Birthdays, "Cheng-Outs" and Striking Gold!

Dear friends and family,

I had kinda hoped that I would never reach this week of my mission... The week when it's my birthday, Mother's Day, and almost my 1-year mark... I had always hoped that I would just keep serving and never hit my half-way mark. Alas, it is here. But I'm super happy to be able to call home this coming week! :) That will be a great gift for all of us!

But tell you what, it has been a week! No rain which was a welcome relief, but we did do a lot of finding. Speaking of which, have I mentioned that finding in Hong Kong is only on the streets? And who would have thought that people could get mad at you on a public street? Anyway, this week my companion tried to contact a lady and she just whipped out her phone and called security for the Estate that we were finding next to. 5 minutes later there were like 7 apartment security guards telling us that we were in a "private" area and couldn't find. Thankfully we had a scheduled appointment there and so we called up the investigator who we were meeting with and she confirmed to the guards that we were going to be there. Sheesh. Once we finally had registered at the bottom of the apartment building some of the over-concerned mom's started questioning us and telling us that we couldn't knock on apartment doors. Gosh, that was annoying! Years and years and years ago missionaries used to be able to knock on apartment doors. But no one had done that for over 10 years and everyone is still so paranoid. We got pretty frustrated with a mom when she accused us of tricking a 12 year old boy (the investigator's son) to let us into the building and his apartment. Oh well, it's all done now.

However, I do want to talk about that family! I mentioned last week that we found a family or two on the street! This week we met with one of the families on Tuesday, having brought a fellowshipper and really worked hard at building the relationship (trust), and then read 1 Nephi 1 and had a great discussion about the role of 'goodly parents'. That family then showed up later that night to our English class (no small feat when she is a single mother with a 12 year old son and a 6 year old daughter and it's a 20 minute walk). Great to see them there and then almost on the spot she scheduled us on Friday to come to her house, teach another lesson, as well as feed us! By the way, we call feeding the missionaries "cheng-outs". The food was excellent! She was so concerned that we had enough that we almost exploded! We had chicken wings, steamed crab, rice, steamed vegetables, bbq beef, soup and tofu. I felt so bad because she just kept bringing it and never hardly had a minute to sit down and eat with us! 

Sound familiar? (go ahead, click on it! :)

She also insisted that we get started and not wait. (That seems to be very typical in Chinese culture). After that meal we sat down with them, watched "Finding Faith in Christ" and then together read the doctrine of Christ as contained in 3 Nephi 11. It was a really wonderful lesson, everyone was involved, the Spirit was so strong and the mother, A-J, and the son, A, both commited to baptism on June 2nd! They've been reading and praying together which makes everything even better! Finally yesterday they were at church again with us for the second week in a row! Even though some of the testimonies were kinda 'dry' for some of the members, they loved it and love to be at church! THEY ARE SO GOLDEN!

We also have an 18 year old investigator named L. He's the equivalent of a Junior in high school, and just knows the church is true. We met him on a few different occasions this week, and were working on teaching him the commandments. On Thursday night we brought him to a member's house for a cheng-out and then lesson. He felt right at home and the family were super good fellowshippers for him. We taught him the Law Of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom. I should say we just reminded him. Because of his own accord he started looking up the doctrine of the church last week and he himself quit tea and coffee on the spot. He doesn't have any problems with smoking or chastity. Super good lesson and he's so prepared. He's even secured baptismal permission from his parents and wants to go to BYU-Hawaii and then a mission! What's awesome is he brought those things up out of the blue! His testimony is so strong already and he can't wait to be baptized on May 26th!

This past week we had Zone Training. So the 24 missionaries in the zone got together and got better instructed on how to do our missionary work. They really hit hard on Less actives and so I feel really strongly that the Lord has some blessings stored in the less actives. Just gotta get out and find them now. At that meeting we also got 2 sets of new name tags. The first set is complete Chinese and are now mandatory to wear, and the second set are all English in case any of us ever get sent in to the Filipina wards to serve. It's kinda cool though because by the end of my mission I will have 4 different sets of missionary tags (that is if I can ever find my MTC tags).

Then at church yesterday we got 6 investigators to KwaiChung's ward services, but then unexpectedly 3 others couldn't make it to those services. It made me so grateful for the blessing of sharing that ward building with 4 different wards. We stayed around after our own services and brought investigators to the Filipina (English) service, and then 1 to the 3:30 Tsing Yi Ward service. It was a real spiritual lift to me to be able to hear 3 different sacrament meetings.

Anyways, that's all for now folks. Keep reading and praying! Do you remember Spiritual CPR? -- Church attendance, prayer, and reading. It really works!

Thanks for the birthday wishes too!

Love, Elder Siebach