Praying with a South African in McDonalds

Dear Friends and Family,

Wow, has the time flown! I just sat down and realized that its April! It feels like yesterday I was back in ChaiWan doing my first street contacting. Anyway, that's not the case now. I've been here in Hong Kong for 8 months now which is also super crazy...

First off I'll update you on transfers. Contrary to missionary rumors and popular speculation here, I stayed with Elder W in KwaiChung! I'm happy with it. I knew I obviously wouldn't be the one leaving, and I love working with Elder W. We get along great and work well together. Among changes though are our apartment mates, and a new set of Sister missionaries who serve KwaiChung ward with us. Our new apartment mates are Elder A and Elder K. They serve CheungShaWan which is the next area over from us. It's really fun to live with them because when I was serving ChaiWan, Elder K was a member in the Causeway Bay branch. In fact I was with him when he opened his mission call! He's super awesome and has a lot of 'missionary fire'! And Elder A is actually one of my MTC companions! He's Senior companion now and the District Leader over the AP's! He's doing awesome too, and it's so much fun to get caught up with him!

As for the Sisters; one, Sister F, has been out in Hong Kong a little over a year now, and she is training Sister M. Sister M is the first 19 year old sister in our mission, and was also in the first wave of missionaries who stayed at the MTC only 9 weeks! It's a lot of fun working with them and the ward was super happy to have Sister missionaries again! (The sisters companionship got closed down about 6 months ago because there weren't enough sisters in the mission).

Among some of the highlights this week were some good street finding and some good less-active finding! I had a really long conversation with one guy on the street. He was what you might call an 'intellectual'. He tried to give me really rehearsed reasons for why Hong Kong people's culture won't allow them to accept Jesus Christ, and how we shouldn't try to learn about God, but should rather find out about human nature and just live as humans. He even pulled out some phrases from Confucius (I was happy earlier this week I took time and learned basic phrases and words for Confucism). Finally at the end I just told him straight up that I could tell him everything he needed to know about this life, Pre-Earth Life, and Post-Mortal Life in 15 minutes. He didn't have much to say to that.  Eventually I commited him to come try out church with us sometime. Hopefully he'll schedule.

This week it rained REALLY hard one day! It was monsoon like rain and there was not much that we could do outside. So, we went and did some less-active finding. We went out to one apartment complex that was in a remote part of our area and tried to go up and visit some LAs. The guards at the bottom of all the apartments were all super unhelpful and told us that they wouldn't help us or even let us in. The conversation with one guard got super heated so we just walked away and let her keep screaming at us. That same sort of story happened in 4 or 5 of the buildings we tried to get to. Finally though, the very last apartment we wanted to visit, the guard let us up. When we knocked the man's nephew came to the door and we chatted with him for a while. He was nice and Elder W was bold and asked if we could come in. He let us in and as we were about to share a message with him the doorbell rang. 2 of his friends came in and so we sat them down as well and taught them too! They were really respectful and it was an absolutely miracle lesson! Turns out all 3 of them are 15 too. They then scheduled for this past Saturday to come to our Games Night and take a tour of our chapel! Elder W and I were dumbfounded and so happy for the experience we had with them! There is no doubt in my mind that the Lord prepared that choice encounter for us. And what made it so much sweeter was how much rejection we had had just an hour previously. It really strengthened my testimony and taught me about the principle of perseverance.

At a different point this week Elder W and I went out to get something for lunch. We got soup and then afterwards went to a McDonalds to sit down and do our language study. I felt like sitting by a window for some reason. A few minutes into our language study 2 guys come into McDonalds (A South African and a guy from New Guinea). They said that as they were out on the street they saw our tags with the name Jesus Christ on them. Turns out that the two of them work for some Missionary Group. It was kinda a complicated story, but it sounded like they live/work on a ship selling Christian books and inviting people to learn more. Their boat is dry-docked right now undergoing some maintenance so they were up in KwaiFong doing some exploring when they saw us. We had a great conversation with them and then it was time for us to go. They said that they would be staying in McDonald's for lunch so we left, ran to the church, got to Book of Mormons, wrote our testimonies in the front and ran back to McDonalds to deliver it to them. They didn't know anything about the book and only one of them knew the name "Mormons". Before we left one of the guys asked if we could do a prayer. He offered it, and we all held hands too haha! :) We swapped contact info too before we left.

Besides these experiences things are OK on the progressing investigator front. All school students are testing right now and so for the most part we've been unable to schedule them. 2 of our baptismal-date-investigator's parents won't let them get baptized. We're working a lot with them and helping to strengthen their faith and be good examples to their parents of what the gospel has done to change them. It's hard work for them and us though. I often have a hard time relating to their situation. Any advice?

A few other of our investigators have been sick so we haven't met with them recently. Hopefully this upcoming week will prove to be better and we'll get a few more lessons in.

I finished the Book of Mormon for the 4th time on my mission this week! I've restarted and am really trying to ponder every verse I read. I've been moving a lot slower and in the last 3 days I've only gotten through 1 Nephi 2. Its all really great stuff though! I'm impressed with Nephi. In chapter 2 he expresses that he had some doubts as to the visions of his father, but instead of arguing or murmuring he works through them and asks God. All he needs to know is if God's hand was in it and then he will do it. Really submits his will to his father and Father in Heaven's will. I like it a lot. I need to work on it.

I hope Conference was an uplifting experience for all and that all took time to watch it! I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to watch it this week! I'd love if you guys sent out your notes to me, let me see your insights!

Stay Spiritually safe with CPR (Church Attendance, Prayer, Reading)!

Love,

Elder Siebach