Archive for June 2015

6.30.2015
by K Fletcher

Vroom Vroom to the Beach!

Before anything else, I have two more saying good-bye pictures. An ode to the McCoys who I love dearly and we've all established that Hermana McCoy is my honorary best friend:
And Eduardo who's just pretty cool (and can pretend to be taller than me in this picture. Hint: He's not)
Saying good-bye to these lovely Hermanas:
and Saying hello to my new companion!:
Meet Hermana Limb. Yep, I'm Senior Companion. That's fun, isn't it? Here in Nag's Head, North Carolina, we have a Spanish group in an english ward. But we have a really solid goal of building a branch. I'll let you know soon all that that entails.

Some miracles happened this week... I actually have two.
#1) The gift of tongues is real. Ever since coming here I feel so so much more comfortable in the Spanish language. But then Stake conference rolled around. And we didn't have a translator. So for two hours I translated ALL OF STAKE CONFERENCE. It was incredibly stressful, but actually really fun! Hopefully I'll be here for the next one and Eduardo and Fernando will get to hear an extreme increase in my vocabulary (right now it's pretty limited). Then, after all of that, we had to take the two hour car drive back to Nags Head. Our two spanish members rode in the car with us, so I had ANOTHER two hours of practice! 
#2) We were knocking doors, getting to know the area. Well, we needed to leave to go to a lesson, but we wanted to talk to one more person. We saw a caucasion man and a Spanish girl. We talked to the girl. When her parents walked out, it was a man, Juan Carlos, who has attended English class for some time but never had the right schedule to meet with missionaries. And he never gave his address. But we found him! He invited us in and we had a very short, powerful lesson about faith which led us to find out his wife was a member of our church! As we were leaving she asked what time our church starts. They have so much promise!

Nags Head is lovely. and it literally is just the beach. a tiny island that is very very long. If you are wondering about why it is called Nags Head, the first settlers were scavengers and so they would tie a lantern to a horses neck and let it walk up and down the beach like a boat in harbor so that other ships would crash into the island and could then be scavenged from. It's pretty cool. There are also cities called Kill Devil Hills, Manteo, Mann's Harbor, and Duck. Oh yes, and Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers took their first flight! 
And (drumroll please) the Mansion on the Beach (as our house is called by the whole mission):
I'm so excited to be here. It's going to be an incredible transfer and we are going to have miracles happen every single week. Keep your eyes open!
Con Amor
Hermana Fletcher

6.28.2015
by K Fletcher

Plot Twist!

A series of dramatic things that happened this week:
BOOM: Transfer calls.
I was pretty well expecting them. I'm not sure why and I knew it was be to Nags Head, North Carolina. Nags Head is in a place called the Outer Banks (or OBX for short) and is a coastal region/peninsula. There are probably 7 Spanish members there, but apparently a LOT of potential.
BOOM: Senior Companion. I'll be with Hermana Limb. She's been on her mission for 4 1/2 months, and is just out of training.
PLOT TWIST: Our area is switching to Elders. Hermana Nyre will be going to Williamsburg and we'll get a total of 4 new elders here (a trio of elders, a set of elders, and a trio of sisters).

Here is the last district picture. Adios, Elder Smith! Good-bye to the last of endless P-Days!
BOOM: the Pinedas got baptized! It was an incredible experience and the spirit was so strong at their baptism. This is going to bless their lives immeasurably.
BOOM: I said good-bye to everyone. It was very sad. I'll be honest, I probably definitely cried when I received the call.
Hermano Faustino, our ward mission leader
the kids
Hermana Hernandez (and a passed out Thiago)
The Pinedas! (Except Kevin)
It's going to be a grand adventure down in Outer Banks. It's going to be terrifying to be senior companion, but what an incredible opportunity to grow!
I love you all and hope you are happy, safe, and well. Pray hard, work harder!
Con Amor,
Hermana Fletcher

6.16.2015
by K Fletcher

The Moment You Love Your Area

There comes a point when nothing seems to be going right. When you want to sit down and cry and give up and not talk to a single person. There comes a point when you feel like you are worthless and like the entire world is against you. And in that moment we just have to stand back up again, rely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ, trust in his plan, and endure to the end and remember the words of Jeffrey R Holland:

"Don’t give up, boy. Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it—30 years of it now, and still counting. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.”

This week I found my love for this area. I liked the people before, I liked the work and I enjoyed teaching. I was a little self-conscious of my Spanish. But now I love these people. I would do anything for them. When I see the people around me choosing the right and making and keeping covenants with God I can hardly contain my happiness. There was a family recently baptized and confirmed in our branch this week. I could simply think of all the happiness and joy they would receive. Eduardo came to church and exercised his priesthood in blessing the Sacrament and I couldn't stop smiling. A little girl we've been teaching for what seems like forever asked us when she could get baptized because she wants to follow Jesus. Any time we teach the Pineda children they pray that we can come back soon so they can learn about God.

The little things build us up and build the kingdom of God. It isn't the grand conversions that solidify the church. It isn't the visions and fire from Heaven that builds heaven in our homes. It is living the gospel a little bit every day that brings heaven into our lives. The blessings of the Celestial Kingdom are not reserved for the life to come. Men are that they might have joy, here, today. And when we can pick ourselves up and brush off the dust we learn how to apply the Atonement.

To end today I just want to share a video with you all that I was invited to watch by a good friend of mine. Because when times get rough, when a door slams on your face, when all your good times seem to be past, when you face rejection, when you face loneliness, when you feel like you can't go on, there is someone who has been their before who has his hand extended still. 


I love you all so much. I know I say that every week but know that it is true. I love you and I hope you can see your inestimable worth in every day. You are a child of God. You are my brother or sister. And I know you can do it. Si se puede.

Con Amor,
Hermana Fletcher

PS- Transfer calls are next Saturday. I have a pretty even chance of staying or going. Keep an eye out.
6.09.2015
by K Fletcher

Will a Man Rob God?

So our big story this week!
Our little car, Gordito, was nearing his death mileage of 50,000 miles. So we have Gordito:
Our replacement minivan for the day:
And our brand new 2015 Toyota Corolla. In red. His name is Dante's Infierno.
And so, we have in our line-up...
Old Car, Used Car, Red Car, Robbed Car.
Oh yeah. 
We got robbed.
I don't leave anything in the car, but Hna Nyre had her wallet, GPS and flash drive stolen. also, some donated blinds in the trunk of our car were stolen as well. It was a pretty random thing to steal. And, of course, they tried to steal our radio but it is literally built in the car so they just succeeded in dismantling it. 

So in case you were wondering, yes, a man will rob God. Or at least his representatives.

In other news, I am now in Alma in my Atonement reading of the book of Mormon. And I just want to share a few quotes from the apostles on this subject:

"The atoning sacrifice was designed to motivate us, to draw us unto him, to lift us to higher ground, and ultimately to assist us in becoming as He is."
 -Tad R. Callister

"And we do not need to achieve some minimum level of capacity or goodness before God will help - divine aid can be ours every hour of every days, no matter where we are in the path to obedience." 
- D. Todd Christofferson 

"I repeat, save for the exception of the very few who defect to perdition, there is no habit, no addiction, no rebellion, no transgression, no apostasy, no crime exempted the promise of complete forgiveness. That is the promise of the Atonement of Christ." 
-Boyd K. Packer

Which leads to this: "the result of His sacrifice is to free us from the effects of sin, that all may have guilt erased and feel hope." 
-Boyd K. Packer

The Atonement is our Message. It is the point of all that we preach. Everything else is a tangent of the great atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

"Remember, Remember, that is is upon the rock of our Redeemer that we are built."

Have a blessed week!
Con Amor, 
Hermana Fletcher
6.02.2015
by K Fletcher

The Importance of Talking to One More

Hermana Nyre and I were walking, trying to talk to as many people as we could and find a few more potential investigators. It was about the time to go home for dinner that we pass this lady and an older man struggling to get a bed up. They look totally white, but our call is to talk to everyone! We go up and introduce ourselves as the missionaries in the area and how we are called to serve and if they have any service they need done we would love to help them.

The lady laughs and says, "You don't even know what you are getting into" and kind of brushes us off. I persist that we really do want to help her. It gives her pause and she considers it. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but we ended up getting a 40 minutes story about her life (Yay for using dinner time!). We find out that for the past 5 years her life has essentially been a living hell and after her fiancé left her with this broken down trailer to fix up so hasn't caught a break. But then these two well-dressed, willing to serve young ladies walked up and asked if they could help.

Not only that, but she speaks Spanish fluently and is from El Salvador. She says she won't convert because she is a "born-again Christian", but we shall see. The entire time she was speaking all I could think is "The gospel! The gospel is what you need!"

And because school is out soon and we no longer have planned service helping the Pineda kids with homework, we've been needing a new service opportunity. Divine providence. It's real.

But if we had not stopped awkwardly and talked to these two people that really did not want to talk to us, if we had just allowed her to brush us off and taken our dinner, we would never have found this diamond in the rough.

------
One more miracle.
So you've heard about Miracle May, about how every companionship in my mission could receive a baptism in May if we gave it our all and were exactly obedient.
Well. We didn't get one.
Or did we?
We were sitting with Eduardo on the 31st of May in his front lawn teaching him the 10 commandments. Hermana McCoy (To whom I could give accolades to all day long) asks, "Hey, wasn't your girlfriend supposed to get baptized? When is that happening?" He looks down at his watch and responds, "Right now."
We taught Eduardo ages ago. His girlfriend was interested to find out what he was learning about and so, over Skype, she received the Restoration from Hermanas in Virginia Chesapeake. Later, Eduardo sends missionaries in Mexico. One May 31, 2015, she was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Talk about a miracle!

Don't give up on miracles everyone. They can happen to you.
Con Amor,
Hermana Fletcher

Did you know pineapples are a sign of friendship?
Me, Hermana Nyre, and Hermano Ramirez getting as Mexican as we can.
There's this creepy old silo I've been wanting to take a picture with for ages. 
Ta da!