GENERAL CONFERENCE, THE SANTAIGO TEMPLE AND MEAT LOVERS PIZZA WITH CHEESY BITS!!

April 5, 2017

Hey mom!

This week things couldn't move that far along because of the Combatant Youth thing and also, General Conference. I don't have a ton to update you on with the investigators except in regards to Fransisca and Enrique! They were able to see the Saturday afternoon session of Conference and had a great experience! Fransisca, especially, was glued to the TV. We actually watched it in Carlos' house because he has a bunch of small kids and it was easier to not go to the stake center. Fransisca even mentioned she had a question about how the church views gays and she said the talk from Elder Holland (which was the bomb diggity, by the way) really helped answer her question! 
We're gonna teach them more about living prophets today and leave them a copy of the Living Christ and Proclamation to the Family. I'm really really hoping they'll continue to progress. 

Today, we had the awesome chance to go to the Temple!!! It was actually my first time in the Santiago Temple and it's A LOT smaller in person. I'd say it's pretty much like the Lubbock one. Afterward, we went to Pizza Hut and we got some meat lovers with Cheesy bits!!! 

That was also a really happy moment. 

In about a week I'll have a new companion because President basically told him he was leaving, so next week I"ll let you guys know who I'm with.

Another cool thing that happened was that Valentina Varas, the girl we helped reactivate in Las Americas, is thinking about going on a mission!!! She's been continuing super strong in the Church and even made all the missionaries there dope knit ties!!! Imma see if she'll make me one, because all the missionaries in the ward got one and they wore them to zone conference. They were wonderful! The only problem is, the Bishop there is being super lame from what I've heard. 

Anyway, that's the greater part of what happened this week.

Love you all. Have a good one!

-Elder Sierra

A DAY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

March 29, 2017

Sorry to be online so early but today's a holiday of civil disturbance and we need to be in the house at 3pm.  It's called Dia de Joven Combatiente (Day of the Young Combatant). We're gonna be inside all day and night so we're just gonna eat a lot of food.

Pretty neat huh? We also stay inside September 11th.  I just barely missed that one. We're gonna have a lot of choripan, coke and other junk food. Gotta go ham when you got nothing else to do, right?

This week we tried to get a lot done with the awesome investigators we have but lots of things got in the way and we didn't even get to teach them! We got to teach Javier and his mom (Nedin) but they weren't able to make it to church and they're quite a bit busy. We did, however, find this new family to teach, so now we're really growing the teaching pool. The mom (Deseña) was a reference from some members and the dad was a reference from the missionaries. We passed by a couple times but they didn't answer and we had a second reference for the husband, not knowing they were related. The husband's (Orlando) reference had the wrong address so that explains why we never could find them and then Monday, Orlando finds us on the street and says, "Hey, when are you going to visit us? It's been like 2 weeks" and we had never met him so we asked his name and got his real address and found out that it's all connected! 

Yesterday, we taught them and they were very receptive. It was pretty funny because Orlando was really happy to have the Book of Mormon, saying "Aw, sick, now we gots tons to read" which is really a translation from pretty ghetto Spanish so it was funny. It was kinda weird, though, because they talked about their son seeing various dark figures and beings walking around in their house and they weren't sure if it was for real or not. We blessed the home and asked them to read the Book of Mormon as a family. 

This week has been pretty cool, literally and figuratively. In 3 days I will be a THIRD through my mission, WHAT?! this is passing by kinda crazy fast! Anyway, hope everyone has a nice week!

Elder Sierra

PRETTY AWESOME WEEK!

March 22, 2017

Dear Family,

This week has been pretty awesome, actually! We've been working with Javier and he has been keeping all his commitments really well and understands a lot of what he reads from the Book of Mormon. We went by one evening to visit him and he wasn't home but his mom answered. We introduced ourselves and she said Javier had told her a lot about us and she was really thankful for us helping him so much. She then talked about how her grandfather converted to the church a year before he died and it was the happiest anyone had ever seen him. She was really receptive and said she'd come with Javier to church and support him and participate in our lessons, so that was just a splendid gift! 

Fransisca and Enrique are also progressing very well! We invited Fransisca to be baptized and she excepted the date May 20th very happily! We then told Enrique that he would have the chance to baptize her if he could also progress well enough. The main challenge with them will be getting them married but they said they had been wanting to for a while and the process isn't too hard here. It's also fairly cheap. 

On a less happy note, I found out a little while ago why Jimmy had stopped progressing even though he was on the brink of baptism. It turns out his best friend convinced him to help him sell drugs. So when the Elders found out they had to drop him.

Today for p-day we came in our pajamas to a chapel, brought a bunch of blankets, made a fort with chairs and made ice cream with plastic bags. Afterwards, we saw the new Jungle Book. It was pretty good. 

Also there was no "falling out" with Carlos haha. He just hasn't been taking many pictures I guess. He's actually started doing night classes to finish his last year of high school. The first day he walked in and the class was taking an English test. There must have been an error. However, since he had been attending our English classes in the chapel he was prepared and did well on the test despite starting the class late haha! 

Things have been going a good deal better in this sector and we've been blessed quite a bit! It's been pretty good! Have a great week! 

-Elder Sierra

IT'S SO NICE WHEN THEY APPLY OUR TEACHINGS!

March 15, 2017


So this week was a nice week!

That Javier guy I was talking about ended up not being home when he said, so that was a bit sad. Because of that, we couldn't invite him to church. However, we have a part-member family we're teaching. The dad, Enrique, we met about a month ago and by pretty incredible circumstances. We had nothing to do and I was like, Let's just go knock some doors! And then the very first one I knocked Enrique opened the door, half-drunk, and straight up invited us in! That never happens! So we went inside and he tells us he's a member but was baptized when he was, like, 15 and went inactive (that's the story of MANY here). He said he knew someone was going to come by that day to help him change his mind so we taught him a bit and set a return visit. Then we could never find him! After a month or so (or a week ago) we finally caught when they weren't busy and got to teach them! His wife is not a member but had so much interest in the church. We invited them to church on Sunday and they went and had a good experience. We're actually going to see them today.

Also on Sunday, we went to go to see if Javier was perhaps home and he was! He apologized for not being there at the appointed time but he had something he was doing (I forgot). He told us about how he was feeling really really bad one night and then he remembered how we talked about prayer and such and he prayed and said he immediately felt better! It was awesome to see because he just had such a resolution to change! We invited him to be baptized on the 9th of April and he was surprised we had so much faith in him but he was very excited. He also talked about how he wanted to stop smoking because he knew it was a bad habit. We challenged him to stop and to say prayers and read the Book of Mormon whenever he felt like smoking. So we'll see how that goes. It was a really exciting few days and now we just need to wait and see! 

That's about all that happened this week. Hope you all have a good one!

-Elder Sierra

P.S. In answer to your question mom: We did end up getting to 63 (attending sacrament meeting) one time. This last Sunday was 53, though. Three new people moved in, though! Two are Priesthood holders and one's a High Priest so we might get an Elders Quorum president! 

You want to hear a Spanish Mormon joke?

¿Por qué Nefi no puede jugar a fútbol? (Why can't Nephi play soccer?)

¡Porque rompe el arco! :D (Because he broke the 'arco')

Nephi broke the bow (arco) 

The goal post in Spanish is arco as well!

NO ACT OF FAITH GOES UNNOTICED BY THE LORD

March 8, 2017

ok... So this week was pretty normal except for when it wasn't, which was a little bit. The zone leaders asked us to fast as a zone for the benefit of the work therein. This is potentially the hardest zone (or so I've heard) because the leadership is a little whack and there's just a lot of old less actives that were poorly handled by the wards and prior missionaries. Despite all that, we've been finding some diamonds in the rough. Yesterday, we were going to see if some Haitian investigators were home (you gotta love them Haitians) and then some guy came up to us and spoke to us in English like, "Yo, can you come and talk to me in my apartment here?" And we were like, "Yeah, theses guys aren't home, so sure!" We went in and the guy (Javier) was talking about how his wife left him and he was fired from his job. I don't even know why he knows English cause we just went right in to talking to him about his various trials. He was crying a lot and was saying that he felt, like, maybe if he might pray that might work. It was really sad to see him in so much pain, but then we shared with him various truths and scriptures and showed him how he could apply it to the problems he's facing to help him overcome them. He said by the end that he felt a lot better and we're gonna see him tomorrow. He has a little chapter to read from the Book of Mormon and he was really excited to read it. It was neat because a lot of appointments fell through that day for us to eventually choose to pass by this one house of our investigators and then to be able to run into Javier. It just goes to show that no act of faith goes unnoticed by the Lord. 

We also had a really nice movie night in the ward. We watched 17 Miracles in Spanish. None of them had seen it before and it had a really edifying effect on the ward. 

Fun fact: in Chile they don't salt or butter their popcorn. They put sugar and oil on it! It's kinda kettle corn, basically.

Have a great week everyone!

Elder Sierra

Some pictures of our house (before we cleaned it up, unfortunately):

SACRAMENT NUMBERS ARE CLIMBING AND...WE'RE GONNA GET TO LEAVE THE MISSION!!!!

March 1, 2017

Dear Family,

Neither I nor my comp had transfers so everything's normal. Actually, in the other companionship, the Argentine left and, to be honest, it was a bit of a relief. I can usually get along with anyone just fine but he was just really rude at times (also nice at other times) and just constantly negative. We have a new elder in the house, Elder Hellbusch, so now we're 4 Americans. It's pretty fun but I hope our Spanish doesn't slip, haha... 

...The mission work is going well. We actually had 60 people in Sacrament meeting this last week (5 weeks ago it was 40!) and we were missing people that usually come, so we're really hopeful for saving the chapel (but more importantly getting a new one!!) We've been teaching a lot of children recently. We have 3 that we want to have a baptismal date with the next time we can visit them and 2 others that we're teaching that are going to be 8 when they're baptized. They have a less active parent so they'd technically be ward baptisms, but they don't really get much help from the ward so missionaries teach them. 

It's kinda hard to feel like you're accomplishing enough because there's also more you can do... but I'm just working and trying to improve. 

That's REALLY cool that Ari is making some dope swag goals! One thing I'd change about Utah is that there'd be more missionaries because there's really not any, and they're such a help for less actives! But the wards there are also really supportive.

Something interesting that has happened is that we had a big ol' conference with all the missionaries in the world and they said that we should worry less about less actives. They don't even count reactivations now!!! We still do some work because the ward doesn't do much but we're trying to get them to come with us to maybe do a hand off. There was a woman a couple weeks ago that came back to church and got a calling so, technically, she's a reactivation, so that was cool. 

Also, today for p-day we had a water balloon fight and it was a blast! It was nice because it's super hot here still and we never get to do water-related things. We even got a hose and a small fire house out. It got crazy! The zone leaders are trying to raise the enthusiasm in the zone and with the missionaries. 

Oh yeah! and Carlos and Susan (his wife) also did something really cool! They went to the airport to say goodbye to a missionary leaving and asked President personally if they could take us out of the mission to do an activity or something one P-day. Of course it's kinda a no, and president said that it's more of an area thing and there's actually 1/3 of the presidency that are with us. BUT he said we could go to the temple with them and then perhaps visit a place or do whatever on the way back!!! Wooo hooo!!!! WE'RE GONNA GET TO LEAVE THE MISSION!!!!

That's about all for this week, 

Love you all. Bye!!

-Elder Sierra

KFC SURPRISE AND OUR FIRST 'BIBLE BASH'

February 22, 2017

Dear Family,

So this week was very neat with a couple of funny stories.  First off, this happened like a week or two ago but I forgot to mention it: 

My comp and I were on our way to do divisions with our district leaders and were going to meet up at a food court in a metro station. We got there early and, all of a sudden, a guy who looked really German (there are some Germans here in Chile) came up to me and my comp and spoke to us in Spanish with quite a strange accent. 

Guy: Hey do you understand me?

Me: Yeah.

Guy: Cool. Come, I'm too full and don't want this chicken sandwich from KFC, so you can have it. Kapish?

Me: oh... ok

So this guy just came up to me and gave me a sandwhich like I was poor or something! But then I realized, I AM poor... and this sandwich looks pretty good... My comp didn't want it so our district leaders found me eating a KFC sandwich, laughing and quite perplexed. Later, I came to find out it was an $8 sandwich! And it was REALLY good. 

Sunday, we were leaving an apartment complex and a visibly drunk young man came up to us with his less drunk friend and invited us to come to his house in about 3 hours. It was pretty weird, but so are people when they're drunk, so we ended up heading over to his house around the time he mentioned and followed his vague directions to where he lived. We found him (still drunk) and his friends and family outside having a barbecue. We just started chatting with them and they handed my companion and me a fork with a piece of steak on it! We began getting to know them for about 10 minutes and they kept giving us steak on our forks and then gave us some soda. They then told us some people inside wanted to talk to us. We kinda wanted to go because we noticed they weren't super interested, but we were invited inside and didn't want to be rude and not accept.

We entered the house and there was an older mother and her adult daughter. We talked to them and they had some questions and we ended up teaching them about the Restoration. They turned off the TV and settled down a couple of loud children and the Spirit was really strong! Just when we finished, a middle-aged guy came in and was like, "Hey, what's the truth?" and we were like, "What?" He repeated the question and everyone listening was confused and he was like, "the Bible! DUH" and we were like, "Well, yeah." Then he began saying things like the Book of Mormon might be neat but the Bible's the only word of God there can be, and thus began the closest thing to a "Bible-bash" I've had on my mission. It wasn't really a Bible-bash because it was actually just us pulling out scriptures from the Bible that contradicted his own falsely conceived ideas of its nature. And the guy didn't even know the Bible well- like at all. We looked up his OWN scriptures FOR him because we knew where they were and he didn't, and then we explained how it clearly didn't say what he thought it said. We didn't even do it for us or for him, but so the people we were teaching in the room could see the authority we carried with us. It was obvious to everyone in the room. It was a funny and neat experience and we have a return visit so we'll see how it goes. 

That's the bulk of what happened other than we've been just enjoying the sun (actually not really- it's hot!) and doing ward activities. We're actually getting almost the same attendance at activities as Sacrament meeting (which is great and sad at the same time!!

There is progress, it just seems like it can't be with the same person for more than a lesson or two, but that's February here in STGO. We got dope swag ward lists that have all the baptized members of the ward (approx. 500 for us) and it's very organized in a nice folder with some pages with filters. It's gonna help a LOT with the work, we think, and finally, we can actually update the state of everything in the ward because the list is all on the drive. We take notes on all the less actives and actives we visit and put it in the computer via Google Drive and then, later, peeps put it in the MLS (Church program thingy?) 

To answer your question, the best part of being a missionary = having a better testimony, love for the Savior and Gospel and then getting the chance to share it. It's really a bonus if they accept it to a lasting extent because I've learned to find joy in being able to just share it (though of course it's SUPER better when they accept).

So that's all for this week!

-Elder Sierra