The Spirit is...anxious to help us!

Hello Everyone,

Spencer's area is located on the NE corner of
Hong Kong Island

Another good week here on the Island! Things have been good and we've had a lot of sunshine recently! Feels like it's getting warmer little by little, and I'm getting tan on my wrists and neck since I still have to wear a suitcoat.

Chinese New Year finally ended 2 days ago so things are starting to get back to normal. Today for P-Day we don't really have anything going on. We all took naps this morning since we were absolutely exhausted. For the rest of the day we are chillaxing, writing letters and might go explore around Wanchai for a little bit.

This past week was a bit more exciting than our P-Day though. On Thursday we had our quarterly Multi-Zone Conference in Kowloon Tong. We heard some great messages about living up to our potential, the benefits of obedience, and...hygiene--It's that time of year when I guess a lot of the missionaries are getting sick:) We also had the Asia Area Senior Couple who are in charge of Family History come and give a presentation. The message that resonated with me was that of living up to our potential as missionaries. There are so many 'good' things in missionary work, some 'better' things, and then 'best' things. It caused me to reflect and think about myself. I think I'm pretty good, but there is definitely some room for improvement.

President Hawks also spent some time to talk about the future of this mission. It was all rather inspiring as he laid out the plan for the next 6-12 months with the surge of new missionaries that will begin arriving next month. Recently he has also taken steps to help the mission increase in faith. He talked about how his overall feeling is that every missionary has increased his or her faith in the last 2 months and that this is evidenced through greater success, as well as the trials that precede this.

Currently our companionship only has 1 investigator with a baptismal date. His name is P and he's doing really well! We saw him twice this week; once on Wednesday and once on Thursday. He's making great progress and has a desire to be baptized and keep the commandments. This week we talked about the Word of Wisdom and Chastity. He agreed wholeheartedly with both and is willing to get rid of what little tea he did drink! He's scheduled for baptism on March 3rd.

We've been unable to see A for almost two weeks now--due in part to the craziness of New Years, and that he got a new job. This is a little worrisome to us, but we were discussing his situation and how he has great interest in the Bible but not as much towards the Book of Mormon and so our new thought is to really focus on the Bible and show how these two books complement and support each other. We'll meet with him this coming Wednesday so hopefully this can help him.

On Friday we went to our Elders Quorum President's house for lunch. The food was great--we had Chinese dumplings, Korean dumplings, and Shanghai-style stir-fried mochi. Super tasty stuff! We asked him how we could better help the Elders Quorum and what his thoughts were. Through this conversation we started talking about teaching investigators in general and mentioned that anytime we wanted we could call him up and ask to use his house for lessons! This is a missionaries dream come true because street lessons are good, teaching in the church is good too, but homes are the best! Right after that lunch we actually called him up and that evening we brought our investigator A-C to his home and had a lesson on the Plan of Salvation! This was the second time I've ever taught in a home! Super good lesson! A-C is really great too. I found him a couple weeks ago and he's making great progress. Our concern is just that he is on break from college right now and will go back to mainland in March for school. He has expressed desire to go to church even when he's in mainland, but as far as I know, you have to be a member to attend services in mainland.  

Another one of our investigators is named Ms. C. She's a nice lady but is having a hard time committing to a date right now because her boss knows that she is investigating our church and doesn't approve. She only has one day off each week (Saturday) and recently he has been assigning her on business trips so that she won't be able to meet with us on her weekends. Prayer is the only thing I can think of currently for that situation.

In our ward of 40 or so, we have 2 members that are Thai women. One of the women called us oner week and gave us a referral for another Thai friend of hers. We went and visited her this week with a member fellowshipper and had a very interesting conversation on prayer. It was a good thing she came with us too because this lady doesn't know a word of English and her Cantonese is poor, so she made for an excellent translator.

Yesterday we had 2 investigators at church so that was nice! They both only came for sacrament meeting though. We managed to get a lesson with one of them right after church too.

A few weeks ago we got a referral from some other missionaries for a lady named G. We met with her last night and it was perhaps the best lesson of my mission! We met her at the church, gave her a tour, and then talked about how the message of the Restoration is all about a loving Heavenly Father. We also answered some of her questions relating to the after-life. She is 'golden' and we were all really feeling the spirit during her sweet closing prayer. She even mentioned how she felt so good in the church and talking with us!  Right before this lesson we were in the chapel waiting and some other missionaries had just finished up a lesson with a walk-in from our area. This man's name is A-S and he's also golden! Referred himself, and when he found out we were serving in the area that he lived in he immediately asked for our numbers and scheduled us for later this week!

It was a good week and we look forward to another really good week to come!

Sorry my thoughts are so scattered in this email, but I love you all and hope you continue to read and pray! "The Spirit is a lot more anxious to help us than we are to let him help us." So let him help you through prayer and reading.

Love,

Elder Siebach