Miracle Mission

I am a Temple Square Missionary!!! How crazy is that?!

Oh my goodness, so many things to tell you, so many things have happened. I can't believe it's only been like 5 days, doesn't feel like that at all. I love being a missionary, I'm pretty sure I have testified about the gospel more in the last 5 days than I have in my entire life. It's wonderful! So I'm just going to try to share everything that's happened so that you get a feel for what my mission is like since it is so different and unique compared to other missions. 

Day 1 was just a wonderful, emotional, blur. We arrived at the square around seven in the morning. The first few hours were long and pretty uneventful, we got our nametags, flags, mission card, and mission rules and all that fun stuff. They basically shared with us just how our mission works. Oh speaking of nametags, did you all hear that I am now Sister Fluckinger? :) I laughed when I saw it, the AP's felt so bad, but they said the new tags are on the way so until then I've just told everyone that the 'N' is silent. We then met President Poulsen, I love him. We were unable to meet Sister Poulsen because she fell and broke her wrist last week and has been on some pretty high medications for pain. She's supposed to get surgery next week so please pray for her. I'm so excited to meet her, all the sisters call her the Mission Mom :) It's pretty cool because we see President pretty often because his office is on the Square and usually Sister Poulsen is also in everyday. We actually see everyone, such a blessing, no one had to say goodbye because you are always able to run into everyone occasionally. So I still get to see all my MTC sisters which is fantastic. So after President spoke to us as a whole we then met with him individually and then with the AP's. Sister Briggs and Sister McQueen are the AP's and they are wonderful, well every sister here is wonderful but I love them. After all the meetings, the 11 of us just relaxed and hung out in the theater watching Mormon Messages. What we didn't know was that they had our trainers picked out but they waited until meeting with us to pair us together. Then while we were in the theater President and the AP's prayed and discussed who should be paired with who. That was the longest process every! But patience is a virtue. So Sister Bomgren is my trainer, I love her! She is perfect, and she's perfect for me. The Lord really knows what he's doing. Cool story though, Sister Briggs shared with us that the second she met me she knew I needed to be with Sister Bomgren, then after praying with President, President immediately paired the two of us together, without Sister Briggs needing to say anything. And then as the other companionship's bounced around, we always stayed the same. It was definitely meant to be. We have had so much fun already and I have learned so much from her! She's from Sweden, and has been out under a year. She went to BYU Hawaii before her mission (Apparently like half the sisters in the mission went there so they already all knew each other). We are basically the same person, have gone through similar trials before our mission, same family relationships, same hobbies. It's pretty cool as we learn more about each other. 

We live in the second nice apartment in the whole mission, which is pretty awesome. Except knowing that eventually I'll have to move to a not as nice apartment, so I'm going to enjoy it while I can. We live with two other sisters, one is from the states and the other is from Fiji. We have our own washer and dryer which is so cool and then around the block we have our own track where we go running every morning and sometimes play soccer on the field. We have early schedule so our schedule is 15 minutes ahead, for example we get up at 6:15 instead of 6:30 and go to bed at 10:15. This is Sister Bomgren's first time having early schedule so she's still getting used to it, but I love it.

Okay enough about all the boring details, time to share all the miracles that have happened. Temple Square is literally the Miracle Mission. The Sisters here all refer to their mission calls as the Golden Ticket and I now understand why. I think the one thing I have learned the most during these past few days is that everything happens for a reason, everything. Especially on Temple Square, if Heavenly Father wants you to run into someone, you do. He places His prepared children in the path of His prepared servants. Just in the past 5 days we already have 7 new investigators, to add to the many people we are already teaching, it's mind blowing. The field is white ready to harvest. I've never read a more true sentence. I am so grateful for the decision that I made to serve a mission, I already feel like it is the best decision I have ever made. I love it. Every sister has a different schedule according to what zone they are in. We have Square, so we are on the square the majority of the day. Contacting people and taking tours, it's been so much fun. I did get my first anti on day one. That was a fun experience, thank goodness for my wonderful companion. We just testified our hearts out and then left. I think that's my favorite part of my mission, bearing testimony. We do it all the time, left and right. Our goal is to have everything that we share with people be laced with our testimony. It's so much fun. What's even better is when you can see in our guests eyes when they have felt the spirit because of our testimony. What a wonderful feeling. 

So I want to share two quick examples of us being at the perfect spot at the perfect time. On Wednesday, day 1, we were on the square and supposed to stay only on the square but a sister who was serving in the Beehive House had forgotten her Bible so we ran and got it and dropped it off at the Beehive House. On our way back to the square we met Nikki. A recent convert who has just moved to Salt Lake and didn't know where to go to church, how to contact new missionaries for the new member lessons, and really didn't know what to do. So what did Elder Nelson counsel us all the do? "Ask the missionaries, they can help!" So Nikki didn't actually stop to talk to us but she and her friends had just finished a tour of the beehive house and were on their way back to the square and Sister Bomgren being the awesome missionary that she is said hello to them as we were walking and that led to a conversation which led us to find out that she was a RC and her situation. She was super excited to meet us and when we told her that we could stay in contact and teach her the lessons she was even more excited! She actually reminds me a lot of Emily :) it's been so wonderful teaching her, she has such a strong testimony and her family was all baptized because of her example and now she's sharing the gospel to all her friends. Perfect example of a wonderful member missionary. Funny how you don't realize how important and influential member missionaries are until you become a missionary. Member missionary work, it works! So we got her to her ward for Sunday and we'll follow up with her this week.

Example number 2. On Sunday after church we were scheduled to work in the Assembly Hall, but last minute Sister Lee wanted us to come with her and her companion to Music and the Spoken Word over at the conference center. We didn't have a cover for the Assembly Hall but she wanted us to come so bad that she ran and found a cover for us. So we got to go, it was so amazing. And guess who showed up? President Thomas S Monson! How crazy is that? He was literally five rows in front of us. So on day 5 of my mission I got to see the Prophet, no big deal :) 

But no that wasn't the miracle, that was just a bonus. Afterwards we were walking out of the Conference Center about to head back to the Square when three guys from Sweden come up to us because they recognized Sister Bomgren's flag and start speaking Swedish to her. Totally cool! Apparently it's very rare for people to come from Sweden. She'll usually get to give a Swedish tour once every two months, maybe. Even better though was that they were very strong Christians, also very rare for Sweden. So after chatting a bit and telling them who we were and what we did they asked us for a tour. So of course we said yes! Their English was very good so the majority of the tour was in English thankfully. So we taught them the Restoration, the Plan of Salvation and some other key parts, they were very interested with lots and lots of questions. Such a lesson that it's really the Spirit that teaches because some of the questions they had I somehow answered, but thinking back I know that it was not me. They all asked for a Book of Mormon and one even said how excited he was to read it after hearing our testimonies of it. How wonderful that was to hear! We got all their information and now I have 3 Swedish investigators :)

There were many many more instances like that that really showed me just how many people are prepared for this message. We just have to open our mouths to share it.

So I'm sure you've all heard that I ran into the Fryers and the McGraths. :) They both made my day and week. And just so you know it is no small miracle that they found me. Our schedule is so crazy, we are never in the same spot for longer than a couple of minutes. So the fact that they found me is miraculous. The day Brother Anderson found us, we were down in the basements praying about our baptism goals for this transfer, afterwards we were actually going to head home to do our studies, but last minute Sister Bomgren wanted to head over to the Joseph Smith Memorial building to use the ATM, which meant we had to go out a different door than we normally would have. And who did I see after walking up the stairs? Sweet Brother Anderson :) and of course that meant we had to take the time to go find the rest of the family. I love them all. The same thing happened with Sister McGrath, we had just finished lunch and were just about to start planning for one of our investigators when I had a prompting to check our phone (we are horrible about checking it, and always miss phone calls and messages) and we had a text message from another sister telling us that she was looking for me. The message though was sent 25 min earlier so I knew that it was unlikely that she was still at the North Visitors Center, were she was when the message was sent. But Sister Bomgren said that we could go check. So we walked around the center for a few minutes, contacted a few people and then as we were talking with a cute couple I see them across the room. So much fun talking with them, I forgot how much I missed them living near us :) So yes miracles happen every day at Temple Square. 

I have been called to the Miracle Mission.

I love you all and miss you lots! But families can be together for eternity so I know that we have lots of time to spend together! There is a beautiful video presentation at the Visitor Center called God's Plan, it's all about God's plan for families. Everyone needs to see it!!!! Everyone! It's only 11 minutes long but it's our favorite thing on the square, 2nd to the Christus Statue. My testimony on the importance of eternal families has grown leaps and bounds. It's funny how much you grow as a missionary. But really, I want you all the see it :) so I guess you have to find a reason toe visit a visitor center. I love taking families to see it and being able to bear testimony of how grateful I am and how blessed my life has been because of the knowledge of eternal families. 

I love you all, and hope things are going fantastic back home.

Don't forget to laugh today!

XOXOXOXOXO

-Sister Fluckiger