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

Fun in Ottawa!

Canadian Parliament building

"Hey mom,

They bring letters and stuff to us once a transfer at zone conference, so it will take me a super long time to get anything you want to send me. It's pretty inconvenient.

The address is the same though. 

Ottawa is such a cool city. I wish I had come with you and RoseE when you came here a few years ago.

Love you, 

Elder Hadden"

Hallway inside the Parliament building

In the library of the Canadian Parliament.

Stained glass window

Another hallway

Senate Room 

once a transfer - Transfers happen every six weeks, so it's going to be another long time before Elder Hadden gets the package I sent last week. :(

哇太花 (Wow to Flowers)

Mandarin District: Cannon, Hadden, Leung, Furness

Dear all,

Well, the transfer call came, and my prediction was totally wrong. Turns out Elder Leung and Elder Furness are both staying in Mandarin Central, Elder Cannon is staying in Mandarin West, and I'm going to Ottawa. I can't say I would have expected it, but I am pretty excited to get out of the branch, and Quebec, for a while. 

The area I'm going to is Dow's Lake YSA Chinese. It's an English YSA branch, but has a few Mandarin investigators and members. It's been doing really well the past few transfers (I'll get to why in a second), so I'm pretty excited to get out there and help to keep that good streak going. 

My companion will be the mission-famous Elder Gauthier. Elder Gauthier is a Mandarin speaking missionary from France (I actually went on an hour long exchange with him on my first day in the field, so I sort of know him already). He was Elder Cannon's MTC companion, so he'll be dying with Elder Cannon at the end of next transfer. He's about 25, the oldest missionary currently serving here, and has a Masters degree in diplomacy from some big university in the eastern US. He speaks 5 or 6 different languages, and can read both ancient Greek and Latin. The guy is crazy smart and has served as both a zone leader and an AP here. Despite all that, what he's most well-known for is being relentless in contacting and unceasingly energetic. I honestly have no idea how he manages to put as much energy as he does into the work, and I don't think anyone else does either. Even though he seems like he would be super intimidating, he's pretty nice (he's a diplomat both in personality and education). 

This is pretty much just what I've heard from other people about him, as well as a little bit of what I've seen in person. I'm really curious to see what he's actually like to work with. It should be a good transfer, and I'm sure I'm gonna learn a ton. 

Anyway, Elder Gauthier has been in Dow's Lake for three transfers now (hence why it's been doing so well. The guy is a machine, from what I hear), the last 2 transfers he's been training Elder Burton (a missionary from Salt Lake who I coincidentally went to elementary school with). Elder Burton is coming to replace me in Mandarin West with Elder Cannon. It was an interesting transfer. No one was really expecting it, but it should be a good one. We'll see how it goes.

As of Thursday, my mission record will be 8 companions in just over 4 transfers, with 4 areas and 4 moves. That's pretty much the same as Elder Cannon's record will be when he leaves (except for the number of transfers).

Au revoir, Montreal.

On Sunday I said goodbye to everyone in the branch, since I won't see them for a while. With any luck, I'll come back to the branch before I go home. It was sad to say goodbye, but I'm pretty sure I'll come back. Honestly though, given my current experience, anything could happen to me. 

Cedric took Elder Cannon and me for a walk along the shore of the St. Lawrence this morning since it was my last P-day on the island.

That's it for me.

Love you all

Elder Hadden

于 2018年5月22日周二 下午2:36写道

A plant that Cedric gave me

The St. Lawrence

Cedric and me

A goose family on the St. Lawrence

Rapids on the St. Lawrence

Me in front of a rapids on the St. Lawrence

Mother’s Day

Dear all,

Well it's been a week. Nothing particularly interesting happened. No crazy anarchists, no cool super prepared people, no phenomenal lessons, just life. 

I cleaned some of our kitchen this morning. I don't remember if I've mentioned the disgusting grease-soaked paper towel that I found stuck to one of the shelves in a cupboard, but I spent about an hour trying to scrub the grease that it left behind off the shelf. Really gross, lot's of scrubbing, and not a lot of success. 

All the Liahonas we put out for recycling

I also found a ridiculous amount of tupperware all jammed in the cupboard above the stove, and again all covered in grease. I'm just gonna give them away and let other people try to clean that though. After a morning of solid work, the kitchen is slightly cleaner, there's no more tupperware, and there's not as much grease caked onto our shelves. 

We went on 2 exchanges this week, one with the Zone Leaders and one with Mandarin Central. For the Zone Leader exchange, I stayed in Mandarin West with Elder Purahui, from Tahiti (he doesn't speak Chinese). It was kinda weird to run a Chinese-speaking area with a companion who doesn't speak Chinese, but everything went surprisingly smoothly. We decided to go visit a recent convert who speaks absolutely no English, so Elder Purahui was really bored and confused for a while, but I had a really good conversation with her. 

This is the extended transfer prediction I drew up with Elder Furness.
We signed and dated it just to prove to everyone we were right.

For our second exchange, I went back to Mandarin Central with Elder Furness. We had a lot of fun since we already knew how to run the area and work with each other. We talked pretty much the whole time about our predictions for transfer call on Saturday. We both think we'll be staying where we currently are, but that Elder Leung, Elder Furness' current companion, might be moving out of the branch for his last 2 transfers. I'll let you know what really happened next week. 

Love you all,

Elder Hadden

Costco poutine:  it really exists, and is pretty good!

A really big spider I found in our apartment the other day.