Weekly Report: Not-So-Heavenly Peach, Translating, Baptism

Hey Everyone!
Happy Pi Day! My dad would be so proud that I remembered this very important nerdy day. However, I'm sure he'd be disappointed if he knew I had to look up how to write the symbol for pi in my calculator. I could only think of a Chinese character that looks similar to it.

Food Review: Celestial Lie
So this last week, a guy in English gave us something called a Xian1tao3. It basically translates to Celestial Peach (I looked it up and my electronic dictionary and it came up with 'heavenly peach' which did not help me at all. Thanks, dictionary, I can directly translate characters too). Yeah, huge lie. I took a bite out of it and thought it wasn't worth completing. So I ate about half of it and then threw it away. It basically tasted like a really worthless sweet potato. I felt so jipped. Hope we don't end up eating those in the Celestial Kingdom. 1 celestial stupids out of 5 (yeah, my English is getting worse. Not my fault. I've had one American companion in half a year. I've spoken Chinese almost exclusively throughout that whole time period.)

So, there's an American family in the ward, and I always have to translate for them, and yesterday, the kids were watching the We Believe movie in Young Mens. Well, the problem is that when it's not speaking in English, it's in a language I can't understand with really fast Chinese subtitles. I thought I pulled it off pretty well though. Got the overall message right. Proud, mom?

This morning, we had a really strange experience. Yesterday, I was contacted by a drunk, homeless guy and I promised him that if he wouldn't drink, we'd go meet with him today and share a message that would change his life. He was very excited and set up his own time for this morning. Anyways, we got permission to leave early and then went and taught him. Started out great, and then this guy who's been looking out for him, Mr. Wang, came by and was like, "let me let you meet his friend. He's living in my house" And I immediately felt like that was not what I wanted to do. So I resisted. The guy, Mr. Wu, tried to pull me over and after trying for five minutes to convince him, we went over. Turns out the friend was a Christian preacher. Strange man who acted really subservient, but was really controlling at the same time. More than anything, I kind of got the voodoo witch doctor vibe from him. There was a very different spirit in the room, and it seemed like everyone there was kind of in the thrall of this spirit (why would Mr Wang, who is Buddhist, let this preacher stay in his house for a month? all very strange). We got out of there after sharing quickly about prophets and the BoM. It was just kind of strange. Thought you'd all be interested in that.

Well, we're still being blessed here in Jiayi. Got to baptize another friend yesterday. His name is Zhao4 Qian4 Wei3, or for ease of expression, Ben (I only learned this three days ago). The first time I met with him, I wanted to kill him. He came to English, and was added to meet afterwards. So we were struggling to teach a lesson fast enough to get home (we have to ride a ways) before 9:30 so we wouldn't have to call for permission to still be out. It was just not working out. Then we met with him again a couple of days later, and he was amazed that we couldn't spend more than 45 minutes tops with him. "What?" he said, "but I wanted to make some foreign friends, learn English, and learn some history on the side." I nearly slammed my head into the table right then and there. But he came to church, and then he started to change. Ben jelled really good with on of the recent converts in the ward (they are the two funniest guys ever) and started to gain a testimony. He stopped asking history questions and started to listen. He'd joke around, but he cared about what was being taught. I know that the Gospel changes people. Yesterday, while he bore his testimony, he talked about how the Book of Mormon helped his personality get better. It was really cool. I'm very fortunate to have baptized him. We've been very blessed lately. People just show up. I still have yet to contact someone really good here in Jiayi, but the Lord makes up for it by sending people our way. It's very cool.

Well, I hope you're all doing great back home. Thanks for everyone who's been supporting me by writing, especially that father of mine. He's a saint. I love you all and wish the best for you in this coming week. Love,
Elder Siebert