Monday, August 5th, 2019

A sweet sister who gave Elders White and Ogden sunflowers from her garden

Elder Morita and Elder Ogden serving at Kansas University Medical Center 

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This week was a pretty good one and kind of a hard one, but it was pretty rewarding. On Monday, we stumbled into a homeless trap house! Whatta place! 

I think I've learned 2 major things this week. 

1. Something I learned at Zone Conference is everything we do should be based with faith in God. If we are doing anything, we should view it how he would view it. If we view our efforts as less than others, we're gonna feel like we suck. But if we view our efforts as God views them, we will be fine, as long as we try our hardest and improve. So block out the fakes.

2. People who have member connections are money! We have found a ton of them!

On Monday we were walking home. It was pretty late, but I just felt carried up to this door, even though we were mostly just street contacting. A hispanic guy opened up and we talked for a bit. Then he mentioned that he had literally just gotten off a video call with some elders in Arizona, where his wife, who is a member, lives! He is being taught and prepping for baptism and it definitely wasn't a coincidence that we found him that night. 

Tuesday kinda sucked! There wasn't a lot of Hispanics. It was a humbling day, we talked to a Mexican dood named Jonah who liked Trump and went on a political rant, which was probably the funniest thing I've ever seen. 

We also taught a referral from some other elders named Kevin. He was a really nice guy. We taught him and started teaching the Restoration. It was going great! As soon as we said Joseph Smith though the wife kicked us out. Nice! 

We are teaching a man named Antonio, who plays in a Norteño band! He is super cool and a really good guy. Tuesday night, we stopped by to teach him. He was in the back, working on a van. We asked him what was up and he explained to us that a couple nights before, at like 2 in the morning, somebody stole his work van with all his tools in it and everything. He even had a steering wheel lock and everything. A lot of security on it, yet they just grabbed it and bounced. So sad. He was devastated and the cops couldn't help him because he didn't have the vehicle ID # memorized, which is a giant number. Poor guy.

Wednesday was also kind of slow. We met quite a few people, including a 16 year old kid from Honduras who broke his arm the day before in a car accident. He wasn't entirely conscious, but he was a super nice kid. 

We got to interrupt a JW's lesson! We went to try a recent convert and their neighbors were outside, so we went to talk to them. They lady that lives there and is from Chuk (Chook), which is from Micropolynesia. Anyways, she speaks no English, and these poor Jehovah Witness have been trying to learn her language without the gift of tongues. I don't speak Chukeese, but it was terrible. It was like 1 word every 5-10 seconds, and they couldn't even understand the Chukeese lady. Nice people though and we gave the lady being "taught" by the JW's a pass along card. 

Since we serve KU Med in our area, we get asked to give quite a few blessings. It's always a really cool experience to feel so guided in a blessing like that. This week there was a man who has a bunch of gastrointestinal problems and he has a brain tumor. They were nonmembers, but they had so much faith it was pretty cool to see people like that. And their faith wasn't related to some church, but to Christ and they were so open to learning more. I think because of that, the Lord is going to bless them with some amazing things that were promised in the blessings. 

I went on exchanges with Elder Morita from Hawaii and he is awesome. It was a pretty fun exchange. We both are just kinda lighthearted guys and so it was a fun time. We went and did service for a blind and deaf man. We communicate by typing on a screen in big letters and then he holds it up really close to his face and then he will just talk to us. His upstairs is infested by raccoons, so that was a weird sight. 

This week a crazy white guy was talking to me and so when Elder White came up I asked if I could translate for him in Spanish. So we pretended Elder White didn't speak English and it was pretty fun. 

We had tons of people come to church yesterday. It was awesome. We are teaching so many families and I love to see how they grow so well together. It was awesome. We are teaching quite a few part Member families. One of them we are probably going to have to give to the sisters because we think we offended him by being too straight up... 

The wife of someone we are teaching went up to go bear her testimony yesterday and told the whole ward how when we were going to go over on Wednesday, he left work early. He never leaves work early, and so they wanted to go to a movie or something. But they let us come over instead. That night we put Juan on date for the 24th. As she was saying this, she started bawling. Her husband has been coming to church on and off for about 15 years, and this was an answer to her prayers. It was so cool to feel how we could be tools in the Lord's hands. 

Well that's about it for this week. I'm livin a good life. I love you; thank you for everything. 

Elder Ogden