A Lady on the Metro

Dear all,

This week I did missionary work, the weather was cold and then got really warm, and Elder Cannon and I got along.

Something else really interesting happened, though. We were contacting on the Metro last night and I sat down next to this Chinese lady. I started off in a pretty normal way, just asked her (in English) if she spoke Chinese. She responded that she did, but she knew who I was, had seen missionaries like me before, and was not interested at all. Normally, that would be the end of the contact, I would go find someone else to talk to, and that would be that. But there was no one else around to talk to, and I felt like I could keep talking to her, so I asked her if I could just practice speaking Chinese with her. She said I could, and seemed pretty willing, so I just asked her where she was from and how long she had been in Canada. She answered pretty briefly, and then asked me how I could speak Chinese so well. I told her that I was a missionary assigned to speak Chinese, so I studied Chinese on my own every day and talked with a lot of people on the street and the Metro to practice. I also told her that I had only been studying for 7 months, and she, very genuinely, told me that it wasn't possible for me to speak Chinese so well in such a short period of time. I got to tell her that I agreed, and that I believed that God had helped me learn Chinese because He loves me and wants to help me.

She was by this point pretty intrigued by what I was saying, so we talked a little bit more about what missionaries do, and why we do what we do. She asked me if we were Christians, and when I responded we were, she said, "So what do Mormons actually believe?" Unfortunately, I had to get off the Metro just as she asked that, so I didn't have time to continue the conversation. 

I thought this was really interesting because a random lady, in about 5 minutes, went from not wanting to hear anything about the Church, to genuinely asking me about what we believe. I think it's incredible that someone's attitude can change from one extreme to the other in such a short period of time. The Spirit can work those kinds of changes in people every day. I'm glad I got to be a part of one.

That's it for me,

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

We got Hot Pot with a former [investigator] Elder Cannon taught
when he was in the branch before

We just went to this random giant orange ball on the west side of Montreal to get some Orange Julius.
I'm not really sure where this place came from, or why it's here, but the Orange Julius is good.