3 Month Mark!

Dear Friends and Family,

I remembered my camera hook up today so I can send pictures home! Glad to hear that you all have looked up the areas where I am living and serving! Soon I will be moving apartments to an unknown-to-me location in Shau Kei Wan if you care to look that area up. It is in my area of service now so that will be very nice, but a lot further from church and those nice car dealerships that I get to walk by multiple times daily.

I alerted y'all to a possible typhoon in my area last week. It didn't come. Well actually it did, but it didn't stay very long. It rained very lightly on my soccer match that I played last Thursday evening and that was it. No rain on Friday, just some moderate wind.

Before I forget, things that I need: Food and deodorant, possibly more shampoo and body wash. I have been well warned that they have very strange smelling deodorant here and that it is not very effective. I would love it if I could get sent out more of that Old Spice white, chalky kind of deodorant. I think that will probably be best. Packaged foods would be pretty good too! Each month I get 1700 HK dollars for food and essentials. Before you get all blown away by that sum, keep in mind that eight HK dollars is roughly 1 US dollar. So, it comes out to a little over 200 dollars a month. Generally things in HK are cheap but I live in the most expensive part of the mission... 250 dollars of this goes to travel for missionaries (I've been here 2 full weeks and spent 300 on travel) thankfully we can get reimbursed if we travel up to Kowloon to the mission office. Also the first month they take off 500 HK dollars from my monthly allotment. When the monthly budget was determined some odd years ago, food was also a lot cheaper (its 3 times more expensive now than it was). Most missionaries are almost in an uproar because what this all boils down to is either not eating because there isn't enough money, or eating really poorly. I've done a little of both. I've been with my companion 2 weeks now and we have been to McDonalds 7 times (I've only eaten 4 times because mostly I really don't want it, it is cheap though so that is why so frequently. I think you would have to go back like 3 or so years to find the last 4 times I had McDonalds in the states. This has all been a good experience for me because it has forced me to budget and figure out what I really need. For the last week I've either had an orange or nothing for breakfast, I make my own sandwich for lunch, and dinner is typically under 24 dollars so that I can keep to my meager budget. Needless to say, when you factor in the walking and sweating, I've lost a little weight and my pants and belt fit a little bit looser now!  Anyway, this long tangent was to say that I'm a little bit hungry all the time, so packaged food is good! Milk is really expensive here and only is good for a couple days, so if by chance y'all sent cereal, I could take care of myself for a little while :)

Big tangent. You probably didn't want to know all that...

This week there is supposed to be a Super Typhoon! I'm stoked! I think right about now it is wreaking havoc on Taiwan, and if it follows it's predicted course, it will plow through Hong Kong on Friday or Saturday! I really hope it does because I really want a good storm!

I'm not sure if I told you guys about EEFY, but we have it this week. EEFY is English Especially For Youth but all ages groups are invited. It's put on by missionaries and happens 2 weeks a year--the first week was the week I got here, there was a week break and now it is on again this week. It goes from 3-5 PM. Previously there hadn't been a lot of success so we were a little nervous for this week. We've had different activities every day of week and yesterday (Wednesday) was my companion and my turn to host for the day. Because Monday and Tuesday hadn't been great showings we had a district fast and yesterday we had a ton of young investigators and some of their moms there! The activity was tower building that day and afterwards we read about "Friends" from the "For The Strength of Youth." Quick side note: I didn't know they had come out with a new style since the ones with white covers that I got as a deacon! Now they're bluish.

Because its EEFY this week we haven't had a lot of time to go finding. In fact so far none at all. We have had a few investigators of ours come and our lessons with them afterwards have been really successful! It's hard to get many of our investigators to come because its 7.5 dollars to ride the MTR to church and this is every day, so we really appreciate when they do come! And since we never teach people in their apartments, any chance we have we teach in the church. I really like it, but its very different from what I expected to be doing on my mission. I thought I would be tracting and teaching in homes.

This past Sunday was a really big day for us! Every Sunday is a big day because its crucial that we establish relationships with the ward members so that they come, but this Sunday was especially good for us because we had 4 investigators show up! It was so good! For as long as anyone can remember there have never been that many investigators show up in the ChaiWan branch! I was so pleased that our little branch was also really friendly and helpful with these investigators too! I was so drained afterwards because I had been going a hundred miles an hour and straining myself to understand the topics so that I could speak to my investigators. In our first week of church my comp and I split up sitting together so that we could introduce and network better with the ward, and then this past Sunday we were forced to split as I sat with 2 investigators and he sat with the other two. I caught enough to know that in Sunday we talked about the Word of Wisdom... this is an especially dangerous topic right now for us because these investigators are all new, most of them before Sunday we had never really taught a lesson too. We had street contacted and hopefully prayed with them, but they were actually really receptive and weren't turned off to the discussion of the church. Sacrament meeting (which is the last hour) was really good because it was all about missionary work. The bishop's son gave his farewell talk and he is so excited to head out to Boston! We've had a few discussions about his mission and I've given him some tips on Boston. Right after church he also helped me teach one of our investigators named R. I contacted R on Saturday night, commited him to church, English class, and EEFY this week. Hopefully we will be able to have good progress with him before school starts back up again and every school aged boy or girl has "boujaahp" Pronouced "Bow jop" which means tutoring. School for these kids in Hong Kong never stops... All summer long they have tutoring during the day, and then when school starts back up they have school and still tutoring so they never have time for lessons. Education is everything here.

Today for P-Day we went to Diamond Hill to this beautiful Buddhist shrine/garden and then to MongKok which is street-market, rip-off hot spot, then went to Tsim Sha Tsui and took the ferry from the Kowloon side to Hong Kong Island. And now at 6:30, EEFY is finished, and I have time to write! It was a great day and I have a bunch of pictures!

Best of luck in school Sterling, Mom, and Grace! I'm sure you all will do wonderfully! And Sterling also best of luck with your ACT in a few weeks! That's exciting!

Oh, and I'm sorry I don't have a spiritual thought for the day. I left my planner with all my notes back in the apartment. However, this week I have been reading in Mosiah, and just got to Alma, I'm in St. John in the Bible, and I'm at Section 65 or so in Doctrine and Covenants! A lot of really good missionaries scriptures in D&C! Best of luck to everyone else starting up college classes and whatever else you may be doing at this time!

Love,

Elder Siebach

 

P.S. all the pictures are either farewells in the MTC, pictures of the HK sky line and light show on some, one is a picture with all the boys I played soccer with last week (kinda poor quality, it was raining), and then a few with me in them at the gardens today!