Ottawa Zone 20AUG18

This was posted today on facebook by Michelle Phillips, the mission president's wife.

School is Back in Session

Dear all,

School is back in session now. There are many Chinese people all over the place again. It's wonderful. We spent a ton of time around the University of Ottawa campus. I remember walking around the U at the beginning of the semester last year and thinking about how much it looked like some kind of weird summer camp, and how glad I was that I didn't have to deal with all that nonsense yet. I've had the same feeling this year, but I do feel a lot more prepared to deal with it for next year #trunkymoment. I'm still glad I don't have to deal with all that right now.

In other news, all the people we are teaching are still as interesting as I explained last week. Nothing changed there. 

My good friend Vincent Mooochaw of the LaSalle ward in Montreal come out to Ottawa this week and took Elder Burton and me to lunch. It was a party. I almost feel like I'm on a mini mission here in Ottawa sometimes. Like I've taken a short break from my mission home in Montreal to come here and serve for a period of time before going back to Montreal. Hopefully I go back to it, at least. I miss that place.

Speaking of going back to Montreal, I went on an exchange with the Zone Leaders this week, so I got to spend an entire day across the river back in the lovely city of Gatineau in the lovely province of Quebec. It's crazy how quickly the environment changes from Ontario to Quebec. You go from well developed, good roads, Anglophone, with Canadian flags to really foresty, horrible roads, Francophone, with Quebec flags. There is a very apparent shift in culture. It's quite an experience to drive across the border. It felt really comfortable to be surrounded by all the familiar sounds and feelings of the province. It was a good experience, all in all. 

That's it for me this week.

Love you all

Elder Hadden

#trunkymoment:  In missionary slang, being 'trunky' is the feeling you get when you are about six months from the end of your mission, and you just want to pack your trunk and go home, instead of continuing with all this missionary stuff.  As I understand it, it gets worse the closer you get to the end.

Another Normal Week 28AUG18

This is my favorite picture from my mission so far.

Dear all,

Another normal week for Elder Burton and me. We did all the normal missionary things like eating, and sleeping, and studying, and talking to people, and all that good stuff. 

We're currently teaching a couple people who are particularly interesting. One is named Jasper. He is from Quebec, but he's anglophone. In his thirties. He's really good about coming to church and reading the book of Mormon, but he's still working on building his faith in Christ. He believes in reincarnation and a lot of other spiritualist things, and often has trouble seeing how Jesus fits into everything. 

The other particularly interesting person we're teaching is named He Lin. She's a lady in her seventies from China and has a story about living through pretty much every event in the last 70 years of Chinese history. Listening to her talk is kind of like watching a Chinese version of Forrest Gump, but if Forrest Gump was dominated by things like the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward (look those up if you have never heard of them. China is a messed up place). She has a lot of trouble believing that God really loves all of his children if He lets such awful things happen to everyone, and she has even more trouble believing things without proof. Talking to her is kind of like talking to a holocaust survivor or something like that, but she lives a surprisingly happy life. She really likes coming to church and being with all the members.

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Elder Tarati, Elder Burton, and I all went to the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum the other week. I found it to be more of a Canadian Aviation and Chris Hadfield Museum, but I'm as big a fan of Chris Hadfield as any Canadian, so I enjoyed it nonetheless. The museum was a lot like the Hill Airforce Base Museum, but smaller and with more British planes and pictures of Chris Hadfield. It was probably my highlight from my time in Ottawa so far. Pictures below.

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

Super cool Lancaster from WWII.

Genuinely pretty cool Nazi rocket plane from WWII
(they were crazy dangerous) Messerschmitt Komet

Super cool candarm from the space shuttle Endeavor.

Super cool Chris Hadfield's actual guitar used for
super cool David Bowie covers in space.

Elder Tarati and me in front of a super cool recreation
of Yuri Gregarin's Vostok spacecraft.

Chris Hadfield doing his thing.

Super cool Chris Hadfield's actual Russian pressure suit from his last flight.

Super cool spitfire from WWII.

Super cool Nazi jet fighter from WWII (it's made of wood.
The Nazis made some weird stuff.

The Cultural Revolution:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

The Great Leap Forward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

Chris Hadfield:  First Canadian to walk in space https://chrishadfield.ca/

Adventures with Canadian Medical Care

Dear all,

This has been a week. Elder Tarati left on Friday for his new home in Valleyfield (just north of Montreal), and Elder Burton and I are now living on our own. We're doing pretty much the same things we've been doing for the past few weeks, working in the Riverside ward and doing some Chinese work in the Dow's Lake ward on the side. It's been a busy week, but it's better to be busy than bored. Things are going well.

We had our zone conference yesterday. A lot of it was about district council meetings. I took a lot of notes. Organizing district councils feels a lot like doing tech again. I do a lot of preparation, and then just kind of watch the whole thing come together. I enjoy it a lot. It all feels really familiar to me even though nothing about it is the same. 

While at zone conference yesterday, Sister Phillips told me to go to a clinic to see someone about this little bump that grew a few months ago. So, today, we went to a clinic to see someone about it. After a while of waiting, I spent about 10 minutes with a doctor who told me that it was probably just a wart, but it might be a super mild skin cancer, and that she would schedule and appointment for a biopsy just in case. Then she froze it with liquid nitrogen just for fun. So, that was my first experience with the famous Canadian medical system. It lived up to all my expectations, in that I didn't have to pay for anything, but I think that was more because of church insurance than actual Canadian politics, but whatever. It was free, and now my arm is frozen.

So, I almost forgot that the Prophet came to our mission this week. He gave a devotional in Montreal that was broadcast to a bunch of different buildings in the area. I didn't get to go to Montreal, but I did get to watch it here. It was pretty cool to know that he was really here in the mission and really speaking to all these people that I was serving. The thing that really touched about the whole devotional was when he talked about obedience. He said that to be obedient, you really just have to focus on loving God, your neighbors, and yourself. It's super easy to get really stressed out about obedience as a missionary because there a lot of really little things we have to follow. It was a good reminder that our focus really should not be on what we are doing, but why we are doing it. It doesn't matter if you wake up at 6:30 if you don't love God, or others, or yourself. The focus shouldn't always on the tiny nit-picky things. 

Hope you all have a good week.

Love you all

Elder Hadden

Another Week, Another Transfer

Dear all,

The most exciting thing that happened this week was, as always, the transfer call. I will be going to Riverside (the family ward in the same area as Dow's Lake with a small Chinese group) with the one and only Elder Logan Burton of Farmington, UT. We will be running all of the Chinese work in Ottawa and likely be in and out of Dow's Lake with Chinese YSA. We're not really sure how it will all work out, but it should be good. I'm excited to be with Elder Burton and get back into more Chinese work.

Our expensive hot pot adventure.

Other than that, this week we did a lot of work with the Riverside members. Being in a trio with Elder Burton meant we inherited all of the DAs for Riverside for the week. We had a couple with Chinese members and a couple with white members. One of our Chinese DAs was with a couple of members named Wang Lu and Yu Yan. They both used to live in the branch but recently moved here to Ottawa.They decided to meet up in a Hot Pot chain restaurant. I went to this same chain in Montreal one time and I remembered it being only about 10 or 15 dollars per person. We ate with them and then had to leave a little before everyone else so we could get home on time. We went to pay for our share of the food and found out that it wasn't 15 dollars per person, but actually 30. It was really expensive. The most expensive meal I have ever paid for on my mission. Needless to say, we won't go there again. at least not in Ottawa. 

Hiking in the Gatineau hills.
This is what Quebec really looks like.

Shucks. So little time. Anyway, the point of the story is that I'm back in Chinese work and there will hopefully be cheaper Chinese food in my future. I missed Chinese food.

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

YSA - Young Single Adult ward

DAs - Dinner appointments; people they are teaching the Gospel

Hot pot - a Chinese cooking method, prepared with a simmering pot of soup stock at the dining table, containing a variety of East Asian foodstuffs and ingredients. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leaf vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, tofu, and seafood. The cooked food is usually eaten with a dipping sauce.

The Hump Day Project

Elder Hadden will be at the halfway point of his mission on 27 September 2018, which is less than two months away!

I am preparing a package for him, including half bars of all his favorite chocolates ("You're halfway there!"), possibly a big bag of only camel animal crackers, and a photo book of all his favorite people holding a Happy Hump Day sign.

Here are a few of the first pics for the photo book, thanks to Caitlyn Rogers and the staff at Hinckley Scout Ranch:

Is that guy wearing any pants?!?

If you would like to include a pic of your family or group in the photo book, or if you have any other clever or annoying ideas for his Happy Hump Day package, send me an email at 

scarhandpiper@gmail.com

We Finally Found Some Computers

Dear All,

We have been with Elder Burton for the past few days, and as a result, have a car and a second apartment. We spent the night in the Riverside apartment so we could do laundry, and are now actually in the church to do emails. It is so much better than the bench next to Victoria's Secret in the mall.

This week, Elder Leung went home, and it was just as sad as I expected it to be. He really was not happy to spend the last four weeks of his mission in Ottawa instead of the Mandarin Branch in Montreal, but he really seemed sad to leave in the end. He's back in Hong Kong now, free to pursue his life being ridiculously intelligent and studying at one of the best universities in Asia.

Elder Leung left.

Once Elder Leung left, Elder Burton had no companion, so we snagged him and his car and his apartment. We've been in a trio running both the Riverside Chinese area and the Dow's Lake YSA area at the same time. Needless to say, it's been very busy, and we've had to do quite a few member splits. Both areas are doing very well, though.

We had a very interesting Sunday this week. A few weeks ago, Elder Tarati and I talked to this guy in a park near our apartment named Minh. We met with him a couple times, and between the first and second times that we met with him, he looked up our church, read a ton of stuff about what we believe, and then read the first 8 chapters of the Book of Mormon without us asking him to. And then he prayed about some questions he had and started receiving answers without our help. And then he came to church on Sunday and made friends with several members. And then! he bore his testimony on his first time ever attending a church meeting. It was incredible. I've never seen anyone like him. None of the many RMs in the ward have ever seen anyone like him. It was incredible. Easily the highlight of the week.

I actually got to do some Chinese work this week. Like an actual Chinese missionary instead of just an English-speaking missionary who talks to Chinese people. We went and visited less-actives, taught lessons in Chinese, and ate Chinese food. It's only been a few months since I was in the Branch, but I really really miss Chinese food. We're going to eat hot pot with a member later this week. I am ridiculously excited. 

We're going to the Canadian History museum (again) today because last time I was there I didn't get to see the actual Canadian History part of it and Elder Burton insists that I go back. It's gonna be a party. 

Les Voyageurs in the Canadian History Museum.

Transfer call is this Saturday. My guess is that I'll either stay in Dow's Lake with Elder Tarati or stay in Riverside with Elder Burton. Given my current record for transfer calls though, I'll probably get sent somewhere in Quebec with a totally random new companion. Life never ceases to be exciting.....

Love you all,

Elder Hadden