Written on His Hands

Hello everyone!

This week was really great.  We were able to find a lot of new people to teach and we felt guided by the Spirit in order to do so, which is really all one can ask for. 

This past Wednesday, we had a special Halloween-themed English class where we explained the background of Halloween, and compared the origins of it to other cultures' festivals like "Ghost Month" in Chinese culture, and the Day of the Dead in Mexican culture. It's cool to see all the similarities different cultures share, and how we really all do come from the same place, [with the] same Heavenly Father. That night we also did some games we remembered from parties we've had in America.  We made some fake body parts to put in a box for people to feel, using things like tofu skin, which is just the outside of tofu and it feels exactly like rotten flesh. (When you don't really know what [rotten flesh feels like] so that worked really well.) People had a lot of fun with that and it was a great chance to get to know our students well and set them up to learn more about the gospel.

This week I finished the Book of Mormon again and I loved looking back through at the things I had learned and written down. I think this scripture and an experience we had this week sums up what I learned over and over again during this reading: 1 Nephi 21:14-16 says:

"14 But, behold, Zion hath said: The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me—but he will show that he hath not.
15 For can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee, O house of Israel.
16 Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me."

We were sitting in this random convenience store in the middle of a factory complex that Elder Brady had looked up and wanted to do our companionship study in, and I looked over and there was a guy sitting there watching a movie on his phone. I felt like I should talk to him so I asked him a Chinese question.  He looked up with a scared look in his eyes and in bad Chinese he was like "I can't, I'm Vietnamese" and we were like, "Oh dang," so we did our best to share a little bit with him through Google translate and we got his Line (phone number) and were texting back and forth and he was just like, "Thank you so much! I'm so grateful God led you to me. You guys are so awesome!" It really was a testimony to me that God knows where all of His children are, and He will use us to bless those around us if we let Him.  Our Savior has us written on His hands, and he knows our pains.

I love you all, have a great week!

Elder 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

Excerpt from Elder Ogden's email to Missionary Mom Des:

"We went to a theme park that has a zoo today and there's a place you can go and little parakeets and [other birds] will just fly onto you and nibble your dead skin and stuff.  I thought of how terrified you would be the whole time, haha." 

(Missionary Mom Des does not like birds.  It's a long story...)

(Yep.  Missionary Mom Des wants to go huddle in a corner when I see these pictures.  Lol.)