MTC Week Two

Hey all,

This week has been pretty good. I'm into my normal schedule now, so the next weeks should hopefully go by pretty quickly. 

I greatly appreciate all the mail I've been getting. The package from Grant and Lucy made my day,

and the Biscuits Voyageurs are great. I love you all lots, and I'm glad you're thinking about me.

One of the elders in my district tried to do a back flip the other day. He weighs 270 pounds, and is built like a tank. Considering how big he is, he got really close to landing it, but he didn't, and now he's on crutches and has to go to the BYU Clinic today. Exciting stuff.

Everybody seems to be really interested in Elder Chan, but I don't really know what else to say about him. He was born and raised in Birmingham, England. He's 19. His dad is from Hong Kong. He has several older siblings who all served missions, most of them speaking Mandarin, either in Australia or Taiwan, except for one who served in Russia, speaking Russian. This is the first time he's been out of the UK, and I kinda feel bad for him because he's stuck here and unable to actually see anything. He's a really cool guy. I'm glad he's my companion.

My daily schedule consists of an hour of exercise in the morning, either before or after breakfast. Then Elder Chan and I head up to the building our classroom is in and do personal companion and language study for an hour each. Then we have lunch, and then class in the afternoon. He's the district leader, so we get to go check the mail at lunch and dinner everyday, which is pretty exciting. After afternoon class, we have dinner and then another language class. This week we taught 3 more lessons to our "Investigator," who then became our language teacher on Friday. He gave us some tips and a really cool perspective on the Gift of Tongues. He told us that the gift of tongues is not the magical ability to speak perfect language, it's the the power and spirit that your limited words can carry. With that knowledge, he challenged us to prepare a lesson without scripting any Chinese or reading from our cheat book of missionary phrases. Elder Chan and I did this, and taught him again (this time he was playing a different investigator). our lesson was very short, and very simple, but really good. We taught with the Spirit even with our limited words. It was super cool.

For Dad, I'm in the Ray L Pratt building, which I think is just south of the Erastus Snow building. I'm in Branch 2, District E. I have very little contact with Canadian missionaries. There are a couple elders in my branch from Alberta, who I've talked to a lot. I've met a few Elders going to Montreal speaking French and Spanish, and I hear there's an elder in the other Chinese branch, Branch 1, who's speaking Mandarin and French in Montreal, but I haven't met him. I'm almost certain he'll be my companion at some point though.

Overall, I'm doing really well. Nothing is going wrong. Life's good. I'll see if I can get some pictures this week.

Here's a picture of Elder Chan and me at the temple today. (09OCT17)

Here's the BYU marching band in the homecoming parade that we watched from our classroom window while we should have been studying. Good times.

Here's the view where Elder Chan and I normally study.

Have a good week everyone. You can send me emails any time. I read them every evening.

Love you All!

Zai Jian

Elder Hadden

Voyageurspeak

Biscuits Voyageurs - small cookies made with every seed and nut and dried fruit imaginable, plus some M&Ms and chocolate chips thrown in for interest. A staple of the French Voyageur students at Concordia College's French language camp, Lac du Bois, at Bemidji, MN.

Mormonspeak

BYU - Brigham Young University, which campus is right next to the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo.

Elder - All male missionaries are addressed as Elder, and all female missionaries are addressed as Sister.

Spirit - the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost.