Happy Canada Day!
Yep today is Canada Day and my companion has not let me forget it :) Luckily my holiday and her holiday are in the same week or else who knows what would happen...
Speaking of fun, this week was filled with lots of it! Brad Wilcox came and spoke to our mission for Relief Society. He is basically here on Temple Square as often as we are because we have multiple youth conferences and he speaks at a lot of them. Well I guess some sisters cornered him one day and was like "why don't you ever come and speak to us..Temple Square is our home anyway" - well I guess that worked. We had a lesson on Grace, which of course is his soapbox (in a good way of course). Before he started talking about grace he shared with us a little history of Temple Square. Which we love! So the pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in July of 1847, he shared that by the first winter there was about 1,650 people living here and 54% of those people were under the age of 18. And the statistics remained like that until 1869. "The church was and still is on the shoulders of the youth. I mean what better testimony of this than the fact that missionaries are now being sent out younger and with less training!" Talk about no pressure there, but really it is such a blessing to be a youth in the church...even if I am technically not considered that anymore. Even better, what a blessing it is to have grown up within this church and with this knowledge. I can remember an experience that actually one of my companions had had. We were on exchanges serving in different areas (this was in Georgia) and an investigator was getting baptized in the area that my companion was in for the day. She had the opportunity to talk with him and he asked her how long she had been a member. She of course shared that she had had it in her life the entire time. She shared with me that his response to that was "I hope you know how luck you are. I have been in darkness my whole life. But now I have finally found the light and I am never going to let it leave me" Both of our hearts were touched by this experience. Here was someone who understand more than we did how important it is to have the restored gospel in your life.
"We are all important because we are all children of God. But you have great importance because you have the message of the restoration. Please use it to bless the lives of others" -Man I met on the Square
Some other great things that have happened this week was our focus on bridging anything to the message of the Restoration. A lot of people will call in asking for a free Bible and really something that I love to do it to give out copies of the Book of Mormon and invite them to meet with missionaries. So I don't know if it was my time that I spent serving in the South but now I love it when people call in for a free Bible because I can always get them to be so excited about getting a Book of Mormon to read with their new Bible. It's great! So that's what happened this week, and Sister Sommerfeldt is awesome! She answered one of these phone calls and even got the guy to invite himself to church this Sunday! When people truly understand was the Restoration means, that God wanted to clear out any confusion that was made because of the apostasy and He did that by bringing back ONE church, they are always excited and ready to learn more.
One guy in particular who actually called in the same week that I returned from Georgia asked for a Bible and shared with me that it was because he felt that something was missing in his life and he guessed that a brand new Bible would fix that. We talked a lot about the patterns that God has had throughout the Bible, namely his pattern of calling prophets. We also talked about the record of the Book of Mormon and he was curious as to what the Book of Mormon was so he was willing to get a copy. Well that was about 6 weeks ago and the Book of Mormon has changed his life! He is now meeting with missionaries and attending church and they are planning a day that he can enter the waters of Baptism to make promises with our Father. The Book of Mormon truly changes lives. I just love being a missionary!
So that is some of the exciting things that have been happening on Temple Square. Now to share the not as exciting stuff :)
Last P-day after we emailed we decided we wanted to be tourists and we went and explored a lot of different places.
-We hiked the U....which really means we just drove up into a neighborhood and parked and 'oh look there's the U'
-We went to a place called Gilgal Gardens (so cool!)
-Toured the state capital
-Walked around the Pioneer museum for a bit
-And then we went to a Baseball game!
Well the work continues to move forward and another transfer nears it's end. Sister Sommerfeldt and I will probably stay together since President likes trainers and trainees to stay together. This will be a change since I've had a new companion every six weeks since I finished being trained. We aren't sure yet though if we will be staying in the Beehive House or not. We find out on Monday. So if we are getting moved out P-day gets moved as well, so you may or may not hear from me next week. If not Happy 4th!!
XOXOXO
-Sister Fluckiger
P.S. Hippos can open their mouths so wide that their top and bottom jaws almost form a straight line.
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