Of Loved Ones and Language Tests

Today I found out that one of the guys from my MTC district is heading home right now. He fell off of his bike and broke his collarbone. He will be returning to get surgery and hopefully come back in about three months. Wow! I feel so bad for him! Despite the fact that I yearn to spend this precious season of giving and love with my family, I know that one day I will be rejoined with them. Going on a mission has made me realize how much I miss my loved ones and how much I want to spend time with them. I love the unique perspective that we have that includes the fact that righteous families who've been sealed in the temple will be able to live together forever. That's pretty cool! Whatever happens, we will be reunited again. At any moment our life or the lives of our loved ones can be snuffed out. That's scary... Being on a mission would be a lot harder if I didn't have the hope that one day, no matter what, I will see my family again. That hope is not just for us, it is for everyone. I love showing people pictures of my family and testifying about the plan of salvation and the potential families have. It's a cool experience and always brings the spirit. I encourage you to talk about your beliefs regarding families with someone this week!

So this past week has been pretty good. Our pool of potential investigators is growing and we got to teach a few lessons to some of them this week. One cool story is we were out at an omurice restaurant with one of the people we met this week. He is alright at English and wants to study it so we were speaking in English mostly with a little Japanese to clarify things (up to that point we hadn't talked a lot about the church) and then the man looked at me and, in Japanese, told me that he wanted to see how good I was at Japanese and asked me to talk. Of course I had no idea what to say, those situations are the worst! I decided to tell him about the MTC and how we learn how to teach and talk about the gospel. I told him that my best area of Japanese is teaching about our church and he said go for it. So I started talking about how the church has a lot of beliefs, but they are centered around Christ. I then asked him if he knew what the real reason and meaning of Christmas was. He said no, so we talked about Christ and ended up teaching this man most of the first two lessons. It was really amazing. He was interested and wants to learn more. The next step is to show him how incredibly important the gospel really is. I will send a picture of the meal!

 I love you all!

Siebach 長老