Elder Ogden in Taipei: Making Progress

Hello everyone!

This week went pretty well. It was definitely full of small and simple tender mercies that reconfirmed to me over and over again that the Lord really does take an active role in our lives.

We made quite a bit of progress with getting down to the root of investigators' concerns and were able to see the power of pure testimony in helping them overcome their barriers.
Monday night, we saw that with one investigator, and we were also able to meet with a dude who's WAY sick (Missionary Mom translation: He's a cool dude). He has perfect English and the Book of Mormon really resonated with him. He also came to church and really enjoyed it.

On Tuesday, I went on exchanges with Elder Sproul, our zone leader, and we had a lot of fun looking for less active members and former investigators to visit in a poorer area. We saw a small miracle when we almost decided not to stop by one person's house because it was getting late, but we decided we had better stop by anyway because we had prayed over our plans that morning and felt we needed to go there. When we got there, the person we wanted to visit was gone, but his next door neighbor was home and talked to us about how much he loved prayer and was pretty willing to learn more, so that was pretty sweet.

This Sunday, we had several less active members come back to church, even one whom we expected to take longer to be willing, so that was so nice to see. The Lord really is concerned with all of His children, and I've been really lucky to see people's lives being changed and blessed and have opportunities to teach people whom the Lord has been preparing for a while as we continue to do our best to follow our leaders' counsel.

This week I was reading in Alma 37 (which is all way beast), and in the end Alma talks about the Liahona, a compass that Nephi and his family were able to use to guide them according to their faith and keeping the commandments. I thought it was a really cool application to daily life:

38 "And now, my son, I have somewhat to say concerning the thing which our fathers call a ball, or director—or our fathers called it Liahona, which is, being interpreted, a compass; and the Lord prepared it.

39 ... behold, it was prepared to show unto our fathers the course which they should travel in the wilderness.

40 And it did work for them according to their faith in God; therefore, if they had faith to believe that God could cause that those spindles should point the way they should go, behold, it was done; therefore they had this miracle, and also many other miracles wrought by the power of God, day by day.

41 Nevertheless, because those miracles were worked by small means it did show unto them marvelous works. They were slothful, and forgot to exercise their faith and diligence and then those marvelous works ceased, and they did not progress in their journey."

I learned this week that sometimes we (*cough me) forget to appreciate the little things our Heavenly Father puts into our lives, the times when we learn from mistakes, when we get a chance to help someone else out, or when someone helps us out. We really can't comprehend everything He does for us. Sometimes not seeing those big extravagant mind-blowing miracles that we might expect makes it easy to stop looking, stop believing, and stop acting. At that point there's not even anything that could happen, so then our low expectations definitely come true. I'm definitely self defeating in this way all too often, so I decided this week that every night in my journal at the very least I was going to write one thing I learned that day, about anything, and do my best to learn something from everyone I spend time with. It's been really cool! 10/10 would recommend

. You guys have a great week!

Elder Joshua Ogden
Missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
武忠樂長老
耶穌基督後期聖徒教會的傳教士

Missionary Mom Des here- It is always a happy day when I see a video in the folder of Elder Ogden's pictures. This week, it was extra special because I got to see him play the cello again!!!! =)