Yingge: A Place of Miracles (with a slight chance of rabies)

"Pretending to understand the 2000-year old Chinese Poetry."

台灣父親節快樂！(Happy Father's Day!)

Hey, so there's a LOT that happened this week, so I'll get started right away!

First of all Happy Taiwanese Father's day! (Technically it was week ago today haha, that's what my greeting says). In English class that day, we talked about home and families and our inner GPS that can guide us home to our Heavenly Father, and it was great! I'll invite you to do the same thing I invited them to do: tell your Dad "我愛你"-wǒ aì nǐ!" (I love you!)

So transfers were pretty crazy.  President Petersen just went nuts moving people, including whitewashing the zone leaders [which means that all of the zone leaders were transferred] in central Taipei (which is pretty crazy), and yes he moved me out of Zhudong after only two transfers there. Elder Hong is still there for his fourth transfer, which is pretty typical, but usually the person who has been there for a shorter time stays, so we were pretty surprised. I was pretty sad to leave, there are some wonderful people there and it's such a beautiful place, but I've really felt the Lord needs things to be this way, so I'm ok with it.  

"My last day in Zhudong."

I've been transferred to八德-bā-dé! It's a district in 桃園市-táo yuán city, and our area includes a few other districts as well-- 鶯歌-yīng gē and 大溪-dà xī. 

I am now with Elder Steffen.  We have a lot of similar interests and he's ridiculously good with computers (he's helping program our English Website and the automatic referral system from that and stuff). He's not much older than me, we have a lot of fun. 

"Elder Steffen and me eating way too much curry."

Our Area is pretty big here too.  When there were more missionaries, our area was actually split into two, but 鶯歌-Yingge (eeng-guh) got closed down a while ago so now we just cover one massive area that is one ward. Yingge is a great place as well, also very beautiful except there aren't as many mountains. Parts of the area are much more fancy than I'm used to.  We actually have like a giant shopping mall and stuff, and then in Yingge and a few other places we have some 老街-laojie(laow-jieh), which just means "old street", so they have like cobblestone and cool old buildings with a lot of little tourist attractions and cafes and stuff.  I'm really excited to check those out on P-Days.

It's a great place, the members are really excited to do missionary work, and they're great at it. We have a lot of great friends learning the gospel here too. They all love to just talk about what they're feeling and struggling with, and ask us for help.  It's quite surprising how open they are, but it makes it really nice to figure out how to help them receive an answer. 

We met with a man named Todd yesterday who's really awesome.  He grew up in America but was born here.  He has had to move back here recently, has been feeling really out of place, and without purpose in life. It's pretty strange to teach in English, but he's super personable and open and asks a lot of questions. He just kind of approaches it matter-of-fact like "Ok, so you say to do this and I get that and then I do this and get that and then I know it's true.  Ok let's do this." And we're like, "Sweet, let's do it". We just need to have the Spirit more when we teach him and not be so stiff and businesslike and he'll be solid.

One cool miracle was that on Saturday we were planning on going to Yingge but it was a little late and it's pretty far away so we weren't going to have much time to get there, plus the rickety old bike I'm riding until mine gets shipped here was going to be a little sketchy on the giant hill going down into the district. But our plan was to go there and visit some people the missionaries had taught before that area was closed and combined with ours.  [We also wanted to visit] a member that had been out of contact with missionaries and members for a while, so we decided to pray and see if God wanted us to head out there in spite of a little danger and not being able to spend very much time there to make use for the hour round trip. 

After we prayed we both just had the word "ying ge" pop into our heads and we were like "ok I guess we're going to Ying ge". We headed out and normally as we're going down there are stray dogs just chilling in the trees next to the road on the steep hill waiting to attack us (there have been dogs jumping off of the divider trying to catch missionaries it's an actual problem haha) but there weren't even dogs barking at us. We got down with no bike problems, visited some awesome people who were excited to meet with us again, saw a bunch of weird stuff and the cool old street in the middle of Yingge, and we visited the house of the member who had been off the radar for a while. We had no idea what floor he was on, but we just randomly hit a buzzer and were like "Hey, it's the missionaries, is brother Liu the...*bzzt*" so we just got in like that. We talked to him and he's really cool, said he had moved and didn't know how to contact anyone and he just happened to be back visiting his family for THAT NIGHT ONLY so we got his Line and everything. As we were biking back up the hill we looked over and 20 feet away were like 10 dogs just rolling around or sleeping in a parking lot, so we felt like Daniel in the lion's den haha. We were definitely supposed to be in Yingge that night.


The members and people we're teaching here are awesome.  Taoyuan stake is just famous for members who love missionary work (and love feeding the missionaries also, I was talking to Elder Steffen on the phone the night before I came, and he told me there were 4 members that wanted to feed us meals that day and I almost dropped the phone haha. That also included a lady who took us to an expensive all-you-can-eat barbecue place with ice cream and drinks and pretty much anything else you can imagine. I felt so bad but she just loves doing it apparently.)

"Giant mango"

I just want to testify of the power of prayer, revelation, and repentance. We've been really trying to utilize the sacrament, repent often, pray for guidance in all things, and keep the Savior on our minds.  We have seen so many miracles of just being in the right place at the right time and being guided on how to help people during lessons. I know we can all have that kind of step-by-step guidance by the Spirit in all aspects of our lives, and it brings so much joy to know you're doing what the Lord wants you to do in that moment! I'm so glad I can be here serving people and helping them work towards receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost so they can have that guidance always!

Love you all! Have a great week!
Elder Ogden

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

"Buying cheap sports gear at a decathlon.  This was $10!" 

"Seeing a familiar face in the Liahona."
This gentlemen is a member of our Stake High Council.  The Liahona is a church produced magazine.