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


Friday, October 24, 2014

OPERATION IGNITE!
 
Letter from Oct. 13, 2014

Hey Mom,

About my new area, the place is literally bursting with energy. The members here are ON FIRE! I've realized that this area is definitely hard. The area is huge and it's widespread, not to mention, the concentration of Latinos are all over the place and practically hidden. However, Elder Osorio and I have identified the problem: one, we have not explored other areas, two, the stake is unaware of our circumstances, and three, we have been contacting the same people over and over again. To combat the problems that we have here, we created a plan of action. Because my companion and I both have plans for the military in the future, we came up with, "Operation Ignite!". Like the name, we want to ignite the Spanish work here in El Dorado. We have 3 objectives that we are going to meet. We want to start growing a pool of progressing investigators, we want to have firm STAKE member support, and we want to reactivate the very small group of members and recent converts that we have to solidify our current group. We have the details all planned out and we have met with a few of the ward mission leaders from around the stake, our bishop, and our stake president. They are all behind us 100%. We have received 4 referrals after implementing this operation two days ago. We have an investigator already, named Margarita Mendoza, who is progressing towards baptism. We are going to set a date with her for this month. We are very stoked. We can feel the energy and the urgency of the work here. We can't wait to see the fruits of it all. El Dorado is definitely going to ignite. The area has so much potential. The real problem that this area has had is the fact that the missionaries that worked here were not that experienced and also weren't very creative. 
Elder Osorio is the perfect companion for me to have here. He has been out for 8 months and is still figuring it all out, but he will be just fine. He is a fast learner. The guy is also very organized. I have done what I can to help him, but he has done 80% of the work in organizing the area books, the registries, dividing the area maps accordingly, and he has been making files for the members in El Dorado that speak Spanish, so we can use them to help aid our work here. The guys is really on top of things. He is also a native from Mexico. His Spanish is fluent, which is a bonus! I didn't want to help another missionary work on his language while we were here. In short, work is progressing here and we are very excited to make it all explode in the City of Gold. 

I am happy to hear things are going [good] at home...I also hope that Benjamin will be able to continue to excel in martial arts. He is pretty good at being basically great at everything he does. And from what Dad has been telling me, he has been a very busy boy and also a great help to you. That does me good to see that he really has magnified his callings, especially as a son, above and beyond the call of duty. I keep him and, of course, all of you in my prayers. Not much more to mention. I love you all. 

Elder Sierra

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