I WILL RUN TO THE FINISH! AND...RICKY IS FINALLY GETTING BAPTIZED!!!

Letter from New Year's Day 2015

Note to Dad:

I have already accepted such a challenge. The Lord has asked it of me. I will run to the finish. It means that my last transfer will go by the fastest, but it also means that the work will hasten and move along. My goal is to leave a STRONG foundation for the Spanish group so that when missionaries come in, they will no longer need to say, "Let's make a game plan!" There will already be a game plan. Instead, they will ask, "What needs to be done next?" I will achieve this goal and more, if I can. I have been honored to finish my mission in the El Dorado area and leave my mark. I will come home with my shield, with my honor, with my head held high......and exhausted. I love you too, Dad. I accept your challenge. I will talk to you next week.

Elder Sierra

Hi Mom,

I just got online and was talking to Ricky, telling him, THAT I GOT PERMISSION FROM PRESIDENT TO BAPTIZE HIM!!

I AM SO HAPPY! He called me today saying that if I'm not there, there will be no baptism. I am real excited... I love Ricky to death. He is one awesome convert.

I enjoyed Skyping with you all. It was weird because I knew in six weeks, I was going to see you all again face to face. However, it gave me great comfort to know that you were all happy and are okay. 

Well, we just had transfers yesterday. My brother, Elder Osorio (one of my closest companions) has been called to serve as a DL in East Sac. I was very sad to see him go, and from what he told me, he was very sad to leave me. We accomplished so much together and we had hoped to serve one more transfer together, but life goes on and he had to move on to bigger and better things. My new companion is Elder Mortensen. The guy looks a LOT like Jace (I found that very weird). Anyway, he is from South Jordan and has been out a little under 6 months. He is obviously a little fresh, but he is excited as any to go forth and work. He is a good kid and is pretty dang funny. We will make a good team. His Spanish needs much improvement, but that will come, all in due time. I am gonna have him start translating next Sunday. His Spanish will improve a ton by next transfer. I am leaving this area in his capable hands, so I gotta show him the ropes quick so he can take the reigns when I am finally gone. He was excited to serve with me haha. He heard a lot of stories about me and was pumped to have the chance to meet me and be my companion. I told him, "Whatever stories you heard.....they are probably all true haha". I am happy to have a good companion at my last transfer. I am very blessed. 

Well Mom, tell Ralynne I say happy belated birthday.... So. there isn't much to update you on. You heard it all when we Skyped last week. I will write again next Monday if anything comes up. I am trying to keep the momentum here and am praying that we will be able to go where the miracles are at. I love you Mom. 

Elder Sierra 

A LITTLE HOLIDAY CHEER

Recent pics from the Sacramento Mission:

Christmas Day on Skype

Some members sent this pic of Elder Sierra and Elder Osorio helping them with their Christmas tree!

Our Soccer team

Up in the mountains near Placeville, CA

NO FUE COINCIDENCIA QUE LES VI AQUI!
Letter from Dec. 15, 2014

Hey Mom,

Sorry I am sending you a letter so late. A LOT has happened today.

Well Mom, its hard for me to think of a present. I really got nothing. I mean maybe a harmonica so I can start learning how to play that too. Benjamin told me about his plans for the dance. I am happy he is having fun. It seems like he has a good group of friends and is happy, which really puts my mind at ease concerning him. He has always been a good kid... His date was cute. Tell him I say good job. 

So, work is beginning to pick up A LOT! We just got a new investigator, named Antonio, and we have a return appointment for tomorrow. He actually called us over and asked us to teach him. It was very cool. He enjoyed hearing the Plan of Salvation. He has just moved to Placerville and had seen missionaries in Mexico, but never actually talked to them. So when he saw us, in his own words, "No fue coincedencia que les vi aqui!" (It was no coincidence that I saw you here!) He invited us to come back and since he found out that I like to spar (he is a boxer) we are gonna have a little match tomorrow. It'll be fun lol. I will update you on what happens. Work is moving along. La familia Perez came to church yesterday and that was awesome. We are gonna see them again on Wednesday. Elder Osorio and I have seen that, little by little, we have been seeing miracles here. The best part is that we notice them after the trial of our faith and diligence every time. It's awesome!

I almost forgot to mention that something BIG just happened in the Sacramento mission. It was SO BIG that President Jardine called all the missionaries on a huge conference call last night. The news was pretty huge. We were the first ones to find this out. The stake presidents don't know, the Seventy doesn't know, and the other mission that is involved doesn't know either. They all won't know until tomorrow or so. So you will be also one of the first to hear. Our mission is getting SPLIT! Bottom half of our mission and a small part of the Fresno mission are going to become part of a new mission that will be known as the California Modesto mission. It was hard to take in. I served in three of the four zones that will be going to the Modesto mission. I loved serving there and I guess for me and a lot of the others we just feel that they are splitting our home. It's our mission that's taking the biggest hit. It'll be rough for the missionaries to adjust to, I feel, but I know it will be fine. California will have 20 missions total by July. That is when the actual split will happen, so I will be long gone before it happens for real. My companion is worried about going to the new mission. He'd rather stay in Sacramento, as I would assume most missionaries feel that way. It was tough for President Jardine as well. He is going to have to reassign about a 1/3 of our missionaries to this new mission and the language programs will be taking a huge blow as well. Well, only the Lord knows what's best so it's in His hands. That's all I have for ya Mom. Love you and can't wait till Christmas to Skype you again. Talk to you soon.

Elder Sierra

TRUE LOVE BETWEEN YOUR FELLOWMEN

Letter from Dec. 8, 2014

Hey Mom,

The concert was great! One of the missionaries took some pics and some video of the songs, so it worked out great. My talk is being made as I go.  I'm kinda just putting some dynamite stuff in there as I receive inspiration throughout the day. It'll be great... And yes, we did see the Christmas devotional with the members that we live with at their parents' place. It was a nice family setting. I enjoyed Elder Christofferson's talk the most. When the guy speaks I swear he just commands the elements around him. Real Majestic-like. Although, the part that touched me the most was the part when they were talking about the children waking up to a dill pickle on their plates, then hearing about all the things that they have to be grateful for. Then the boy finds a dime, runs immediately to the store, to which the store owner charitably takes time away from CHRISTMAS MORNING to give him bags of sweets for his whole family. To me, that really made the devotional. True love between your fellowmen and I think about the boy and how he didn't use the dime to get something for himself, but instead ran out to get his whole family sweets just because he believed Santa left a dime for them =) Work here is a bit slow at the moment, so there isn't too much to talk about, but we have a killer week planned that is full of appointments with investigators, service projects, and temple trip with the zone. I am very excited for that. Other than that, sorry not too much more to go on. A lot of appointments got cancelled so that's part of the problem, but we have been getting somewhere with our less actives. That's been AWESOME! We may start doing some reactivation pretty soon (which is a miracle in itself). We are still happy. I love you Mom Merry Christmas!

Elder Sierra

 THINGS I'M THANKFUL FOR

Letter from Nov 27, 2014

We asked Elder Sierra what he was grateful for this year and this was his reply:

 1.) I am grateful for my freedom. Freedom is God-given and it allows us to choose for ourselves what path to take. As we obey His commandments, we can achieve the peak of spiritual freedom. We were never created to be bound or enslaved by anyone, or anything. 2.) I am grateful for my family. For the bonds I have with not only my parents, brother, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandma, etc., but also with my friends that I consider my family as well. I am grateful that My Father in Heaven placed them in my path so that I could truly enjoy my life and share it with all of them. They enrich my life with happiness. 3.) I am grateful for the Atonement. I don't and will never understand the sacrifice of our Savior fully in my mortal life, but I can appreciate and apply it as much as possible. There is nothing more comforting than to know that my guilt can and will be swept away from my past mistakes. I can scratch it all away and move on. This to me will always be the most important part of the restored gospel that I share. The Restoration of Prophets, Apostles, Temples, and all the other little blessings are wonderful, but they are merely just icing on the cake. None of those things could exist without the Atonement. That is how Jesus Christ saved the world. 

D&C 46:7-8 

We must always remember to be thankful. Honestly, I do not believe the Lord really cares so much of receiving thanks, as much as he cares about us being able to see His acts of love and charity in our life. As we are thankful, not only do we show gratitude, but we notice the worth of what we have and it implies a greater meaning. It armors us against the adversary. We need never feel that we are alone, unloved, or forsaken. We should always be grateful that we are never alone. As long as we live in a state of Thanksgiving daily, Hell has no power over you. As a special servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, I testify that we will always be protected by the Armor of Righteousness as we clad ourselves with love, gratitude, and purity. May we celebrate Thanksgiving daily. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

His letter:

Hey Mom,

Sorry for not mentioning that last monday was not gonna be P-Day. Hope you weren't too upset lol. Las familias Garcia y Villianueva estan haciendo muy bien. No sentiamos que estan listos para aceptar una invitacion por bautismo pero vamos a tener una actividad la proxima semana con todas de las iglesias en la comunidad. Se llama "Guardando Cristo en Navidad". Voy a cantar por el evento y invitabamos las familias para venir. Ojala que sienten el espiritu muchissimo que pueden reconocer que estan en el camino correcto. (The Garcia and Villanueva families doing very well. We don't feel they are ready to accept a baptismal invitation, however, we are having an activity next week with all the churches in our community. It's called Keeping Christ in Christmas. I will be singing at the event and we invited our families to come. Hopefully, they will feel the Spirit and can recognize that they are in the correct path.) 

Anyway, so work is going great. We are moving everything along. What is cool that we have noticed about our teaching pool is that all of our investigators found us, instead of us finding them. We are LOVIN it! We just need to keep the momentum rollin. I received one of the packages two days ago. I didn't get the other one yet, but the pink camo stocking sounds legit haha. Speaking of camo-style Christmas, I have begun an operation here in El Dorado, an operation that has been a family tradition for as long as I can remember. It will be a stake-wide activity with members and missionaries alike, bringing good cheer and hope to the poor in heart and spirit of El Dorado. Operation SECRET SANTA is BACK!! We will be donning the santa camo hats once again. We are already beginning to find homes and families that could use some serious Christmas joy. The phase one: "Mark Your Targets" has already begun. I will update you on that operation next coming P-Day. So the zone here would like to say, "THANKS FOR THAT PECAN PIE!!!!!" (I shared). It was AWESOME (as always)! We appreciate the treats you send us, thanks. Also, for today we are eating with some members. We've got like 4 families that invited us over. We feel ill-prepared to eat 4 Thanksgiving meals, but we will see what happens with the upcoming match on Elders vs. Food! Other than that, we just had a turkey bowl that was setup by yours truly (that's just tradition!) and it was a blast. We got some good hits and I had some pretty good runs. Caught the ball on the 50 yard line, then I ran it down to the end zone (got by 7 people). It was legit. I got hit pretty hard as well (totally blindsided), knocked all the wind out of me, but I'm all right. It was a lot of fun. I'll send you a picture of my team (we won). We played against some guys we found on the field already. So much fun (cuz we WON). We are having a great time right now. It's a full-day p-day. So about the tree, we will be working with some members on a Christmas tree farm this Saturday and they said we can buy a nice size one for cheap. We are gonna have all the elders at our place opening presents at our tree, so we are gonna get a good sized one. It'll be pretty sick! I wouldn't send any ornaments until I get the actual size of the tree. I'll send you a pic on my next p-day. So touching on the new baby, she is ADORABLE!! I hope I get to meet her someday. There is not much else to talk about right now. Love you Mom! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Elder Sierra

p.s. tell all the Family that I love them.

RECENT PICTURES FROM THE SACRAMENTO MISSION

My whole zone on our hike.

 

Some of my district elders. My companion, Elder Osorio, is with the dog, Elder Bancroft is wearing the cowboy hat and Elder Yi is the Korean Elder. the member is Brother Swarbrick. He is awesome and takes care of me for ya! lol

Glorious Miracle! We got steak!!

THINGS ARE GREAT HERE IN THE HILLS OF GOLD!
Letter from Nov. 18, 2014

Dear Mom,

I am staying here in the hills (SO HAPPY) and I keep my current companion (even HAPPIER). Yeah, Osorio and I are stoked. We wanted to stay another transfer together so we could continue to see the work progress. We have added 2 new families, the Perez family and the Garduno family. They are all open to receiving the gospel and we are very excited that we finally have an actual TEACHING POOL!! On top of all that, the stake president (great guy) has granted us permission to go and work with all the ward mission leaders in the entire stake so that we can try to find more (Spanish) work and coordinate with them accordingly. President Jardine has mentioned to us many times on how much he appreciates our desire to get things rolling. He understands that work here is very difficult, but that we have been pressing forward and trying to be creative in coming up with ways to make the work here effective. We have had to work very closely with the wards, individually, as well as on a stake level. It's pretty funny. We meet more with the stake president than the zone leaders do, haha. I gotta say this has been one of my greatest challenges yet, but Elder Osorio and I just love it here. We love the work here, the members, the people we are blessed to teach, and we wouldn't trade it for anything else. Things are great here in the Hills of Gold. 

How is everything going for Thanksgiving and Christmas preparation? I hope that you guys aren't stacked with a long list of stuff again. Please don't kill yourselves by over volunteering again! Well, anyhow, I have been asked to sing for a multi-faith event on Dec. 5th. It's an event that is titled, "Keeping Christ in Christmas". I will be singing "O Holy Night" and also "I Wonder as I Wander". I am humbled to have been asked to sing. The Stake President had asked me to sing, so it will be a great experience. That is all that is happening as of right now. I will keep you posted if anything new comes up. Love you all!

Elder Sierra