Cabane à Sucre

Hey all,

This week the French YSA sisters are using the computers in the mission office, so we're stuck with our phones to email today. This email might be shorter than normal. Sorry. 

Last Tuesday, Elder Furness and I went and visited Zhang Ning so he could work some Chinese medicine on us. He ended up just giving me a really intense massage and cracking more joints in my back than I knew I had. It was pretty fun, and made my back feel really good. Afterwards we had a lesson with him and he accepted a date for baptism. Hopefully everything will continue to go well to keep him on that date. 

On Friday Alice said she wanted to take us out to dinner, so we went to a really well-known noodle bar in Chinatown. They were probably the best noodles I've ever had. Elder Furness and I both ate way too much, but we had a good time. Alice said she wanted to go contacting with us afterwards, but we didn't really have enough time to do any real contacting. 

On Saturday, the branch had it's annual cabane à sucre activity, so we all drove out to rural Québec about an hour south of the island (which is still in my area bounadries. I could go all the way down to the New York border if I really wanted to) to eat a bunch of food covered in maple syrup. It's a super Québecois activity which originally started just to celebrate having so much maple syrup, I guess. They brought out as much eggs, sausage, ham, and roubabou as we could eat, and then gave us a bunch of donuts to finish it off. Really unhealthy, but really sweet. After the meal, we poured fresh hot maple syrup on snow, waited until it froze, and then ate it on a stick. You can't get more Canadian. 

Yesterday, one of our somewhat recent converts, Catalina, asked us to come to court with her to help her translate. She was trying to file a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend for a lot of complicated reasons. We ended up spending about 4 hours with her in the Montreal courthouse, not actually having to do anything in an actual court (which I was very happy about),  and not actually having to translate anything. At least she really appreciated having our support in everything, and we at least got to know her better. An interesting experience all-in-all. 

That's it for me this week. 

Elder Hadden

Pictures:

1. This is the maple forest where the cabane à sucre was. There were lots of maple trees.

2. Selfies with Cedric. He never holds still so it's really hard to get pictures of him.

3. The maple syrup refinery or distiller or whatever you want to call it

4. Eating frozen syrup on a stick.

5. Noodles! So many noodles.

6. A set of information cards one of West's investigators made for me to help me learn Chinese Geography.

Translations

Cabane à sucre - sugar shack, where maple sap is refined into maple syrup

roubabou - traditional Voyageur split pea soup.

Voyageur - a French Canadian boatman employed by the fur companies in transporting goods and passengers to and from trading posts in the 18th and 19th centuries.They traveled in long canoes, sang to keep everybody's paddle strokes in sync, and generally could not swim.  They slept in the open, or with their head and torso under their overturned canoes

. 

Smart Phones 'n' Stuff

Dear all,

It's been a week full of busy interesting changes. On Tuesday, we all got our new smartphones, which means we can do cool stuff like use Facebook and text people in Chinese. Now we don\t have to try to understand the horrible toneless pinyin we've been using to text so far. Now we can communicate much smother with everyone we teach and I'm getting a ton better at reading. All is good.

In other news, we met with Oliver again this week, and he actually admitted to us that he was looking for God but didn't know how to find Him. This means he's actually admitted that he has desire to view the Gospel in a non-worldly way, and actually can be open to the Spirit. Woooh! We told him to keep reading, praying, and coming to church, he would eventually get his answer. He said he was willing. He still has hope

Last Monday, Elder Furness and I met up with Cedric to have a P-day party. Neither of us have actually seen any of the sights in Montreal, so Cedric said he would take us to see some of the cool stuff. Cedric is the crazy, short, Vietnamese guy I met on my first week.

Here's Cedric probably saying something dumb about me.

He really likes to work with all of the missionaries and spends a lot of time especially with the missionaries in the Branch. He took us to St. Joseph's Oratory on Mount Royal

Here it is in all of its massive glory.

(pictures included) and gave us a very in-depth lesson in Catholic theology since he used to be Catholic before he joined the church. The Oratory was built in the first half of the 19th century and is absolutely massive. It basically looks like what would happen if you built a European cathedral in the 1900s in North America. Really, really big, and very, very Catholic. It was pretty cool.

Other than that, Elder Furness and I are still having a party every day. Our Chinese is getting better every day.

Hope you all have a good week.

Elder Hadden

This is the small chapel.

St. Frere Andre, the guy who built it. He was colonized in 2010
(ed: I think he means "cannonized".)

This is the big Chapel. It's a ton bigger than this picture makes it look.

Elder Furness and I with the view from the Oratory behind us.

Montreal. Mount Royal and downtown are behind me

The St. Laurence seaway

Three apostles from St. Joseph's Oratory

Random Monday P-Day

Hey all,

My P-day is Monday today because we're getting smartphones tomorrow. Surprise! 

Also, I have a Facebook now if you want to look me up. I can't really do anything with it though.

This week wasn't super eventful. We spent most of our time trying to set up appointments with new investigators, almost all of which fell through. We did get a few good appointments in. We met with a mother and her daughter from Shanghai the other day who have a lot of potential. I still don't know them very well yet, but they were very welcoming, came to church, and want to meet with us again as soon as possible. We met with another man, named Zhang Ning, who is a pretty well-known Chinese medicine doctor(?). He's also really willing to meet with us and come to church, and he even said we could come over sometime to do some Chinese medicine stuff. I don't really know what that entails, but I guess we'll find out. 

Yang Yuan Lan said she wanted to go contacting with us this week, so we spent about an hour and a half one day on the street with her stopping and talking to people. She was amazingly motivated to stop people and share the gospel with them. She sort of showed the two of us up a little. She hasn't even been a member of the church for 2 weeks and she's already fearlessly sharing the gospel with others. She's crazy.

Elder Furness and I have been getting along really well. He seems like he's adjusted to life in Quebec instead of Ottawa. Everyone in the branch likes him and is impressed by his Chinese. Noobie life has been pretty good for the two of us. We're gonna go party with Cedric (the crazy Vietnamese guy from my first day) today so he can give us an insider tour of the city. Tomorrow we'll be able to finally text people in Chinese. Life is good.

Hope you all have a good week. 

Elder Hadden

没有信心不用想办法

照片

Notre Dame de Montreal: It looks like Notre Dame de Paris except not as cool. or old. but still pretty cool

Old Montreal. It looks like Europe, but with more hockey stuff.

We're famous! We made it into the Chinese President Monson Liahona addition.

We:  Hinckley Scout Ranch, a Boy Scout camp at the East Fork of the Bear River in Utah where Elder Hadden worked for many summers as a counselor.  The building in the picture is their new lodge.

没有信心不用想办法: No confidence not to think of a solution.

照片: photo

Before I Forget

Next week's P-day is on Monday. Don't freak out. 

Elder H.

A New Companion

Dear All,

Another week of changes. On Thursday, I moved out of my temporary residence with Elder Leung and Elder Lehnardt, and moved back into my old apartment with Elder Furness for the new transfer.  Elder Furness is from Taiwan, but his Chinese is non-native. He grew up in Taiwan and Utah, and went to American schools in both places, so his Chinese is far from perfect, but it's a lot better than mine. He's only two transfers older than me, so neither of us really knows what we're doing, but we're doing what we can, nonetheless. It's gonna be a good learning experience for both of us, and we'll probably have to rely a lot on Greenie blessings.

The first thing we did after Elder Furness got here was go visit Oliver, so Elder Furness' first experience with Chinese people in Montreal was certainly an interesting one. As lessons with Oliver usually go, we started off talking about the Book of Mormon and ended up with a discussion about whether or not there's universal truth. It was an unusual lesson, but he agreed to read the Book of Mormon in the end, so it worked out. Elder Furness seemed like he enjoyed it.

On Saturday we met with Alice just to follow up on her scripture reading and church experience and answer any questions she might have. She ended up sharing more with us than we did with her. Her scripture study seems like it's been more in depth than mine has. She's doing crazy well as a recent convert.




All of us at Yang Yuan Lan's baptism Feb 2018

Yesterday we had dinner with Yang Yuan Lan and a few of her numerous friends. After dinner she spent a while teaching me about Chinese and Chinese geography. I learned a lot about China and Chinese, and everyone there seemed pretty excited to teach me about it. We talked to everyone a little bit about family history, since we're planning on taking her to our branch president's house later this week to get her started on her own family history. Yang Yuan Lan is totally unafraid to be open about her beliefs in front of her friends. She even asked if she could go contacting with us tomorrow. She has barely been a member of the church for a week, and already wants to do the scariest part of missionary work. She's crazy.

Elder Lehnardt wearing a funny hat.

Everyone seems to really like Elder Furness, and I've had a lot more opportunities to speak Chinese now that I don't have a native speaker to hide behind. It's shaping up to be a good transfer.



Here's me wearing a funny hat. (This is how you can tell we are real Chinese missionaries.)

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

Mormon-speak



Two transfers older than me - missionaries count their missionary "age" by how many transfers they have been through on their mission so far.  This is Elder Hadden's first transfer, but it is Elder Furness' third transfer.


Greenie - a missionary who has been out in the mission field for six months or less.  "It's not easy being green."  Kermit the Frog

contacting - going out looking for people who are interested in learning about the church and the gospel.  This sometimes involves knocking on doors, but in Elder Hadden's case, it's probably approaching people on the street or the subway.