Hello?

Dear Friends and Family,

Missionary apartment in  Shau Kei Wan

I sent off a few pictures finally. Sorry it took so long to find a computer that was compatible to hook up my camera too. I was unable to send all of them because afterwards the computer kind of freaked out and now I can't attach anymore photos. The ones I did attach are from a month or so ago when I went to Cheung Chau (an island that I went to on a P-Day) and then a few from random places, and then finally I think some of the last photos were of Dragon Boat racing that I saw in mid-September. I tried to hook up a video that I took of my apartment to show you, but it exceeded the size of attachments. Guess you'll have to wait for two years. Oh, and one of the photos, a building that is brown and white, with a highway running in front of it, that's my apartment in Shau Kei Wan. We're on the 15th floor.

It was a pretty good week this week. We did a lot of finding. I told you guys about "Motorboat Dave" last week, and he gave us a call on Wednesday and invited us to come play boats. We went for an hour or so, got to know him a lot better--he's not nearly as crazy as we make him sound, but I just think he's retired, bored, and likes practicing his English. We raced around a model tanker that day. Afterwards we went with him and got a bite to eat at a corner shop. Roasted pork and chicken on rice with vegetable broth on the side. Costs 26 dollars, which is about 3 US dollars. Standard meal that I eat 2 or 3 times a week.

Since we don't have a lot of money to spend each day--I've figured that I can budget a little under 50 HK dollars a day, including travel--we try to cook at least one meal a day. Often I make rice, scramble some eggs with onions, cabbage/lettuce, and little bits of sausage and then throw on some soy sauce. Pretty filling, relatively cheap, and tastes good. However, I also like to drink what little milk I can afford since its so expensive, and because it goes bad after like 3 days... So one evening we got home from 3 hours of finding and were going to make dinner. I settled on cereal with a few orange slices. Turns out the oranges I bought had gone partially moldy so I cut out the bad parts and ate the rest. Still didn't taste very good but oh well, I still had some cereal. When I went to pour the milk it smelled fine and looked alright. As I ate my cereal I was surprised at how not-soupy it was. I thought it was just because I had put in a lot of cereal and didn't have very much milk. I ate it anyway. Then, knowing that the milk had expired the day before, I resolved to drink it since tomorrow it would probably go bad for sure. As I drank it didn't really feel like real milk. Almost slimy-ish. Come to find out, my milk had curdled/was curdling... Probably the worst meal I've made/had in Hong Kong. I've now decided to buy SoyMilk which is cheaper. I can get 3 litres of Soy milk (since that's the package size) for the same price of one quart of actual milk (about 21 dollars).

Later in the week we were invited to a members house for a meal!! Whoohoo! That's only the 3rd time it's happened to me. She was really nice, her name is Sister N, is originally from Thailand but married a Chinese man. He is not a member, wasn't home when we were there either. We also ate with her inactive 24 year old son, and his girlfriend. I had the spiritual thought at the end of the night and shared on Trials and the importance of prayer. Unfortunately that was about all I contributed the entire night since I really didn't understand too much of the table talk conversation. Frustrating for sure.

Since I've started my mission I've kind of sworn off soda. I didn't have any of it in the MTC, but often members give us soda or meals here so that's the only exception. However, I made another exception this week when I passed a convenience store and was thirsty. I stepped in and went to the water, but my attention was drawn to a clear plastic soda can with "LYCHEE" written across it. I bought it. Pretty tasty too. It's been years since I had lychee!

One night while we were finding along a harbour promenade we came across a few wierd things. First, we saw a man walking his turtle. The turtle was the size of a mid-sized dog, and this man, if the turtle went a direction he didn't want it to go, would pick it up under its shell, hold it to his chest and coddle it like a baby. Pretty interesting. Then our attention was grabbed later when we saw a group of people standing near a stairway that led down to the water. We looked over the side of the protective wall and saw 3 boxes full of fish. We thought maybe it was the catch of the day for this group. Turns out they threw these fish, squid, crabs and whatever else into the sea while they started chanting and dancing. We asked a man what it was all about, and in a very bothered way he inticated that it was a Buddhist life-expectancy ritual. I think that's stranger then anything we Mormons do.

One of our best investigators, a guy I contacted the first week I arrived in Hong Kong leaves this week... He comes to church, learns a ton, very interested, and would be baptized if it weren't that he is going to Australia tomorrow for school. Too bad but we have his e-mail and will try to keep in contact and support him. The ward choir also performed yesterday. Very nice/interesting performance. 20 people (half the ward) got up and sang. And I'm sorry but singing in Cantonese doesn't sound all that great since it's such a choppy language. :) Still felt the spirit of the message though.

Got to go!

Love all you guys, have a good week!

Sincerely,

Elder Siebach

P.S. I've now been in Hong Kong for as long as I was in the MTC!