Meree Kooreesoomas!!!

Yay!! He got his Craisins!!

Meree Kooreesoomas (almost)!!

Here's a short rundown of the week: Monday started with studies and then we went to take a tour of a soda bottling plant (as I was deceived into thinking) in our area. One of the Nihonjin Elders really wanted to go. It turned out to be exclusively a brewery. Super lame, HUGE waste of precious p day time! I was super bummed. I wrote emails and went grocery shopping, had some good one on one time with an elder in my district who came to the mission at the same time. We got pretty close at the MTC and just talked for a while about how life is. It was good. For dinner we went to an investigator's house and had tacos and chicken pot pie. It was amazing!

Tuesday was awful. It was so cold and rained the entire day. We went to Kichijoji to get a new phone, and that's when I got your package! Yay!!!! 🎉🎊  Thank you so much--and thank Brother Edwards for bringing it all this way! Other than that, that day was just miserable, but we went out and worked hard trying to find people to teach. Turned out to not be very productive, but those who we talked to we invited and those who we invited we tried to help:)

Wednesday was good. We usually don't have a whole lot of dendo time on Wednesdays. Just three or four hours, so we made the most of our time and found a lot of cool people. We got to teach a couple lessons. We also found a really cool human jukebox. Then in the evening we taught the children's English class and the regular English class which took up the rest of our night. We were able to set up a lesson with one of the students for the following day!

Thursday is our weekly planning day. We came to the church at noon to plan then we had a lesson at 3:30 with that eikaiwa (英会話) student. It was really good. We got to talk to him a lot about Jesus and the Book of Mormon. We showed him the He is the Gift video and he cried. The Spirit was really strong. We have another lesson with him on Christmas day! That was also the night when Elder W and I were called by the APs and asked to go to the district leader training the following day and then to go on splits with them after (I was nervous).

Friday we went back to kichijoji and participated in the district leader training meeting which went until about 4 and then I came back to Fuchu with one of the APs, Elder T (his katakana name is Saruman... Pretty dope), where we dendoed for a while and then went to a game night at the church with six of the eight Fuchu missionaries and a bunch of members, potential investigators, investigators, and recent converts. It was really good and we set up a lesson the following day at a sushi place!

Saturday rained a lot. We studied and then went to the sushi place where we had some great (cheap) sushi and had a great lesson! We taught about the Book of Mormon, word of wisdom, our relationship with God and prayer. He promised to pray everyday for a week! And to read the scriptures! It was a great lesson! We ran to the train and got Elder T back to Kichijoji for some meetings. Short but sweet! Came home and Elder W and I immediately went to the church for an Elders Quorum yakiniku party where we brought 7 investigators. It was amazing! Ward members have a crazy amount of power when it comes to missionary work! Missionaries can teach and bring the Spirit in but it is the members that make the church seem real and accessible. If investigators only ever see missionaries then that is their image of the church. If they get to see and get to know members then they see what the church is usually like, they see normal people and they have friends.

Sunday was really good. Church is tough as always, but I am starting to understand a lot more of what the speakers say. It is really hard still and I usually have a headache after. We then went out and dendoed and completely forgot to eat dinner. We went that way until we looked at our phone at 8:34 and realized that we had 26 minutes to make the 40ish minute walk home. Needless to say we booked it and made it with a few seconds to spare. I was praying the entire time for help and watched as all of the crosswalk lights changed to green a couple seconds before we got there. It was really a great night. We talked to so many great people and have a lot of appointments set up. Those nights are so rare. We must have been doing something right!

This past week had a lot of peaks and troughs and a bit of a painful amplitude. There were a few really low lows, but more really high highs! The district leader meeting was good. It helped me realize how much I need to improve. When I told that to the AP he told me that was good, that we don't have those meetings to help people to feel good about where they are, but to see where they need to be. That made me think about when the disciples said in John 6 "this is an hard saying; who can hear it?" I think about setting big goals and doing everything I can think of to live with God and become like him. That requires perfection. In order to get there I'm gonna need to be corrected a lot; to change a lot; to become a lot. Those are hard things. It is hard to be corrected, it is hard to see how imperfect you are. These are all hard sayings. I think the trick is being the type of person that those disciples are asking about, becoming the type of person who can hear it. Then we can deal with the hard things that we have to deal with in order to return to our Heavenly Father. I want to become someone who can hear it. I think the key to becoming that is having faith hope and charity, and of course no pride. That's what I need to work on.

Anyways, I love you guys! Merry Christmas!!! Can't wait to talk to y'all this week!
- Elder Siebach