First Full Week!

Elder Ogden and Elder Nielsen

Dear friends and family, 大家好！(da4jia1hao3)

So one thing the members do that's really cool here, is when they give a talk or something, they say "da4jia1hao3!", which basically means "hello big family!", so I thought I'd try it out here! 

So this week was really good, I'll just give you a few highlights because there's way too much to get it all!

Last Monday we didn't have enough extra bikes, so instead of going to the hike we went to the beach and played frisbee and volleyball, which was still a ton of fun. We're going on a different hike today.

Playing frisbee

This week we went on a lot of exchanges, and I went on one with Elder Cheeney, one of our zone leaders, at the southern end of the mission in Taidong (it's Taitung on the map, but the romanization here is dumb and looks nothing like it sounds haha). We went knocking, talked to some drunk ama's, got rejected a few times, and eventually got to the point where we had time to knock one more house before dinner. I had really been trying to listen for the Spirit to know where to go, and I didn't feel any pull towards a particular house or hear a voice in my head say "that one" or anything, all I did was look around and pick the house that my eyes kind of lingered on a bit, the one at the end of the street, pretty much randomly. We knocked, this old agong opened the door, and he was like "Oh, Mormon missionaries! I'm jidujiao (christian) too, come on in!" and we were just like "uh, ok" so we went in and talked to him and he told us he had met with missionaries a long time ago in high school and loved them and loved Jesus and had a Book of Mormon back in Gaoxiong, but he left it there when he moved to Taidong. I was able to give him a Moermenjing I had been carrying with me, and he was super excited and thanked us and invited Elder Cheeney and his normal companion to come back and teach him more, it was so cool! Sometimes the Lord really just leads us along without us even realizing it, but if we are doing our best and trying to be led by the Spirit, we'll end up where we need to be in the end!

We went to another ward party last Saturday and it was pretty intense. They had a very elaborate nativity, a projector screen with Christmas just dance type things, and a TON of food! They really go all out with the Christmas spirit in the church here and I love it. Outside of the church, they don't really do anything Christmasy though, but it's been really great to talk to people about Christmas and find out what they know, and then show them the light the world video and offer to teach them more! It really brightens their days!

I know that Heavenly Father wants all of his children to have His gospel! I know that He gave us the gospel to bless our lives, and they truly will be blessed if we come unto Him, and just let Him do His job! It takes effort, but it's so worth it!

Love you all!

Elder Ogden

"A really sweet house we saw."

"Fun fact:  It's better than American peanut butter with even less sugar, I think."

Cheesecake!

From Elder Ogden's letter to Mark...
"On another note, I thought you ought to know that I've had several danbings and zhuabings, and some wintermelon tea with jinzhus, in your honor, and it was all amazing! It has definitely been nice to have heard all these things about the food and culture here from you before I came. We had dinner with Yao2di4xiong1, who's the one who says he served with you in Taichung, and his family last night, and it was cool to see all these cultural things you told me about in action!"

Danbing with bacon

"My steamed bun...courtesy of Dad's tutelage"

Potstickers

"Really good mystery fruit-flavored energy drink"

From Elder Ogden's letter to Missionary Mom Des...

"The air in Hualien is not too bad, it's weird to describe because there are a lot of tall buildings, but the city doesn't have nearly the footprint of Taipei or, well, the entire west coast, so the pollution doesn't get too bad. It's really just a cool experience of both city and rural, I love it."

On a hike

Pictures taken from either the train or a bus

Hualien