THEY WORK PICKS UP AND ELDER SIERRA LEARNS TO MAKE YERBA MATÉ

October 4, 2017

Wow, so this week we had lots of work to do and had some cool experiences. With my new companion, Elder McKane, we started working on getting some contact with our investigators because the independence days and my former companion leaving the sector kind of slowed us down. We got a couple of lessons in with Alexander, however, after the last one, we think it's time to drop him. We're going to leave him with a chapter to read in the Book of Mormon, but he recognizes he isn't doing his part and told us that, basically, he doesn't want to do his part either, so it's pretty sad, but there's nothing more we can do. 

Despite losing Alex and not being able to find some other investigators, we've found some great new ones that we're really excited about! The other day, we decided to contact on a less familiar street and nobody was home or, if they were, they were not receptive. We literally got to the last house and a woman came out and greeted us surprisingly nicely. We introduce ourselves and it turns out that she used to see the missionaries in another part of town. I said, "Great! Did they ever share anything with you?" She said "No, they just ate with us." *facepalm*

Ok, so we talked to her and it also turns out she needs to finish an extension to her home that would basically triple her living space and right now they're very cramped. We asked if we could share a message with her family and she said, "Yes, when they're all home. Come back Sunday." Sweet!

We came back on Sunday and got to teach a lesson to her family of 5! (husband and 3 kids) We chatted with them and taught the Plan of Salvation and they were all very interested and had many good questions on baptism, death, and authority! At the end, we extended a baptismal invitation to them and they all accepted! 

It kinda seems like a normal story, but in our mission, it was kinda crazy to find an entire family where all were interested in the Gospel and were able to listen to us together!

Apart from that, we've found some very nice Haitians that have visited an LDS church before and we've set up some times to meet with them. They're really excited to learn more about the Church. 

In other news, Elder McKane is a Maté enthusiast (Yerba maté is a drink made from steeping dried yerba mate leaves)and he taught me a little on how to better prepare it. (I had always been bad at it) Ironically, he's way more into mate than my Argentine companion was! We got some nice flavors, Forrest Fruits and Guaraná. There's also a cool family in our ward that "deals" maté for us. They go up to downtown and pick up maté there for cheap and we pay them back. So when I get home, I'll be a master "cebador".

Sidenote:

Since I've never been a big NFL fan my comp has been training me to be a Kansas City Chiefs fan. So every now and then I say things like 

"Well, are you a Broncos fan?" 

"Yes"

"Well I was gonna say it could be worse..."

And then my comp gets really happy with me. 

And a funny story!

Today, we watched the 6th Star Wars with part of the Zone because my comp loves Star Wars but had never seen it. We were watching the movie, all chill like, and there's the part where the Ewok shows up and is speaking his gibberish and then out of the blue he just perfectly pronounces "Chucha"- a Chilean swear-word- and everyone just dies! (Translates to "Dang it") It was used in perfect context and everything! Good thing there were no Chileans there! 

Well, that was my week! Sorry I don't have any pictures but I'll get some next week!

Love you all. Have a good one!

-Elder Sierra

WARD PARTY FOR MEMBERS ONLY...WHAT THE WHAT?!

September 27, 2017

Dear Family,

This week, we had a ward party for the Chilean Independence day, which was cool, but also super lame! It was cool because it was an awesome ward activity: lots of food, people dancing cueca, games. It was great! However, people (like Queene, our super awesome recent convert) asked Bishop if they could invite people, like non-member friends and family, and he said no because there wouldn't be enough food...

But you know who the members DID invite? Their extended family from other wards in the stake who were already members. So, really, no purpose was served except partying, and they made sure not to have investigators there. Elder Bellido and I were kinda mad, but that sums up our ward and many others in Chile. They don't really care that much about sharing the Gospel if most of their family is LDS and they have enough LDS friends to not feel lonely.

Well anyway, we did get transfers. Elder Bellido left, I'm staying in this same ward, we're continuing as DLs and my new companion is Elder McKane! He is super fun and really enthusiastic! He's from Draper, UT, and has been in the mission for 11 months. It's been really nice because he's a lot more relaxed and patient and that just makes things easier for me and less stressful. 

We had a rocky start to our first day, though! We had to take a bus back to our house from the stake center because we had his bags, and the two directions for the bus are really close and I took the wrong one! We ended up going about 30 minutes in the wrong direction! We ended up at the end of the line and I talked to the guys there and they sent us on the same bus going the other way and we finally got to the house! But, I think I may have left a backpack on the bus with one of my notebooks, a water bottle and some other stuff. That was kind of frustrating.

Our first day was pretty good. We got to do a lot of proselyting and it was just kind of refreshing. I feel like a lot more will be able to get done now. We found some investigators, made some visits, and we even got a really good reference in a pick-up game of basketball! We got the district pretty excited too. Monday I gave the class on "hablar con todos" (talk to everyone) because we had an area seventy, Elder Bragg, give us a zone conference a couple weeks ago and he talked about that a lot and said that if we need to talk to 600 people to get a baptism, then that would be 21 people a day for a baptism every month. So I was like, "Well, what if we just do that?" so we're going to keep track and strive for 21 people a day. 

Today was a fun p-day. We played water-balloon volleyball,10/10, highly recommend. We also wanted to watch a movie so we checked President's "approved" (or so we thought) movie library and saw the Fantastic Four. We thought, ok! We started watching it and then stopped watching it... we're pretty sure President never approved it. It was pretty lame anyway. And now we're here writing! 

All in all I'm excited about this week, I think a lot will change and I'm happy! 

Have a good one everybody!

-Elder Sierra

A NEW HOME, FAULTY PANTS, AND CHILEAN INDEPENDENCE MEANS EATING ASADO FOR DAYS ON END...

September 20, 2017

So this week was kinda slow because of the Chilean Independence celebrations! Here, they do quite a bit. Everyone was off work from Saturday to Wednesday and here for their parties they usually do cook-outs. Like, every day! So Sunday was our first day with asado for lunch and that was pretty fun! Then comes Monday, then Tuesday, and now today, we had a zone activity, also celebrating Chilean independence, also with asado. We're kinda dying right now. Both my companion and I are having digestive nightmares! 

Something really awesome happened this week, too! 

Since I arrived to this zone (about 3 months ago) we've been living in an apartment that's pretty nice but has a really lame flaw. It's super humid and the walls and just about anything near the walls grow fungus! We lost a couple pairs of socks, my comp lost a backpack, me a wallet, and some other stuff had fungus! We would talk to the Pension Secretary but he said there was nothing he could do because the owner didn't want to do anything about it. Now, in our district we have a companionship that also lives alone fairly close by. As we're doing inspections we were thinking about how cool it would be if we lived together, because the house used to be for 8 missionaries anyway, and then I was like, "Wait, what if we just talk to the office?..." So we did. And they said yes, but were moving kinda slow about it and then my comp got mad and told them what was happening in our house and told the office to change us and that he wouldn't sleep one more night in our house.... so then they changed us that same day! 

Now there's four of us in the house and it's SO MUCH better!!! Living with just one companionship in the house is so boring but having another just livens everything up! We cook a lot more now and every night, we play B.S.! It's quite the change so we're pretty happy! 

We also got to do a really fun service project on Friday and Saturday. There was a house in our zone that burned down almost to the ground and we got to help take it apart! (So, really, fun for us, not the homeowner)

We broke apart walls and destroyed roofs and all kinds of stuff! There'll be some pictures!

Another funny story. The other day, I found some clothes left behind in a house that fit me and were in pretty good shape so I kept them. Among them were a pair of grey pants. The fit but they were slim fit and were pretty tight, especially to be riding a bike. One day, I was wearing them and as I hopped off my bike, my pants RIP! But like, a lot!!! Basically, the entire seam around the crotch ripped out! We had just arrived to lunch so I had to go in with my backpack in front of my pants and keep it on the down low during lunch. But then, when we were about to leave, and I didn't think she'd found out, she just stood at the door and didn't go inside. I was waiting for her to go inside to jump on my bike but she didn't do anything. Then she said, "Elder, I know what happened!" and started laughing hysterically!  I'm pretty sure that made it into the Whatsapp group of the Relief Society. 

This week we had a good lesson with Alex but he hasn't been doing more lately so we're worried about him and have gotten to the point where if he doesn't keep his commitment this week we may have to drop him which would be lame. We have some other new investigators but we've had nearly no opportunities to teach due to the independence celebrations. We'll have to see how things go this week. 

Anyway hope everyone's doing well. Have a great week!

-Elder Sierra

P.S. Notes from a chat with Elder Sierra regarding teaching whole families which spilled over into the state of the wards and branches:

"The problem with Chile is that the nuclear family is pretty dead. In my experience, 85% of children are born out of wedlock, outside of marriage. No one plans their families; they just get pregnant and then stay together or split... It's a bit tough to teach the law of chastity. In the church, there are very few wards that are complete with all their organizations. A lot of ward would probably die without missionaries. But the youth who are active generally do go on missions. A young woman we helped re-activate in another area is now serving in Honduras!"

Giving service to a house that had burned