Weekly Report: Everything on Rice, A Li Mountain, Investigator Named Teddy

Hey Everyone!
It's official, David Archuletta is now my favorite singer. I'll let you all know why later.

How was everyones' week? Mine was great. The weather is getting warmer (not too excited about that...)! Things are moving along here in Jiayi. But first...

The Food Review: ... on Rice
So Kohl had a companion who would eat anything on toast. My companion is the same way, except he does it with rice too. Mashed potatoes, salad dressing, ketchup, pepper salt, tofu milk (I just translated it, it has nothing to do with milk), etc. Pretty intense. I think I'd die of blandness if I tried to do that. But he seems happy, so that's all that matters, I guess. 1 out of 5 on rice.

Shirt Review:
This week, Elder Chen contacted a guy whose shirt said "Black Soul." He proved it by rudely rejected my companion. I tried to explain it to Elder Chen, but somehow the humor got lost in translation. 5 ... uh... I'm out of ideas... out of 5.

Today we went to A Li Mountain with the members of the first and third wards. It was AWESOME. So much fun. I just chatted with our investigator Teddy the entire way up and down. He's hilarious. Has a song to sing for anything... but I'll get to that later. Anyways, A Li Mountain was really pretty, and I had a good time with the members. I love our ward. I'll get pictures to you, cause I took a ton (and Teddy took a million more). We had rice cooked in bamboo shoots and it was delicious. The view off the top was bad cause it was all misty, but it was still tons of fun.

Now for the good part: Teddy. I'm not a fabulous missionary. My personality is not just well suited to the Taichung missionary stereotype. However, Heavenly Father is merciful anyways. He always gives us investigators and people to teach. It's kind of like He's just patting me on the shoulder and going, "it's ok, Elder Siebert, here's another one." I think out of all of our investigators, only one is one that I added. All the others were sent to me. This was the case with Teddy. And this is why I love Archuletta. Teddy was converted by David Archuletta. Teddy loves American TV, and he always watched Idol. When he saw Archuletta sing, he instantly loved him and researched him. Teddy was so moved by Archuletta's rendition of "Be Still My Soul" that he found the missionaries and came to English class. We all thought he just had English interest cause he would never meet after English (cause he was taking a friend home, as I learned today), but he always wanted to learn. He remembered being rescued by 2 missionaries when he got lost as a little kid. Anyways, before he went home for Winter Break, Elder Salgado, the Elder who teaches Teddy's English class, asked him to meet with missionaries in Gaoxiong. So Teddy met with missionaries in both Gaoxiong and Taibei and gained a testimony. When he got back last week, we immediately had a baptismal interview which he flew threw. Teddy's getting baptized on Thursday. He's such a cool kid. He's a fabulous singer and artist, and is really funny. He came to the Christmas activity with his friend wearing Santa hats, and then one time came to English wearing a Tiger Eskimo hat. So funny. He loves Pokemon and cartoons and Disney. He's got a really high voice, and acts fairly childlike (in a good way). I always wanted to be his friend (all of the missionaries in Jiayi wanted to) and now I get to baptize him! I'm so so so thrilled. God blesses us so much when we work hard. When we show up, we try, and we care about the people around us, we see miracles, not because of any inherent ability on our part, but because God loves us and wants us to see success. It's been a really good week. We saw a lot of miracles and blessings. I taught lessons this week where I was pretty sure I had Spirit sparking out my fingers. I love that feeling. I feel invincible and brilliant. There is nothing I can't explain, and my Chinese accent is so pure and standardized (hard to translate that word) that it's beautiful to listen to myself. The power of the Holy Ghost is real. I love this work. I love being a missionary. As I sit here and look back on the last week, I have no real regrets. It's a great feeling. I hope you all have a good week too. Trust in the Lord. He's there.

I love you all!
Elder Siebert