Again at the Computer!

Dear Friends and Family,

It's me again! Can't believe its been another week already! Hope all of you had a good week.

First off I want to thank the Tietjen's for their very generous package stuffed with all sorts of goodies! It had brought joy to many missionaries! I actually got that package a week ago, but I got it about an hour after I finished writing my weekly letter.

Few questions: By the sound of Sterling's letter it sounds like Hutch left choir? Who is the new teacher and where did Hutch go? I am also curious, where in Hong Kong is Sister Sng from?

Hong Kong "yuht-beng"

This past week was full! We had a lot of different things going on. I'll start with Sunday. At church on Sunday we had 4 investigators at church. Not as many as we had hoped for, but really good considering that Sunday was a holiday called "Jung Chaau Jit" or in other words, Mid-Autumn Festival. I don't really understand the purpose of it, but it's fun! Everyone is off of work, and they eat sweets called 'Yuht-beng" or mooncakes. They are interesting because they range in size from about the size of an Oreo to about the size of an orange. Inside they can have ice cream, chocolate, red bean, or lotus paste. When you eat it it feels a bit like eating fudge. Lotus paste is the common one and inside of those they often have 2 whole egg yolks. Some of the Chinese, and most of the foreigners don't like them very much, but I think it's pretty good. When you're in the mood for eating chalky egg yolk that is. :) 

Anyway, that was Sunday. And unfortunately no baptism. If you recall, a few weeks ago I told you about a former investigator who wanted to get baptized. Well, he came to church, came to play basketball with us, and then dropped off the face of the earth. He was much too genuine for me to think that he all of a sudden lost interest, but I do think that his parents don't want him to meet with us or get baptized. A very legitimate and common concern among parents with teenage kids. All we can really do is hope that in a few years he will come find missionaries again. However, amidst all this, I still consider it a miracle. I really believe that through faith and then work we were able to contact this boy, A. God had prepared him and brought him to us. The only thing that God won't do is take away someone's agency, or even the agency of their parents. Fingers crossed for him in a few years.

Oh, and sorry, back to the topic of church, I saw the Bradford's come into church this past Sunday as I was waiting for an investigator to show up. Looked like they were doing very well, and hopefully soon we will be able to have dinner with them! They are legendary here for having missionaries over for dinner. :) This past Sacrament meeting they also invited me to get up and bear a 5 minute testimony. It went pretty well. I'm sure my grammar was poor, but I communicated the ideas that I wanted to, and I rehearsed the Joseph Smith experience and what it means to me and can mean to all of us. I almost have the whole thing committed to memory in Cantonese.

Dragon Boat Racing

Since Sunday was a holiday, so were Monday and Tuesday. I'm not exactly sure if they were a continuation of mid-Autumn festival or not--I've heard both ways. Because everyone is with their families for holidays, you can have super miracles and talk to families, or just get shut down all the time because people just want to be with their families. On Monday we experienced the second option. We went finding at a park for a few hours and didn't get to talk to anyone! Kind of disappointing, but it was still an awesome day because as we were walking we walked by the bay and stopped to watch, with thousands of others, dragon-boat racing! Super cool to watch. They have very long, very narrow boats and then probably 30 people rowing inside. There is one person sitting down in the front of the boat and he has a big drum that he beats and the rowers all keep time to. People came from all over to compete in the races. Saw a lot of teams from the Mainland especially. That evening we went to the church, had dinner, and then went to Victoria Park hoping to maybe talk to some families, but if not, to look at all the festivities that they had set up. They had a ton of lanterns, a puppet show, music, and other props. I took a lot of pictures that perhaps one of these weeks I will be able to send home... To cap off that night they have a enormous fireworks display out in the harbor. We didn't go to it but we could hear and feel it! It was so cool to hear it echo off all the buildings and  even the mountainside. it also really lit up the cloudy sky with every color of the rainbow!

Last Friday (yes, I know I'm jumping out of order) was my favorite day last week! And it was because we met with Ken to play tennis! I've been bugging him to play for a couple weeks now! He's been giving me updates on the US Open and other tennis tournaments. It was a lot of fun! My companion and I played with him for about an hour and a half, and then afterwards followed up on his reading is going and preparation for baptism. I realized that it had almost been 5 months since I had held a racquet in my hand! Felt good to run and hit again! We haven't met with him again this week, but hopefully very soon.

Also because Monday was a holiday, the two Elders companionships that serve in Chaiwan went and played soccer with some of the members from our Elders Quorum. A lot of fun and a good way to get some exercise! One of the days this week, I think it was Monday, we were finding one night and about to head home to our apartment. The last lady that we greeted turned to her friend and told her not to listen to us. My comp talked to her a little bit and then she just went off on us. According to her we're all going to hell, we trick people, and many other things. I didn't get involved and just stood there while they talked. She was in a screaming rampage by the end. Pretty bad stuff. One thing that doesn't help here in Hong Kong is that of course, much like the US they know us as Mormons. Or they pronounce it "Mo Mun" which with the tones they they use for it, means "Devil's Gate". So many many people think we are this Satanic cult.

My favorite day this week was Tuesday. As I mentioned Tuesday was also a holiday. These holidays are Statutory Holidays which means that all the Philipino and Indonesian domestic workers are off work too! They all gather together in Black Man's Park and Worldwide. Both are in an area of Hong Kong called Central. The place is crawling with people, so very often the Elders and Sisters that serve in International work (English missionary work) will call in reinforcements. Every missionary wants to go do this so we pretty much invited ourselves to help. We went and at first I was kind of nervous. It's a bunch of women just hanging out, and to me they seemed unapproachable. However, I persevered, and talked to a lot of women! Got a lot of phone numbers, shared a lot of messages/lessons, and at about noon I was talking with one woman named E. She has a couple kids back in the Philippines and her brother is a member! She didn't have anything going on so I was able to get a 'pull-back' or in other words, get her to come to the church! My companion for the day, Elder B (who happens to be Elder Rostrom's previous companion), and I went with her to the church. Took her on a tour, taught the first lesson, she even said the closing prayer, and then introduced her to some of the Filipino church members. She ended up staying with them after we left, ate with them, and hung out! We also gave her a Book of Mormon, and she wants to come to church next week! So good! The Filipinos are amazing! So genuine, many of them are Christian, very easy to talk to, and when they are baptized they are so committed and firm! Super generous too! They always always always want the Elders to stay around so that they can feed them. Just very loving nice people! It also helps that they all speak English so they're easier to teach, and for myself right now, it's easier to feel the Spirit testify to me when I'm not worried about how my grammar and tones are. Such a good day for me!

Yesterday was also good. We turned over an investigator to the Mandarin Elders, and then we had two investigators turned over to us. They are two older women, and are searching different religions. We sat down and talked with them for about an hour, shared portions of the first lesson, but really just answered their questions and testified. The Spirit was strong in that meeting and you could see that what we were saying was affecting them. Best of all they are coming to conference in two weeks! I don't know what I'm going to do for conference. It will all be in Cantonese so hopefully I will understand enough, and then afterwards I'll just have to read the conference talks.

As I was reading this week what stuck out to me was 3 Nephi 28:29 which talks about the "convincing power of God which is in them." This is in reference to the Apostles that Jesus called in the Americas. I've been wondering how I can get more of that power to teach. I haven't come to any conclusions yet, but I definitely think that it comes from a desire to keep to Gods standards exactly so that he can endow us with power. I'll save my other thought for next week because I am out of time. I love you all, hope that everyone is safe and sound.

Love,

Elder Siebach