GROUP EMAIL 10/15/2018 Qianqian Baptism!

Alright so this week was pretty good. We taught a few good lessons, and then had Qianqian's baptism! However, I am not in a writing mood today, so I apologize for that up front. But, to make up for that, I am going to try and attach some pictures because apparently it isn't clear how to see all of the pictures on the blog. And my missionary friends can't see the blog. So yeah. 

Alright! So first Mike. Do you guys all remember who Mike is? He is the one who has been having a hard time understanding the Book of Mormon. Turns out, he totally understands it he just waaay over thinks it. In our lesson with him, we read a scripture with him, then Kerry (A guy in our ward who went to Boston Chinese speaking, apparently he is a legend from what I hear from the guys in Boston) asked him, "Do you understand?" "No" "Try to explain it" Then Mike explained it perfectly. It was kind of a funny moment. However, that is not the main point I wanted to point out about this lesson. First of all this lesson was 2 hours. Like holy crap i was so drained by the end of it. But it was good. So Mike always is a bit confrontational, he always asks these really weird questions that are honestly not relevant to try and twist us, and just other things. But you can tell he has a total desire to know. I think part of the reason he asks super weird questions is because he truly does want to understand everything about the church that there is to know. But anyways, at about the midpoint of this lesson, it turned into a whole different kind of lesson. Like it seemed like two completely different lessons. You could tell that he had felt the Spirit. So it was really awesome. We explained how he could find any answer to any question in the Book of Mormon. He then asked, what is the purpose of life? So we said we gave him Alma 34 and asked him read out of it. Anyways, the lesson finished and I was super confident he was going to go home, read this chapter, find an answer and then be super willing to learn more. That night we reminded him to read Alma 34 and we assume he did. However, Saturday night came, and we invited him to both church and Qianqian's baptism, and he didn't want to come to either (He has been coming to church in the past, despite the fact that the two he has been to were Stake Conference and General Conference lol). He basically said, I don't want to go, but you can. It was pretty sad, so we don't really know what is going on. We are going to try and meet with him and have Kerry there again. 

Alright, next up is Heather. So Heather is the one that was baptized a couple of months ago and now is trying to decide to go to the church she was raised in or our church. It was also a good lesson. So she lives in an apartment owned by the other church and lives with three other girls who go to that church. It is also a requirement for her to go to that church apparently, we aren't totally sure on that part though (her first language is broken english, long story, but basically super hard for her to put her thoughts into words). We then asked her, which church do you feel like is true? She then said both. We then tried to explain the differences, how our church has the Priesthood, it has the fulness of the truth, we having living prophets that can guide us, etc. We tried to explain that her church wasn't a bad church, that it had some truths, just that our church had the fulness of the truth. She seemed to understand, it just was hard for her is what she said, because she was raised in that other church. So we asked her to ask God which church she go to, and then read 1 Nephi 3:7 with her to show that God wouldn't command her to do something that wasn't impossible, that if God wanted her to come to our church, He would provide a way. It went really well I think. Then she came to church and to Qianqian's baptism so it was awesome.

Alright finally, Qianqian's baptism. It was awesome. So I won't go into the full detail of it, but I will just explain everything super shortly. So one little funny thing. Qianqian is scared of water. So we were filling the font and Fiona (her English name that I will use from now on because it is quicker to type and i am sure is easier to pronounce for you guys) got super scared. We were like, "Why?" then she explained how she was scared of water. Luckily Heather was there to calm her down a bit, but we stopped it pretty short. But, when the ward mission leader, Isaac, got there, he was like, "It seems to be a bit short" We agreed but explained the situation, however, we looked at the water again and we were like, this will be awful for Qianqian if we don't raise it. So we explained the situation to her and raised it. Then the baptism was awesome. Sister Lu (missionary in our district) gave a great talk on baptism. Then Elder Thacker baptized Qianqian, but he had to do it twice. It was funny because you could tell he was super stressed about getting all of the tones right and making sure to get all of the words, then he got everything right but forgot the easiest one. It was okay though, but kind of sad for Qianqian because she was scared of water. After her baptism, Stephanie (another girl in our ward that went to Korea on her mission, but has been really trying to learn Chinese so that she could communicate with few Chinese members and fellowship them) gave a great talk on the Holy Ghost and even threw in some Chinese sentences, so go her. Then the Relief Society welcome Qianqian, then bishop had her give her testimony. It was a really awesome testimony, but it was kind of funny because Qianqian is super unconfident in her English, despite the fact that she is a linguistics major (so her English is great). Because of this, Adam (an rm that got back from Taichung a couple months ago) translated for her. Then after she was done, Bishop said a few more things but asked Adam  to translate for her (because he thought she wouldn't understand even though she totally did) and it was funny because you could see she was laughing at a few things before Adam even started to translate. ANYWAYS. the baptism was super awesome. Qianqian is awesome. It is so cool to see people realize the change that the gospel has had on their life from doing the simple things like reading the Book of Mormon, praying everyday, going to church, and everything else and because of these things accept baptism and make a covenant to always represent Jesus Christ in their lives. 

I love you all, and I do realize this is a bit long again. I will cut back next week, promise ;)

Love you all,

Elder Vander Linden