A River of Referrals

Dear Friends and Family,

We are on day four of the 6 Days of Chinese New Year right now. Days 4-6 are days to relax. 1-3 have various meanings. If I remember correctly the 1st and 2nd days are for family, and the 3rd is a day for friends. It's been really interesting! The typical 700,000 residents of Tuen Mun are no longer on the streets! Shops are closed down with taped up signs wishing everyone a "Happy New Year," "More Money This Year," "Body Health," etc... It's incredible how many different greetings there are depending on the person you are talking to. One specifically for students is "Learning Progress". (Keep in mind these are all the literal translations; I'll let you guys mess with the correct English grammar and such).

This week was a bit of a miracle week I must say. A LOT of people went up to Mainland or were busy with family (still are actually), but it gave Elder P and I a good opportunity to do a lot of street contacting and focus on learning a bit about Chinese New Year and how the gospel can relate. It's quite simple actually. Chinese New Year is for families as is the gospel. We were able to get some good street lessons and good contacts our first day. On Wednesday we used a few hours with our district and went District banner finding. Basically we had a bunch of banners and some missionaries stayed by a table with some church publications and the rest of us went out and did our best to contact on this busy bridge. For the first hour we were coming up dry. No one was stopping for anyone. Then things really seemed to pick up the second hour. Some families even stopped to hear part of our message. 

Elder P and I were in charge of the table for the last part of the find and a family came over to check out our display. We exchanged contact information and they actually were at church with us yesterday! A mom, her 12 year old son and her 5 year old daughter! Now we just gotta meet the father and teach them! While we were contacting this family, a family from the ward just happened to walk by, so I beckoned them over and they were able to introduce themselves and get to know this potential family for a few minutes. 

Later on a Mainlander  randomly came over and started checking our our table. He had a lot of interest. He said he had observed how some of the Sister missionaries had very patiently contacted a lady and he was impressed and felt that he wanted to learn more. We gave him a Book of Mormon right then (we had him write his name in it so that when he crosses the border they don't take it from him), and then we all hopped on a train and took him to the church where we then gave him a tour. He loved the tour! Very prepared man. Loved that the Relief Society program is especially to help those in need, and then we almost had a potential disaster happen... As we were giving this tour the church doorbell rang and a crazy guy walked in. He's just sane enough that he's not in an asylum, but crazy enough that he goes to anyone he sees and asked them to treat him to a meal and hire him. Well, he came in, used the church phone for about 10 minutes, and then as we were about to let our mainland friend go, crazy guy asks our new friend to treat him to a meal. Normally I wouldn't think that would be a big deal; a little strange, but not my concern. What worried me was that our mainland friend would think this crazy guy was a member of our church and just trying to take advantage of him. We talked it all out and the mainlander was very good hearted about the whole thing. He told the crazy guy that he can't expect everyone to do everything for him, but he was willing to help and then gave him 100 dollars (HK=$15US). It was a super generous move and left me in awe as I watched him walk out into the night. We can't really contact him since he's in Mainland, but hopefully the Book Of Mormon will become a treasured possession for him.

The other family that we contacted that same day actually came to church yesterday! Church services were delayed an hour in honor of Chinese New Years, and we also only had Sacrament meeting. We heard some good testimonies from some members and after the services we were able to get two members to go with us on the tour with this family. The mom has been to every church under the heavens and was a little peeved about tithing (something every member somehow included in the testimonies today), but the member fellowshippers were wonderful and now we are super tight with the family. They tried to have us over for dinner last night but we already had an appointment (not to mention they wanted to hot-pot and that's not allowed in the mission.) Maybe next time!

Sunday dinner at the Lin's

Sunday evening we went over the the Lin Family home. It was a great meal! We had two investigators there, 4 missionaries, 3 of the family's friends, and the Lin family of 4. It was a lot of fun! Great food! Great company and we were able to give a Book of Mormon to the father of the new family. He was hesitant to give us he contact info though. He's got ours for when he is ready.

One other miracle this week was we had a member from the TST ward call us up and refer 2 of his friends to just emigrated from Mainland to HK. He took us to meet them and we had a wonderful time talking to this single mom and her 16 year old son. Time was short and we had to get down to Kowloon Tong for a meeting that night, but we got their info and we'll be here waiting for them when they get back from Mainland on the 9th.

Miracles in Tuen Mun! I got more referrals this week than I think I have my entire mission! Blessings of the Lord for sure! I'm so happy to be here in Tuen Mun for at least the next couple weeks!

Love you all!

Love,

Elder Siebach

Window washing on the 31st floor!

P.S. This week we also had deep clean. a 12 hour marathon of cleaning our apartment! Lots of fun! I have some pics I'll send soon!

Newest tag is on the top left

P.S.S. This week we also got our new church-approved Chinese-English name tags! They look pretty sweet! I'm up to 5 different sets of name tags now!

P.S.S.S. Happy Birthday Mom! I love you!