Tuesday, January 20, 2015

 
Hey family!!

Another day, another dollar...oh, wait never-mind. 
Anyways, can anyone believe this transfer has flown by? (I'll admit I think my brain is permanently programmed to only think in 6 week periods)
I feel like Sister Merrill and I have only been companions for like a week. I guess the statement, 'time sure flies when you're having fun', is really applicable here. We've been staying busy with missionary work and office work.
Now that the end of the year is over we have finished all of our yearly reports but we finished just in time to start working on things for transfers. It is a little weird working in the office because we know everything that is going to be happening next transfer before any of the other sisters. So the nervousness, anticipation, and stress isn't really present this transfer, which really is just a blessing I think.
But aside from all the boring office work, we had a great week!
The sisters all got their outbound assignments, Sister Merrill is going to Louisiana! It's crazy, a huge group is going out this time because we don't need as many sisters on the square right now since it is a lot slower. So like all the sisters who have just been out a transfer longer than me...and like all the sisters who came out with me are leaving! Crazy! I feel like we all just here yesterday, well I still think we did, but now they are all leaving me. So that will be the weird thing about next transfer. Sister Mahoney and I are both in an assignment that is at least 2 transfers long so we are both staying, and we are speculating (which president doesn't like when we do that) that we will probably go outbound next transfer. Crazy! Another transfer, another thing to learn.
We had some great experience this week. Some not so spiritual ones would be that we helped President Harmon and Elder Skanky (members of the Mission Presidency) with two seperate problems. I've learned that being an Office Assitant means that everyone assumes you can fix everything, be it technical or whatever. So President Harmon came in saying that his mouse for his computer wasn't working, so we went into his office and played around with a few cords, unplugged something here and plugged something in there, and would you look at that we fixed it! Elder Skanky came in another day saying that he needed his folders all organized again for the new year. So we did, we got it all done in a day. Anyways they now both owe us dinner :) Isn't service just wonderful.
So that's been fun, we get to work a lot with them and they are just funny.
Oh, I also learned that Elder Skanky remembers Becca Fluckiger serving here. He has been here for a couple of years and I told him that we were cousins. Small world.
As for the spiritual experiences, we were able to meet a lot of awesome people who had amazing stories to tell and beautiful testimonies. Throughout the week we met a lot of recent converts who had just moved here to attend school and they were working on preparing for their missions. Each one had their own unique experiences with the spirit, but what I learned that even though each one of us takes a different path, our Father always finds a way to get us all where we need to be. He sure does always know what is best. :)
This week we also had the privilege of taking around a new senior couple who will be serving as a director of a visitor center. Apparently, each visitor center has a director and then our mission and Nauvoo are the two that have mission presidents. They are all just two years of service and so each year they call new directors to serve over them. And just like sisters who get called to a visitor center come to Temple Square as part of their training at the MTC, so do the directors and their wives. So we were asked to help out in the training. We got paired with a couple and we took them on a tour, we didn't role play or anything. We just did the tour as we would have done it for any other member of the church. We taught, bore testimony, and invited. It was a very cool experience. The couple that we took around got called to serve at Hill Cumorah and they were just awesome! They taught us so much! They were actually serving in Africa recently but their mission was shut down so they were sent home and released. And they just got a phone call like 2 days before they needed to report to the MTC saying that they had a new assignment to serve on Hill Cumorah.Crazy. Well we took them around, and then we dropped them off in a classroom to have lunch and then to continue their instruction and we picked them up later in the day and they came back onto the square with us, but instead of taking them on a tour they wanted to teach with us. So we walked around and explained a bit of how the mission goes, the difference between online teaching and teaching on the square with tours and things. And then just told them that we would walk around and if they felt prompted to talk with anyone, then that was what we were going to do. Man, did they just dive right in! It's was awesome. We approached the first man who walked on the square as we walked past the gate and they were awesome. They followed all the steps in Preach My Gospel and we ended up taking him on a tour. We were meant to be there to help them with the history and to help them with the little things like 'How to Begin Teaching', 'Asking Inspired Questions' and other teaching skills from Preach My Gospel, but they got it all. They even remembered all the history from the tour that we shared with them. We were able to have a great spiritual, converting tour and it was because of their awesome testimonies. I don't feel like we helped them with anything but we were definitely uplifted and strengthened from spending the day with them.
Oh, and because I'm in the office I already know who my next companion is going to be. I am super excited, I don't know too much about her but I think it will be really fun. She is just a transfer below me and is from Germany. Sister Fingerle, gotta love those German names :D
Oh, and next week is transfer week, but I already know that my p-day will stay the same, so no worries there. :)
I'll let you know all about the crazy transfer stuff next week.

Love you all!
XOXOXOX
-Sister Fluckiger

Friday, January 16, 2015

Divine Orchestration!


Hey Family!
Yay!! I am now an aunt!!! Baby Aria looks beautiful and perfect! Remember to learn from her family, she was just with our Father, so I bet she has lots that she can teach us if we watch and love her.
It sounds like this week was crazy and exciting for everyone back home. Here at Temple Square, it's about the opposite. The lights are now coming down, the snow is melting and everyone has gone back to work or school so it's pretty quiet. Yet, we are still missionaries and we are still finding people that we can talk with about the gospel.
The probably most exciting thing that has happened at the square alone, is that we are now showing Meet the Mormons in our theaters. Which is good because it is bringing a lot of people to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, and some of them trickle into the square. We are excited and expecting to see a lot of missionary work happen because of the movie. I hope everyone was able to see it while it was in theaters, if not it is showing at all the visitor centers so Oakland should have it? A trip to the temple is always good :) 
I've decided (and I can't remember if I shared this before) but I really want to live like right next door to the temple for the rest of my life! I love it. We are so blessed to be serving right next to the temple. Even though we can't go in all the time the spirit is still there. There is a story that we love to tell about a visitor of temple square years and years ago, okay not that long ago because Elder Skanky (Mission Financial Secretary) was still here. But a guy came to the square and was just standing in the gates and would step in and then step back out and he continued this for some time. Elder Skanky was the one who saw this man and he approached him to see what he was doing. The man said that he was trying to figure out why he felt different when he stepped into the gates. It's true, we like the think of our little Temple Square as the perfect example of being in the world but not of it.
Anyways, things are good here. We are staying busy, the APs have already started transfer planning, crazy right?! Which means not much happens in the office because they are in meetings all day with President, which means more time for us to be on the square working! Yay! 
We were able to talk to a lot of cool people. One in particular was a truck driving couple who stopped in for the night and came to temple square. She was a member and he is planning on getting baptized pretty soon. They were awesome people! Had an incredible story. But the guy was actually a bit of an anti when it came to the LDS church. I'm sure he knows everything there is to know about the church. He ripped it apart, and yet now he knows that it is true! It was such a testimony builder to me that Heavenly Father knows us perfectly and has a specific plan for all of us to come to the truth. I really do know that everyone will eventually figure out for themselves what God wants for them, sometimes it just takes people a little longer and for some they usually have to go the wrong way to figure out the right way. Which is okay, that's the entire 'Good News' of the gospel!
I taught one lady this week who has another cool story. We were on exchanges with out district leader and I was with her companion Sister Rajah (Australia). We were teaching one of her investigators who wasn't exactly progressing just because of the situation that she was living in and she wasn't ready to change it. When Sister Rajah was telling me about her before we called, it sounded like she was really studying the gospel but wasn't to the point that she was willing to live it yet so of course she wasn't having the spiritual confirmations that this was true. When we called her however, her heart was completely changed. it was evident that the spirit had been working on her since the last time she was taught by Sister Rajah. She ended up just telling us that she new it was true and she knew the changes that she needed to make. The cool thing about it was her story that she shared with me about how she came in contact with the church. Her husband is actually a member of the church who stopped going some years ago, but her family is pretty active. So the in-laws have invited them to church a few times. Even though they didn't go, Sister Rajah's investigator starting looking into the church and eventually met Sister Rajah.
Divine Orchestration, something that I learned from a man on the square. It basically means that there are no coincidences, and that God is very good at leading us to where we need to be. For this investigator, she was led to her husband, then to the church and I bet you she is going to be a key part in bringing her husband back to the church as well. It's an unusual circumstance, one that I will admit that I doubted when I heard before we called her. It'll happen though because God is good :)
Oh, and last p-day we watched Meet the Mormons for a zone activity. We watched it downstairs in our theater and we decided we also needed to have a pajama party with lots of food... so that's what we did. I will admit we put on our Pj's under our coats and jackets and walked to the square. It was a genius idea and even made us ponder doing it during the week (don't worry we haven't done it). But seriously you couldn't even tell. It was a lot of fun, and I really like the movie! Of course, it might be because I'm a missionary but still, it's great.

Well it's about that time. Just want you all to know that I love being a missionary, and I love Temple Square. There is so much that Heavenly Father is teaching me, either through my companions or through my investigators, He always find a way to get me to listen. And it's funny, since we met that man who taught us the word 'Divine Orchestration', I've been able to notice more and more each day in every aspect of the work. He really is the one directing this work, no doubt about that.
I love you all! Have a happy January week!
XOXOXOX
-Sister Fluckiger

Sunday, January 4, 2015

New Beginnings


Happy New Year!
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and you got some sleep this weekend :)
For us, New Year's Eve was just another day, haha welcome to being a missionary.
It's been a good week though, hard to believe it is already 2015!

Did anyone make any new years resolutions? I'm sure I have shared this with you but President Pouslen loves to tell us: "If you always do what you've always done, you're gonna get what you've always had". Granted he applies that to missionary work but I think it can be applied to anything in life. Also there was a fun poem thing that was on the back on the New Year's Eve Temple Square concerts program that I really like and I think Momma would love it :)
"There's something invigorating and inviting about new beginnings. Like a fresh blanket of untouched snow, like a book full of empty pages, the new year lies before us, waiting for us to make our mark"
2015 is going to be a great year, full of learning, adventures, and miracles. Every day is a new beginning, it is so exciting!

Despite the New Year, this week was filled with lots of work but lots of tender mercies. We've had investigators drop us and investigators progress more than we expected because our Father is so good! So it's been a week of ups and downs, but the ups make everything else worth it.
We were able to be out of the office for most of the week. We did have to calculate the months numbers and send it to the missionary department. But that was about it. Which means more time doing missionary work!
We were able to talk with a lot of amazing people this week. I love hearing people's stories. Everyone has their own story and there is always something that we can learn from it. A lot of the people we met, either on chat or on the square, had really strong testimonies of the gospel but were in a situation that was preventing progression. It's been interesting, Heavenly Father is very good at placing certain people in your path to remind you of something that you learned in the past. Sister Merrill and I were both able to have experiences when we were talking with people and were prompted to share an experience that we had, that before then was long forgotten about.
Well sorry this email is short, this p-day is a little shorter. We are meeting as a zone to watch the "Meet the Mormons" movie because tonight is the first night that we are now showing it here.
Yay! :)
oh, and fun fact, we ran into Elder Holland today! He is so cool! Perks of serving in SLC!
XOXOXOX
-Sister Fluckiger