Updates on the investigators!

- Maria and Carlos are doing very very well. They still haven't come to church yet, which breaks my heart, but Maria and her daughters came to a ward Easter activity! Basically our whole brach was there and tons of screaming kids, chocolate galore and enough food to feed Utah.

- Delia is a somewhat new investigator and she lives with her son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. She also came to the activity! It was so lovely to see so many people there, we were just smiling all day long.

- Zacario has been much harder to get a hold of. His work schedule has ramped up and we haven't been able to meet with him as much. It's also hard because we need that third female now in order to teach him. But we look forward with faith that we will be able to get more contact with him.

- Esther and Angelica are two new investigators, friends that live in the same manufactured home park. They are two of the most lovely people you will ever meet and have been in the states for less than 6 months! It's incredible. They are so cute and I look forward to getting to know them better.

Our members are absolutely the best. Most recently we visited the Ramirez family, who have always been excellent fellow shippers with Eduardo. Yesterday we taught him about teaching and learning in the church with that family and President Chamberlain.  Everyone pitches in with such wonderful comments.

the Ramirez Family

 Selfie courtesy of Branch President Chamberlain

And then one of the Hermanas in my district had appendicitis, and not even an hour after her surgery Hermana McCoy (former RS president) and President Chamberlain were calling to see if everything was alright, if she needed food, priesthood blessings, etc. You couldn't ask for a better branch.

What's really interesting is that there are 6 Spanish missionaries assigned to the stake, and all of them are in my branch! We each have roughly drawn out borders on our areas that we proselyte in, but we have open communication and easy passing of contacts and the like.

Speaking of contacting, he have been doing so much of that lately! It's super fun, but it can be hard thinking of new ideas and things to do. So this Saturday we were brainstorming how to connect to people better and we decided service was the way to go! But there isn't any organized service here and people have a tendency to turn strangers down, so we did community service! We popped out, bags and gloves ready and picked up trash for 2 hours in one of our common areas.

The best part was halfway through we ran into a group of children playing, and of course they asked us what we were doing. We told them, "We're pickin' up trash! Look how dirty it is!" Then one of them cries out, "We gotta help 'em!" "Let's be nice to the earth!" and suddenly we have a dozen helpers running around and cleaning up their community. It was super fun and totally worth it.

The kids and us after picking up trash

 slushie break after that

Two miracles:

1) While out contacting we run across this man who shakes our hands and asks what church we are from, we say The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and he says "I grew up Mormon!" We come to find out that he had made the decision to leave the church, but, all of his family was still active. His son had just moved in with him and he wanted to offer his son the chance to learn about the gospel. I'm sure many prayers from faithful family members were answered in that moment! We got his information and will be sending the English ward to him soon.

2) Contacting. Our last one for the night. We see a man and think that Family History might be the best approach for him, so we pull out a card, hand it to him and he gets so excited. He has tons and tons of family history on paper. His family even had a "family tree gathering" as the church calls it, to gather family history information. And he had no idea he could put it all online. He also said that he had been missing a chunk of about 400 years and that with familysearch.org he just might be able to find it.

Miracles abound in the mission, especially when we strive to follow our mission President's counsel.

One last story: We are walking around contacting and we hear Mariachi music. Well of course we are going to go talk to these people. What comes next is literally the most Mexican scene I have seen on my mission. 4 Spanish speaking people, white trucks, blasting Spanish music, beer, cigarettes, Chihuahua, Español. I imprinted that on my mind. And all four were so nice! We had met one of them before, but all the rest were very interested and happy folk. I look forward to seeing them again.

Sorry today's post was a little long, but a mission is great. It really is.

I love you all and hope you have a splendid week!

Con Amor,

Hermana Fletcher