Elder Luk Vanderlinden

December 14, 2021 This is the last email I’ll be sending from the comfort of my own basement! I’ve been able to feel the spirit so strongly these last two weeks and it’s all been over zoom so I can’t wait to see what the Provo MTC holds for me. My last zoom class was yesterday morning and it was the last English focused class I’ll ever have. From now on it’s going to be Dutch learning only so there’s going to be a lot of “Hoe zegt u?”(how do you say?) and “Wat bedekent…?”(what does……mean?) but I’m really excited! A few days ago my district made a goal to try and use only Dutch in our google chat so that’s really helped with all of our casual talk. It has really been incredible to see how the gift of tongues has worked in my district. We were encouraged to ask in every prayer for the gift of tongues and it has been so cool! Obviously we haven’t gotten that far in Dutch but there are a lot of really tricky words as far as pronunciation goes and everyone nails them! We’ve all memorized “...

December 8, 2021 Hoi everyone! I'll get to explaining my title in a bit. My English teachers always taught me to have a good hook... pun intended *wink wink*. Anyway, this last week of learning has been really good! There are a couple of new things I've started doing since the last email, one of those being workshops. The workshops are just little online classes that you sign up for to teach you anything from the timeline of the Book of Mormon to posting on social media while on the mission. I went to one called Normal and natural interactions and it was really good for multiple reasons. I thought the teachers were really good at explaining the importance of having charity (the pure love of Christ) with you as you served and taught. They also performed a comedy sketch of sorts at the beginning which was the comedic relief I needed that day. The other thing me and my companion have started doing is called Helping Others. It's basically a mock lesson with an investigator whe...

December 1, 2021 Goedendag everyone! I've only been in the at home MTC for two days but it has already been so incredible! The first day I was struggling a bit with getting all the online stuff working but I figured it out and I'm all ready to go now. The first day of MTC was mostly introductory but we still had some great lessons. I got to know everyone in my district, district 11-H, and my companion and I love them all! There are ten people in my district, four sisters and six elders, and we are all going to the same mission which is so cool! We haven't done any language study together but we've been using basic dutch every once and a while which has been really fun. Already I know everyone in my district as well as my companion are serving missions because they love God and Jesus Christ. Their testimonies are incredible and I've learned a lot from them in just the two days I've known them. Like I said before day 1 was mostly introductory but we did talk a l...