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| Holding our Christmas presents from the Sisters |
Hello friends and family)
So this has been a crazy week, full of ups and downs, but I've learned a lot of great stuff and grown closer to our Savior!
First of all, as many of you may know, they haven't gotten our visas in yet, and as of right now we're in the process of getting a temporary reassignment to depart to next week if the visas don't come in the meantime! The prospect of staying here yet another week is kinda depressing, because I feel so useless here when I could be serving the people of Taiwan or wherever, but it'll be a good exercise in patience I guess. The plus side is, since they don't have teachers for us, or really any set schedule, we can go to the temple and study and pretty much do whatever we want (which increases the potential for both learning a lot or wasting a lot of time, hopefully we keep it in the first category 
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On a brighter note, Thanksgiving was this week, so happy late Thanksgiving! We had a morning devotional with Elder Bednar where he let the whole world of MTCs that were watching live, send in questions over email and such, and then he would answer them and give us ideas of how we can answer our own questions! It was super cool to be in the presence of a prophet of God again, and it seemed like every question and answer taught me something in some way, either literally with the words that were said, or the thoughts that they provoked that allowed the Spirit to teach me.
The "dinner" (it was at 11:30) was probably the best thing the MTC has had in a long time, which was good because I was in need of a meal that broke from the monotony haha.
That afternoon we heard from Sharon Eubank of the General Relief Society Presidency and LDS Charities, and the CEO of Feeding Children everywhere. They talked about the service project that we were going to do, and the guy from Feeding Children Everywhere told us his conversion story, which was really cool.
He talked about how last year at the MTC, he was impacted by the special spirit that's here, and kinda started investigating what the church was all about. On the plane ride home, he got on his phone and did some serious reading of stuff about the church, both good and bad, and decided he couldn't know what the gospel was really about from anyone's opinion but his own, and so he decided, with God, that if he came across a Book of Mormon, he would read it. When they got in the Uber to go home, the taxi driver (non-lds) handed the guy's screaming daughter a Book of Mormon hoping to calm her down. He asked the driver if he just handed her a Book of Mormon and the guy was like "oh yeah I hope that's ok some people just gave me some and told me to hand them out when the time felt right" and the CEO said "oh yeah that's fine I was just wondering if I could have it instead". As he read it, as always happens to the honest seeker of truth, the Spirit whispered to him that the Book was true and long story short, he joined the church!
After that we watched a movie called "Love, Kennedy" about a girl from Utah who developed Batten's disease, which basically meant her brain function would begin to rapidly decline until she became more and more mentally handicapped and eventually passed away. It was a really sweet, true story about how, in spite of her handicap, she was able to touch so many lives and create so many miracles, and eventually her father received a witness that before she came to earth, she had chosen to go through this awful thing so she could help people, and that when her time came, the Lord needed her to come home. I get chills just thinking about it it's such a great story haha.
We packaged breakfast meals for children in poverty for the service project, and that was a lot of fun and a great opportunity to feel genuinely useful haha.
That night we had a musical devotional with the Nashville Tribute Band, and in spite of a lot of their songs being pretty countryish, which I am not into, the other ones were really good and they had great 4-part harmony and cool lyrics written from the point of view of people who knew the Savior in different ways, so overall I enjoyed it a lot.
I just want to close by saying I know our Savior loves us, that all that is wrong with this world can, and will be made right through His atonement, and that the life of one who knows Him is never easy, but always worth it and always full of blessings and His strengthening power. I love Him, and I can't wait to serve Him by serving the people of Taiwan or wherever I end up soon enough!
Keep looking up, keep hoping, and this week I invite you all to find a quality that the Savior exemplifies that you do not, and actively put forth effort and seek the Lord's help to develop that quality, and I know you'll be amazed at how much you'll be able to rise above the problems that are presented to you!
I love you all!
Elder Ogden
武长老
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| District Photos |
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| "The Bomb" Sunset |
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| Temple Trip |
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| More Temple Trip |
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| Christmas lights outside the classroom window |
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| With Sister Kitchens |
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