Texas Greetings

Dear Friends and Family,

Thank you for all  your notes and packages! This week was quite the haul with goodies from Aunt Betsy and fam--the cookies were delicious! As well as thank you to my family for their package of cookies, and temple names, among other things. Lastly thank you to the Zimmerman's for the brownies! I hope that Matt had a good first week of Summer Term and is settling well to the BYU environment. I'm sure he and Brent will have fun together.

I'm going to get fat with the lack of proper exercise, and all the goodies everyone gives me! I share them around and that makes everyone else happy too.

Special thanks to Jason for getting back to me and writing me about his experience. It's really nice to hear the missionary stories and it inspires and strengthens me.

I kept my eyes pealed this week and saw Elder Tietjen on Thursday, and saw Elder Hangen on Thursday and then again on Sunday as we waited to go in for the Fireside. Nice to talk to both of them. I also have met an Elder Berrie who moved into the Littleton ward a few years after we moved to Utah. He's a nice guy, learning Mandarin so he is in my same hall of classrooms, and I'm not positive were he is going anymore. Also seen a number of other friends from BYU and Lone Peak as would be expected.

So now for my week:

It was a good week. 'Nuff said... Monday through Friday were typical days with lots and lots of sitting, language study, and investigator teaching appointments. I'm blown away at how hard it can be to find the needs of the investigators and cater lessons to them. Not to mention the church keeps updating and adding new criteria. When mom and dad were on missions they memorized the lessons, now Preach My Gospel is out and they have asked that we not memorize, but are knowledgable about all the material, and the most recent thing a couple years ago was "The 8 Fundamentals" which should be testified about in every aspect of every lessons. I can't name all of them but they include Revelation from the Book of Mormon, Revelation through Prayer, Revelation through Church Attendance etc.... It's hard to make everything relate even if we role play in English so you can imagine how hard it is in Cantonese.

Sidenote: Elder Wu and I practiced passing the sacrament on Friday and Thursday evenings--There were 36 elders helping. 3 tables with bread and water with 4 elders behind each, and 8 people passing from each table. The room was broken into a front, middle, and back. I was in the middle group.

 I'll now go into detail about my weekend because I know all of you are dying to hear specifically about my weekend activities. :)

Saturday was great! All the mission presidents showed up throughout the day, and after Elder Wu and I practiced the Sacrament the two Cantonese districts were able to meet with President and Sister Hawks. (In Cantonese they areHaw Wuihjeung and Haw Ji-moui--President and Sister). The 11 Cantonese and 1 Mandarin  all went around, gave a quick introduction in English, then the Hawk's told us about them, talked about how grateful they were for us and already loved us, and then fielded a few questions interspersed with Pres. Hawks talking about a few mission experiences he had in Hong Kong. It got us all so pumped up to see some of the places he was talking about! Apparently there is a 10,000 Buddha temple up on one of the peaks that he said we HAD to do for a P-Day. This took the better part of an hour and then to close each of us bore a simple testimony in our mission language. It was a powerful, wonderful, strengthening experience and we all grew to love both of them.

On Sunday Elder Wu and I went to run through passing one more time, then prepare the sacrament and sit reverently in our assigned seats with the 34 others and wait until Sacrament started at 10. President and Sister Hawks actually sat in our assigned section so we were able to pass to them! The one Mandarin elder, Elder Bradley, was one of the bread breakers at my table so there was solid Hong Kong representation. I sat next to President and Sister McCune serving in Provo Utah and it was nice to talk to them. They pointed out some of the lesser known general authorities to us.

Sacrament passing went exactly as planned, and was so special! I was facing the front the whole time and made eye contact with atleast President Uchtdorf, not 100% sure about all the others. But on the stand were 13 of the 15--we missed Elder Hales, and Elder Packer. Also on the stand were tons of other Seventies. I think the whole presiding bishopbric was their as well. I couldn't possibly name everyone.

President Monson spoke for 1.5 hours and I got a few notes. Unfortunately they didn't want the Elders to bring in note pads so I just wrote in my planner. He spoke specifically to the Mission presidents obviously, but had great one liners for all like, "Show How is more important than Tell How." Or he showed a picture of one of his missionaries who had a wonderful smile and described how this missionary never had any positions of leadership, but his motto was, "I am happy." Lots of things I just can't convey very well over this... Great meeting though and such an honor and privilege. I saw Presient and Sister Budge from a distance so I know that they didn't see me but it was cool to see them. I went up and said hello to President and Sister Moon from our stake presidency in Alpine--they are going to Cambodia.

Wish I had time to say more but I'm already a few minutes over my allotted time--It will be a little easier in the mission when I have an hour instead of 30 minutes.

Hope all is well, that dad is keeping off the weight, you aren't dying of the heat, and that Sterling and Grace enjoy their EFY's. Love you all, and thank you for your prayers. I've needed them.

Sincerely,

Elder Spencer Siebach