MARIACHIS IN CHILE?

October 12, 2016

Dear Family,

Last P-day we got to go to the President's house which was really big (like about our house) and very beautiful. They live in the nice part of Santiago which is outside of our mission. It's literally called La Reina haha. 

Last week was pretty good. We made a lot of progress not only with our investigators, but also the youth program has been having some awesome growth! Most of the youth are recent converts and we just got one ordained to a teacher and who received the priesthood last Sunday. And, he and another girl got temple recommends. We're having a temple trip on Saturday and our mission president was super cool about it. We called him for permission and were like, "Hey President." 

"Hey how's the calling?"

"Great! we have some youth who just got their temples recommends an-" 

"So when are you going?...."

He's just really chill with rules and says he prefers to trust that we know what we're doing. 

We also set up English classes in the Church for every Wednesday night starting tomorrow. Bishop even announced it twice during sacrament meeting for us!

Another neat thing is that I'll be in a triplet starting Sunday night because one of the missionaries in our casa is finishing his mission on Sunday. It should be some good fun but it means we'll have to walk a lot more than we usually do and we already walk like 7-9 miles a day! 

Anyway, for this p-day we went to a park in a nicer part of town to play baseball and frisbee. It was fun and we went to an outlet store afterward and I got the jersey of a local team here called "Cholo Cholo". It was a killer deal (about $15). There's another rival team in Chile called "La U" (La Universidad de Chile) It's a club team like normal but it's named after the local college. When they have their classicos here people go nuts. 

Oh yeah, I also got the chance to give my first blessing in Spanish! Which was like my second blessing ever! I was super nervous when the woman asked me to, but everything went really well and I knew what I had to say. How to say it was a bit of a different story and that was rough, but I communicated everything I needed to. 

Anyway that's all for this week! Love you all!

-Elder  Sierra

P.S. I also forgot to mention I'll be leading my sector tomorrow for the first time! I have splits tomorrow but I'll be staying! I'll have a Chilean companion who's one of my favorites. There are four missionaries generally to a ward (or area). We split up the ward into two sectors. This entire time I've either been with my comp in my own sector or I've go on a split to a different area, so I have never been the leading missionary who knows the sector best. But tomorrow I will be and I'll be leading my temporary comp to each lesson and calling most of the shots. It'll be neat and our sector is 750 meters by 3 km. I did the math super fast. We work in about a square mile area!

We were at this one dude's house for dinner on Sunday and he has all these instruments. The funny thing is, he's actually kinda horrible at all of them! Elder Scott asked if he could see his mariachi suit and eventually he just got the whole shabang out and we started taking pictures. The guy also brought out his revolver and the other elders took pictures with it. I almost did but they put it away. Upon further inspection though it was loaded lol.

A GREAT GENERAL CONFERENCE AND NOW PAPA JOHNS, VOLLEYBALL AND STAR WARS! CAN IT GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS?

Oct. 5, 2016

Dear Family,

Sorry I'm on so early (for you guys). I get to go to the president's house for Papa John's, volley ball and Star Wars, so I gotta get my emails done early!

 

Wow, it's been officially two months since I left home! That's pretty neat! 

Conference weekend was such a flippin' blast!!! We had to go to our stake center to listen to it but they had a classroom playing it in English so that was bomb! Also, we brought our investigator Coni (Constanza) to conference. She's basically a member, but hasnt 'realized it yet. We've had her for two weeks and she went to ALL FOUR SESSIONS!!! Half the members in our ward didn't go to all four sessions! Heck, I'm not sure if the Bishop went to all four sessions! She was so flippin' chill and said she liked it and she felt good about it! She even grabbed my comp's notepad during Elder Robert D. Hales´ talk and copied down a scripture he mentioned, ¨"We love Him, because he first loved us." (Which is also my mission scripture so that was SO cool)

Since we were about a 25-30min walk away from the ward and our house, everyone just stayed and ate lunch in the church during the first break. We had rice with chicken both days so nothing out of the ordinary there. Then, after the next session, we did contacts by the metro station. It was a really fun weekend and listening to the words of the Prophet and Apostles was very refreshing!

Yeah, so my comp and I are over all the young men in the ward, but that's only about 5 active members. We're trying to raise that number through getting more kids to mutual, which worked last time; we had about 12. We also have this big teaching pool of recently converted young women that we teach at a member's house about twice a week. It started with one recent convert, Ana, and her other less recent convert friend, Camila. Then they got their other recent convert friends and through them, we got a reference for a single mother and her child that were inactive. Her daughter's 13 so she's about the average age of the 5-6 that we teach and we asked the groups to help in fellowshipping her and taking her to mutual/conference. She went to both and gets along awesome with the other girls. We're doing what we can to reactivate the mom who is a very friendly and happy person, but is working almost 24/7, which includes Sundays. That's actually a big reason there are so many inactives here. 

Anyway, I think the ward will grow quite a bit in a few weeks or so and I'm excited to see what lies ahead. My Spanish is getting better and I'm leading more and more lessons and talking to members a lot more. I've been adjusting quite well to Chile but I still miss certain things about the States, namely Chick-Fil-A. But, I'm having Papa-Johns today at my president's house so I'm happy!

Love you all

-Elder Sierra

Elder Simms and Me!

Photobombing Elder Simms!

WE GOT TO TEACH THE SICKEST OBJECT LESSON EVER!

September 28, 2016

Dear Family,

Wow! What an incredible week! I almost cried reading JG's email. It's great to see how happy he is!

In terms of this week, days Weds-Sat were probably the hardest of my mission so far. It was the first time I had really felt homesickness since leaving and it was no fun. It got a lot better, though, and I realized it's just something you have to learn how to manage. People say here that you won't go a day without thinking about your family and it's true. There's just no way not to think about you guys during my time when I'm not out on the streets, but I've learned how to deal with it as I focus more and more on our growing teaching pool here.

Yesterday, we had this awesome lesson with our golden investigator, Constanza. She an 18-year-old student in college and we took another member the same age over to teach with us. We taught her out on her patio and she gave us some water (with gas so it was basically
disgusting but we drank it to be polite). The investigator we brought, Harmony (people love giving their kids Gringo names here), accidentally hit her glass and it fell over and shattered. She was super apologetic and sorry but Elder Sims and I were basically bouncing in our chairs because that meant we finally got to do the SICKEST object lesson ever! And it was right in time during the lesson! Elder Sims used the shards of glass to explain how the church fell and was fractured, then I talked about Joseph Smith and the Restoration and about the Sacred Grove and was like "seeing these shards of glass representing all the churches at the time, which do you think Christ said was the correct one?" [Constanza]:"well, it looks like none of them 'cause they aren't the glass"...[Me:]"Bingo!" (disclaimer- I didn't actually say 'Bingo'). So, we later invited her to be baptized an she agreed to on November 5th! We pretty stoked for her and that's 2 investigators we have right now with baptismal dates. We hope to commit Alfonso to a date this week.

Other than that, I really don't think I have any stories to tell you. We found another family but we'll see if that comes to fruition or not soon. Today for p-day, we went to a church and played futsol and ate chilean bbq
(choripan and hamburger). It was a lot of fun and I'm getting more and more formidable in soccer. Next week, or the week after, I get to go to the president's house with the other greenies for some Papa Johns,
volley ball, and Star Wars!

Anyway, I hope that gives a good idea of what's going on over here.

Love you all!

-Elder Sierra

THE RICCARDI LETTER

Sept. 21, 2016

This is is a REALLY Cool letter! I read it a couple of days ago and it's given me so much motivation for the work! It's a long read but totally worth it.

THE RICCARDI LETTER:

drive.google.com/file/d/0B22_4gaeybhbS3I2Yi16dHhKeWJkbWpBUlBBTzF4TEZJNm1B/view

CHILE IS...QUITE A WILD RIDE... BUT THE LORD TRUSTS US HIS SERVANTS

September 21, 2016

Wow,

So Chile is... quite a wild ride! I kinda don't know where to begin, but I think I'll start with the language. If you think you know Spanish pretty well and are looking for some humility, just visit Chile. The people here are basically speaking the Thick Scottish accent of the Spanish world. It's so crazy because they have TONS of slang and they speak like they're on a shock clock or something. One of the things they do also is drop S´s at the end of words. I haven't heard "mas o menos" in, like, 5 days. It's just "ma-o meno" and some people don't pronounce S´s at all! They also have this "Po" thing that's like a filler word for them. It means absolutely nothing but some say it every other sentence. "¡Ya po!" "Yo se po!" "ayudame po" Nevertheless, I'm improving a lot and like what one of the Elders in my house says, "It gets easier every day". My comp, Elder Sims, also says my Spanish is really really good for a greenie so that's nice. It just sucks still to not always know what's going on.

Our house is a bit dirty and sketchy but not too bad. It has no heating but lots of blankets so we dont have many problems, especially since summer is really starting now. 

Saturday, we got this reference for this old guy named Alfonso. We went by to talk to him and he was very nice and quite interested. All of the sudden though, a guy came up to my comp and started talking to him. My comp then told me I had to talk to Alfonso solo! It was a super-scary task because older men are the hardest to understand because they often have no teeth and have a wicked accent. So I just conversed with Alfonso for a bit and then started introducing him to the Gospel. Eventually, I taught him the Plan of Salvation completely and he was loving it. I was using a pamphlet and he was asking me if he could borrow it to read before I was even done. So I finished up with Alfonso and committed him to read, pray, etc., which he was very excited to do and then my comp was done with the other dude about the same time. I told him about Alfonso and how it was pretty dang difficult and he then told me how his guy just came up to him and told him he couldn't decide between going to work or taking his life. My comp talked him down and shared a little message with and got his info to pass to other missionaries (he lives outside our area). The guy's wife left him and his two kids and he was just getting tired of life. By the end my comp got him smiling and he went off to work. It was a bold reminder about how important our work is here and how much the Lord trusts us as his servants.

On a less serious note, the food here has been pretty nice. We get fed every lunch except p-days and we don't do a lot for dinners since dinner is hardly a meal here. They just pack it in for lunch and have a snack late at night. Since we don't have tons of money we do things like have cereal with milk and then pour some basic instant oats in there. I've actually been eating surprisingly healthy for breakfast. The lunches however are at the mercy of the members which means a lot of bread, rice, or potatoes, and Coke. They love their Coke here.

But, yeah, the people here are not huge on health. They don't eat wonderful nor do they keep their living spaces clean. It's not like we live in a super ghetto area, people will just not better their living circumstances. It's usually what you see in the difference between the active and less-active. 

The ward here is kinda small. Around 40ish members. This last Sunday, it was only 26 because of the 18th of September which is the Chilean Independence Day. If every member actually went to church every week we would have about 80-100 active members. But the thing is, they lack ánimo. 'Animo' is a specific Spanish word that kinda means 'excitement', but also will, like the will to actually go to church or read the scriptures. So we are constantly passing by less active member homes as well as doing contacts. The members are nice here but very few of them help with the work, like... none of them. So we never get referrals. 

Today we bought a fardo which is a 40 kilo bag of ties. It's kinda crazy but sadly, it was actually a really ugly one and there weren't many good ties. 

Let me know what else you'd like to hear about. 

Love, 

Elder Sierra 

P.S. This is is a REALLY Cool letter! I read it a couple days ago and it's given me so much motivation for the work! It's a long read but totally worth it.

THE RICCARDI LETTER:

drive.google.com/file/d/0B22_4gaeybhbS3I2Yi16dHhKeWJkbWpBUlBBTzF4TEZJNm1B/view