Thanksgiving Dinner

Cedric de Concordia sent these pictures of a late Thanksgiving.  I'm not sure if this is Canadian Thanksgiving (08OCT18) or American Thanksgiving (22NOV18).  Cedric said:  "Here are a few photos of a Thanksgiving meal a little late that we had with your son and his missionary colleagues.  Better late than never!"

"He is doing well, your son!  He is happier to be on l'Ile de Montreal than in Ottawa."
"On the menu:  grilled fish served with asparagus and very tender roasted pork."

没有感恩节

Dear all,

Well, it has been a week.

We went on an exchange with the APs Thursday (they're in our district). I was with Elder Clark, a Spanish-speaking elder from LA, so I got to spend Thanksgiving with a real American. We had dinner with a super Quebecois family, so it wasn't very Thanksgiving-y, but it was filling and good. AND, Elder Clark taught me a few more words of Spanish. I'm gonna be so good at Spanish one day.

On Saturday night, we had a couple of baptismal services. One in our ward for a Cameroonian guy named Mac, and another in the Mandarin Branch. Mac was very very excited to be baptized. Elder Blinn and I have talked to him a lot while he's been learning about the church even though we weren't the ones teaching him. He felt really good, and the service was one of the best one's I've been to. Afterwards, we hung around for the Mandarin baptism since it was in the same building. I got to be around all the members again, and I translated for Elder Blinn. It was a great night all in all.

In other news, one of the members we've been working with is going through the temple tomorrow. We're excited for him.

Today we will hopefully be going to see old port in the snow with Vincent Myuka. I got my real camera, so I should get some half-decent pics.

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

DA with Elder and Sister Evans

Elder Evans, Elders Blinn & Hadden, Sis Evans at a Dinner Appointment

Dear Hadden Family,

This is Elder Evans from the Canada Montreal Mission.  Sister Evans and I serve in the Office and we are also in the same ward as your son, Elder Hadden, and his companion, Elder Blinn.

We invited them to have dinner with us this evening, and as usual, we took a picture afterward and have attached it for you to see.

We are grateful for the opportunity that we have to see your son often in the Mission Office, and want you to know that he is a great young man and you can be proud of his efforts as a missionary here in the Montreal Mission!

Take care,

Elder and Sister Evans

From Elder Hadden  27NOV18:
They serve in our ward and they feed us every once in a while. It's really nice to have dinner from other misisionaries. They get the experience on a very personal level. It's fun to talk to them and see them all the time.    

Canadian Food for American Thanksgiving

Elder Hadden's sister Cat sent him some money to buy an American Thanksgiving dinner if nobody invited them out for it.  Here is their dinner:

Elders Hadden and Blinn eating poutine for American Thanksgiving 2018.

In case you don't recognize this, it's poutine, with every animal on it.  Like a poutine zoo.

A Poutine Zoo

Happy REAL Thanksgiving!

A wintry day in the park

Dear all,

This week started off interesting as we had a Zone Conference with Elder Hamilton of the Seventy. We had a little more than half of the missionaries in the entire mission just in our one Zone Conference (the other missionaries got their own meetings on different days). Elder Hamilton talked to us about increasing our personal conversion and then about improving our teaching skills. He mentioned a couple things which I really enjoyed. The first was that not only should every member be a missionary, every missionary should be a member. We've been doing so much member work in this ward so I thought that was a really good perspective on building relationships. The second was that we should strive to find and teach people who have the means to assist in building the kingdom. I thought it was a very inspiring meeting. 

In addition to the Zone Conference, we had Stake Conference on Sunday. Elder Hamilton spoke during that, as well. I think I fell asleep while he was talking though, so I really don't remember anything he said. Oh, well... 

After the meeting, we made Cedric go pass by some members with us. None of the members were home, so we convinced Cedric to feed us lunch at his apartment. He ended up taking us to his parents' place, and feeding us left-overs from their fridge. It was a very Cedric DA, but the food was really good, so I can't complain.

Sunday evening we went on an exchange with the zone leaders, so I got to head all the way out to the far west side of the island for a day. I was with Elder Jeronimo who was born in Mexico,  but has spent most of his life near Seattle. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met, so we had a really good time running around the Anglophone Montreal suburbs. In the evening, we had a DA with a family from Guatemala. They spoke in Spanish most of the time with Elder Jeronimo, so I was pretty lost. I understood more than I thought I would though. We had some super good tamales. All in all, It was a very good day. 

In other news, winter is here. It's currently -7C and snowing outside. There's been snow on the ground for almost a week now. No more clear roads for Quebec for the next 6 months (not that there were clear roads here in the first place). Luckily, Elder Blinn and I still do't have a car, so we can exploit the lack of snow in the metro system for the winter. 

That's all for me. I have a few pictures I think.

Elder Hadden

Selfie with our friend Vincent Mocha

-7C = 19.4 F.

Snow in Kirkland

Balut

                                                                           Dear all,

Here's the poppy I wore on the 11th. Remembering the
armistice is a pretty big deal up here. I tried to blend in.

More fun in all of Montreal this week. It's really starting to get cold now. I don't think it's stopped raining for more than 24 hours for about 3 weeks now, and we're just hovering around freezing. It snowed a little bit this morning, but it was more rain than snow and it didn't last very long. I know we'll be up to our knees in it in not too long though. I am not ready to be consistently cold for the next 6 months.

Despite the cold, things have still been going very well. Last Tuesday the Elder's Quorum President in the ward took all of the missionaries (there are 8 of us in the Montreal ward) out to dinner and then on a tour of his work. He works as the producer for a pretty big VFX studio in Montreal, so we got to see all the apple computers that made the visual effects for things like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Stranger Things, Game of Thrones, and even Deadpool. He showed us some of the in-the-works stuff for the new season of Stranger Things, and showed us the layers of effects and the process that goes into making so much of movies and TV. It was pretty cool to get such a personal behind-the-scenes look at all of it.  Not really very missionary-related, but President approved it, so it's all good.

Sunday night, Brother Brao, one of the numerous Filipino members of the ward, invited us over for dinner(?). Really, we just talked to him at church and then he was like ''you can come over sometime tonight. Just knock on the door.'' So, we came over at a totally random time that evening, and he very happily let us in. We came in just as his family, and another family were finishing up eating some balut Brother Brao had prepared early that night. During my time here in Montreal, I have often heard stories (mostly from Vincent Muuche who is Filipino, too) about poor white missionaries experiencing the Filipino delicacy of balut and having many adverse reactions. Balut is a fertilized duck egg that you boil (like a hard-boiled egg) and eat with salt and vinegar. Usually, they are fully formed little duck fetuses that you eat whole, beak, feathers, bones and all. I have really wanted to try it (It's apparently really good, despite looking and feeling disgusting), so I jumped at the chance to finally see what it was like. They were more than happy to share, and sat me down at a newspaper-covered table and gave me an egg. After some instruction, I cracked it open and ate the whole thing. Luckily for my ego, I got one that did not have a fully formed little duck fetus inside, and instead just at a large, brown, and chunky hard-boiled egg. The texture was pretty much halfway between that of chicken and that of a hard boiled egg, and it tasted more like pizza than anything else. I would recommend it.

That was the most exciting thing for this week by far. Coming up this next week is zone conference with Elder Hamilton of the seventy. Should be pretty exciting, and stake conference, also with Elder Hamilton. This will be my 3rd or 4th stake conference this year.

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

A Walk In The Woods

Can you see the city? Me, neither. Montreal is a cool city.

Dear all,

This week we got to celebrate Halloween, which means nothing super special happened. But, we did go on an exchange with the zone leaders, and I spent a wonderful day with Elder Fourie. Elder Fourie has the most interesting accent of anyone I have ever met. He was born in South Africa (he's white though), and is one of the few people in the world who speaks Afrikaans as their native language. However, when he wasn't too old, his family left South Africa to move to Australia. Because of immigration problems, they spent a while in New Zealand where Elder Fourie learned English. He's spent the last 10 years in Perth, Australia. So his accent is a weird mix of Holland, South Africa, New Zealand, and Western Australia. Very very interesting.

All in all, It was a wonderful day of pretty normal missionary work. Cedric even fed us dinner. 

Montreal selfie. Elders Blinn and Hadden

Last Tuesday, Elder Blinn and I had nothing to do, so we decided to take a walk up to the top of Mount Royal. I was super impressed with Mount Royal park. It's in the middle of Montreal, but it feels like the woods. There were times when it was just Elder Blinn and me by ourselves, surrounded by nothing but trees. No city. No people. Just woods. It was amazing. 

Last night while we were visiting some people on our ward list, we decided to go pass by this random guy we heard about from Sister Phillips. We stopped by his address, and he opened the door with a cigarette in his hand and let us in. As we talked, we found out that he was trying to quit smoking and had just relapsed. We talked with him a little more, shared some scriptures, and gave him our number so he can call us if he needs some help. It was a cool experience to be in the right place in the right time and to be able to help out. Hopefully we'll be working with him a little more. 

That's all for me

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

The classical view of Montreal

Look at the woods!

This is downtown!