A Chapel Tour and a Beer? Hmmm...

Dear Friends and Family,

Good week here in Kwai Chung! We worked hard and spent a lot of the week wet from the heavy rain or when it wasn't raining, the stifling heat and humidity. Summer is certainly on it's way.

Contemplating in Cantonese:)

Recently President Hawks has been asking missionaries to take some time and make sure that their planning is in code with what Preach My Gospel Chapter 8 says. It's a good chapter that I have read many times and has caused me to reflect on how Elder W and I do our planning. I'm always pleased that we have every minute of the day scheduled. However, this past week I felt like we needed to change up our schedules a little bit and do more things during the day. So this week most days we did our studies in the morning, ate lunch and then for the afternoon (if we didn't have lessons) we would spend an hour or two street contacting, an hour doing less-active work, and 30 minutes updating member records/organizing our area book. We then would take an early dinner, and most nights we had lessons that we'd do from about 6:30 to 9. At 9 we would come home and try and schedule people/call potentials and then at 10 we would plan. Maybe I'm a little ADD or something, but I felt so much more effective when we broke up and did a variety of productive things in a day! Because of this, I think that this week was one of the best weeks I had on my mission!

With the start of a new Sisters companionship in our area it's my first time working with sisters and it's been fun to talk to them and see them out on the street sometimes. We've also been working closely with them on member visits and managed to visit 2 or 3 families this week which was really good! One particular night Elder W and I had an hour to kill before going to go visit a member so we went to their apartment complex and did some finding. One of the first people I contacted was a super cool 20 year old who is a 1st year student of Philosophy. We had a kinda philosophical discussion that stretched my brain, but at the very end he said he'd be willing to learn about God. He's scheduled for tomorrow so I hope it all works out. The next guy I stopped was a 30-something-year-old Chinese man from Hong Kong. He doesn't really know Cantonese so we talked for a bit and he wants to take Elder W and I out for a beer after we give him a tour of the chapel this upcoming week... He has family in Canada (2 little kids and a wife) so hopefully we can see him and get him interested in the Plan of Salvation. Randomly while I was talking with these guys a gaggle of old Chinese women (we call them PoPo's) started following me and chatting. They actually proved beneficial because they started pointing out to me the people coming home from work who were already Christians. It was kinda funny because they REALLY didn't want to talk to me, but were willing to give me "referrals" I guess. The last guy I stopped turned out to be from Thailand, but he didn't know a word of English or Chinese. He wanted to sit down with me and then we just talked through gestures. Miracle of miracles, I remembered 4 words from when I had a Thai investigator in ChaiWan. I remembered God, Jesus Christ, Plan of Salvation, and goodbye. We talked about BangKok, ChiangRai, ChiangMai, and

Tuk-Tuks in Thailand

Tuk-Tuks. It was pretty cool. I pulled out a Plan of Salvation pamphlet at the very end and told him to look for us missionaries when he goes back to Bangkok next month. That was a super cool conversation! :)

Besides street contacting Elder W and I had a fair amount of scheduled lessons too. Most of them with people we contacted from last week. All are at various stages; one has a baptismal date already, another is trying to accept that God exists, and another has great faith and love for God so now we are trying to show to him that God has again revealed his gospel. It's really interesting for me to see all my investigators are all on the same path but their needs are so different. What works for one won't work for another. It's not frustrating at all but just an eye-opening experience to learn that even though we are all different, this gospel is for everyone.

I can't remember where I was reading in 1st Nephi this week, but I can tell you it was one verse from the end of the chapter on the riight page, right column, almost to the top and it was Nephih talking about the need for 'faith', 'diligence', and 'heed'. I've been thinking a lot about these this week and it's worthy to note that in everything we do we need faith. Then with the faith that we have, we diligently work. But work is not enough. We need to Heed to the Lord. Heed to the Spirit. Be willing to listen. Our faith and diligent work qualify us for the Holy Ghost's guidance. We then need to listen or we won't be moving forward.

Yesterday was the Kowloon Stake Stake Conference in HoManTin. We had 3 investigators go with us and I was really impressed with the speakers who spoke of fulfilling and magnifying callings, as well as put heavy emphasis on preparing for missionary work and helping the full-time missionaries. The stake leaders who spoke all did really well, but there was real power and authority in that meeting hall when President Hawks got up and gave a talk in very fluent Cantonese. He sounded awesome and his words really resonated. No one particular thing stood out to me, but it was all just filled with the Spirit. It made me really grateful to have the Holy Ghost witness to me that he does recieve revelation for this mission and knows what and where is best for me. My job is to live up to what he, the Lord, and I should expect of myself.

Hoping and praying for another good week here in Hong Kong! Keep reading and praying everyone!

Love,

Elder Siebach