Elder Ogden in Taipei: That Time I Had a Creative Thought

Hello Everyone!

Thanks for all your prayers and love, it was especially awesome to see my dad's side of the family all gathered for general conference when I Skyped today. I'm pretty blessed to have so many people who support me and pray for my success. Definitely makes me think I should probably start trying to be a good missionary to live up to everyone's hopes

This week was a big shaping week for us as a companionship. Elder Yang and I get along really well but it seems like we just haven't connected and been in sync until this week. He has a lot of the same struggles I had as a young missionary and still struggle with sometimes, so I feel like we can really help each other a lot.

One fun thing that happened this week was we went to a place where we used to teach our English class to grab a white board we had left there, and we walked out and were wondering what we were going to do with it when I made a joke that we could just carry it around with us and use it to find. Then elder Yang was like "haha yeah we could write inspired questions and have people answer them" and I replied "yeah we could make it an experiment to understand Taiwanese people more". And then we realized we could actually just do that right then and there. So we did. We wrote "What do you think is the purpose of life? What is true happiness?" and went and asked people to answer, and then we would take a selfie with them and explain how the Book of Mormon answers these questions and stuff. It was fun because it made a lot of people think and a lot less people turned us down right from the get-go, so there was more opportunity for them to feel the spirit. I don't know if it's just because I grew up in Utah or if this would seem weird to a lot of other Americans too, but Taiwanese people usually don't ever put any thought into questions like this. It was the first time for many of them, but it did get them thinking.

Random picture of a panini

This week we taught a friend who has come to English class for a while and we met with him a while ago but ended up stopping teaching him because he talks so much, is very hard to teach, and struggled to keep commitments. But, he reached out again to us and we decided to give him another chance because he seems to really want answers and peace. He has had a lot of challenges and seen a lot of people in his previous churches do things that are contrary to what they claim to believe, and also he doesn't know if God has really actually answered his prayers before. So he really needs to feel peace and God's love, but he feels like the people that were supposed to be his vessels and help him feel that love let him down. We had a really long discussion with him and the patience and love we had for him really touched him, and he said he's going to let go and ask God in faith. Your prayers that he can get an answer and be willing to do his part and let go of the imperfections he has seen in others would be greatly appreciated.

This week we also started teaching our friend (and recent convert) Leo how to ride a bike! He wants to have that freedom and be able to explore and also come do missionary work with us. He's a really inspiring middle schooler. He could also use some prayers, since learning to ride this old seems to be a little challenging.

Well, love you all, hope you have a great week! If you get a chance, I would love to hear everyone's favorite part of conference!

Love,

Elder Ogden

*Note from Missionary Mom Des: Feel free to leave a comment with your favorite part of conference, or send an email directly to Elder Ogden by clicking on his name. :)