Elder Ogden in Taipei: Pruning the Mulberry Bush

"A member having a laugh..."

Note from Missionary Mom Des: Another recording this week! Enjoy! :)

Transcription of recording:

Hello everyone! Happy Monday! I decided that I would keep doing this for a little bit because it's a lot easier than writing an email and it sounds like a lot of you like it a lot more. I hope this is able to help you understand how my week went and that you enjoy listening to it.

This is our first full week together, Elder Brady and I. [It was] his first full week in Taiwan. I think he's adjusting really well to Taiwan. His Chinese is improving every day. It's already super good so it's really fun to talk to people that we meet and just brag about his Chinese a little bit. I can be like, "Hey, how long do you think he's been in Taiwan?" And they're like, "I don't know, maybe a year?" And then I can be like, "Actually no, he's been here for a week." People are always super impressed with that because his Chinese is impressive...only having learned Chinese for three months and then coming to Taiwan. So, it's super fun to do that and testify of the gift of tongues and the help that we get, learning Chinese here. That's definitely one of the biggest miracles I've seen here on my mission--just being able to learn the language quickly and thoroughly. We meet a lot of white people who have been in Taiwan for like 5 or 10 years who can barely speak Chinese. A lot of them are like teaching English or something. I don't really know how that works, if they don't learn Chinese, but...

"Catching Elder Brady mid-bite."

It's been super fun to work with Elder Brady. On Monday, last Monday, we had two members beg us to come over to their house so we could eat food with them. That day was "Mid Autumn Festival". It's a traditional holiday from China. They have a traditional food called "moon cake", so they fed us a lot of those. Moon cakes are like...they have this kind of flakey pastry-ish outside and then the inside has a lot of different fillings. Some of them are really good and some of them are really disgusting and you never really know until you bite into it. So, that's been quite the adventure. Some of them have like this weird dried pork stuff. I don't even know if I want to know what it is. It's just gross. Some of them have like peanut paste or sesame or the red bean that they eat for...(I don't know why I used the Chinese tones for the words "red bean" when I said it. It just tells you how much Chinese is influencing the way I speak now...)

So, ya- the moon cakes are pretty good and then they also have a tradition in Taiwan, and Taiwan only where for "Mid Autumn Festival" everyone goes out on the street outside their house and they take these little grills and barbecue. They take like strips of meat and vegetables and grill them on these little grills and they talk to each other. It's super fun to kind of just experience the culture and get to know our member friends better and be able to talk to people about their families and the culture of their ancestors.

Another rainy day in Taiwan

So ya, that was our Monday. On Tuesday, we went out to Yingge for Elder Brady's first time and it was pretty uneventful. No dogs attacked us. I did warn him that he should keep his foot available to kick at any dogs that tried to pounce on us and he just kind of laughed. He was like, "Hahaha, very funny." But, about five seconds later we rode past some dogs that were kind of sitting there looking like they were ready to start chasing us and so, I think he believes me now....We met a couple of people--some of them were cool, some of them were crazy. That usually happens when we go to Yingge, and we were able to get to know some awesome members there that we were visiting. Then we took a road that I thought was going to be a shortcut home, but ended up leading us straight to a cliff with some very steep switchbacks, so that was quite the adventure to bike up.

On Thursday we had a cool experience. We were meeting with Zoe who is a member who was recently baptized. It's almost been a year now, I think. We were eating at her husband's restaurant, which was really good Korean food. Originally the other Elders had the "spiritual share", but they realized they had a lesson and they had to leave early, so we had to kind of think of a "spiritual share" (something spiritual to share) with her, on the spot. I just remembered a scripture and a story I had been thinking about that morning about President Hugh B. Brown. One day, he had bought a new farm...There was some bush that he saw in the garden and it had grown up and had gotten really tangly and really unhealthily big. So, he had to prune it back quite a bit. He saw a little bit of sap leaking out of one of the branches that he had cut and he imagined in his mind the mulberry bush saying, "How could you do this to me? I had grown up so big. I was feeling so good and you just cut me down. I thought you loved me? I thought you wanted me to be happy?" He just kind of thought to himself, "Well, I'm the gardener here. Little mulberry bush, I know what I want you to be. I want you to be a mulberry bush and because I love you and know what you can be, I cut you down so you can grow back stronger and bear fruit and be what you're supposed to be."

Years down the road, when he was in the military and was due for a promotion, but was turned down because he was a Mormon, he went home and threw his cap on the bed and he said, "God, how could you do this to me? I keep the commandments. I do everything I feel is right. I do my best. How could you do this to me? How could you let this happen?" In his mind, he heard his own voice say, "Well, I'm the gardener here and I know what I want you to be. I know what you can be and so I cut you down so you can become stronger and achieve your potential."

So, I shared that, along with Alma 36:3 which is Alma promising his son, Helaman, that as long as we keep the commandments of God and trust in Him, that we will be supported in all our trials and all our afflictions and we can have hope that we can be lifted up at the last day. We shared that with Zoe and it was really cool as she shared with us that, just that day, she had had an experience at work that had made her kind of feel like President Hugh B. Brown, and just think, "How could this happen?" But, the fact that we were able to share that with her helped her understand that a little more and be happy with the experiences that she was having. So, that was cool. It's really cool to be led by the Spirit in those situations and be able to help people in that way.

The exciting thing that happened this week is 辛伯伯- xin beibei, passed his baptismal interview this week. He's been learning for a long time and he finally feels ready to be baptized and we're really excited for him. He loves Jesus. He has a lot of experience. He's 87 years old...He's getting baptized this next Saturday. So, we're really excited to be able to participate in that.

So, ya. That was our week. I hope you enjoy it. I'm super grateful for everyone at home who loves me and supports me. It really means a lot and I hope you guys have a great week!

-Elder Ogden