U-Turns

Dear Friends and Family,

At a casino buffet for lunch

Another week down here in Taipa. The weather has made a turn for the better and we didn't really have any storms of significance. We did have a day where the skies just couldn't decide if they wanted to rain or not. Consequently it rained for 2 minutes and stopped for just enough time to dry (10 minutes) and then it rained again. On our way to one appointment it rained and cleared 3 or 4 times! 

Over the last month or so Elder M and I have walked every inch on the roads in Taipa and so we decided to go out and explore the south-eastern part of the Taipa Island. From all we knew there was a hospital, prison, and beach in the vicinity. We were happily surprised to see that besides beach-side restaurants and pubs there were also a few places to knock. We taught a simple lesson to an 81 year old man, we contacted a tourist-y looking grandmother and were able to share our testimonies of family with her, and we knocked the door of a heart-diseased European with no interest, and homes where Vietnamese maids were home. Obviously we didn't go into those homes. It was pretty sunny that day and since we hadn't packed water we were about to turn around and look for a restaurant but as we were walking down the street a car pulled up right next to us. Kinda freaked me out honestly; I thought someone was going to yell at us. Instead, we were greeted by a friendly, "Hey missionaries!". Turns out we were contacting near the apartment of some members from the Macau 2nd Branch (2nd branch is for non-Chinese speakers). Really nice mom and her 3 daughters asked us where we were headed and invited us to dinner. We politely declined since we had an appointment at that same time. But before she left she told us all the codes to get into the fancy apartment buildings down there! We'll see if we ever get the courage to go knock on Westerner apartments.

In companionship right now we have 4 pretty solid investigators. 3 of them have baptismal dates, and the 4th one is praying about whether he needs to be baptized or not. He's got a lot of sincerity so I'm not too worried that he won't get an answer. John continues to make progress and says that he knows that the Book of Mormon is true and will continue to work towards being baptized in June. A-Fan is doing OK. We are trying to find a time that we can meet with her and introduce her to the sister missionaries. She still has her baptismal date for the middle of June but she struggles finding time for reading, praying and church since college finals are right around the corner for her. Tyler is another one of our solid investigators. We met with him twice this week and were blessed to have members at both lessons. He is making great progress, however, we also need to turn him over since his Mandarin is better than his Cantonese. We're looking to do that this week. The last investigator is Rex. We haven't seen him for a little over a week but that is because of work and he's also preparing for finals. He's also coming along well.

This week Elder M and I were blessed to have a number of lessons scheduled. We were able to get some members to come along which will go a long way for helping these investigators, and of course we did some finding:) The irony of the situation is that it took miracles for us to find the investigators we have, but they don't do much for our companionship since we keep having to turn them over to other missionaries. Since we have been able to get into the apartments, we have taught 2 lessons. One was a Mandarin who respectfully listened but then didn't have time to reschedule, and the other was a Filipino father that we've rescheduled for this next week and hope to be able to meet him and his wife. Great lessons but they will need to be turned over to the appropriate companionships. It's all the same work so I don't mind too much. 

This past Saturday marked 30 days for me in Macau and with my visa I had to leave the island. Saturday morning Elder M and I went into Hong Kong to renew my visa, get his HK ID and then pick up supplies at the mission home. Since American's can only stay in Macau a total of 60 days unless they have special permission, I will have to leave Macau in 20 days time and then again 10 days later, at which point I will have to leave for good. Since transfers are 64 days, I'm praying that as we continue on down the road I will be able to get a special "Black Stamp" that would allow me to stay until I finish my mission. So that's all on the horizon right now.

This past Sunday was a great day for us. We had 2 investigators in church and it was Branch Conference. President Hawks and the mission presidency came out and each of the three of them took a different hour of the 3-hour block. President Hawks started us off in Sacrament Meeting and really powerfully invited the members to grasp onto the idea of "Zion" being both a place and a people. With President Holland having been in Macau about 3 months ago and dedicating the land for missionary work he quoted some of those promises in regards to the growth and potential of Macau. There are 2 small branches right now but with the vision that an Apostle of the Lord has for this place, there will one day be stakes in Macau and a temple. It's all very exciting and being a missionary and sitting in the midst of the members and investigators it really impacted me. He finished his thoughts by encouraging investigators to hold on to the gospel and build their foundations. I think it was really good for those that were in attendance.

After church there was a baptismal service for Tomson C. He is a power-house. The whole ceremony went exactly as it should and afterwards he shared his testimony. He talked about learning the gospel once before but turning from it. Then recently having a strong desire to know the truth and so he called the missionaries up. Through meeting with the missionaries he found that his questions were resolved. However, much like Joseph Smith he wanted to investigate other churches and see if there was something more. He talked about the peace that he found in the Book of Mormon and that regardless of what his friends and family said about this church being a cult he had a witness from the Spirit that it was truth and that it was good. So prepared! I was so impressed by his comments and the insights that he has. Even before being baptized he was with the missionaries almost daily and would attend "less-active finding" activities with the missionaries where he would share his testimony and invite these members to come back. He'll be a powerful influence in Macau for good if he will continue to endure! And all this from a mere 16 year old boy!

It's been a great week and really highlighted by the events of this past weekend. We're looking forward to another week full of miracles! Best of luck to all of you in your missionary efforts!

Love,
Elder Siebach

BTW, today for P-Day we went to one of the buffets in the Sands Casino. Super good. Super stuffed, but the food I ate that was new and exotic was snails--yum!