GROUP EMAIL 12-9-2018 Hello everyone, just your casual tall, white elder from Taiwan who is trying to learn Chinese

One day, maybe my subject lines will be interesting or have something cool in them. For now, you all get my jokes. 

This week was pretty good! One big thing we had this week was a Christmas concert on Saturday. It was super fun. Me and my companion actually sang in two of the choirs because our stake was the ones that put it on. They held it at an elementary school in Tianmu and we got a bunch of people to come I think! I don't know how many were members and how many were not but it had a lot of people. And on Sunday, the people from my ward that came told us how they loved it. But yeah! That was pretty much our entire Saturday. 

Another crazy thing that happened this week was we went and visited a members house. This story is pretty crazy so hold your horses. So we are teaching these people, one is an active member who is a returned missionary and the other is a returning member. Both are really awesome and super nice (the Returning member is a super old grandma who is the mom of the active member). Anyways, we are teaching them and then at the end we ask if there is anything we can do for them. They ask us if we can give the mom a Priesthood blessing. I'm cool, thinking yeah we can do this, I just will do the first short part, but wait, there's more. We ask the mom who she would like to give the blessing and she turns to me and asks me to do it. I'm like what?? I turn to my companion and I'm like, don't worry, she probably won't know the difference if I just do the easy part, and Elder Bateman is like nope, you're doing this. So yeah, I gave her a Priesthood blessing. In Chinese. It was actually so cool. I am definitely grateful for the opportunity that she gave me to give her a blessing. And let me tell you all, when you are giving a blessing in a different language, you really gotta follow the Spirit, so it was a super cool experience for me to do and I hope that she was able to feel the Spirit and feel comforted. 

Anyways, that is pretty much all for me this week. The spiritual thought I want to share is about the Book of Mormon. Man, the Book of Mormon is great. I know that through reading the book of Mormon you all can receive a testimony and see the blessings from this gospel. I know for me, it wasn't until I started to read the Book of Mormon that I truly came to find the truthfulness of the gospel. It wasn't until I started reading the Book of Mormon everyday that I was able to see the difference that the gospel brought to my life. I invite all of you to read it everyday. Even if it is just one chapter, or one page, or even one verse, the important part is reading it everyday. I promise you all, that if you read the book of Mormon every single day to the best of your ability, you will see the differences in your life and you will come to know the truthfulness of this gospel. 

Love and miss you all! 

Elder Vander Linden