Well, it's hard to believe, but this is my last email of my mission! The time went so fast. I can hardly believe it.
This last week was very full. We found a lot of new people through every method we have. On Tuesday we taught a ton of our friends throughout the day and taught several first lessons, which was great. I love teaching about the Restoration [of the gospel of Jesus Christ]. My understanding of it has become so clear and firm in these 2 years, which is a fulfillment of my patriarchal blessing.
On Wednesday, we had English class and my last interview with President Peterson. He gave me a lot of great advice on how to stay happy and in control of my life. For English class that night, at the end we watched a video about the importance of families and we ended up talking about how the temple gives us an eternal perspective. I asked the class, “If you knew your marriage could last forever, how would that change the way you look at it?” One of the students was really inspired by the whole eternal perspective thing. It's true, really, in the grand scheme of things, arguments and disagreements are usually over things that are relatively small and insignificant.
On Friday, I had my last weekly planning session and last exchange. I went with Elder Engel and we ran into a lot of pretty cool people.
On Saturday, Li-de got baptized! It was a great service! He's super funny. He talked about how he's been contacted by missionaries of various churches like 20 times, but the first 19 he always felt really stressed and pressured. Then, on the 20th time we came, and just made him feel relaxed and like we actually cared about him. Then, he came to our church and instead of feeling pressured to buy stuff and do things that made him uncomfortable, it just felt like a big family where he could learn and improve and relax. Just the way he said all that was really funny, because he just exaggerated to so much. He's a super smart guy who works for IBM. He was telling us about this super computer they're experimenting with that is 10000 times faster than an average computer and can literally let you see the past (up to 3 years previously) by pulling the previous states of electrons back to the present or something. It was really hard to fathom, but he was serious. So that is pretty interesting.
Yesterday I gave a talk in church in honor of it being my last Sunday. I was pretty nervous, but I started speaking and the spirit kinda took over and I ended up speaking longer than was expected (I didn't hog the whole program though). I talked about my experiences from the MTC to now and how the talk, “Come What May, and Love it” by Elder Wirthlin really helped me during my time in my first area, which was really hard for me. I love how he talked about how we can even love hard times, because we can know they are for our good. That doesn't mean we pretend life isn't hard or that we have to be happy all the time, but that's exactly the point, we SHOULDN'T be happy ALL the time. We learn and grow as much, if not more during times that are hard, as we do during times that are easy. We can't control those things, but we can control our reactions. Responding to hard times and especially our own mistakes with laughter or with an attitude that we need to learn from those things that aren't what we wanted, can help us turn unpleasant memories into positive ones, where we can look back and actually be glad we had them, instead of ones where we look back in bitterness and regret, ones where we were miserable and we made ourselves and others even more miserable by reacting poorly.
It's super surreal that this stage in my life is coming to a close, especially as I feel like I'm just getting comfortable with the work and feeling like I can do it well. But, I guess that means that it's probably not stretching me enough so it's time for the Lord to throw me into the deep end again with full-time adulting (almost).
I know God loves all of His children. I don't know the meaning of all things, but I know He loves us. I'm so grateful I had the chance to serve these people, to learn how to work and deal with adversity and work with people who have different beliefs and opinions, and most importantly I'm grateful for the privilege I had to represent the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ, our big brother, every day for the last 2 years, and to have a taste of His love for God's children. I'm sad to leave, but I'm excited to see you all! See you on the flipside.
Love,
Elder Ogden
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