My 10th Companion . . .

Dear all,

I actually thought of a new subject line this week so I can stop making excuses about emailing in my phone. Yay.

This week I went on an exchange with Elder Burton in Riverside. Being with him in the mission field is an experience I would have never imagined to have, mostly because I'm simply not creative enough to think of a reunion as random as this one. It was a good exchange nonetheless. It was nice to talk to someone who knows the Rose Park hood like I do, and it made me feel better about telling other people that there were really people who aren't white in my neighborhood. Everyone is pretty convinced here that Salt Lake is some kind of "Scarlet Letter"-esqe puritan white Mormon society. It's good to have a second witness that it isn't actually.

Tshi-Tshi, the Congolese guy from last week, did not come to church this week, but we did get him to come to the ward FHE activity last night. He seemed to enjoy it. We'll see what else happens with him. I didn't start writing about him because he seems particularly interested in learning about the gospel, more just because he was really funny. 

Elder Leung is going home this week. He had his final district meeting last Thursday, so we had impromptu funeral services for him. He's heading out this Thursday, leaving Elder Burton without a companion for the last couple weeks of the transfer. So, Elder Burton will be with us in a trio for the remainder of the transfer starting Thursday morning. This will be my fourth trio so far on my mission, and my 10th companion. I think I have pretty much every other missionary beat at this point.

This morning Elder Tarati and I tried to go to parliament again. Again, we didn't manage to make it inside, but we did have quite the spectacle from the outside. There must have been some commemoration or something going on today, because there were a bunch of military people in dumb looking hats playing in a band. They had both a pipe band, and a brass band which played together. I have to say, it really doesn't matter how good your musicians are, or how significant your band is, but bagpipes and trombones do NOT sound good together. At least not to me. Everyone else thought it was cool, but I just shook my head.

We're going on an exchange with the Zone Leaders tonight. It should be a party. We'll see.

Love you all. Don't support weird bagpipe fusion music. Especially not Celtic rock. 

Elder Hadden

Pictures next week. My phone farted out today and it didn't work. Sorry

I went back to the U.S. - Stuck With This Subject Line

I don't think I'm gonna find a computer any time soon, so we're stuck with this subject line for the foreseeable future. It's still a lot more interesting than any subject line I could come up with for this week though.

Our venue for emails today is the Rideau Mall in downtown Ottawa. They have mediocre free wifi, but not really any good place to sit down. We're on a bench, unfortunately right in front of the Victoria's Secret. It's not ideal, but.... It works. I guess.

It's been a really good week actually. We managed to keep ourselves pretty busy and actually found someone new to teach. It's been a little slow up here recently, so it's good to actually find someone. Finding was never a problem with Elder Gauthier, but he's a machine so it doesn't count. There were days I literally had to run to keep up as he talked to people. I can't do that.

The guy's name is Tshi-Tshi. He's from DR Congo and lives across the river in Gatineau. We actually found him a couple weeks ago, but only just met with him this week. Our lesson with him was super chill. He was really relaxed and joked


with us a bunch. It was a good environment for me to practice my French a little more (it's still not great, but getting a lot better). We're planning to help him paint his mom's walls this weekend. We'll see how that goes.

Other than that, we had exchanges last Tuesday to Wednesday. I went on my last exchange with Elder Leung :(. He's going back to Hong Kong next Thursdays, so this was out last chance to do an exchange. I've been on an exchange with him every transfer so far but one. So sad.

Today we're going on another exchange. I'll be going with Elder Burton, my long lost fourth grade friend. It's really weird how things work out like that sometimes. 

Elder Tarati and I went to Parliament today. I took some pictures of the river, and he took some selfies for those people who don't enjoy my landscape photography. 

Love you all, 

Elder Hadden

1. The Ottawa River and Gatineau from Parliament hill. You can tell it's Québec because there are more Québec flags than Canada flags. Je me souviens. 

2. I tried to take a picture of the famous thing and the Money with the famous thing on it. 

3. I thought the sky looked kinda cool... 

4-5. You're welcome. 

17 July 2018

Dear all, 

Well, still on my phone this week. I'm just gonna keep this email chain going for a while. We lost our free wifi spot though, so we'll probably do something different next week. Who knows.

This week has been pretty normal. We had our transfer zone conference yesterday, and I got to go to the fancy, big-boy district leader meeting afterwards. The whole meeting was focused around one other new district leader and me asking everyone else questions about being a district leader. It was actually really helpful and very informative. I took more notes in that short meeting than I did in the 5 hour long zone conference. 

During the actual zone conference they told us that even though the Prophet himself will be visiting our mission, only the missionaries who live an hour or less away from Montreal will be allowed to go. Unless I get transferred back to the island (of Montreal) next transfer, I likely will not go. I would complain, but I've already seen the guy once on my mission, so..... 

Today, the wonderful Vincent Mucha of the LaSalle ward finally got his butt out to Ottawa to take me to lunch. When I left Montréal, he promised me that the next time he was in Ottawa (he used to work for the government so he comes here frequently) he would take me to lunch. However, about a month ago he came out here and didn't even tell me. I was pretty mad, but today he came back and actually took us to lunch. It was all good in the end. Everyone in LaSalle ward who reads this should thank Vincent from Elder Tarati and me. 

We taught a Chinese guy this week! I taught him in Chinese by myself. He said he would come to church this Sunday, but something came up and he wasn't able to make it. We'll see him again this week and shoot for next Sunday. I feel pretty good about it. It's very enabling not to have to rely on someone else to help me do things. 

It's still not easy to teach people on your own though. 

That's it for me. 

Love you all. Hope you have a hip-happenin' week. 

Elder Hadden

Home of the Governor General, the Queen's Representative for Canada. No law can take effect without her say-so.  -Todd

The picture is from the house of the sort-of-the-queen of Canada. She has a special name, and Vincent explained to me who she actually is and what she actually does, but I forgot it all. So all I have is a picture of a random building which I guess is the Canadian equivalent of the White House. Note the guards with the funny hats. 

Pictures!

Well, I'm on my phone this week, so I just have to reply to the email I sent last week. I hope everyone isn't bummed about the lack of an original subject line.

I got a brand-spankin'-new companion this week from the far reaches of Tahiti. His name is Elder Tarati and this is his fourth transfer and second area on the mission. He's still learning English, but his English is crazy good already. A lot better than my Chinese, for sure. He doesn't really have any problems communicating. I'm impressed. He's happy to be in YSA, and being with him makes me feel like I'm back in good ol' Rose Park. I missed polies a lot.

We're still teaching in French, English, and Chinese, which means that I've been doing a lot of Chinese work all by myself. It actually is pretty empowering knowing that I don't need to rely on anyone else for language ability. We haven't taught any full on lessons just in Chinese yet, but I think it will help me a ton to teach by myself a few times. It's way different when you don't have a companion to rely on.

Also, I'm a district leader now. I had to organize a district meeting (actually now they're called district councils™ (see the new Preach my Gospel)) and everything . It's interesting to be in a leadership position again. I feel a lot like an area director at camp. I'm pretty happy because I've missed leadership a lot in the past year. It's a lot different.

We don't have any fancy plans for P-Day today. I'm pretty beat from our P-Day adventures last transfer, and Elder Tarati is pretty beat from moving. It'll be a naps and movies kind of P-Day.

I love you all. I'll actually send pictures this week.

Elder Hadden 

polies - People of Polynesian descent. There are many Polynesian families in Rose Park.

The Corktown bridge, also known as the Love Lock bridge over the Rideau canal

Set up for Canada Day at Parliament Hill. There were a bunch of concerts there the day of.

All the people downtown for Canada Day

A bunch of totem poles in the Canadian History Museum (which is a super good museum. I highly recommend it)

A really big canoe from BC

Sister Jeon's funeral. She went back to her home in Busan, South Korea this week

The Original Canadian Flag. It was the first flag to fly over Parliament

I Went Back to the US

Dear all,

We had a pretty interesting week this week. A lot of stuff happened all at the same time. 

Last Tuesday, Elder Gauthier and I got a special inside tour of the US embassy from a member who works there. Elder Gauthier wants to be a French diplomat when he goes home, so he was super excited to see all the diplomatty stuff going on. We even saw the ambassador. It was really interesting, and nice to take a short trip back to the US. 

Saturday we had our transfer call. I will be staying in Dow's Lake and receiving a Tahitian companions who's even newer than me, so I'll be the senior companion. He doesn't speak any Chinese, so I'll be teaching all of our Chinese investigators.I will also be the district leader for the Dow's Lake district. President gave me a ton of responsibility out of nowhere, but I'm pretty excited to be a mission leader. I really enjoyed being a leader at camp and in other situations, so now I'm excited to keep going with that. Elder Gauthier extended his mission and is going back to Montreal for his last 6 weeks. Elder Leung and Elder Burton (my elementary school buddy) are coming to Ottawa to be the Chinese speakers in my district.

This Sunday was the fabled Canada Day. I had the great experience of singing "O Canada" in Sacrament meeting. Elder Gauthier and I both didn't know the words so we had to have one of the members give us her phone so we could sing along. Everyone laughed at us for being not Canadian, but it was all good. 

Later that night, we listened to the music blasting through downtown Ottawa, the jet-flyovers, and all the drunk people walking on the street below. At one point we got sick of stewing in our sweltering apartment and decided to go "finding" so we could see what was going on. We walked about a block away from the Parliament building before turning around because there were too many people and it wasn't that interesting. I'll send pictures in another email.

I love you all! I'll let you know how it goes with all the changes this week.

Elder Hadden