First Real Transfer

Elder Ogden did not upload any new pictures this week, but in honor of transfers and the fact that Elder Nielsen has moved on to another area, I am choosing to post this collage of Elder Ogden and Elder Nielsen. :)  -Missionary Mom Des

大家好！(dàjiā hǎo-hello big famiily)

Hey, this week was CRAZY but good! We had dinner with our Bishop on Monday and his wife gave me a 全名-quánmíng, or a Chinese full name. It's 武忠樂-wǔ zhōng yuè/lè, the zhōng means loyal, faithful, devoted and the last character has two pronunciations. The lè one means happy, joyful, pleasant and the yuè one means music! I say it yuè when I introduce myself, but most people think the lè at first, so it's fun.

So this week was transfers, my first one that actually affected me, which has been stressful but fun. Elder Nielsen got transfered and Elder Vincent came in! I miss Elder Nielsen, but I get along really well with Elder Vincent too, which is a blessing. He is really cool, played tennis for BYU for a year, he's from Huntington Beach California, and has only been on his mission for about 6 months, so he's pretty "young" too. It's a little stressful because neither of us really knows what to do and this area is very different from Zhubei, the only other one he's been in, but we've seen some cool miracles and we're both excited to get to work and get out of this rut we've been having recently, and things are already looking up. 

At English class on Wednesday, when Elder Nielsen was still here, we did a group spiritual share where we missionaries performed some songs including me getting to play the cello, which was really nice, and Elder Bagley and Sister Bernhardt, both of whom went home this week, bore some great testimonies, and we watched a video with the students. After that we had 3 people from our area who wanted to learn more, and us Elders [will get to teach] an older guy and a young man on Saturday.  The sisters are starting to teach a woman from mainland China! So those were some cool miracles.

Transfers were crazy.  Basically I ended up being with Elder Church for a couple hours and we had to juggle a bunch of crappy exchange bikes and make it the half hour bike ride up Meilun Mountain and back for a meal with a member, [all the while] stressing about luggage and taxis and getting members to help drive us and everything, but in the end it all worked out and my new other half arrived safely!

The past couple days have basically consisted of getting to know the area for real, talking to a lot of people, and getting Elder Vincent familiar with the members and how things work here. It's been really stressful leading the area and everything when we both kind of have no idea what we're doing haha, but at least this is the Lord's work and not mine so he's making sure it ends up ok!

Yesterday, we were biking down the street and we ran into one of the first native English speakers I've met on the street outside of our church who wasn't borderline rude! She was super awesome.  She's from South Africa and here studying at the college, and I'm pretty sure she was the first black person I've seen here.  Even though I'm not exactly from the most diverse place in the world, I've still kinda missed that haha. She was so nice and said she had met with sister missionaries in Taiwan before, but when she went back home to Africa her number was cancelled and she lost contact with them. She was way down to continue learning so we got her set up with the sisters! That was definitely a miracle, and it was nice to be able to share about something I love so much without a language barrier to someone who was willing to listen and participate in a conversation!

I've recently been trying to get back to the basics and really strengthening my simple, unshaken testimony of Jesus Christ as our Savior and Redeemer. I loved as I read Abinadi's quotations of Isaiah in Mosiah 14, things like

    [3] "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

     [4] "Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted."

  [5] "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

I also read Elder Holland's talk from the MTC called "Missionary Work and the Atonement", which is SO powerful. He talks about how Jesus Christ and His Atonement should be the center of our teaching to our investigators and the focal point of our own testimonies, and he also said this: 

"I am convinced that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation never was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him? It seems to me that missionaries and mission leaders have to spend at least a few moments in Gethsemane. Missionaries and mission leaders have to take at least a step or two toward the summit of Calvary.

"If He could come forward in the night, kneel down, fall on His face, bleed from every pore, and cry, “Abba, Father (Papa), if this cup can pass, let it pass,” then little wonder that salvation is not a whimsical or easy thing for us."

And I want to add my own testimony to that. I know Jesus is the Christ, the son of God. I know he died for us, that he suffered for our pains, our weaknesses, our sufferings, and our sins, so we can have someone by our side, who knows us individually, and is encouraging us to do our best, and when that happens and it is still not enough, then He can make up the rest so we can return to live with our Father in Heaven. His love is unimaginably, inconceivably infinite, and all we need to do is choose to do what He knows will make us the most happy, even when it seems hard are doesn't make sense or anything like that. 

I'm so happy to share that knowledge with the people of Taiwan and I hope everyone who reads this can feel of that love from Him through my words! I encourage you all to study the life and example of Jesus Christ and seek to emulate it even more in the way you live your life, and I promise as you develop a relationship with Him in that way your faith in Him will carry you through anything!

I love you all!

Elder Joshua Ogden
Missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints