17 July 2018

Dear all, 

Well, still on my phone this week. I'm just gonna keep this email chain going for a while. We lost our free wifi spot though, so we'll probably do something different next week. Who knows.

This week has been pretty normal. We had our transfer zone conference yesterday, and I got to go to the fancy, big-boy district leader meeting afterwards. The whole meeting was focused around one other new district leader and me asking everyone else questions about being a district leader. It was actually really helpful and very informative. I took more notes in that short meeting than I did in the 5 hour long zone conference. 

During the actual zone conference they told us that even though the Prophet himself will be visiting our mission, only the missionaries who live an hour or less away from Montreal will be allowed to go. Unless I get transferred back to the island (of Montreal) next transfer, I likely will not go. I would complain, but I've already seen the guy once on my mission, so..... 

Today, the wonderful Vincent Mucha of the LaSalle ward finally got his butt out to Ottawa to take me to lunch. When I left Montréal, he promised me that the next time he was in Ottawa (he used to work for the government so he comes here frequently) he would take me to lunch. However, about a month ago he came out here and didn't even tell me. I was pretty mad, but today he came back and actually took us to lunch. It was all good in the end. Everyone in LaSalle ward who reads this should thank Vincent from Elder Tarati and me. 

We taught a Chinese guy this week! I taught him in Chinese by myself. He said he would come to church this Sunday, but something came up and he wasn't able to make it. We'll see him again this week and shoot for next Sunday. I feel pretty good about it. It's very enabling not to have to rely on someone else to help me do things. 

It's still not easy to teach people on your own though. 

That's it for me. 

Love you all. Hope you have a hip-happenin' week. 

Elder Hadden

Home of the Governor General, the Queen's Representative for Canada. No law can take effect without her say-so.  -Todd

The picture is from the house of the sort-of-the-queen of Canada. She has a special name, and Vincent explained to me who she actually is and what she actually does, but I forgot it all. So all I have is a picture of a random building which I guess is the Canadian equivalent of the White House. Note the guards with the funny hats. 

Pictures!

Well, I'm on my phone this week, so I just have to reply to the email I sent last week. I hope everyone isn't bummed about the lack of an original subject line.

I got a brand-spankin'-new companion this week from the far reaches of Tahiti. His name is Elder Tarati and this is his fourth transfer and second area on the mission. He's still learning English, but his English is crazy good already. A lot better than my Chinese, for sure. He doesn't really have any problems communicating. I'm impressed. He's happy to be in YSA, and being with him makes me feel like I'm back in good ol' Rose Park. I missed polies a lot.

We're still teaching in French, English, and Chinese, which means that I've been doing a lot of Chinese work all by myself. It actually is pretty empowering knowing that I don't need to rely on anyone else for language ability. We haven't taught any full on lessons just in Chinese yet, but I think it will help me a ton to teach by myself a few times. It's way different when you don't have a companion to rely on.

Also, I'm a district leader now. I had to organize a district meeting (actually now they're called district councils™ (see the new Preach my Gospel)) and everything . It's interesting to be in a leadership position again. I feel a lot like an area director at camp. I'm pretty happy because I've missed leadership a lot in the past year. It's a lot different.

We don't have any fancy plans for P-Day today. I'm pretty beat from our P-Day adventures last transfer, and Elder Tarati is pretty beat from moving. It'll be a naps and movies kind of P-Day.

I love you all. I'll actually send pictures this week.

Elder Hadden 

polies - People of Polynesian descent. There are many Polynesian families in Rose Park.

The Corktown bridge, also known as the Love Lock bridge over the Rideau canal

Set up for Canada Day at Parliament Hill. There were a bunch of concerts there the day of.

All the people downtown for Canada Day

A bunch of totem poles in the Canadian History Museum (which is a super good museum. I highly recommend it)

A really big canoe from BC

Sister Jeon's funeral. She went back to her home in Busan, South Korea this week

The Original Canadian Flag. It was the first flag to fly over Parliament

I Went Back to the US

Dear all,

We had a pretty interesting week this week. A lot of stuff happened all at the same time. 

Last Tuesday, Elder Gauthier and I got a special inside tour of the US embassy from a member who works there. Elder Gauthier wants to be a French diplomat when he goes home, so he was super excited to see all the diplomatty stuff going on. We even saw the ambassador. It was really interesting, and nice to take a short trip back to the US. 

Saturday we had our transfer call. I will be staying in Dow's Lake and receiving a Tahitian companions who's even newer than me, so I'll be the senior companion. He doesn't speak any Chinese, so I'll be teaching all of our Chinese investigators.I will also be the district leader for the Dow's Lake district. President gave me a ton of responsibility out of nowhere, but I'm pretty excited to be a mission leader. I really enjoyed being a leader at camp and in other situations, so now I'm excited to keep going with that. Elder Gauthier extended his mission and is going back to Montreal for his last 6 weeks. Elder Leung and Elder Burton (my elementary school buddy) are coming to Ottawa to be the Chinese speakers in my district.

This Sunday was the fabled Canada Day. I had the great experience of singing "O Canada" in Sacrament meeting. Elder Gauthier and I both didn't know the words so we had to have one of the members give us her phone so we could sing along. Everyone laughed at us for being not Canadian, but it was all good. 

Later that night, we listened to the music blasting through downtown Ottawa, the jet-flyovers, and all the drunk people walking on the street below. At one point we got sick of stewing in our sweltering apartment and decided to go "finding" so we could see what was going on. We walked about a block away from the Parliament building before turning around because there were too many people and it wasn't that interesting. I'll send pictures in another email.

I love you all! I'll let you know how it goes with all the changes this week.

Elder Hadden

Ultimate Frisbee

Dear all,

Well, I don't have a whole lot of time today, so I'll just do a quick lowlight and highlight. 

The lowlight of the week was probably just that I felt kinda homesick. Being in a city during the summer feels kinda weird to me after spending five summers at camp. I miss being able to be in the mountains all the time :(

The highlight of the week by far was the ward's Family Home Evening activity last night. We all went to a park and played ultimate Frisbee. It was really nice to be able to run around a little and play with the members for a while. I feel like I'm a lot better friends with most of them too.

Love you all.

I have to go to the US embassy now for a tour. Pictures next week!

Elder Hadden

Sunday

Dear all,

We had a good Sunday this week. One of our investigators, Minh from Vietnam, got a job on Sundays last week, and won't be able to come to the YSA ward in the afternoon for the foreseeable future. However, he was willing to wake up early and come to the family ward at 9:30 until he had to go to work. Elder Gauthier and I were both super surprised to find that he was at church at 8:45, all dressed up and ready for church. We sat with him in Sacrament meeting, and then he had to take off, but he came. It was cool.  

Elder Hadden, Bro Minh, Elder Gautier

In the afternoon we had another eternigator who's super not committed to anything, come to church too. This was big because he's been investigating for about 2 years now and only came to church a handful of times. We managed to coerce the guy into coming by showing up at his house and riding the bus with him to church, and then refusing to let him leave until after everything was done. We thought it might help him, but he's just not ready. He does not want to change his life at all even though he says he does.

I don't remember if I've mentioned this before in any emails, but missionary apartments are so disgusting. Every time I try to clean, I just find so much more nasty everywhere. I spent a solid hour and a half vigorously cleaning our kitchen, which I have deep cleaned before, and still have not purified the place. It is absolutely foul. Some of these places are completely uninhabitable. 19-year-olds apparently possess no life skills.

Hitler's car in the Canadian War Museum

*Sigh*

That's it for me this week. Clean your homes please. 

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

Sacrament Meeting - like mass, for all you Catholics.

eternigator - not sure, but I think it's an eternal investigator

12 June 2018

Dear all,

Elder Bednar came to the mission this weekend, but he only went to Montreal and only talked about ministering, so none of the missionaries got to see him. I heard it was a really eventful training, and everyone from our ward who went is really excited to do ministering now.

This Sunday we had one of our investigators named Schrodinger come to church. He's from Haiti, but apparently his parents really love science so they named him Schrodinger. He's already Christian, but is super open and really willing to look for answers. Teaching people that already have a Christian background is so much different that teaching people without. Some of them have really good questions and are super willing to look for answers with real intent, and others just try to bash us relentlessly. It's a way different dynamic than Chinese work. We've taught Schrodinger a few times now, and luckily he is very open to us. We've taught him in French since his English isn't that good. Teaching in French is still super difficult. It's like going back to square one with language. I tried to have a conversation with Schrodinger on Sunday and was completely unable to talk to him at all. There's so much I still have to work on.

We're still teaching a bunch of Chinese people, but none of them have been very solid so far. We haven't had any Chinese investigators come to church yet. Maybe soon!

That's pretty much it for me. Elder Gauthier and I might go to the War Museum of Canada today and send pictures later. 

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

(An additional short note):  A former Chinese missionary came back to visit the mission this week. He was from Glasgow and took us out to lunch. He didn't pipe at all but was really surprised to hear that I did, and even more surprised to hear that there was a Scottish festival going on in Salt Lake City this weekend. I told him that one day when I go to Glasgow to see the Worlds Competition, I would come find him. He was a really funny guy, and the whole conversation made me miss the band.

Elder Bednar - Elder David A Bednar. Here's a link to a short bio.

the Worlds Championship - a competition of pipe bands from all over the world, held yearly in August in Glasgow, Scotland.  Here's a link.

the band - The Salt Lake Scots Pipe and Drum Band. Elder Hadden played bagpipes with them for several years before leaving for his mission. Here's a link to their facebook page:  Salt Lake Scots. If you look carefully, you will see Elder Hadden in the back row of the picture of the band in Moab on top of the page.

Whoops!

Dear all,

I just realized that somehow, the email I wrote last week didn't send. I don't really know what happened, but I blame my phone. That's OK though, because I really didn't say anything interesting. Here's a sum up:

Ottawa is waaaaaaay nicer than Montreal in terms of just being a well-organized and clean city.

The YSA ward I'm in is really excited about missionary work, and all the members are really chill.

I was super tired because we were teaching so many people and the transition from Montreal to here was big and kinda difficult for me. 

My companion is really nice, really smart, and really French.

We went to Parliament. 

Now no one is missing out on anything. 

This week was a lot better than last week. We had our Zone Conference on Friday, and then that evening we had YSA devotional with Elder Carl B. Cook. There were only about 40 YSA there so it was a really more of a conversation than a devotional. He taught us all about the organization of church leadership (mostly because none of us really understood what the Seventies do) and it was surprisingly inspiring for being such a mundane topic. Church leadership takes a ridiculous amount of communication. 

At the dinner before that devotional, I found out that one of the members acted in his high schools version of "Back to the 80s." We were both really surprised that the other even knew what that show was! We bonded over our wonderful and weird experiences working on obscure, Australian, 80s-themed musicals.

We taught a ton of people this week in French, English, and Chinese. We currently have at least one progressing investigator that speaks each of those languages. This area is super intense and I need to pick up my French a lot more.

Anyway, That's it for me. I sent all the cool pictures I had last week. Sorry.

Love,

Elder Hadden

YSA - Young Single Adult

Elder Carl B. Cook - link to a short bio of Elder Cook

Seventies - What are Seventies?

Back to the 80s - a play for which Elder Hadden did tech in high school. Back to the 80s synopsis