Transfers

Dear all,

It's been an interesting week this week. We had transfer calls yesterday, which was a big deal for the rest of the mission, but not for the Chinese district. Everyone is staying exactly the same. There were a few changes to the Mandarin missionaries in Ottawa, but that's really far away. 

Everyone in the Branch is still doing well. We met with Yang Yuan Lan a few times this week to talk about temples and to help her with scripture study. On Sunday, she told us out of nowhere that she decided she wants to get baptized on the 24th of February, so she actually has a date again now. Elder Tsai and I were both pretty relieved about that. She's really ready to get baptized! She has a really strong testimony and has a great understanding of doctrines and scriptures. I'm excited to see her make that step.

We met with Alice to watch Elder Uchtdorf's general address to young adults the other day. I think she enjoyed watching it. Honestly, I'm not really sure what he talked about since we watched it in Chinese. I hope it was good.

On Friday we had a dinner appointment with a long-time investigator named Oliver. Oliver just graduated from college, but hasn't found a job yet, so has a ton of time and not a lot to do. He's been coming to church every Sunday for several months now, but hasn't really progressed at all. He's really smart, and asks some really complicated questions, but also can understand the scriptures on a really deep level. We've challenged him to read the Book of Mormon with the Branch, hoping that regular scripture study will help him start progressing. I can't really communicate with him that well, because he's from the North East and has a really strong accent.

I want to take a moment to describe the food that I've been eating regularly. Before I left, I always thought Chinese food would have to be nice and bite-sized with boneless meat so that you can eat it with just chopsticks. I was very wrong. Every single piece of meat I eat at an average dinner appointment has some kind of bone or gristle in it. If you're lucky enough for the meat to be bite-sized, you just stick the whole thing in your mouth, chew the meat off the bone, and spit the bone out on the table.  If the meat isn't bight sized (so far I've eaten whole chicken thighs and pork chops just with chopsticks), you pick the whole thing up with with chopsticks or your hands and just eat it a bite at a time. There's always a huge pile of bones by everyone's plate after meals. 

During our dinner appointment on Friday, Oliver made a dish that was about 75% bone, 5% gristle, 5% fat, and only 10% meat. You had to take a bone, break it apart as much as you could with your hands, and suck the meat, fat, gristle, and bone marrow off. It was really hard to eat, but surprisingly good.

The semester started last Monday, so our contacting efforts got a lot more effective this week. There are so many more Chinese people in the city now, and a lot of them just arrived in Canada, so they're really curious about everything Western, including Christianity. We met with a couple new investigators on Friday and talked to them about God and the Restoration. They had a lot of complicated questions, which I didn't understand, but Elder Tsai answered them all. They seem at least interested enough to set up a return appointment. That's the best we've had in terms of new investigators while I've been here.

On Saturday, I went on a temporary exchange with Elder Hsiung, from Taiwan, so that Elder Tsai and Elder Saunders could go visit a recent convert inactive member together. Elder Hsiung and I were eating lunch and doing some study in the church building, when a random French guy (like from France French) came in and asked us if we had a priest. He said that he wanted to confess his sins and thought we would have a priest since we're a church. I told him that we didn't, and asked him why he wanted to talk to a priest. He told us that he was looking for truth and didn't know where to find it. He had arrived in Canada just a couple weeks before and had been reading different scriptural texts and visiting different churches, trying to find a gospel that didn't contradict itself. I of course told him that we didn't have priests, but we had plenty of truth. Elder Hsiung and I then tried to teach him about the restoration half in French, half in English, and with just a little Chinese because that's the only language we know how to teach the gospel with. I'm sure it was really rushed and really confusing, but he seemed genuinely interested. When we finished, I tried to get his phone number, but he didn't have a phone yet, since he just arrived in Canada. I just gave him the numbers of some of the APs since they're the first listed in our contacts. He said he would call when he gets a phone. It was a really, really random experience, but at least I got to practice French.

That's about all for me this week.

Love you all,

Elder Hadden