It's Your Baby!

Dear Friends and family,

Hope all of you are doing well and had a good week. The subject line had reference to me being a new missionary my senior companion. My trainer is my dad, and I am his baby. I can't tell you how many times I've been referenced as baby by missionaries this week, but it is almost more common than Elder Siebach (which by the way, the Chinese people cannot pronounce). Many people here on the Island know English but they can't quite get it down.

My companion is a good guy. Very dedicated to the work and has a lot of faith. Also really believes in the power of member fellowshippers and using the members in anyway we can. He grew up in Puerto Rico and when he was 14 he moved to Alpine--went to Timberline and one year in LP before he switched and went to Maeser Academy. Plays soccer and loves to snowboard. Went to BYU for one year before his mission and was studying Arabic. He's been out since June 2011 and has a lot of experience that I rely on heavily and ask a lot of questions. Thankfully he is very patient with me.

Last Thursday I told you that I would be going to the ChaiWan area and I arrived in my apartment soon after I sent my email. We have to commute by bus or train to our area each day because we don't actually live in ChaiWan. We live in WanChai, which if anyone is familiar with Hong Kong, is the business epicenter. I live about 4 blocks from the WanChai chapel. Go look it up online (118 Gloucester Road). It's 12 stories tall, like 9 wards and branches meet in it on Sunday, and after the Conference Center in SLC, it is the next most expensive building for the church to maintain. It's a beautiful building and for that reason there are a number of curious 'walk-ins' each day whom missionaries try to teach a short message too and give them a tour.

Sterling and any other car junkies will get a little jealous when I mention that from my apartment I walk by a Volvo, Porche, Maserati, Lotus, and Richburg dealerships. They are some beautiful cars! It kind of reminds me of Roppongii in Tokyo. But before you start assuming I live in luxury, don't. I live off the main drag and niceness in an apartment on the 17th floor with another companionship. The A/C in the main room of the apartment doesn't work (of course where my desk, closet, kitchen, and bathroom are), and the bedroom A/C hardly works--It is the second smallest apartment in the mission. I don't love the apartment very much, and we don't have a view of anything but I do like the location and so that makes up for it. :)

Because it is so hot all the time my companion and I go to the church for our language study, personal study, and 2 hours of companionship study.

Here is a quick blow by blow of what my days are mostly like. We get up at 6:45 (the mission time is actually 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM), jog the quarter mile to a soccer field, play soccer with 5 other companionships in the near area and a few investigators for half an hour, go back to our apartment, shower, quick breakfast (for me it's either been an orange or an egg), change into church clothes, go to the church for studies, get lunch somewhere, and then head to one of the towns in our area. (a few days this week we had a Zone Mtg and then another day a District Mtg so we got pushed back further to go finding). Once in our area we scout out a promising, somewhat busy area, and then try to talk to everyone even if its just a hello, how are you. This week we had success mostly with boys between the ages of 11-17 but we did have success with a few girls, an older mother, and 3 families. Families are our goal and what President Hawks wants us to focus our efforts on, but because most people don't travel around town as families it can be a little hard. We've had a lot of successes on a water-front promenade in Sai Wan Ho, and yesterday a lot of success in a remote area called Siu Sai Wan. We spent a few evenings looking in Chai Wan, and had marginal success there. Heng Fa Cheun is another town of just apartments and almost no businesses and we just went at a bad time to go finding there. Evenings around 4-8 are the best times and we went at like 2-3 or something. We still have a few more towns in our area to go to and then of course continue to go back to. The families that we have contacted are very promising too! One is a father and 2 sons and they just moved from mainland but in the Guangdong province so they speak Cantonese. They wanted a place to play basketball we we invited them to come play on Wednesday nights with us but they couldn't make it last night. Another family is a mother and her daughter (haven't met the father yet) and they were in a park. We talked with the mom and she said that recently she has been looking for a church to join, specifically a Christian church! We ran into her the next day and placed a book of mormon! Almost immediately after we left we saw a man go up to her and try to 'anti' her. We got nervous and circled back around after he left and she was fine!

Our three techniques of starting conversations with people are either to talk about free English classes we as missionaries will give them if they like, or we have a program called EEFY with is basically EFY activities put on by the missionaries and then the extra E in the title is for English because we have an English teaching component to it. And our third way is to tell them about sports night on Wednesday and invite them to that. Pretty good success in all realms!

I made some of my first calls this past week. They were pretty bad, but thankfully those I called could speak English so I was able to clarify things. The next day for Comp study we practiced calling so that I could get more comfortable.

We haven't had any follow-up lessons with those that we teach lessons to on the streets, everyone we plan gets cancelled so perhaps that's next week. It's kind of weird to start from a pool of zero investigators but we're making do and both of us are growing in faith.

I told you about walk-ins. So typically the walk-ins are Mandarins so more often than not there is always a Mandarin companionship in the church, however, this past Sunday we taught a family and they seemed pretty interested! They were only in Hong Kong for a few days but the seed was planted. The other typical walk-in is a drunk lady... She comes in weekly, sometimes daily, and is drunk at like noon! Kind of sad because every time she asks for a "Mormon Bible" and a picture of Jesus. She probably has hundreds by now. The church just allows this to happen because the sign says "visitors welcome." Not even the security guards that are posted in the main floor 24/7 do anything about it. Oh well. Twice this week she came in.

Church this week was good! My companion was asked to bear his testimony and bore it on the power of God and tried to ease all fears that the members had considering there are 6 missionaries all working in the same area. The ward got really excited and really like us now which is a big plus when you're looking for member referrals, lessons, and help. The ward has 4 consistent comers, one of the lowest in the mission (14% come to church)--mostly because it's so far away. So for that reason Less-Actives are another big focus of our work right now. That night after church we went to a "Chang Out" which is just the Chinese Missionary slang for meal with members. It was good food and we ate with the Elders Quorum President, his mother, 2 mid-20's members, and 2 Americans who had also come to our ward on their way back to BYU after 4 months researching in India. Nice guys and one of them knew the Budges really well!

Anyway, that's about it for now. Hopefully expecting a minor typhoon tomorrow! That will be exciting! Hope you all have a great week.

Love,

Elder Siebach

P.S. pictures soon to come. I don't have many because we're encouraged to not look like tourists.