My Cigarette-Smoke Sermon

Hello family!

This will be my real email to all y'all! As you can see, I am transferring out of my beloved Hachioji to an area called Kamiooka (上大岡) which means "on top of big hills". It stays true to its name and is known as the hilliest area in my mission! So my legs get to be massive again! Yay! Also I hear that the view out of my apartment is gorgeous so get ready for some wonderful vistas of Fuji and stuff!

So this transfer is a sad one in that all of the sisters that came to Japan with me are going home. There are three of them and they have had incredible missions. They have all become legends in the mission with baptisms and how many people they have trained! They will be sorely missed! If I remember, I will attach a picture that has them in it! You will recognize them from my MTC pictures!

This week we had a lot of lessons with a lot of really good people. I went on splits with an Elder named Nakamoto. He is doing very well. We went and visited one of our investigators and found a lot of very unusual stuff in his apartment on top of a huge mess. We tried to help him clean but he wouldn't let us so I stood in the middle of
this huge mess in a one room apartment with cigarette smoke so thick you could hardly see through and preached to him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the sacrament and keeping the Sabbath Day holy. He knelt in seiza the entire time listening. My companion took the opportunity to clean and organize the room a little bit because our
investigator wasn't paying attention to him. It was a really strange scene I'm sure, but we learned a lot about him and helped him a lot that night. We came out of there smelling like heavy smokers and I had a cough for a few days following. Smoking will NEVER be appealing to me!

I have to go, but hey, I love y'all and hope you are having a Merry Christmas! Y'all're the best!

Elder Siebach

The awesome Sisters from my MTC group getting ready to go home

Hachioji members