GROUP EMAIL 7/30/2018 The Gift of Tongues is Real!

Hello everyone, 

This week has been awesome. I have learned so much Chinese it is insane. It takes a lot of work though and I have to study it whenever I can so it is mentally exhausting. However, I know that the Lord has rewarded me for my efforts because I have learned way more than I could've on my own. It seems like I have learned more Chinese in the past two weeks than I have learned in all my years of high school. I am starting to understand the tones more and especially how to pronounce everything correctly. It is funny because we did this drill where we tried to teach the restoration in three minutes, but we first did it in english, and I was having such a hard time because I haven't taught in english in forever so I kept wanting to say Chinese words, it was kind of weird. My companion when he was doing it couldn't remember eternal life in english, it was funny. The gift of tongues is even more evident in my companion though, he hasn't had any background in chinese and he has soared in his learning of chinese. It is so cool to see. Our district is doing an english fast on friday so that should be interesting. I also love my room a ton, I am pretty sure I have taken a picture with them but they are all so cool. They are all going to Boston though which is sad, but it is okay. We kind of suck at SYLing in our rooms though and we should be better. But that is the gist of my week, it is a lot of Chinese, if you have any questions, feel free to send me an email :)

The Spiritual thought comes from a devotional movie we watched last night after the real devotional (Sunday's are insane how much you do regarding the church its awesome). It was by Elder Bednar and I don't remember what it was called. He gave a story talking about how when he was a missionary, he gave Elder Packer a twenty note bill for the train ride in case they needed food. Turns out, Elder Packer needed the money to get across the border, otherwise it would have been really bad because they were trying to get through East Germany. The gist of the story is that we don't have to recognize when we are feeling the Spirit. This is something that I had always had a hard time with and we talked about it a lot yesterday coincidentally. It also turns out that a lot of people in my district had a hard time with it as well. The Spirit doesn't just give us feelings, sometimes it is a thought that we think is our own, however, we don't have to recognize it at the time. Something that Elder bednar said is that, "we need to just keep being a good boy or a good girl, keep our covenants, and follow the commandments and we will do the right thing." It was really awesome to me. Elder Bednar thought he was giving a twenty note bill to an apostle for food, but turns out he was giving it for other reasons he didn't even know. That was the Spirit impressing him to do it, but he didn't know it and thought it was his own thoughts. He shared some other really cool stories and if it is possible to find I definitely recommend finding it. I don't know if it is or not, it was an MTC devotional so I don't know, but it was so cool. As long as we are being good people, the Spirit will impress things upon us and it doesn't matter if we know it is the Spirit or not. Sometimes it just might be a feeling. Always follow your gut. I don't know if that made any sense but yeah it was awesome.

Scripture for the week is Alma 32 in general, a great chapter if you want to read it. But specifically Alma 32:27, it says, "But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words." This also goes with 1 Nephi 2:16 which is when Nephi prayed to know if what Lehi was saying was true. Fun fact about Nephi, he didn't believe his father at first, but rather than hardening his heart completely and turning away from the gospel and the prophet, he chose to ask God if what he was told was true. He had a desire to believe and he found that Lehi was speaking the truth. I really love these two scriptures and it is awesome because we don't have to believe everything we are told, but if we desire to believe and pray to know that it is true, we will find out by the Spirit that it is true. Just like how it talks about in Moroni 10:5 "And by the power of the Holy Ghost, you may know the truth of all things." (fun fact I have that memorized in Chinese so I translated it from chinese and tried to put it in english grammar but I double checked to see if it was exactly right and a few words were different, just funny stuff) 

Anyways, that's all for this week, sorry if this email is a little long hahaha

Love and miss you all,

Elder Vander Linden