Fun in Ottawa!

Canadian Parliament building

"Hey mom,

They bring letters and stuff to us once a transfer at zone conference, so it will take me a super long time to get anything you want to send me. It's pretty inconvenient.

The address is the same though. 

Ottawa is such a cool city. I wish I had come with you and RoseE when you came here a few years ago.

Love you, 

Elder Hadden"

Hallway inside the Parliament building

In the library of the Canadian Parliament.

Stained glass window

Another hallway

Senate Room 

once a transfer - Transfers happen every six weeks, so it's going to be another long time before Elder Hadden gets the package I sent last week. :(

哇太花 (Wow to Flowers)

Mandarin District: Cannon, Hadden, Leung, Furness

Dear all,

Well, the transfer call came, and my prediction was totally wrong. Turns out Elder Leung and Elder Furness are both staying in Mandarin Central, Elder Cannon is staying in Mandarin West, and I'm going to Ottawa. I can't say I would have expected it, but I am pretty excited to get out of the branch, and Quebec, for a while. 

The area I'm going to is Dow's Lake YSA Chinese. It's an English YSA branch, but has a few Mandarin investigators and members. It's been doing really well the past few transfers (I'll get to why in a second), so I'm pretty excited to get out there and help to keep that good streak going. 

My companion will be the mission-famous Elder Gauthier. Elder Gauthier is a Mandarin speaking missionary from France (I actually went on an hour long exchange with him on my first day in the field, so I sort of know him already). He was Elder Cannon's MTC companion, so he'll be dying with Elder Cannon at the end of next transfer. He's about 25, the oldest missionary currently serving here, and has a Masters degree in diplomacy from some big university in the eastern US. He speaks 5 or 6 different languages, and can read both ancient Greek and Latin. The guy is crazy smart and has served as both a zone leader and an AP here. Despite all that, what he's most well-known for is being relentless in contacting and unceasingly energetic. I honestly have no idea how he manages to put as much energy as he does into the work, and I don't think anyone else does either. Even though he seems like he would be super intimidating, he's pretty nice (he's a diplomat both in personality and education). 

This is pretty much just what I've heard from other people about him, as well as a little bit of what I've seen in person. I'm really curious to see what he's actually like to work with. It should be a good transfer, and I'm sure I'm gonna learn a ton. 

Anyway, Elder Gauthier has been in Dow's Lake for three transfers now (hence why it's been doing so well. The guy is a machine, from what I hear), the last 2 transfers he's been training Elder Burton (a missionary from Salt Lake who I coincidentally went to elementary school with). Elder Burton is coming to replace me in Mandarin West with Elder Cannon. It was an interesting transfer. No one was really expecting it, but it should be a good one. We'll see how it goes.

As of Thursday, my mission record will be 8 companions in just over 4 transfers, with 4 areas and 4 moves. That's pretty much the same as Elder Cannon's record will be when he leaves (except for the number of transfers).

Au revoir, Montreal.

On Sunday I said goodbye to everyone in the branch, since I won't see them for a while. With any luck, I'll come back to the branch before I go home. It was sad to say goodbye, but I'm pretty sure I'll come back. Honestly though, given my current experience, anything could happen to me. 

Cedric took Elder Cannon and me for a walk along the shore of the St. Lawrence this morning since it was my last P-day on the island.

That's it for me.

Love you all

Elder Hadden

于 2018年5月22日周二 下午2:36写道

A plant that Cedric gave me

The St. Lawrence

Cedric and me

A goose family on the St. Lawrence

Rapids on the St. Lawrence

Me in front of a rapids on the St. Lawrence

Mother’s Day

Dear all,

Well it's been a week. Nothing particularly interesting happened. No crazy anarchists, no cool super prepared people, no phenomenal lessons, just life. 

I cleaned some of our kitchen this morning. I don't remember if I've mentioned the disgusting grease-soaked paper towel that I found stuck to one of the shelves in a cupboard, but I spent about an hour trying to scrub the grease that it left behind off the shelf. Really gross, lot's of scrubbing, and not a lot of success. 

All the Liahonas we put out for recycling

I also found a ridiculous amount of tupperware all jammed in the cupboard above the stove, and again all covered in grease. I'm just gonna give them away and let other people try to clean that though. After a morning of solid work, the kitchen is slightly cleaner, there's no more tupperware, and there's not as much grease caked onto our shelves. 

We went on 2 exchanges this week, one with the Zone Leaders and one with Mandarin Central. For the Zone Leader exchange, I stayed in Mandarin West with Elder Purahui, from Tahiti (he doesn't speak Chinese). It was kinda weird to run a Chinese-speaking area with a companion who doesn't speak Chinese, but everything went surprisingly smoothly. We decided to go visit a recent convert who speaks absolutely no English, so Elder Purahui was really bored and confused for a while, but I had a really good conversation with her. 

This is the extended transfer prediction I drew up with Elder Furness.
We signed and dated it just to prove to everyone we were right.

For our second exchange, I went back to Mandarin Central with Elder Furness. We had a lot of fun since we already knew how to run the area and work with each other. We talked pretty much the whole time about our predictions for transfer call on Saturday. We both think we'll be staying where we currently are, but that Elder Leung, Elder Furness' current companion, might be moving out of the branch for his last 2 transfers. I'll let you know what really happened next week. 

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

Costco poutine:  it really exists, and is pretty good!

A really big spider I found in our apartment the other day.

Mother's Day 2018

We had a lovely long group chat with Elder Hadden on Sunday, 13 May 2018 over facebook messenger.  (I'm sorry for the small picture; we tried to project the conversation to the TV, but it just wouldn't go.)  We had Cat&Jeff&Lucy&Grant in person, RoseE on conference, and Caitlyn showed up, too.  Elder Hadden is doing well--happy to no longer be in training.

At which comment his dad and sister chimed in,  "There is only one thing worse than being in training:  being a trainer."

Elder Hadden reports they are tracting every day to find someone new to teach.  He and Elder Cannon never cook; they are always invited to eat with member families.  He also said all of his clothes are too big.  (This might mean he has lost weight, since the clothes seemed to fit when he left in September.) We collectively suggested he find a Chinese tailor to alter his pants and shirts, and he can have a conversation in Chinese with the tailor--about the Gospel, if necessary.  I think we talked him into it.

Other topics of the conversation included chocolates, restaurants in Montreal, and saints' relics in Catholic churches, and the Gospel According to the Hadden Family.

Two-year-old Grant recited his own version of the first Article of Faith:  "We believe in God, the 'ternal Father, and in his Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost, but not for Adam's 'gressions." Elder Hadden sang "Happy Birthday to You" in Chinese for Lucy, who is turning five on the 23rd.





first Article of Faith:  The official version is "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in his Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost." The last bit is part of the the second Article of Faith, apparently thrown in by Grantie for good measure.
There are a total of 13 Articles of Faith.  Click here for the full list.

Cleaning

Dear All,

Photo courtesy of Elder Cannon & his mom

I got in a weird mood this week where I just started cleaning, and decided not to stop until everything in our apartment was spotless. Normally, I spend my time in the apartment doing language study, but this week I spent hour upon hour throwing junk away, sweeping, and scrubbing. I think I spent about four hours total cleaning just this morning. 

The obvious result of this is that the apartment is getting ridiculously clean. It's gone from a horrible, disgusting hoarder-hole, to a pretty tidy and pleasant place. It's not all clean; we still have a bunch of stuff to organize and clean, but you can expect pictures of the newly-cleaned Mandarin West apartment sometime soon.

In other news, we had a really strange day on Saturday while we were contacting. We were on the Metro minding our own business when this homeless guy started yelling at Elder Cannon for being part of an organization that steals money from the poor so our rich leaders can have mansions of gold or something like that. He seemed pretty mad about it, and after he yelled for a while, he spit on the floor right in from of Elder Cannon. Right after that happened, this random teenage girl stood up and started cussing the guy out for being super rude. He was obviously very upset, claiming that he was an "anarchist" so he could do whatever he wanted to. He then cursed her "first born child to become homeless," and walked away. We, trying not laugh at the guy, thanked her for defending us and then got off the metro. 

A few minutes later a really nice Moroccan guy came up to us and thanked us for doing what we do because missionaries taught him English when he first came to Montreal. He was a nice reminder that not everyone in the world hates us, and that there are, in fact, some nice people around.  

That's pretty much it for me this week. Cedric wants to take Elder Cannon and me to walk on the beach or something like that today, so I gotta go soon. 

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

Photo courtesy of Elder Cannon & his mom.

My Grandpa and “Taiwan John”

Dear All, 

This week, the former Elder Lan came to visit the mission. He was a missionary here who went home just a couple months before I entered the MTC.

The former Elder Lan

Elders Cannon & Hadden @ Little Ceasar's

More interestingly, he trained Elder Tsai, which makes him my mission Grandpa. He really had nothing to do while he was here, and he and Elder Cannon were pretty close while they served together, so he took us out to eat twice and went contacting with us for a while. It was pretty fun, and cool to meet someone I've heard so much about. 

In other news, Ke Ning went back to China, so we have nobody to teach anymore. She didn't get baptized before she left, but she says she probably will when she gets back. Hopefully she will. We have no progressing investigators now.

By far, the most incredible and important thing that happened this week was that "Taiwan" John Lin actually got baptized. John Lin has been investigating the church for nearly 2 years now. He's originally from Taiwan, but speaks English too, so he's been taught by both Mandarin and English elders. He's famous for having previously had 6 different baptismal dates, and 3 actual baptismal services, all of which he skipped. He was being taught by English YSA up to this point, so I got the chance to teach him while I was in English YSA. On Saturday, they put a really last minute baptismal service together for him and he actually got baptized. It was a miracle. I'm so glad I got to see it. 

He skipped out on his confirmation the next day though. His very long conversion story is not over yet. 

That's it for me this week.

Love you all.

Elder Hadden

Mormonspeak
YSA: Young Single Adult ward.  Pretty much self explanatory. If you get married, you have to change wards.