Georgia!

Hey Ya'll!!

I'm really working on this ya'll thing, it's pretty fun!

Okay, but really, where do I even start!? I love Georgia so much, I may not like it in the middle of summer or in the middle of the winter but right now is the perfect time and I love it!

Our area is the best, I am not in the city (answer to prayer), it's almost like we are in the woods. There are trees everywhere and you can always smell the pine trees which I love. In some areas it actually feels like I am up in Donner-pine needles all over the ground, dirt sidewalks, fresh clean air. I'm loving it.

Our area is huge, I don't know what other areas are like but ours is pretty big, there are three companionships of missionaries in our ward, us and two sets us elders. I'll admit probably the weirdest thing about being here are the elders. The ward is a decent size which is nice and the members are great, they love us and love to come teaching with us which is awesome. We've really only had about three days of work so far. I feel like so much has happened the last few days.

I'll just tell you about the time I've had in Georgia. I arrived Wednesday afternoon, the plane flight was horrible and I am convinced that I will be driving back to Utah after my three months are over. Some elders picked us up from the airport and drove us to the Mission Home. Again that was a little odd. When we got there, President Harding was having mission council and so all of the zone leaders and sister training leaders were there. Of course he interrupted everything when we arrived and had us come up front to introduce ourselves. That was great. Then sweet Sister Harding fed us some food, we met with President and then got paired with our companions and started off to get to work.

Then on Thursday we had zone conference for half of the day which was great. It was like the perfect thing to get me transitioned into working here in Georgia. Since then we have just been working, working, working. We are teaching a lot of wonderful people, people from all over the world! It's almost like I never left Temple Square. There are a lot of people here from Africa, Burmese, and Nepal. There are entire complexes with families from these countries. It's fun, hard because the majority of them don't speak any English, but still fun.

President Harding's main thing is teaching and baptizing families, which is so exciting since I haven't been able to teach a family really on Temple Square. We have met some beautiful families that we are going to start teaching! One was just a miracle, we were driving to go drop by and visit a less active in the ward when we felt prompted to go visit another lady in the ward, so we quickly made a U-turn and went to go see her. We had a little spiritual thought with her and her grand-kids and then asked if there was anyone she wanted us to stop by and see. This individual just loves doing missionary work and really understands how important it is for everyone to hear about the gospel, she's been rejected a few times and so we think she was a little discouraged, but when we asked her she perked right up and told us about a cute young family that had just moved into the apartment right across the complex from her (there are a lot of apartment complexes in our area) so we went on over! The member walked over with us and we knocked on the door and the cute mom and her kids answered the door, at first she told us that she had already found a church and was pretty content with staying there but then we just asked her if we could just say a prayer together (Georgians love to pray!) and so she allowed us in and we asked about her kids and how everything was going and what she would like us to pray for. She let us know of a few things that were causing her some stress as a mother and so we said a prayer with her asking for a few specific things, and it was awesome. Her heart was touched by the spirit during the prayer and she was totally open for talking with us more about the church afterwards. We taught about eternal families and baptism and she committed to baptism right there!

So many experiences like that have happened, I could probably write for hours about all the people we have met. I wish I could. We have met people who are so prepared and then we have had the opposite, which is just fun :) The way people react when they really don't want to talk with missionaries is just so funny to me. It really hasn't happened that often, maybe like 3 times with the many people that we have talked with over the last few days, so that really surprised me. But it definitely keeps you on your toes.

Some funny experiences that I have to share because they just made my week. For one, the members  do feed us here, not a ton which is really fine to me. But they will call last minute and just ask if we can stop by and then they will have a little snack (meal) for us. Something that happened which was just so funny, a sweet old member had us over, we are teaching her granddaughter and she was supposed to be there but last minute she had to reschedule, but the member still wanted us to stop by because she had prepared a little 'snack' for us all. Well we were starving that day because we had appointments all through lunch so it was a little tender mercy. Well we start eating and I have no idea what it is, she didn't say. But lets just say I wasn't liking it, but I was eating it like a good missionary. Then she makes a comment that it was cooked Salmon....... My companion just looked at me and I tried so hard not to make a face while I just kept eating. Then the sweet member gets us to grab something and Sister Perry just grabbed my plate and switched with me. She's an angel. What's funny is we had brought a recent convert with us to the lesson so she was eating with us and she saw the entire thing! She just stared at us and then said "I didn't see anything, I'm just looking at the paintings"- From all of this I can now say that I have had fish and I do not like it.

Well there are other funny things but I am actually out of time-these computers have time limits-yikes!

I'll tell you more of my Georgia adventures next week. We are teaching many wonderful people! This is going to be a transfers of miracles! I can just feel it in my bones :D

Love you all!!

XOXOXOXOX

-Sister Fluckiger

Sorry if I rambled, always so much to say!