WELCOME to Elder John-Gregory Sierra's mission blog! For the next two years Elder Sierra will be serving as a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the California Sacramento Mission. We hope you will enjoy his experiences, shared through weekly letters. We will post his letters each week and any pictures he may send.

Write Elder Sierra

WRITE ELDER SIERRA!

Missionaries love to get letters (and care packages)! If you'd like to write to Elder Sierra, please use the following addresses:

MISSION OFFICE:
Elder John-Gregory Sierra
California Sacramento Mission
8267 Deseret Ave
Fair Oaks, CA 95628

EMAIL:
john-gregory.sierra@myldsmail.net


Monday, January 13, 2014

THE LORD ALWAYS BLESSES US, JUST NOT ALWAYS IN THE WAY WE THINK OR WANT.

Well Mom, 

As far as missionary work is going out here, it's not getting much better. We dropped Marcos and Miguel and it's been going down-hill with all of our investigators, except for Maria Orozco. She has been doing very well and understands the promptings from the Spirit. We invited her to church and we are keeping our fingers crossed. Maria is a single mother of three beautiful girls, aged 12, 7, and 5 and is very in tune to the Spirit. She recognizes the difference when we visit with her. She is struggling a lot, but she has understood the restoration and the plan of salvation well, and has accepted a baptismal invite. We are very excited for her and we will issue her a date soon. She's a very wonderful person. 
 I will admit that I was feeling down and I was wondering why I was having no success as a missionary right now. I felt like I wasn't getting much help and that I was just going through the motions. I then rekindled my fire last Monday and went to WORK!! Got about 26 lessons (never happens) and we just blew up our area by just talking to literally EVERYONE!! But, despite our efforts, nothing was happening. I was kinda giving up hope and then my companion got really sick. He had an accident when he was about 13 and has a crack in his head that causes severe migraines and the one he had last Sunday was very bad. He couldn't even see straight. I kinda lost it after that.  While I was thinking about all the failures I was having yesterday, Christian called and asked me if we had plans for our p-day. We told him that we had no plans and he wanted us to hang with him at his place for a bit. We went over and enjoyed watching Ephraim's Rescue, eating sandwiches his mom provided, played cards (not poker or anything like that!) and just had a real good time. 
 
While we had fun, I recognized that I did have success. We reactivated Christian and his family. Christian submitted his papers and is in the works of preparing for a mission. We did much better than gain a baptism, we added another future missionary to our ranks. I then recalled how we have also been bringing back families to the ward, helping them to understand that we go to church to better ourselves and if other people try to tear you down, stick with the people that love you. You will feel the Spirit strongly and you will not feel alone. Mom, you should see how the chapel has been filling up since when I first got here. We have reactivated about 5-7 families. The work is truly amazing and the Lord always blesses us,  just not always in the way we think or want. I love you Mom. Talk to you later.

Elder Sierra
 

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