Elder B and I made the mistake today of going to the local gaming arcade and renting 2 computers to write our emails! It's slightly more convenient than having to take the MTR to go email, but the sounds and smells aren't to be cherished; kinda hazy with smoke and no one has headphones on. All their online games are cranked and it feels about like what I imagine World War III would be like. Lots of explosions guts and gore. We're doing our best to avert our eyes!
It's been an interesting week. We've been working non-stop and having some great results. A couple times we got out a few minutes late from our lunch and so that just motivated us to work even harder and to make sure we're out on the street on-time. One afternoon we had about 3 hours of finding ahead of us. We went to one of my favorite roads and walked it and talked to anyone and everyone. There are a couple of benches along the sidewalk so it's just perfect for lessons. Not too many cars since it's up on the side of the mountain and dead ends in a bus stop. The first hour we had a lot of good conversations but no real lessons. Then in the 2nd hour I got into a good conversation with a guy. He was pretty cool I thought. Seemed willing to re-meet. He even knew a little bit about the church since one of his friends is serving in San Francisco right now. I hope we can reach him somehow. He gave me his number but as is all-too-often the case, I called it up, no answer, painstakingly sent out a Chinese message, and the response was that the person I was trying to contact had changed phone numbers... If he's serious about learning he has my number.
After two hours in that spot we walked 100 yards or so down the side of the mountain to another one of my favorite spots. It's right outside two apartment buildings and there is a massive elevator that carries people to the mall situated above. Pretty much a constant flow of people coming through. We had an hour left and in the first 3 minutes Elder B met a young man and sat down for a lesson. 5 minutes later I sat down with another guy. We taught our lessons, rescheduled my guy (Ji) for church, and then still had about 30 minutes to find. The first person Elder B contact stopped immediately to talk. I asked him after-the-fact how he did it so fast and he said that the guy had actually been an less active member (LA) who motioned for him to sit down first!
I am pretty surprised by how many LAs we ran into this week! On Tuesday we met with S--someone we found last week and brought to church with us-- in our lesson he started asking about Thomas S. Monson, which was a little strange; I just assumed he had done a little research. And then as we were establishing expectations and doing things that missionaries do (i.e. trying to talk about the gospel) he told us he was a baptized member! Turns out he was baptized like 35 years ago! So there is another LA that we've contacted and are bringing back.
On Saturday we went up to an area called Shek Yam and did a little finding up in a park over there. I didn't even get an opportunity to try and contact someone when a man shouted out to me in very poor English, "Hey, Hey!" He beckoned me over and shared with me that he was a member of the church who lives in Mainland currently. He was born in Vietnam and doesn't have Mainland citizenship so he's been in HK the last few days sleeping in parks waiting for his visa. We called up our correlator who lives just 3 blocks away and he came right over and we made accommodations for him to be able to keep his stuff in the church. He overnights in the parks. since he can't actually sleep in the church, but he was at church all 3 hours with us yesterday.
Actually yesterday we had 5 less-active men with us at church and then one other LA who technically belongs to a different ward but wants to come to KwaiChung since that's where his friends are. We had a rather skimpy investigator turn-out to church this week. We had Jo, G-J, and that new investigator Ji. I think Ji will be pretty great to work with. He's about 25. working class; seems sincere. He had to leave right after Sacrament meeting so we rescheduled another appointment later this week.
Mr. L is confusing. I don't think I really understand everything that is going on with him. We met with President Hawks last week just to talk about him and get some ideas. He went to his hearing on Friday morning and then told us that he won't get the results until October 9th. Friday, Saturday, Sunday he was unavailable and he hasn't answered the phone yet today. He definitely need to clarify his situation and then we will know what to do about a baptismal service.
For the time being Jo is still scheduled for baptism this next week! I love him so much! He will get interviewed this week, and the service is set for Thursday!
So there you have it. School is in session. We still teach a good amount of lessons each week (between 15 and 20) but our investigators are few, our baptism dates are even fewer, but most importantly we're trying to rebuild and strengthen those investigators we do have. Elder B is working hard; I'm working hard. I got about 185-200 characters down this week. I'm not being too earnest about learning characters since I also need to make sure my tones and spoken language stay up. No super weird foods recently. Mostly just rice, noodles, weird cuts of meat and fat. We've also decided to do A LOT of cooking at home. It's cheaper that way and Elder B and I are loosely "dieting" you might say:) We're mostly just cutting down portion size and cooking more veggies; for some reason it just doesn't feel like buying steamed veggies on the street is worth our money.
Hope all is going well! Keep the faith!
Love,
Elder Siebach
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