Bienvenue à Montréal

Dear all,

Well, I made it out here. Forgive my typing and spelling; the keyboard I`m using is convinced I`m spelling everything wrong because it is not French.

Anyway, its all good.

I've learned a lot this week. One of the most important things is that I do not speak Chinese, and I don't speak French very well. Communication is a little awkward, but everyone speaks English, anyway, so its not too bad.

I'll start from the beginning. I left the MTC bright and early Wednesday morning, hopped on the train, and went to the airport. I had a wonderful conversation with a Québecois couple while waiting for my flight to Toronto, which made me feel pretty confident. I was scheduled to have a one hour layover in Toronto before catching my flight to Montréal. However, when I landed, I got funneled into Customs for about 50 minutes. When I finally got my visa, I frantically ran around trying to figure out how to even get where I needed to go, all the while praying that somehow I would make my flight. I didn't even make it through security again until half an hour after my flight had already left. So, I was alone in the airport of a foreign country surrounded by people speaking French and all kinds of other crazy languages, and I was stuck. Luckily, a super nice lady working in a café let me use her cell phone to call the travel department to figure out what to do. After a short conversation with Salt Lake, I talked to the airline and had them arrange for me to be put on the next flight to Montréal without any problems. Everyday miracles.

I finally made it to Montréal about 3 or 4 hours later than I had been scheduled to. I was luckily able to find President and Sister Phillips without any problems. Salt Lake had told them that I was going to be later than scheduled, but they told them that my new arrival time was an hour before my flight actually landed. They had been waiting for about an hour and a half in the airport for me to arrive, terrified that I wasn't going to make it. We all had a good laugh about it. They took me to Tim Horton's to get some dinner, and then to my apartment.

At my apartment, I met my trainer, Elder Tsai from Taiwan, and his current companion, Elder Leung from Hong Kong. I arrived a week before the transfer, so I'm in a trio for the first little while. Elder Tsai is a native speaker, but he has lived in Vancouver for the past few years. Elder Leung is a native Cantonese speaker, but his Mandarin is just as good. I understand next to nothing they talk about.

My mission district LtoR: Elders Chih, Kim, Leinhard, Saunders, Leung, Tsai, and me

My apartment is right next to downtown. Mount Royal Park is just a few blocks up the road. Our area is downtown Montréal. We spend most of our time teaching college students from China, and contacting around college campuses, in the métro, or on the street in downtown.

Montréal is an insane place. Everything is in French.  About half of the people speak English, and a lot speak something totally different. On Thursday, I went on an hour and a half exchange with Elder Gauthier, an AP from France, also called to Chinese-speaking, and I spoke English, French, and Chinese. Sometimes all three at the same time. It's crazy.

Friday, we did exchanges with the district leader, so I spent a day with Elder Kim, from Korea, instead of my trainer. We went and visited a less active member with a member of the high Council named Cédric. Cédric is a crazy little man from Vietnam, but he has lived in Québec for about 25 years. His English is really good, but his French is better, so I talked with him in French mostly. He shared a message with the less active in French, while showing her  a video in English, as Elder Kim and I added stuff In Chinese.

The rest of the weekend was pretty normal. I've gotten into the rhythm of things a lot more now. I bore my testimony in Chinese in the Chinese branch yesterday, and met the Branch president, a very old Canadian white man.

Yesterday we taught a lesson to one of our investigators. We invited her to be baptized and she agreed. I think.

It's been a crazy week, one full of speaking lots of different languages and being really confused, but I am all right so far. I'll be sure to keep you all posted.

I love you all. Thank you for your love and support.

Sorry again for my spelling. [corrected by Mom so you won't see it]

A la prochaine

Elder Hadden

French

A la prochaine - Until next time