Working Hard, Seeing Results

Dear Mom, Happy Mother's Day!

It's hard to believe that another half a year has gone by! Just yesterday was Christmas, I swear. Things have been going well in Taipa. Elder M and I are getting along great, and besides the British English versus American English language barrier (haha!) we are completely united in the work. Which there seems to be plenty of that! We end each of our days with thanks to God for the miracles that we witness each day and then crash. It's been a long time since I've been as tired as I am now. I wouldn't want it any other way though. If anything I just want to work harder.

This past week we had a great opportunity to meet with President Hawks as he went around and conducted interviews with each of the missionaries in the mission. We each got about 10 minutes and it was more of a chat than anything else. We talked about the area, the branch, the apartment, and other such things. And as I talked about how it was I just had an overwhelming impression that this is exactly where I am supposed to be. I don't know for whom; whether that is an investigator, my companion, or just for myself. But I know that Taipa is absolutely the right area for me. I expressed a little bit of concern to President Hawks over the fact that I felt that we worked so hard but that we weren't seeing new people in Taipa and he just reassured me by saying, "Elder, I didn't think it would be easy." Which to me was a bit of a relief. If he thought this would have been easy I would have started to question every missionary tactic I've learned in the last 23 months. He said one other thing that really pushed me to want to do even better. And that was that he knows that I am obedient and that I will work hard until the end of my mission. I thought that was quite a compliment. There are 139 other missionaries who would die to be in the position I'm in right now, but, he and the Lord chose me. I don't want to let any of them down and slow down even one bit!

This week we started with lots of finding and were blessed to have a lot of lessons within the first 3/4 days. They didn't all transfer into new investigators though and so that kept us on our feet as we looked for people who would continue to meet with us. By Thursday/Friday we started to really see some things happen. Thursday we spent some time doing our weekly planning and spent a fair amount of time talking about how obedient we were and if we could be even more so. We came up with 2 or 3 things that we are going to work on to stay even more exactly obedient (i.e. not singing anything besides Church music, and not talking about anything that could even remotely construed as post-mission talk.) We also went to the Lord and asked him to bless us as we work to accomplish some of the goals that we have for our companionship this month and this transfer. Friday morning we had Zone Training Meeting and were reminded of the importance of boldly declaring our message when we first interact with potential investigators. With these things in mind we hit the streets and felt that even though we had fewer lessons, they were better lessons in the long-run. It also gave us an opportunity to try these same things on two investigators that we had scheduled, as well as on a potential whom we were able to reschedule and teach at the church.

With our new focuses we felt that we were even more productive and that it helped invite the Spirit in quicker and more powerfully. It was really exciting to be able to work with Elder M that way.

Saturday we had a street display and met a guy named L who wants to meet with us. He's looking for answers to some rather bizarre questions, but also has a spark of interest. Sunday we scheduled R and found out that he had investigated the church 3 years prior. For some reason he had dropped off, but now would like to learn some more and so we will be working with him too. J is still coming along and doing great.

For the time being we're doing well. Working hard, seeing results. We just wish that all the above mentioned people lived in Taipa and not in Macau :P  Ah well, the Lord will provide. Thanks everyone for the birthday messages! I'm looking forward to a good 21st year!

 

Love,

Elder Siebach