GROUP EMAIL 10-30

大家好! 

I got my visa!!! I am off to Taiwan tonight. So the flight plan is that we leave LAX at 11:40 tonight! Then it is a 15 and a half hour flight to Hong Kong. After that, we get on a plane for about an hour and a half to go to Taiwan! The plan is to stay up for the first 8 hours of the flight to Hong Kong then sleep. So I have 25 hours of staying awake ahead of me. I will be flying with Elder Harmon, Elder Peterson, and we believe that Sister Player will be with us as well! It is super awesome and I am super excited to fly with them. Hopefully they can help keep me awake though lol. 

Also before I start the rest of the email, I am so sorry if I don't respond to you guys this week. I don't have a ton of time and I have to pack today. So I will try and respond to you all, however, if I don't respond to your email this week, I promise that I will respond next week. 

This week was pretty good. I went on two exchanges this week. One was with Elder Gardner, who is Elder Harmon's companion. Before the exchange, it was originally planned that me and Elder Harmon would be going together, but then it turned out that we had to drive and so we couldn't do that :( It was too bad. I was super excited to go together with Elder Harmon. However! It was a great exchange with Elder Gardner. I was able to learn a ton from him. It was awesome to see different viewpoints about things. He is an awesome guy. 

The other exchange was with Elder Cameron. That one was awesome. So since Elder Fu and Elder Thacker are going home, they went through the temple on Friday and did a a bunch of other stuff. Because of that, we decided to just do an exchange and go from there. It was a really awesome day. We went on campus and proselyted a bit and had some great conversations with people. We also taught a lesson to Mike. It went for two hours. We really need to be better about keeping his lessons shorter, but it went alright I guess. He is still willing to meet with us which is good. I think over all, he went two steps forward, which is better than nothing. He is a great guy and I am excited to hear what happens with him. 

Well, that is pretty much all that happened this week that was excited. The next email I send you all will be from Taiwan! I am so excited to go there. Man oh man. I have loved it here in LA though and I have been able to meet some great people. Anyways, love and miss you all! 

Elder Vander Linden

林長老