Missionary Models...What?

Family Family!

It's P-day! Yay!

It's funny in the MTC I felt like P-Day was a waste of a day. We could've been in the classroom being taught things but instead we were in our rooms usually eating food. Wow has my perception on P-Day changed since coming to the mission field. A preparation day is extremely needed in our mission. I am always so busy that by the time Thursday night comes around I'm surprised I'm still walking. This mission really drains you, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I had no idea that smiling, greeting, and bearing testimony all day every day was so tiring. So no I wouldn't say I'm completely used to the new schedule. I do okay waking up in the morning and the afternoons are good. Its usually by dinner time that I'm just dead tired, but I always made it all day. There was one day when I went to bed at 9:15, immediately after we finished planning and Sister Bomgren just laughed at me the next day because I was out like a rock. So I love P-Days :)

Sister Bomgren and I are getting a long very well. I swear she's like my long lost big sister. I keep telling her that she would fit in perfectly to our family :) She's got that same silly sarcastic humor that we all have, it still surprises me haha just this morning we walked out of our apartment and she turns around right as I close the door and says "Oh no Sister I left the keys in the room!" and of course because our door automatically locks when shut I freak out thinking we were going to be locked out all day until around 7 when our roomies get home from the Humanitarian center...Yep she laughed and laughed and laughed. She's from a family 8, apparently a very large family from Sweden, even large for a LDS family in Sweden. People on the square who know about Sweden love to comment about that if it comes up in the conversation, she always laughs it off and will tell some joke about it. She's got three brothers and two sisters and she's the fourth child, so there is still a little sister and a little brother back home. The most frequent comment I have gotten since arriving here as been "Oh my goodness Sister Bomgren she looks like your little sister" haha it reminds me every time of how often people told me that I look like mom :) miss that. It's also super cute and funny because her english isn't perfect (you wouldn't know talking to her though) so sometimes when we're reading a conferenece talk together or the scriptures she'll stop every once in a while and ask what a word means. I keep telling her that she's asking the wrong Sister, I mean I'm pretty sure her english is better than mine. Also some times when we're texting or emailing one of our investigators she'll time one or two words in Swedish, so when I read it over before sending it I just laugh and tell her that I only speak english. At first she was confused by the comment but now she always laughs and gets a little embarrassed. She's trying to teach my Swedish, ya not really working, my mouth was only made to speak english, barely.
It's also super fun because all the Scandinavia Sisters all knew each other before their missions because of how small the church is in their countries so the sisters I hang out most are them. We were just talking today about how the majority of them will be going on their outbound next transfer which is so not okay. I told them all that they weren't allowed to go since their the only sisters I know. It's all good though, Sister Eldenberg (Sweden) can't find her passport so I told her she's stuck here with me. But all the sisters here are amazing, it's literally like a giant family. Even one of our security men says how he thinks of all the sisters here as his own daughters. There's a lot of love in this mission :) I really am blessed.

It's been hard this week, haven't been able to get a hold of a lot of our investigators. Some people just never answer their phones. It's like I'm already back home ;) It was still a good week though. We were able to get a new investigator through chat! He is so golden, and we always laugh when we talk about the whole situation. Chatting with someone online really produces a lot of anxietry waiting for them to respond. Our companionship goal for that day was to be simple but bold, and we were, very. So just waiting for his replies was horrible. It also didn't helped that I really needed to go to the bathroom, like really bad. Sister Bomgren suggested going on exchanges so she could stay and chat while I ran to the bathroom but the conversation was at the high point with us trying to get him to refer himself. It was a very tense 5 minutes waiting haha. I finally ended up going on exchanges and when I came back he still hadn't referred himself but he made a comment about being surprised that we asked for his number and that he wasn't really expecting it. Of course the way he worded it was weird ( he is pretty much this genius scholar who likes to use big words) So Sister Bomgren was so confused and she didn't know what he meant and she was worried that I wouldn't be back in time so she went onto google translate and translated it to Swedish. I don't think I have ever laughed so hard. We finally did get his number which resulted with a lot of laughter and screaming and high fives. (That happens a lot in the Teaching Center...or TC) We'll call him next week and follow up on his Book of Mormon reading.

Yay for missionary work!

Another exciting story and will probably make you laugh, it still makes us laugh whenever we talk about it. Well we were in the middle of an apointment with out less-active family over at the Relief Society Building when the AP's called us and told us that they needed to see us right away. So either we are so fantastic at being missionaries or we are the opposite for once again getting called last minute to meet with President and the AP's :) No need to worry though, they just asked us to participate in a special, top-secret project for the Church. The Church wants more people to know about Temple Square, which is hard to believe for me because of how busy we have been, so they are coming up with new ways to advertize the square. But they want to add a portion of the Square that they have never really advertized before, and that's the Sister Missionaries. Weird right? We weren't given a lot of information but they think that they are going to redo some Temple Square website that they have and then add some things to the Temple Square Facebook page (that means everyone has to like this page now) Anyways so they asked us to be models for some shoots that they will be taking. They want pictures of the sisters taking different groups of people around the square on tours. Originally they were going to use all actors, even for the missionaries, but the church decided they wanted real missionaries because of the light that they have. So President was asked to pick 5 companionships to participate, and after a lot of prayer he said, Sister Bomgren and I were chosen as one of the compaionships. I'm not going to lie, neither one of us really believed them when they told us. I mean a photoshoot? we're missionaires. This was definitely something I was not planning on when I was preparing for my mission. All the sisters got assigned a different time, we actually did our shoot yesterday. It was fun. They dressed us up, did our hair and our makeup and made us look all pretty. I did feel bad though, they put like 4 different outfits on me, they were trying to get me to match Sister Bomgren but none of the clothes they put me in fit. They ended up having to pin my skirt with some very heavy duty clothes pins haha. So I guess I haven't gained the missionary 25 yet. :) Even though it felt really awkward it was fun. They actually really only took like 3 or 4 poses with us in the photo. The rest was just of the family we were teaching. But ya, we have no idea when these photos will be launched or even if they will be used. Tina did say that all the photos go into to the church's libary on file so anytime in the future they can use the photos if they want. She did make a comment about new missionary manuals... what are the odds that in 20-30 years they make a new manual for missionaries that you get in the MTC and my kid decides to go on a mission and he sees my face in the manual....weird!

Anyways that was probably the most exciting thing that happened this week. I do have a story for Grandpa though :) we had our security training last night and we went over a lot of different things, e.g. bomb threats, shootings, fires, blah blah blah. But one of the things we went over was extreme weather. President Harmon was giving the presentation, and he apparently is known as the funny guy in the presidency. When the slide went up about extreme weather all the older sisters started hooting and hollering. President Harmon has a story that he LOVES telling about extreme weather and it's very similar to a story that Grandpa likes to tell :). Apparently President Harmon was right across the street from the Square when the SLC tornado came through in 2004. You know the same tornado that we were in. He is very animated in his story telling and it was hilarious. He did ask if any of us were in Salt Lake when the tornado came and of course I told him that I was there, but when he asked if I was on the Square and I told him no he got even more excited and went on to told us that he was! Haha the whole thing was hilarious. I don't even know how to describe his personality or the way he tells stories. I loved it though. So I'm sure, from talking with the other Sisters that that is a story that I will hear over and over again.

I'm glad to hear that everything back home is going well and that everyone is surviving the start of school. As a missionary I've decided I don't like the school season because it makes it very difficult to get a hold of our investigators who are still in school. Darn those good school attending children, don't they know that we're trying to teach them the gospel. oh well as we like to quote our pioneer ansectors "All is well!"

Love you all!

XOXOXOXOX

-Sister Fluckiger

P.S. I know how everyone loves Christmas in August, but I literally get to celebrate Christmas in August :) They've already starting putting up lights and its beautiful, It's finally starting to get dark at night so when we walk home we pass many trees all lit up for Christmas.