Finding, Finding, and More Finding

Dear Friends and Family,

Things are going. Not sure in which direction, but time is ticking and Elder M and I have been working hard. We probably did between 20 and 25 hours of street contacting this past week. Certainly not a mission record but a lot when I consider that for the last 1.5 years of my mission we've had people to teach. I find myself often reflecting on my first few months in the mission when my trainer and I also opened a companionship. I wish that I would have paid a little more attention to what he did and see if there were any things that I could magnify now.

Taipa is a wonderful place to serve. It's an interesting place to serve as well. Macau in and of itself is very separate from the rest of the mission; and considering it's a separate "Special Administrative Region" we can't keep contact through phones with any of the missionaries on that side of the mission. Then throw in that Elder M and I serve the Southern of 2 islands. We are completely isolated from even Macau missionaries who spend all their time on the Macau side. It's a little bit like an undercover mission for me.

We worked and we worked and we worked this week. We were blessed though. We taught 13 street lessons in 4 languages--kind of:) -- Cantonese, English, British English, and broken Mandarin/Cantonese. We contacted about 1000 I would guess (meaning we spoke with them for a minute or more), and got about 50 phone numbers. It could have been really monotonous to be doing so much finding all week but we've been making it fun by finding with a topic scripture in mind. During each companionship study we've looked over what we read during personal study and found one verse or passage that we plan on sharing in any contact we have that day. It's been working well and a good way for us to use the Book of Mormon and make sure that we stay on the same page since, as expected, Elder M doesn't understand everything that we talk about on the street.

Being tourists in Macau--Thanks to Elder M's mom:)

The other thing we did to break up the monotony was to try a few different finding methods. We knocked a few doors, we found in parks, on buses, on streets and side walks, we contacted a guy while he was waiting in a parking lot, and we try to squeeze taking pictures during the water breaks we have. We also did some University finding. We were forewarned by the Mandarin Elders that the 2 Universities in Taipa were a little bit harder for Cantonese contacting. They said that Macau University of Science and Technology is about 90% Mandarin speakers, and that the University of Macau is about 50%. So with those odds we spent 3 hours one day proselyting at UM. They proved to be prophetic. Of the people we contacted, a little over 50% of them were mandarin speakers. Just as we were about to end for that portion of the afternoon though we stopped one girl. She was really willing to talk with us and curious about our message. We shared the Restoration with her, gave her a BoM and rescheduled her for this week. She's Cantonese which is awesome! However, she lives on the Macau side and since she's 21 we'll have to turn her over to the sister missionaries.

That kind of was our week in a nut shell though. We were really blessed to find people to teach but they either live in Mainland and just come down here to work, they live on the Macau side, or they aren't native Cantonese speakers. We haven't struck gold yet... Certainly a learning experience.

During one of the lessons we had this week (it was in English since the guy was from Nepal) we had a girl come up to us and actually ask if she could have our number since she wants to learn more about Christ! We were pretty floored. We're pretty sure she lives in Taipa, but she'll still have to get turned over eventually is our thought. Great story though. I think that's the first time on my mission where someone has come up to me seeking to learn.

One opportunity that we had this week was to go and teach a less-active lesson. Our mission correlator, Brother H, is a fireball. He has so much enthusiasm and really gets missionary work. Every Tuesday evening he has the missionaries come together and tries to get as many members as willing to participate, and sends them off on splits to go teach lessons to members that he has scheduled for us! Because members were short this week, Elder M and I went with one of our Zone Leaders, Elder F, and visited twin 16 year old boys. We had a good conversation with them, but it's sad to see boys that are Grace's age not in the church. I think we did pretty well building a friendship with them and maybe we can help them come back!

This past week we thought we were going to get some member-present lessons, but unfortunately John left Macau this past week because he had some family things come up that he had to take care of. And the only other person that we had scheduled for this week confirmed the morning of the appointment and so we went to the church and she was a no-show. We had a member and everything with us. We eventually were able to get hold of her, (her name is Leslie believe it or not) but she said that her mother-in-law forbade her from coming to meet with us and said many other things that probably shouldn't be written out in a mass letter... sufficeth to say, we probably won't be able to see her for the time being.

We're still working hard. Hopefully I can come back with a nice tan face and pasty white neckline :)

That's all for now folks. Keep us and all other missionaries in your prayers! We need them! I love you all.

Love,

Elder Siebach

-I'll send some pics if the computer will be fast...

P.S.-- By the way I finally got the Easter package this week that you guys sent out! It's delicious! Thanks:)