Elder Ogden in Taipei: When a Nice Old Lady Helps You Realize You're Possessed...?

大家好！

Wow, what a week! We've been running around so much with members and other friends to visit that we almost didn't have time to stop and smell the roses! This week and last week it just rained every single day. Every day at right about 3:00, like clockwork, the sky starts dumping buckets. I've learned to just put my rain gear on for every bike ride through it, and stay in the convenience stores where everyone runs to for shelter as much as we can, because that's where the people are. Even a short ride through what looks like a sprinkle magically soaks me to the bone, so it's a fun time haha. It's usually more comfortable than being soaked in sweat, and the air after the rain is always refreshing and cool and smells so good.

In Chinese they have a saying that missionaries hear and use way more than anyone actually says it (just like pretty much every idiom or saying we learn). The saying (in English) is "a chicken that has fallen in soup", or 「落湯雞」(luò tāng jī) in Chinese. It means "one is about as soaked as they can possibly get". Like I said, people don't use it very much, so when I lean over to someone at a stoplight and say it, or say something like "Wow, does it always rain like this?" Or just "Are you a little wet?", they either

a.) notice I'm a white guy in a white shirt on a bike and magically don't hear anything I say,
b.) look at me like I'm crazy and don't respond or acknowledge me further, or
c.) they look at me like I'm crazy and start to laugh.

I've learned that the last kind is usually the kind that is willing to talk to me, so it's a better test right off the bat than "Want not want learn Jesus?"(That's how the grammar works here. Saying that immediately is sadly not how missionary work works usually though haha.)

Friday was a fun day. We went down to Yingge to visit some friends. We were doing our language study in a 7-11 and it started to rain HARD. Like the gutters had a good 6 inches of water running down them. It was super sudden, and luckily it was time for our dinner so we were able to run across the street to get some fried rice (we still got soaked) and pray that when [it was time for us to go] out the rain would subside. It did just in time. Then we were able to visit a poorer family the missionaries taught before Yingge was closed. The husband pretty much just sits and drinks all day while the wife works, and he ignores us when we go visit him. It's really sad, but the wife loves when we come over, and the gospel and the Book of Mormon seems to give her a lot of hope. I do hope one day the husband actually acknowledges what we say to him, because only this gospel can change him into the person their whole family deserves. Seeing people misuse agency is easily the hardest thing about being a missionary.

This week we had a fun experience when a lady, after staring at us for a bit, asked if we were Christian. When we said yes she got really excited and shared her testimony of how she was converted from being a Buddhist nun to being a Christian. She seemed a little crazy, but she was really nice and sweet so we listened. Then we asked if we could share our experience, which she gladly accepted. We talked about how coming to know the Savior through the Bible and the Book of Mormon together has changed our lives, but when we pulled out a Book of Mormon, her face darkened and she started going off how she really hoped we would repent and return to "real" christianity and other things. She also started tracing the character "鬼"-guǐ, which means ghost or demon, on the table and was like "You guys aren't thinking straight, I think you have one of these", and we were like "uh,.... ok...." and we continued to share how the Book of Mormon was written and how we have both learned through our own experience and the Holy Ghost, which she agreed would not lie, that the book was true. Then we read Moroni's promise at the end of the Book of Mormon, where he promises if we read the book, ponder it's meaning to our lives, and pray with real intent to act on the answer we receive, the Holy Ghost would tell us it was true. I don't think she listened to it at all though, because she said the whole time she was praying that the devil wouldn't possess her as we were reading, so at that point we realized she had already been brainwashed past the point of actually listening to anything we had to say.

Even though she was attacking something that is very dear to me in my life, and in previous instances I haven't been able to restrain myself from getting kinda argumentative and defensive when someone attacks this book (that's just my natural response, especially when they refuse to even read it.) . They just listen to whatever hearsay their pastor or cousin Joe or whomever has told them. I get way too easily frustrated at those times. But this time I refused to let my pride take over, and instead forced myself to remember that she really was concerned for us, and even though she didn't have the same experiences we had, we didn't have her experiences either. Also, I don't know everything [about her] either. So instead of arguing, I bore simple testimony of what I do know--that Heavenly Father loves all of us, that He loves her, and that I have truly felt that love through the Book of Mormon, [which is] a feeling that cannot be counterfeited by the devil or a genius and especially not a barely-literate farm boy (Joseph Smith). I did my best to react the way the Savior would and just listen to her even when she wasn't listening to us. Doing that, I felt a lot more calm and feel like we left a lot better impression and represented the Savior a lot better in that situation. I think she was kinda surprised.

It just strengthened my testimony further that responding in the Savior's way with love and a real attempt to understand where someone's coming from when they disagree with you will leave both parties a lot happier and tear down a lot more walls.

I love you all, 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