Holding On

Dear Friends and Family,

The past few days have been really awesome! On Friday we had our Zone Training and it really felt small. When I first started as Zone Leader we had 28 missionaries and now we've dropped to 22 with threats to take out one more companionship this month. It certainly feels smaller than it did, but that actually made for a more personal meeting if anything. As with all Zone Training Meetings we relayed all the information and instruction from President Hawks, and then talked about last months goals and results. Then we spent a few moments talking about March goals and what has been accomplished so far. We had some pretty lofty goals, however, they are certainly achievable if we have FAITH and WORKS. I think as Zone Leader one of the hardest things for me is trying to help missionaries catch a vision of what the ZONE could do together. Building that kind of unity has to bridge cultural differences and come from desire to serve and becoming tools in His hands.

One thing from the Mission Leadership Council which we got to relay to the New Territories Zone was a goal of baptisms this coming July. This year marks 65 years of missionary work in Hong Kong and so the wards and stakes are going to be involved giving 6500 hours of community service, and the youth will give 6500 names to the temple in each stake. The mission wanted to get involved and one idea kept coming to President Hawk's mind was "65 in July" referring to getting 65 baptisms in the month of July. It translates to about 1 baptism per companionship in the month of July. Certainly doable, it just will take more faith and more work.

Target practice!

To make this portion of our Zone Training interesting and trying to evoke their enthusiasm and resolve we had one of the Elders in the zone run in with a bed sheet that Elder C and I had prepared the night before to be similar to the "Title of Liberty". The sheet had a big number '65' on it and we asked all the missionaries to sign on if they were willing to push towards this great goal. I'm super pumped about the whole thing and I know we can do it. What is exciting is the fact that we average about 21 baptisms a month in the mission but in months and years past we've had months that were closer to 40 and one crazy August in 2011 when there were 66 baptisms. Its going to happen though and the New Territories Title of Liberty was signed by everyone and can be our constant reminder of our commitment to serve in the China Hong Kong mission. I think it built zone unity to have this kind of a goal too.

Tuen Mun Zone Bowling Activity

Right after Zone Training our companionship went on exchanges and I went into the Butterfly area for 24 hours. It was a good experience as we taught English class and then the following day did some good finding and had a member-present lesson in which we used a returning LA to help fellowship. We even gave the investigator, Gary, a baptismal goal of May 11th.

Saturday afternoon the exchange ended and Elder C and I were back together and spent the afternoon teaching a former investigator and then doing our weekly planning finally.

Sunday was a pretty solid day at church and we had 3 investigators there and then 5 returning members came too. They also reorganized our Bishopric and so hopefully we can work well with the new slightly altered bishopric members.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about less-active work. It's one of the things that missionaries love and hate. Love because if you can just get someone to open the door to you, you have a good chance of helping them come back to church. The biggest concern that missionaries have is, "Will these members fit into the church scene again?" "What can we do to help them feel welcome in church again?" I haven't seen too many members come back into activity while I've been a missionary. However, my sense is that post-mission I want to work hard in this aspect of missionary work. Just yesterday I was really impressed by one of the members of our ward who wants to do his home teaching, however, his companion isn't active, and the people he wants to visit are also not active. I was impressed that he asked us to come with him so that we could get to know these members, and support in any way that we could. We knocked, no one was home at either, and then we left notes for them. I was just really happy to have a member who was with us because I think people are more receptive to active members because they aren't under the same assignment as missionaries, but are still willing to reach out to them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, contact the people you haven't seen in a while at church! And if there aren't any people you know (for instance you are a new move-in yourself), accompany the missionaries and be a friend to these 'lost lambs'. To paraphrase President Hinckley, "If we can't hold on to the fruits of our missionary efforts, there is no point to missionary work."  

Wishing you the best in your missionary efforts and everything else,

Elder Siebach