Doom's Day!

Dear Friends and Family,

Hope that this letter finds you all happy and well in whatever part of the world you are in. Things are going well here in Hong Kong! All except for the temperature has been in the high 70's the last few days! Not weather for a suitcoat in my opinion.

What can I tell you guys about me... Well after 3 moves (18 weeks) with my trainer, I am finally moving on to a different companion! My new companion is Elder W and he has about 1 month until he finishes his mission. He also just came out of Mission Office where he had served as AP for the last 4 moves. Contrary to EVERYONE's thoughts in the mission, I have stayed in ChaiWan! Something I'm rather happy about :) When I came to Hong Kong I opened a new, and second Elders missionary companionship in the mission, and after my first move the Sister Missionaries were taken out of our area, and now most recently the other ChaiWan Elders Companionship was discontinued. Basically what that means is we had a TON of records to go through and people to try and contact. In the start of this week I made a list of every investigator we had as well as the other companionship and just bugged the other missionaries until they told me something about everyone of their investigators. It's daunting to go through the 6 3" binders that I have now inherited and see literally thousands of names for potential investigators, thousands of former investigators, and even more less-actives. We also have a binder of "Lost Sheep"; basically those that no one knows if they have died, moved, gone inactive or what. It was interesting for me to watch the 3 other ChaiWan Elders leave our apartment and then welcome my new companion and a newly formed Mandarin Companionship to the apartment. I've spent a lot of time guiding them around ShauKeiWan to the cheapest places and the places that no one knows about until they've been here 4 months like me. Speaking of which, since Elder W is almost done with his mission, I will undoubtably stay in ChaiWan after he leaves and get probably another senior companion. If it happens in such a way, I will stay in my baby area for 7 months of my mission! Won't be leaving until March at the earliest.

The last four days with Elder W have been really great though. We've spent time finding out on the street, we've taught numerous lessons, and just had a really good time! He works very hard so we're always on the move/planning for an upcoming lesson. Yesterday for instance we tenatively had 6 investigators planning on church, only 3 showed up, but the lessons just went Bam, Bam, Bam. One was about the Plan of Salvation with a new investigator, E, that was given to us this week, then next was a follow-up with C since she's been taught everything. Turns out she's doing splendidly! Her parents have signed a consent form for her baptism, she is just waiting until all her tests and dance competitions are over in mid-January to get baptized. She's really got great faith and a strong testimony! The third lesson we taught H, a 13 year-old former, but don't let his age send you for a loop, he's almost as tall as I am, and had great interest in Bible/scriptures so we were able to have a great lesson with him about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. These lessons went from 12 to 4 o'clockish and so we did a little personal study before we took the bus to SiuSaiWan to meet with YT, a 20-something-year-old less-active. <---Thats a lot of hyphens:) Finally at 8:45 we got back to the apartment and I made Elder Wong and me a breakfast/lunch/dinner of eggs, sausage and rice. He and I had shared one of my oranges for lunch earlier in the day.

Yesterday was also the Primary Program for our ward so that was awesome! The ward was also really full with families that had come into town to visit and such. Probably had 50 or more people there rather than the typical 30ish. The program was really good! It was funny to see that really all the leadership for the Primary was involved; one held the words for the children to sing, one played the piano and the other 4 emceed and sang with the 4 primary kids that are in the ward! :)

I forgot to mention that A also came to church this week! He hasn't in the past but after our ward FHE on Saturday night we invited him and he was there and had a good experience! He loves coming to the chapel and says it's beautiful and peaceful.

ANSWERING QUESTIONS:

-Actually dad, I have had the opportunity to practice/sing every P-Day for the last 4 weeks as we rehearse for our Mission Choir Christmas program! It's really fun and a good excuse for me to sing since I'm sure all my apartment mates are sick of hearing me.

-I don't know any details about when I will call you mom. On December 25th there is a new chapel opening/being dedicated in Hung Sui Kiu (on the border of mainland, and the furthest spot from ChaiWan in the entire mission.) The Mission Choir is performing at the services. It will take us about 2 hours by Subway to get there and we have a call-time of 1 PM for a 3 PM performance. So I would imagine that my call will be in the evening my time which is super early for y'all. I really have no idea how it will all work out. I'll talk to my companion and we'll see what kind of a plan we can concoct. Oh, HungSuiKiu is also Elder W's home ward so it will be interesting for him to see his ward family a month before he's supposed to come home.

Today on the Subway as we headed up to Kowloon Tong for Choir practice, at one of the stops a really creepy man got on--he was older, wrinkly, wore heavy eye-liner, and for the life of me I could not figure out if he was Chinese or what! He stood a few feet from me and I could tell that he was reading my tag (something that happens a lot) but this time it was weird because I felt no desire to try to talk to him and explain it to him. As soon as the wave of people with him got onto the train I also felt dark, the spirit had left. About a minute later he asked if I was from Salt Lake City. I said no and that I was from Texas. He went on to tell me about how he was an ex-member. I said I was sorry to hear that and his only reply was that he only believed in the Bible and didn't want to offend it with Mormonism. It was all super weird. His next question was if I celebrated Christmas, I said yes and he flat out said that that was heresy and a disgrace. By this time I wasn't saying anything. Then he asked if I went to church yesterday, I did say yes to that and he told me that I was wrong and had the wrong day. I was just plain uncomfortable now and was relieved when I realized we were pulling into our train station stop. Anyway, that's my uncomfortable story for the week.

Wait, forgot, yesterday a woman came into our church meetings all frazzled and insisting on being baptized right then so that she could be saved when Dooms Day came. That was interesting as Elder W had to explain to her that the world wasn't ending and she could relax. Crazy people everywhere.

On a happier note, I want to leave y'all with a scripture I read this morning. It's Mormon 9 in which Moroni is beating down anyone who doesn't believe, denies the gifts of God, or disbelieves the Book of Mormon because of the weaknesses of the writers. What stood out to me was verse 24. The preceding verses from 22 on are talking about missionary work and the Lord's command that the gospel should go to every creature. Verse 24 is talking about the signs and miracles that will come from the disciple/missionaries. The one that stood out to me was that, "they shall speak with new tongues..." Obviously this has very direct application to me and I don't think I give enough thanks, credit, awe, to the wonderful power of God who has made it possible for me to communicate with some fluency with his children in Hong Kong. I've seen many miracles thus far in my mission and I'm sure that many more will come if I continue faithful, am worthy, and working hard. God be with you all this Christmas season!

Love Elder Siebach

 

P.S. Mom, if you think one wrong note in a song is bad, imagine my horror when yesterday I blanked 2/3rds of the way through while reciting Joseph's Vision. And what makes it worse is that I can't read any characters so I can't just bounce right into reading it.

P.S.S. Good luck with surgery this week Sterling! You will be in my prayers.