When It Rains, It Pours!

Well hey there!

This week was a pretty crazy one, and a pretty good one. 

We got a rainstorm finally! It felt so good to just walk in pouring rain after an eternal summer. Last year i bought some plastic shoes and they are pretty awesome in the rain and I just stick a giant plastic sack over my bag so my books and stuff dont get wet.

Our street

This week we met some super intersting people, we went to go visit this guy names eduardo who had a huge fancy house! He gave us some sparkling water to drink... it was super weird.

He has traveled all over the world and fought in some war in africa 50 years ago and speaks a bunch of different languages. He showed us a cool african click language. A few years ago a member of the church had given him a book of mormon on a flight on the other side of the world or something and well he didnt want to change but said he would like to stop by at the church some day.

On friday, We were walking down the street and saw a guy coming our way and decided to contact him, the second he opened his mouth we could tell he was super drunk. He started talking to us in english and saying weird things haha but he showed us his house and we decided on visiting him the next day. We visited him the next day, saturday, and he was still a little under the influence but told us how bad he wanted to stop drinking and about some other difficulties in his life. He was super glad we came to visit him, and on Sunday, he came to church!!! It was super funny because when a person comes to church for the first time, we tell the bishopbric their name and they welcome them over the pulpit, and when they said "wed like to welcome gerardo to church, hope you feel at home" he stood up and waved to everyone and said Gracias! Gracias!!!! 

In the other email I attached a picture with a family! We ate with them yesterday. They are super awesome members and Mayra, comes with us a lot to visit people. She definitely has the pure love of Christ! She has a little old white VW bug so we go chuggin around town and its pretty fun, plus we can get to the houses super fast.

Panaderia (bakery)

yellow door!

More and more members are coming to our ward which is good!!! We our focusing a lot on working with the members together! Having support sistems, where a member goes to visit the person we are teaching and reads a little bit of the book of mormon with them once or twice a week, and takes them to church. Sometimes its hard to get people to commit but we are trying.

house

I love being a missionary and I love this gospel. Being a representative of Jesus Christ is something very special and I can feel every single prayer that is coming my way. I have too many blessings, and I have a wonderful family. I pray for you all and I love you all.

Hope you have a wonderful week!

Hermana Stacie Fleischer

Lizard!

cambios cambios y mas cambios!!!!!

Hey fam bam!!!!

Well this was quite the week! First things first,

ELDER BEDNAR came to our mission. As in the apostle. It was super awesome!!! All of the missionaries were there and it was super awesome. He got there and instead of giving a long talk, he asked a bunch of questions and we asked him questions too and it was super cool. He talked a lot about the spirit being the teacher. He talked about testimony and conversion, and how we need to seek learning by faith. Not just to read to know and have that knowledge, but with the intention to act, to improve, and to come unto Christ. 

There were lots more things that were said, but most importantly the spirit that we felt. We were there with him for about 3 hours. 

Afterwards, he had a devotional with all of the young single adults in the mission. One of our investigators went!!! We were pretty excited because you can put your money on an apostle to help someone to receive an answer that it is true.

We have a super awesome investigator named Gerardo, he is a professor at the university here and he is just eating the gospel up. He loves it so much and he told us he wants to learn more so that he can travel the world and share it with everyone! hahaha future missionary right there. He speaks English and he always says funny things to us. "Sisters! I made you some lemon juice!" (talking about lemonade). I am pretty sure our convert Edgar Sosa is going to baptized him. Que tal!

On Sunday night we had an open house with our ward! all the organizations (young women, young men, relief society etc.) had a room and they talked about what they did and how the gospel blessed their lives. Then when people came we stuck them in little groups and they went on a little tour of the church and went in all the rooms. It was really good! At the end we all went in the sacrament room and watched the restoration movie and ate arroz con leche. 

It was a good way to end the cambio because it was my last night in the ward Industrial. I got TRANSFERRED and my companion is HERMANA MARTINEZ!!!!!! She was my first companion in the mission!!!!!! I am super excited! We are sister training leaders, which sounds fancy, but it just means that we help out the other sister missionaries in a couple zones and we do exchanges with them, and we help them if they have any problems or questions and things like that. I am in a ward called Chichen Itza (nowhere close to the ruins). Its in the same Stake as Industrial! So I was pretty happy so I will still see Hermana Petersen and the members in that ward.

This morning I went to say goodbye to Wendy and we cried. It is the hardest part of the mission, saying goodbye!!! They let us know sunday night around 10 and we have to go to the mission offices at 8am the next day, so there isnt time to say goodbye or anything. We are super excited to be together and we are going to work super hard. We end our missions together so it will be pretty fun. She is such a wonderful missionary! She is from Guatemala and she is probably one of the best missionaries in the world. She is 10 years older than me and we get along super well. 

I also decided to chop off all my hair. Its pretty fun. I sent some pictures. I dont think they loaded correctly. But we´ll see.

Well I love you all lots!

I know that this church is true! I know that Heavenly Father really knows each and every one of us! And loves us so much. He has a plan and every trial makes us stronger, stronger through Jesus Christ. We are all lost and fallen without Him. When we come unto Him, we become stronger, we become clean, and we become whole.

Have a great week!

Hermana Stacie Fleischer

Sacerdocio!

Hello fam bam!!!!!!!

I loved seeing you all yesterday. It was super wonderful to see all your smiles and see everyone together. 40 minutes pass by really really fast! I hope you know that I love you all so so much! I am so thankful for you all. I like being the youngest, you have all taken care of me in some way and I love you all.

I really do have the best family in the whole world!

Well, there is not much more to say from last week. But we are excited that Edgar Sosa, my convert, got the Melchizedek priesthood and so did Wendy´s husband, Edgar. We are super excited about our converts, they are all doing super well and they all have callings. 

Nothing too crazy happened this week. We had a lot of lessons so that was good. 

The giant dog across the street -- he always make whale noises while we are trying to study.

Elder Bednar is coming in a couple weeks and we are reading the whole book of mormon before he comes! Its a lot of pages in one day but it is so awesome. It has so much power and inspiration. 

Well, I love you all so much! Sorry this was a short one but here are some pics.

Have a great day and a great week!

Hermana Stacie Fleischer

Buenas Tardes!

Hello familia! 

Well I am still a happy missionary in Merida! Time is flying.

This week was good, next week we have lots of goals. We found a couple investigators who are super prepared! Both of them are 17 years old! One girl, and one boy, I can totally see them going on missions! One focus we have right now in the mission is teaching lessons to future missionaries and also future elders( melquesidek preisthood) forgive the spelling. We are doing pretty good! 2 of the recent converts in our ward are going to get the melquisedek preisthood this week at stake conference! 

BTS, fried banana ( there are lots of different types of bananas here)

A common problem here is that people just blast music SUPER loud from their house. So sometimes we are teaching a awesome lesson and the spirit is there, but then Bruno Mars interrupts it from next door and we have to talk super loud and it kind of goes downhill. 

On the way to a zone conference I ran into a cute family that I love that I met while I was in Caucel! The Familia Martinez!They were excited to see me and I was super excited to see them! They told me about how they were doing and we took a pic. I told them there is room at home to come visit me in Utah . 

Last saturday we had interviews with our Mission president. We went and waited in the mission office but there were a ton a missionaries before us and we had to wait a long time and then it was super late and there wasnt time for everyone so he took us all home in his minivan haha. And then the next day he came to our church and gave us an interview in his car. It was super funny. Presidente Garcia is really awesome! He has a lot of love, a lot of light, and a lot of spirit. 

the young men came to clean up our backyard! Cut lots of branches off our tree and pulled a bunch of weeds. No one uses clippers here, everyone uses machetes.

They also check our houses once in a while to see if they are clean, our house was suuuper clean! Hermana Garcia came in and was so happy and said great job sisters!!!! I was so happy all day that we could present a neat and clean house, without having to be ashamed of anything in there. It made me think, how wonderful would it be to arrive to Heavenly Fathers presence, and be 100% clean, knowing that we did well on earth, and not having anything to hide. How wonderful will we feel to be worthy to stand in His presence? 

Sometimes it feels unreachable, we all make mistakes, we always fall, but through Jesus Christ, we can get back up! We can be clean of everything. His Atonement is real, His love is great, His plan is perfect.

I love you all so much!

Have a wonderful week and I will see you on Sunday!!! 4:00 pm! be there or be square!!!!!

Hermana Fleischer

The Eternal Summer

Hello fam!!!!

This week passed by super fast... I feel like I dont have many new things to say.

But this week was a good one! We had zone meetings every single day this week! So it kind of took up some time and didnt have as much time for the lessons. But the training was good. One of the days I gave the training for the zone about how to use the book of mormon. 

I love the book of mormon so much! Even when I didnt really understand it very well when I was younger I loved it because sometimes its not the words you need but the feeling you get from showing the faith to open the pages and look for answers. It is so awesome to give the book of mormon to people everyday and show them how it can help them and what they can learn.

My converts in this ward, Edgar, Wendy, and Enrique are all still doing super great! They have so much light and being a member of the church has blessed their lives and their families. 

We found a couple new families to teach this week, we hope they can progress! A challenge that some people have is that they work a lot! Like all day!!!!! Until the night. So it is sometimes hard to visit them and hard to teach them very often and get them to come to church. 

It is just getting hotter and hotter here. I know that I say it a lot but it is hard to ignore. Hna Petersen and I were walking down the street and we saw a perfectly good chunk of ice in the middle of the sidewalk. We thought maybe we should stick it in our water bottles because our water was really hot (and the water bottles have a filter) but then we decided not to haha. But we should have.

We also tried cooking an egg on the sidewalk today but I dont think we did it at the right time of day because it didnt work but it should.

I have learned a lot about being persisent, patient, boldness, and love in the mission. All of it is super important in missionary work. We have to be really dirent and fearless to find people and invite them to come unto Christ. There is nothing to be afraid of when I remember that I have something so special that I came to share with the people here.

Jesus Christ is our Savior. He came to this earth and lived a perfect example, and gave us a perfect gift through His perfect sacrifice. He is the difference! It cant be denied. Sometimes I see a lot of sad things here, lots of alcoholism, broken up families, poverty, but when we have the Holy Ghost and the hope that comes from our faith in Jesus Christ, it can overcome it all. The lightness will always outshine the darkness.

I love you all!

Have the most wonderful week! :)

Hermana Stacie Fleischer

bautismo de Enrique!

Hello fam bam!

Well this was a great week!

Enrique was baptized!!!!!! Hooray! And guess who baptized him.... Edgar Sosa!!! Our convert who was baptized a few months ago. It was super awesome. A lot of members came and we ate cake afterwards. Hermana Petersen and I sang come thou fount, but with a verse in Spanish (the words of Oh my Father). I have sang at all my baptisms. It makes it special. Sometimes Edgar asks us to sing the song we sang for him at his baptism because he loved it so much. 

Wendy´s husband received the priesthood and that little family is progressing so well. I love them tons!

On Friday we took Enrique to the temple to have a little lesson in the waiting room.

This week we went to go to service at a members house to help her clean her backyard. She said we could come at 6, when the sun wasn't out. We thought she meant 6 in the morning so we went over to her house and knocked on her door but she didn't answer... then we sent her a text message to say we had arrived and we were so sleepy still so we just laid down on her driveway and fell asleep for a little bit hahaha. Turns out she wanted us to come at 6 in the afternoon. Well we went the next morning and got it all done. 

Its been SUPER hot. When we come back to visit, we are going in November or December... ok people??

Thank you so much for all the prayers, I really do feel them every single day! I have so many blessings, I have great health, I am really happy! Thank you thank you thank you!

Zone Conference

Today we went to the temple! We were going to do a session, but a lot of people went and there wasn't room so we did baptisms in the temple. Hooray!

Self timer fail... :)

I am so humbled by the people here. They are so amazing and so wonderful. There are some members who are super willing to help and it really shows their conversion.

Zone Conference

This week we saw a little video about john tanner, one of the early members of the church, he was pretty rich and he gave everything to the church when he got baptized, its a really cool story. I hope you can look it up.

Well, like always, time is up!

Love you tons!

Enjoy the pictures. 

Hermana Fleischer

Bautismo!

Buenas Tardes mi familia maravillosa!

This week was cambios... but we didnt change! Hooray! Hna Petersen and I are going to be in this area again! I am super happy about that. We are working really hard, probably the hardest I have worked in my whole mission. I am super excited for all the things coming ahead.

On Saturday morning Wendy got baptized!!!! Hooray! We went early to get it all ready and fill up the font. We also bought muffins and juice for afterwards. It was about 100 degrees that morning! haha. It was a super great baptism!!!!! Elder Rodriguez, a missionary in our ward baptized her. When she came out of the font she was smiling so big! She was so happy and she is just super excited about it and about the church and everything. 

Enrique is progressing a lot! He should get baptized this week. He had a beard and longish hair, but one day we went to his house and he had cut is hair and shaved and was wearing a nice shirt and looked good as new! haha it really surprised us when he walked out. He also has a lot of light in his face and his prayers are really sincere. 

We contacted this guy who happened to be from Germany! We talked to him in English and in Spanish and in the little german that I know haha. It was kind of an interesting guy, we will see if we can get him to church. He accepted baptism, but I dont think he really understands it yet. But the good thing is that we are here to help him know it and feel it!

Also this weekend we had a devotional called Gracias a Que El Vive. (Because He Lives). Inspired by the new video and Easter! It started out as an idea Hna Petersen and I had for our ward and it grew and it turned out really well!!!!! We made a choir with some members of the ward, and all the missionaries in our zone (about 15 hermanas and elders or so). I played the piano, and a member played the violin and another played the oboe. We sang 5 songs and there were 5 short talks about the life of Jesus Christ and ended with The Resurrection. It was cool because the whole program told a story, starting with His birth, and ending with the resurrection and new beginnings! 

We did an arrangement of I Know That My Redeemer Lives, and it was super powerful and the spirit was so strong in that moment.

The church was full of people that came and it was just a super great way to end the week.

These days are the really hot ones. Really really sweaty. When I come home you people wont even recognize me! My hair is turning blonde from all the sunshine!!!!

Please dont hate me... I left my camera cord in the house! :( And I dont think there is enough time to run back and get it. But I have lots of good pictures and I promise that next week will be lots :) :)

I love you all and I know that we will be an eternal family if we all do our best. Our weaknesses will make us stronger, and maybe Heavenly Father wont change all of our weaknesses, but He will change us through our weaknesses. We can always come back to Him if we have made a wrong choice. He is calling our name and He LIVES :)

Les amo con todo mi corazon.

Un gran abrazo y beso de Merida,

Hermana Stacie Fleischer

La Conferencia!

Buenas Tardes mi querida familia.

Well. This weekend was so beautiful! Probably, the best conference ever. I planned to share some of my favorite things with you BUT there were too many. I think I especially loved Elder Holland! and Elder Uchtdorf. I love how both of them talk. Elder Holland really direct and powerful, his testimony just bursting at the seams! And then Elder Uchtdorf, with a lot of love. You can just feel the message and know that we have a wonderful Savior who loves us, who is there to rescue us from the fears or falls that we may have.

I also laughed a lot when Pres. Uchtdorf started speaking in German hahaha.

I hope you can all remember the spirit you felt during conference and make goals to grow closer to Christ durante the next 6 months.

Enrique came to all 5 sessions of conference!!!! Woo hoo! He has made lots of changes in his life, it is a miracle. If all goes well he will be baptized this week.

Wendy is also going to be baptized this week.

We also found some more investigators that are really awesome! But didnt come to conference :( That is one of the hardest parts, getting people to attend church. Pero ay vamos.

Conference is kind of fun because a lot of members go to the stake center, and then bring a bunch of food to eat in between sessions, so all the classrooms are filled with a bunch of people eating and so we ate with some members in our ward.

The members really love us here and I feel really blessed to be in such a wonderful part of the world!

Well sorry it was a short one, but time runs out quick.

Love you all.

Hermana Fleischer

Dont worry, I will give an epic mission recap when I get home and tell lots of cool stories when I have time. If you do a mission right, there is just not verymuch time for anything haha.

Here are some pics.

Tying the Knot

Hola familia!!!!!

Well just a few hours ago Wendy and Edgar got married!!!! Hooray! Our zone leaders let us leave our district meeting a little early to go to their wedding. Then we all went to this nice restaurant to eat breakfast. Wendy is really excited to be baptized! She would be getting baptized this weekend, but it is general conference, so we are going to wait until next weekend. Hooray!

Enrique is doing really well! This week he hasnt drank alcohol or done any drugs. He still smokes a little bit but yesterday he told us that he was going to stop smoking all at once. He is pretty excited to get baptized too. I think the years and years of drugs have affected his mind a little bit and sometimes he forgets things, but he is really sincere and wants to do good.

every good day starts with a cactus leaf

Well I sure hope you all have seen this video :

http://www.mormon.org/easter?cid=HP_FR_3-27-2015_dMIS_fMRMN_xLIDyL1-A_

We downloaded it onto a USB and we carry around our little dvd player and show all the members, investigators, people in the street. It is pretty fun and really powerful. 

I know that it is true! It is something tangible, that we can feel, He is here. He really does love us and has the beautiful plan for us. We can lean on Him for everything and we will feel true happiness.

Well this was a pretty good week. We found some new investigators and others are progressing. A few came to church and we are hoping that a lot of them come to the general conference!

Hooray!

I hope you all have a wonderful week and take advantage of this wonderful weekend! On saturday we will be watching it at the same time! Hooray! But sunday we have daylight savings .. mexican equivalent.

Love you con todo mi corazon y queda poco tiempo hasta que nos veamos de nuevo :)

Hermana Fleischer

Templo!

Buenas Dias!!!!!

Sorry I didnt write yesterday, today we went to the temple!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So today is our Pday.

Well this week sure was full of adventures!!!

The Elders came and gave Enrique a blessing! The next couple days he was so better and didnt smoke or drink anything! He looked so great I couldnt believe it!!!! Our stake had this big Self Sufficiency activity and he went and loved it and joined a group of some sort haha but he was pretty excited. He also came to church on Sunday!

This week we took Wendy to the temple! We had a lesson with her in the waiting room about the Atonement and the spirit was so strong. She is so awesome. The only thing she needs to do to get baptized is marry Edgar! They will get married this week and baptized in a couple weeks!! Hooray! She lives really close to us so we go to her house everynight and it is awesome.

This is a shout out for mom!

She has only been asking me for about a year about the day of a missionary so here goes.

6:15 the alarm goes off and we pray

6:30 exercise! Sometimes we go run in the park, do yoga, other stuff in the house.

7:00 shower and make and eat breakfast

8:00 personal study (scriptures, Preach my gospel, etc. )
9:00 companionship study , share what we studied and plan our lessons.

10:00 language study, normally just out of the grammar book they gave us or read the church magazines in Spanish and look up the words I dont know.

11:00 LA CHAMBA. going to visit members, less active members, recent converts, investigators, and teaching them the gospel! (based on Preach My Gospel) contacting referrals people have given us, talking to people in the street, sometimes Family nights with the members.

2:00 pm, go to a members house for lunch. They pass around a calendar in relief society and the hermanas sign up to give us food!

3:00 LA CHAMBA 

until

9:00 return home!

Then we plan for the next day, wrtie down which lessons we taught, eat a little bit. Get ready for bed.

10:30 to the hammock!

And that is it!

It changes a little bit with different meetings or activities that we have, but really every day is a surprise! Every day there are ups and downs, rarely does a day go as planned haha. It is a good work. This week I hit my 13 month mark. So fast it has gone by! 

Well I love you all and I know the temple is where we need to be, it really is our goal, and I know as a family we can make it there very soon :)

You are in my hearts and in my prayers. I am lucky to have such a wonderful family. If I was born 10 times, I would choose our family every single time.

Have a great week!

Hermana Fleischer

Pokey Tree

Semana 2

Hello family!

Another week of ups and downs in the mission field.

The downs.. Rosy had a lot of problems with her husband and went to live far away! But we talked to her on the phone and sent the missionaries over there to go visit her. 

Enrique had the worst week ever with the word of wisdom. His mom went on a trip to Mexico City and basically he is just home alone almost all day drinking and drugging. The few times we went to go visit him his eyes were bloodshot and he kept saying strange things. Oh no. He didn't come to church either so we are going to pray a lot for him and see if we can literally save his life.

The ups.. Wendy is progressing super well! She loves church and just loves it all and has such a desire to learn. This week we are going to go to the temple and have a little lesson in the waiting room. 

The church made another awesome holiday video "Gracias a que El vive" (Because He lives). But its not public until 28 of march. So its a secret still. But we saw at our zone conference and it is way awesome.

We also found a bunch of new investigators this week! We just are going to pray lots that they can progress.

We were teaching a lady in the park and all the sudden a member comes up and it turns out that it was her best friend! Hooray! Instant support system. 

We went to go help this less active member clean her house but when we got there she just started talking to us and talked and talked for about 2 hours, but then she told us how much it meant to her that we were there to listen to her and to get all of it off her chest felt so much better. Sometimes the best thing we can do is listen. Not just with our ears but with our hearts. 

We taught one of our neighbors this week and he is this really cool hipster kid, and had a lot of questions about why we are here on earth and about who Jesus Christ really was. So it was cool to testify about what we know is true.

I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior! It isn't something we need to understand perfectly but it is something we can feel! I felt so much strength from Him being far away from home and giving me the strength to fulfill this mission day after day. I felt forgiveness and also peace from regrets. I feel hope for the future and assurance that our family can be eternal.

I love you all so much!

How is the book of mormon challenge coming along?

Hermana Fleischer

No pics this week but I promise some next week. 

Hola Familia!

Hermanas Fleischer and Lee

Hola familia!

Well this week had its ups and downs like usual. Enrique came to church, hooray! But he has lots of problems with the word of wisdom. Just about all of it. Sometimes we go to teach him and he is so out of it and it just no use. It makes us really sad to watch him waste his life away with drugs and alcohol. But he has desires to change and has faith.

Wendy is buenisima. We taught her and Edgar (her boyfriend who was baptized last year) about eternal families and the law of chastity. And she said maybe she didnt agree with the commandment or didnt understand why, but she wanted to follow it because she has felt that this is the true pathway and she will do what she needs to do. Wow. Mucha fe.

Pues, we have a less active member in our ward who is really progressing! His name is Heyder, he is a return missionary of about 15 years and there were some problems with his family and he hasnt gone for a few years. But the Spirit is really touching his heart. He saw the movie Meet the Mormons this week and after he saw it he just cant stop smiling and it really motivated him. He has come to church for 2 weeks straight and he really wants to come back. Hooray!

We also had another less active family came to church who brought their WHOLE family! haha all of the children their children and boyfriends. It was great. And very suprising. And wonderful.

Fluffy dogs on the roof

Hermana Petersen is from Cottonwood heights and she got here just one cambio after me. She has also been in Caucel and Sascalum and we have had 2 of the same companions. That is kind of rare but it is fun that we have a lot in common. We get along super well and we are super happy!

Rule for life. We must laugh everyday! Men are that they might have joy!!!! (2 nephi 2:25) We must do something to lift someone else everyday. We must thank our Heavenly Father for our blessings and remember His son Jesus Christ in some way everyday. He loves us, and the love we have for Him can grow each day, if we help it grow like a little seed. Why must we do it? To have the blessings of the Atonement in our life, to be worthy of His presence, and achieve an eternal family.

Love you all!!!!!!!!!! Les amo con todo mis corazon.

Como les va en su lectura del libro de mormon???

Hermana Stacie Fleischer