Welcome to Elder Benjamin Sierra's Missionary Blog. Elder Sierra will be serving for two years in the Chile Santiago South Mission as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.



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ELDER BENJAMIN SIERRA
CHILE SANTIAGO SOUTH MISSION
FRANCISCO ARANDA 530
SAN BERNARDO
REGION METROPOLITANA (SANTIAGO)
CHILE

EMAIL:

benjamin.sierra@myldsmail.net

Thursday, June 29, 2017

HAITIANS HERE, HAITIANS THERE, HAITIANS EVERYWHERE AND...WATER IS FOR DOGS?! 

April 20, 2017

Hey! 

This week was pretty legit! First off, we went to the temple with our ward mission leader and another awesome member in our ward for their endowments! It was pretty cool!Inline image 1

The Santiago temple is kinda small but it's swell and it's always awesome to head out to the temple whenever we get the chance! 

The last couple of days we also have been super busy! Like, really busy! Yesterday, was the once-in-ten-year census so everyone had the day off and everyone had to stay inside until they got counted. After we had been counted in the morning we were able to go ham on all our investigators and people we wanted to see because everyone would be home. We had a ton of set appointments that day (which is less common in our mission) and got a lot done. 

We started teaching a 14-year-old girl in a part member family and she accepted a date to get baptized. Her name's Kimberly and she's pretty nice, but also really shy, so we're trying to get the young women to help fellowship her. 

Another super crazy thing happened this week! In the last two days we've found 12 new Haitians to teach! It all started when we saw this Haitian next to the church building by a bike repair shop and talked to him. He was pretty nice and accepted a visit. When we went by, he introduced us to his two cousins and we started to teach the 3 of them the Restoration. Part-way into the lesson, 3 more hear us teaching and show up and join in! When we end the lesson my companion hands around his agenda so we can get all their names and info and we plan another appointment to visit them!  Through very similar means, we find 3 more Haitians to teach and then yesterday, we also found a new family while they were outside playing with their kids. They said they wouldn't be home anytime but in the morning so we decided to visit them this morning during our first hour of p-day. Only the mom was up but it was a really good lesson and she accepted a baptismal invitation. 

So now, we're just scrambling around trying to make sure we can retain them all. The majority of them speak Spanish pretty well, but some don't and we use the French & Creole materials we have to help teach them, as well as using Haitians who can translate. We woke up early this morning to go to the chapel to print out invitations for the Spanish classes that we'll be holding twice a week and then we booked it to our appointment. Right at the end of P-day we'll be booking it again and we'll teach the group of 6 Haitians again. 

Things have been a bit hardcore lately and it's a joy to be so busy in the work of the Lord! More updates next week!

-Elder Sierra 

Answers to questions from home:

The chileans here drink soda like crazy! They almost never drink pure water! It's either sugary juice or soda! Sometimes, even if you ask for water they'll give you coke and say "el agua es para los perros" (water is for dogs)  I'm drinking water, and I'm gonna do it more, too. There's a healthy eating competition in our mission because the people here eat so poorly. The mission's a bit worried so they have a point system and everything!

Fransisca and Enrique have been having a tough time, mainly Fransisca. We were been able to share The Family: A Proclamation to the World and talk about marriage and it went well. We even committed them to talk about a date but then we didn't get to see her this week because her mom has some health problems and she's really sad about that. We think that when Enrique isn't home she tries to distance herself and doesn't answer the door because we've passed by 4 times and she hasn't been home even when it looks like she is. So, she could really use some prayers. 

Yeah, Haitians are super awesome, just a great great people! It's hard a lot of times because they may not know Spanish well or work a lot, or are moving around a lot because they're unestablished immigrants most of the time. But, we found 2 families that are quite established that speak Spanish pretty dang well!

I heard you're basically penpals with Susan! 
She's super awesome and it's true, you ARE the only missionary mom she gets to talk with! (at least from the States) She said she really likes talking with you. They sometimes mention things they may want in a package from the states and I spoke to her yesterday wondering if there was anything she wanted and she was like "Pff, I don't need you, I can talk to your mom directly muwhahaha" She's really cool and is always helping us out when she can! 

These people think they have a winter! It's really not that bad. We also get heating pads to put on our matresses but the people are always reall


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