GROUP EMAIL 9-10-2018 Travel plans?

Hello everyone, I hope you all have had a fantastic week

First of all, I was challenged to put more effort into my weekly emails, so here goes nothing. I really suck at writing these though and nothing new happens but I can shishikan (try)

This week was crazy! Well MTC crazy. So first of all, I forgot to say this last week, but I had a super cool opportunity to bless the sacrament in Chinese. It was pretty cool. I messed up though, sort of. I had the paper on the bread side, but then Elder Harmon was studying the water side and switched it onto the water side. Well, when I started, I didn't notice until I got to the part where I was supposed to say water. It is good thing I understood chinese because if I didn't nobody would have noticed lol. Our branch presidency doesn't speak any Chinese except for like hello, so yeah, that could have been bad. So yeah, go gift of tongues. 

Anyways, another MTC crazy thing that happened this week was I wore the same tie every single day. You know, when you don't have anything new to do in the MTC, you gotta improvise. This week I think I will wear one of my ugliest ties every day. We will see though. I have a surprising amount of ugly ties and I am not sure why. Hahahah but yeah. 

TRAVEL PLANS! Alright so crazy story. On friday, we all got our travel plans, even if we were going to Taiwan. Well first of all, the past few districts that were going to Taiwan and got visa waited, didn't get their travel plans on this friday like they were supposed to. So we got super pumped, because we were like, this is hope. However, we didn't have our visas yet. If I do end up going to Taiwan though, I will fly into LA, then Hong Kong, then arrive in Taiwan at 9 AM on the 19th (with a four hour layover in LA so we will basically commit everyone to baptism there because we have so much time hahaha). However, Sunday, we were looking at our missionary portals, and we all had a different mission on there other than Taiwan. So if I don't get my visa, I will be going to LA. Now here's the catch. I am already flying into LA as part of going to Taiwan, but I won't arrive in LA until 8 oclock at night (and other taiwan missionaries got assigned elsewhere). Well I have never heard of a missionary arriving in his mission at night, so we are going to go and talk to the travel office to figure everything out. 

But yeah, that was everything that was exciting about my week. Spiritual thought for the week. Alma 32:21. 

"And now as I said concerning faith - faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." 

I love this scripture because sometimes we think faith is having a perfect knowledge. Sometimes we think that we have to have a positive knowledge that everything is true in order to have faith. But that isn't true. We have to hope for things to be true. Alma continues to explain even more what faith is in verse 27-28 

"But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yeah, 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.

"Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves - It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me."

If we just have this little bit of hope and experiment on the words. If we just hope that the Book of Mormon can help our lives and so we experiment by reading it, we will gain faith about it. I also love the comparison to a seed, we can never stop growing our faith. Does a tree ever stop growing? I'm not entirely sure but I am pretty sure it doesn't lol. So our faith can never stop growing and we must continue to nurture it and help it to grow, and as we continue to experiment on the word of God, we will find it to be true and we will know that it can help our lives.

Sorry this email was long, I love and miss you all! 

Elder Vander Linden

SECOND EMAIL

Sorry everyone! I don't know if my mom has already sent this out or not but I just got some news on my reassignment. If I do end up going to LA, all of the Chinese missionaries (who are being visa waited) proselyte and stuff on the college campuses. And there are also a lot of Chinese branches. So it looks like I will be able to use my Chinese! I was super pumped when I heard about that, my chinese won't go down the drain. Hahahha, but yeah. I thought it was super cool that you guys might want to hear about. Also, I don't know if I will be able to email next week because that is when my flight is, so yeah. If I can't, I will email you the week after. Love and miss you all!