Hello Everyone!
This has been awesome! We had, sure as some of you already know, General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints. We able to hear from a lot of the leader of the church, and it was very inspiring and cool! President Monson announced that the age requirement for missionaries was changed from 19 to 18 for the guys and from 21 to 19 for the girls! It doesnt sound to profound from an email but this is a very big thing. The amount of missionaries serving is to expected to increase dramatically over the next year or so. This makes it much more convienient for missionaries to serve right out of high school and more of an opportuninty for the girls if the decide to. I know for a fact the BYU will be changed for ever! Pretty much no more 18 freshman on campus, everyone will head there after the mission at 20. This is such a great opportunity beacuse it will really allow the gospel to spead and move forward at an excellerated rate. Right now there are roughly 58,000 missionaries around the word with some 340 missions open. They predict that this number will go up significantly and subsequently plan to open more missions to new countries in the follow years. Maybe China? haha well we will have to see in time. Some of the other elders in my district have already recieved some letters from some of the friends back at home or at college who had decided to serve missions right away! It cool to see that it's already taking effect.
Things are going very well here. Everyone is getting excited because we leave in about 3 weeks and we will probably get our travel plans the end of this week or next. I am so excited. I know that I probably wont be able to understand too much when I get taiwan but i know that i'll start to pick it up quick one i've been immersed in it. As I have been here at the MTC, my biggest priority is to continue to stengthen my testimony of Jesus Christ and his gospel so that I will be able to better help other know of the truths that I know and so many others around the world know. Obviously the next biggest priority is the language. It coming along well, but I wish that I was better at it! Often times when I am teaching I want to share some impressions or thoughts that I have but they come out in very broken chinese. It's frustrating sometimes, but i glad to know and at least have a little patience that it will all come in time.
On Sunday, our MTC devotional speaker was Chad Lewis the former NFL football player. I was so excited to see that he was speaking to us! I had met him on the BYU campus back in april as he over heard when I was talking to a friend that I would be going to Taiwan on my mission. He also went to Taiwan on his mission back in the 90's. He went to the mission my brother Marc went to, Tai Cheng. He gave me the biggest pep talk and was so excited for me! He told me how all I needed to know was how to say "Ni hao" and "Zai Jian" (hello, goodbye) and I would be ready to go and have an awesome time. So it was super cool to listen to him on sunday. He talked alot about the experience he had as a missionary and in the NFL and how all of his blessing in life after his mission has stemmed as a result of him serving. He is actually as of right now the NFL Ambassdor to China and translated the last Super Bowl for all of China. Pretty cool, huh? He is an awesome guy. He all so had the chance to hike mount kilimanjaro in Africa with some of the wounded warriors from afganistan and iraq, along with some of the other NFL players like Teddy Bruiski form the Patroit. As he was telling us these different experiences he related them all back to his mission and how when on the mission we need to rely on the Lord and He will do the rest. Often times we wont know what to say, but he said to just keep speaking, if you get discouraged, just pray. If you dont know what to do, just keep working. And as you do your best in all of these things, all areas of life, the Lord will take care of the rest. He will open doors to blessings you could have never have thought of. I really like his talk that he shared with us it was inspiring. I know that this is true. I have seen it in my life and countless others, including many of you who are reading this right now. I encourage everyone to recognize the the blessings you have been given in life, big and small. These are from the Lord. He loves you and is always taking care of you.
Wish I had more time to write, but I hope all is well for everyone!
Love, Elder Bastian
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