A Beautiful Sight for a Tired Old Missionary Like Me

Dear Family,

My week was so good! It was a bummer to lose my companion, but I got another pro missionary, so it's alright! Elder Driscoll got transferred out to fit a zone leader vacancy. Then the AP that got booted out by the new one came to be my new companion! His name is Elder Livingston! We are torn as to what to do because I only know the area so well and I will be gone in a few weeks, so we have to get him up and running here. There are so many people that we are working with and it would be a sin to lose them! But we also have a responsibility to train the mission! Last week we went and taught a lesson with another companionship. I'm glad they called us in because they have such an awful relationship with that investigator! It felt like a teacher asking for his homework to see if he did the reading assignment! So bad! But we got his number and have been calling him periodically and he is progressing so well now! His testimony and commitment grow more and more with everyday!

This week I had some great experiences that I will tell you about! Yesterday was a day of finding because we only had two lessons. While we were out "streeting" we stopped a boy named N. I started talking to him and found out that he is 21 living with his family. Then the conversation went somewhere else and we ended up talking about things we are grateful for. When asked he said that the person he is most grateful for is his mother. We both agreed with him and then asked more about his family, "How many people do you have in your family?" He looked into my eyes and then looked down and said "only two of us". When he said that I felt so much love well up in my heart for this boy. I looked at my companion and his eyes were tearing up too. We stood there and bore our testimonies of the influence we have felt in our lives from our mothers, and asserted that the influence from our moms is divine, the love we feel from them is divine, and the relationship we have with them is eternal. I felt a tear roll down my cheek as I promised him that God is there and loves his little family, I got to promise him that God was reaching out to that little family through my companion and me. I am so excited to be one of the messengers God uses to pierce a life of suffering and pain with light.

The next cool experience was a man named M. This was another guy that I stopped while we were streeting! Our eyes met right as I was a bout to get on an escalator. My companion was already on and actually had to run opposite in order to get back off, but I looked in his eyes and felt the strongest urge to stop and talk to him right immediately. We started talking and I found out that he is Roman Catholic by birth, but when he described his relationship with God to me he said a lot of things that resembled our teachings of God and less so of the teachings of the Catholic Church. Turns out he feels like there is more out there than what his church offers. The things he feels in his heart are a little bit different from the things he feels like his church is teaching. We shared our testimonies and invited him to try out our message and see if we can add to the things he has come to know. We promised blessings and he gave us his number and said we need to meet sometime this week! Elder Livingston and I walked away from that lesson wondering how much more we could possibly be blessed!

The last experience was so sweet! We were just inside the train and looking out through the doors that were standing open. We had already tried to talk to everyone, but had gotten rejected or ignored so we were just waiting for the doors to close and to be on our way. We looked out and on the other side of the platform we saw a man sitting in a wheel chair talking to the station employee that was going to help him on to his train. This man in the wheel chair had obviously been in his wheel chair for his entire life. We watched his exchange with his helper in the setting of a big busy train station filled with a bunch of rushing, busy business men and business women all around. The shocking thing was that this man, who had been confined to a wheel chair for his entire life and never experienced the joy of having a mobile and free body, had a huge smile on and was telling jokes and spreading a lot of joy to his helper. It was a beautiful sight for a tired old missionary like me to see! I wanted to go talk to him when the doors closed and whisked me away.

What a great day yesterday! And a great week! So many cool things happened this week! I wish I could write all of them!

I hope y'all had and have a wonderful week! Love you! It was a blast to talk to you on Mother's Day!

Love,
Elder Siebach