June 30, 2014

Buenas tardes familia!

This week was kind of a crazy one! My new companion is Hermana Price! She is from Syracuse, Utah! She is really awesome! I was surprised to get a companion that didnt know Spanish, and also to train in an area that I dont know very well, but I have seen how Heavenly Father has helped me so much with everything this week! I am so greatful and I feel more than ever like a tool in the Lords hands. 

Being a trainer is fun, we have an hour everyday that we study some things together and we do practices and do things out of our little training book. I know I need to be a good example in everything because this is where she will learn a lot of things for the rest of the mission. I am so grateful for Hna Martinez and for her example, I know she helped me be obedient and diligent. Also the first few weeks of the mission are kind of hard to adjust to everything and start learning Spanish, so I hope my companion feels comfortable here and that I can love her and serve her so that she will love the mission!

An experience of the week, we were going to contact a reference and we went to go find the direction and we were on the right street but the house number we had was nowhere near that area, so we had no idea which house to go to. There was a boy outside painting a fence so I thought I should ask him if he knew where this person lived, but then I was like no, that's too random, but then we did ask him, and it turns out the reference lived in that house! We had a great lesson, and we will see what happens next. I know the spirit was guiding us to that person and that we should always follow the promptings we receive!

Have a wonderful week! I love you all!

Hermana Fleischer

June 23, 2014

Buenas Dias familia!!

Yesterday was cambios, and I am going to be a trainer! I am super pumped but a little nervous too, I hardly know my area because I just got here! But I know that I can do anything with trust in my Heavenly Father! I will miss Hermana Delgado a lot! She was really great and we had tons of fun together. I will receive my new companion tomorrow, today we have a little bit of training and then I will stay the night with another trainer. Last night one of the members stopped by our house and gave us cake because they love Hermana Delgado.

 

This week we had planned a baptism for the little sister of Stiff, who was baptized a couple weeks ago, but the night of her baptism we were waiting and waiting and she never came! We called and her mom had to work really late and nobody could bring her. We planned for the next morning at 10 am and they said they would come, we called them at 8:30 ish am and they said they would come, but about 10:30 we were waiting in the church and they didnt come!! We called them to see what happened and her mom had to go to the airport to pick up her boss or something. Ah! It was such a bummer. We are planning for the next week and we hope that everything will go ok. Shannyk (hermanita de stiff) is 11 years old and really smart and has such a pure spirit. We are teaching their parents too, but only once in while because they always work.

 

This week we came upon a portable Burger King... picture included.

 

Also this week we forgot the keys one day! We came back to our house and we said uh oh! Luckily! the screen door to our window was broken so we were able to reach through the window bars and take town the curtain rail to use to reach the keys on the hook on the wall. Haha it was very intersting but we were able to get our keys through the window and open our door!

 

Missionaries in our ward- the boundary is huge!

I am getting more brave and killing cockroaches with our squeegie. But still so gross. blech.

 

One thing I learned this week is that the gospel can help us in so many ways. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is infinite, meaning that it can heal anything. To put it the Atonement in our lives can be hard, it can be very humbling, but as we turn our hearts to our Savior and try to follow His example, He will strengthen us. Through prayer, we can communicate with our Heavenly Father and feel His love!! Heavenly Father loves us so much. I know it, because He has given us so many things to help us. He lets us pass through trials, because He knows that in each obstacle, we will learn more, and grow to become more like Him. We pass through things that require a lot of patience, that humble us, that cause us to rely on others and on our Heavenly Father. We may pass through things that help us realize what is most important in life. But we dont pass through these things alone!. We have our family, prayer, the Holy Ghost, the scriptures, prophets, so many things! How wonderful to know that we are never alone!

 

Have a wonderful week! I love you all!

Please send me pictures! And any spiritual experience or insight you have had this week.

Pray for me to be a good trainer and to help my new companion.

Hermana Stacie Fleischer

June 16, 2014

Hello Family! 

I feel like I just barely emailed yesterday. This week passed by so fast. I like this area and the members are really good to us. It is super hot! But one day we were in a lesson and it started pouring rain!! So hard. Luckily, the person we were with had 2 huge clear bags and cut a little hole for our faces so we could go out in the rain. It kept us pretty dry except for our feet.

One of our investigators has a drum set!!! I played a little bit one day and it made me so happy. In my last area I heard someone playing the drums one time and the next few nights I dreamed about playing the drums haha. So it was about time.

This week we had a super powerful lesson with a boy in our ward whose family is inactive and he has been inactive, he said the bishop and counselor came to his house to talk to him about going on a mission. He told us he wasnt sure and he has fear that he cant teach people about the gospel when he has made so many mistakes. This is the wonderful thing about the gospel, that it doesnt matter how many mistakes we make, because through the Atonement of Jesus Christ we can change and be cleansed of our sins. Everyday we can turn our hearts to our Father and follow the example of Jesus Christ. Heavenly Father doesnt look at what we`ve done, but who we`ve become. During the lesson there was a moment where the spirit was really strong and all 3 of us had tears in our eyes and we asked him what he thought, and he thanked us and said he had made the decision to go on a mission. It was a special experience and I am looking very forward to seeing him as an elder one day.

This week we had Stake Conference and it was so powerful. I am getting to the point where I can understand most things in Spanish. We had a Seventy come (I don´t know what quorum or what his name was, I think an area seventy) and also our mission president spoke and the president of the Merida Temple spoke. Fun fact, our mission president and temple president are brothers!

My desk

 Well thats all for this week!

I love you all! Have a wonderful day!

Pics include my district

our street

our house

Con mucho amor!

Hermana Stacie Fleischer

Caucel- June 9

Buenas!!!!!!!

This week was actually very crazy. I am here in my new area called Caucel 2. (prounouced Cow - Kell). It is super different than my other area. It is really flat and our area is mostly a large suburb and a lot of the houses are the same and there are hardly no points of reference haha. 

"Forbidden Forest- saw a huge iguana!

Unlike Campeche there are no hills, it is completely flat!!! Also it is much hotter, but this last week it was cloudy and rainy and felt really good. One day it just poured rain but we keep walking and it is ok.  The ward here is really big!!! There are 6 missionaries in our ward and I think there are 200 or 300 active members. It is fun.

My new companion is Hermana Delgado!!! She is from D.F. Mexico! She is really great and a really good teacher. She is super different than Hna Martinez haha but I love her tons still.

This week our whole stake had a huge baptism altogether!!!! It was like the story of Alma preaching to the people in secret in Mosiah 18 and they all baptized. We had I think 35 people who were baptized! Woo hoo!!! And one of them was from our area. His name is Stiff (Steve). He is 15 years old and a really good kid. He was super nervous. and he was the very last baptism of all! The whole thing lasted a few hours. It was really cool. Hermana Garcia (presidents wife) asked Hna Delgado and I to help out the people so I helped them out of the font and gave them a plastic bag for their wet baptismal clothes and hna delgado and another elder mopped up the water during the whole thing, because if you can imagine 35 people entering and leaving the font is a lot of water haha. We also stayed a little bit after to help clean up and a little kid threw up in the bathroom sink and I volunteered to clean it up haha. It wasn't that bad, I just put bags on my hands like gloves and it was ok, mostly funny actually because the elders were too grossed out.

By the time the night was over and we cleaned up it was almost 10:30!!!!! And it takes an hour to get to our stake center! There were some other elders but we were the only hermanas left and President and Hermana Garcia were going to drive us home and we were in the car it was really late and they asked us if we wanted to stay in the mission home that night instead because it was too late and we said Si!!!! 

So that night we went to the mission home and they gave us food and we slept in beds!!!! Ah! It was so weird to sleep in a bed. And with air conditioning. Too weird. But so awesome because we stayed overnight in the mission home. Hahaha it was so fun.

Remember that studying the book of Mormon will bring the distance between you and Heavenly Father to zero. This book is so powerful and are words preserved especially for us. They were prepared and hidden in the earth for 1400 years until they were translated by Joseph Smith and now it is in tons of languages and people all over the world are reading it! There are lots of prophecies of this coming to pass and it is awesome to see it being fulfilled. 

It is also awesome to be a missionary here because the Book of Mormon was written in the Americas, so we can tell people that it was their ancestors who wrote it!!! so cool.

I love you all so much! 

Have a wonderful week! 

Stiff who was baptized on Friday! And confirmed on Sunday. Cant forget the confirmation.

More pictures- June 2

 Our district leader's birthday

 Our lovely home.

 Our awesome district!!! I love every missionary in our district. They are great. 

A parrot in the taco shop we ate in today.

June 2, 2014

Today was a little crazy because we got a call last night that we have special transfers (normal transfers are not for another few weeks) and I am going to a new area in Merida tonight!! I am a bit sad, because I love Campeche and I love our ward and I love Hermana Martinez, but I knew I would leave someday. 

This week I learned more of the role of the Holy Ghost in the missionary work. The Holy Ghost helps us learns things and inspires us with understanding of the gospel and how we can apply it to our lives.

Also, it is incredible how much love we can feel for people that we have only met a couple times. I realized that the "natural man" cant feel this love by himself, but when the spirit is working through us, we have the presence of our Heavenly Father with us, and we have His love as well.

This week we had the baptism of Cristina!!! It was really rainy that day and we were afraid that not very many people would come (it rains super hard and everything stops when it rains) but the primary room was full of people and it was really special!

It rained a lot this week! One night we were in a house and it started pouring tons! It was super late and we needed to leave but we didnt have anything so they gave us a plastic tablecloth and Hna Martinez and I ran home under the table cloth hahaha it was too good. The water filled the street. The next day our neighbor said they saw a white sheet or something run past her house the night before and we laughed so hard because it was us.

Next time I email I will be in a new area with new companion. 

Have the most wonderful week!!

And happy Aniversary Mom and Dad!!!!!

Love ya!!!!!!

Hermana stacie Fleischer