Elder Ogden in Taipei: Taiwan...California...Taiwan...?

Elder Ogden is finally getting to move on!

First Email this morning:
你們好！ (Hello everyone)

This week wasn't super eventful, so this email won't be as long, but it was still a good learning experience.

So first, the power of prayer: 2 weeks from last Friday, I lost the piano book I've had that's been keeping me sane and allowing me to decompress when I've been hitting the Chinese really hard. I was pretty sad about it, so I immediately started praying and looking everywhere I could think. I searched the chapel on the 3rd floor we had studied in the day I realized the book was gone; looked in the lost and found, everything. Then, last Tuesday, the very day we were going to leave, Elder Anderson decided to go up to the 6th floor and study in our favorite chapel room. As I got up there, even though I was sure the book had been left on the 3rd floor, and someone had taken it or something, I had the thought to just check in one of the rooms we had studied in a while before. Lo and behold, there it was sitting on the piano, apparently right where I had left it the day before I had originally thought so. So that was definitely a tender mercy that I wouldn't have had if everything had gone according to our plan.

For Tuesday Devotional we had Joy D. Jones of the Relief Society presidency come and speak to us, and it was wonderful. My favorite was probably when she told an old Japanese Fable:

There was once an old man who lived with his grandson on a mountain, by the ocean, and who watched over the rice paddies for the town below. One day he stared long and hard out over the ocean, and suddenly he shouted to his grandson, "Yoshi! Quick, go get a torch!" The boy quickly returned with the torch, and the man promptly threw it into the dry rice paddies, which quickly turned them into a massive, blazing fire. The villagers below looked up, saw the smoke of their livelihoods burning away, and every one of them rushed up the mountain in a rage, leaving no one behind. When they got to the top and beheld their source of food blazing and crackling, they turned in shock to the old man and demanded an explanation. He responded, "Look to the ocean!" and they promptly turned with horror saw a massive tidal wave sweeping in, and completely submerging the village they were all sitting in moments before.

Sister Jones compared this story to the Lord's prophets, and it's so important to remember that the Lord knows how to run His church, and Thomas S. Monson really is His chosen vessel to receive His direction on the church's behalf, but He also knows how to run our individual lives, and has a plan for each of us.

The Lord sometimes burns down our rice paddies, or our plans for our lives, and only when we rise up and see things from His perspective to we see the tidal wave, or the wisdom of His own plan for us. I don't fully know all of His reasons for this delay, or why I'm not in Taiwan right know, but nevertheless, like Nephi "I know he loveth his children", that His ways are greater than our ways, and that this is HIS mission, not mine. I'm so thankful for the privilege I have to give my all being is servant in Long Beach, and eventually (probably after 6 weeks), Taiwan!

I love you all!

Elder Ogden

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

武長老

耶穌基督後期聖徒教會

Second Email this afternoon:

So they just told us President Jergensen talked to the consulate and the visas are being approved now if they haven't already and they'll be here in a couple days, so they cancelled our reassignments and I'll probably be in Taiwan by next week!!

Note from Missionary Mom, Des:

Yay! Elder Ogden will be headed to Taiwan later this week! We do not have an exact date yet, but I will keep you posted! Thank you for all of your prayers and positive vibes!