A New Companion

Dear All,

Another week of changes. On Thursday, I moved out of my temporary residence with Elder Leung and Elder Lehnardt, and moved back into my old apartment with Elder Furness for the new transfer.  Elder Furness is from Taiwan, but his Chinese is non-native. He grew up in Taiwan and Utah, and went to American schools in both places, so his Chinese is far from perfect, but it's a lot better than mine. He's only two transfers older than me, so neither of us really knows what we're doing, but we're doing what we can, nonetheless. It's gonna be a good learning experience for both of us, and we'll probably have to rely a lot on Greenie blessings.

The first thing we did after Elder Furness got here was go visit Oliver, so Elder Furness' first experience with Chinese people in Montreal was certainly an interesting one. As lessons with Oliver usually go, we started off talking about the Book of Mormon and ended up with a discussion about whether or not there's universal truth. It was an unusual lesson, but he agreed to read the Book of Mormon in the end, so it worked out. Elder Furness seemed like he enjoyed it.

On Saturday we met with Alice just to follow up on her scripture reading and church experience and answer any questions she might have. She ended up sharing more with us than we did with her. Her scripture study seems like it's been more in depth than mine has. She's doing crazy well as a recent convert.




All of us at Yang Yuan Lan's baptism Feb 2018

Yesterday we had dinner with Yang Yuan Lan and a few of her numerous friends. After dinner she spent a while teaching me about Chinese and Chinese geography. I learned a lot about China and Chinese, and everyone there seemed pretty excited to teach me about it. We talked to everyone a little bit about family history, since we're planning on taking her to our branch president's house later this week to get her started on her own family history. Yang Yuan Lan is totally unafraid to be open about her beliefs in front of her friends. She even asked if she could go contacting with us tomorrow. She has barely been a member of the church for a week, and already wants to do the scariest part of missionary work. She's crazy.

Elder Lehnardt wearing a funny hat.

Everyone seems to really like Elder Furness, and I've had a lot more opportunities to speak Chinese now that I don't have a native speaker to hide behind. It's shaping up to be a good transfer.



Here's me wearing a funny hat. (This is how you can tell we are real Chinese missionaries.)

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

Mormon-speak



Two transfers older than me - missionaries count their missionary "age" by how many transfers they have been through on their mission so far.  This is Elder Hadden's first transfer, but it is Elder Furness' third transfer.


Greenie - a missionary who has been out in the mission field for six months or less.  "It's not easy being green."  Kermit the Frog

contacting - going out looking for people who are interested in learning about the church and the gospel.  This sometimes involves knocking on doors, but in Elder Hadden's case, it's probably approaching people on the street or the subway.