission president and not a calling. This assignment is typically given to young male missionaries who have shown themselves capable of the requirements of a responsible leadership role, have demonstrated reasonable obedience, and whose talents and abilities are not needed more in a different role within the mission.

In many missions, an AP is chosen from among the missionaries who have been in the mission the longest. Although an AP may remain in the position until the end of his mission, some missions allow a missionary to serve in other capacities after having served as an Assistant. APs supervise many of the affairs of the missionaries in a mission. Most missions have 2 APs, but the number and how they function may vary. They are accountable to the Mission President in their mission and generally supervise the activity of the Zone Leaders.

YSA:  Young Single Adults.  A YSA ward is an optional ward for single adults ages 18-30-ish.  Elder Hadden's sister Bethe is in a YSA ward in Salt Lake City by choice, mainly because she doesn't like the sound of crying  kids, but also because she's a single young adult.  If you are a young single adult, you can usually choose to be in either type of ward.  If you get married, you are automatically moved into a regular (family) ward.

生日快乐 (Happy Birthday)

Dear All,

It's been a pretty normal week. It was my birthday on Sunday, but it was pretty much just a normal Sunday. Elder Lehnardt's birthday was yesterday, on the 5th, so we went over to President Aloi's house to celebrate a little. Elder Lehanrdt, Elder Hsiung, and I ended up making a bunch of chocolate chip cookies to give to ward members, while the older missionaries helped President Aloi do online paperwork for the branch. President Aloi bought us Benny's, a super Quebecois "BBQ" chicken restaurant (in Quebec, BBQ chicken means a piece of baked chicken covered in French fries, cole slaw, and brown gravy. It's really good; I was just really confused the first time I had it.), for lunch. He also bought us a cake, and just kept giving us food and cake until we had to insist we could not eat any more.

We met with the usual people this week, the most noteworthy of which is Oliver. Oliver has been coming to church for three hours every week for about 4 months now, but really hasn't progressed or shown any interest in progressing. He insists to me that he doesn't think the church is true, but can't give me a good reason why he comes to church. He's really smart, and just likes to discuss gospel topics with missionaries and ask weird questions to see how'll they'll respond. He's pretty interesting to talk to, but almost impossible to teach if you're not a native Chinese speaker. We met with him the other day to talk to him about commandments and the Word of Wisdom. He told me that he didn't think following commandments were that important, and that God shouldn't give us commandments, but he agreed to follow the Word of Wisdom anyway because he agreed that it would be beneficial to him. One day we'll get him to admit he thinks this is all true.

We met with Yang Yuan Lan again, but we've pretty much run out of things to teach her. She's had all the lessons twice, she keeps the commandments, she comes to church, she reads and prays daily, and has a really strong testimony, so there's not a whole lot more we can do to help her prepare for baptism. We ended up just talking about bible history with her, including the dispersing and gathering of Israel. It was more of just a conversation than a lesson. She bore her testimony in church on Sunday. It's really unusual for a investigator to bear their testimony before they get baptized.

In other news, Elder Tsai feels pretty much better. We can actually go out and contact again. 

That's pretty much it for me this week. 

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

Alice made horse kebabs in her class this week. She gave us some. Now I can say I've eaten horse meat.