The Time is Far Spent

Another wonderful week has come and gone! Time really is just an awful thing. :) Oh well, you have to live with what you've got. Lot's of different things happened this week and all of them were fun and exciting. I mean it's always fun to be a missionary and exciting things happen 24/7, but I only have photos documenting a few of those fun things....

​Our trip last week to the Provo City Temple for our Preparation Day :)

​My last Staff Meeting with the entire gang!

​My lovely African friend, Sister Sonku (South Africa). She said that we didn't have enough photos together. 

​Music and the Spoken Word yesterday. The last Sunday the entire departing class will goes together. 

​Oh and this is my home away from home :)

I love you all and hope that you will continue to have amazing miracles happen within your own lives. I truly know that this is the Lord's church and it's honor to serve on His team. 

2 Nephi 33:7

... and I guess I'll be seeing you in a few!

XOXOXOX

Sister Fluckiger

I Feel My Savior's Love

G'Day Family! 

Tomorrow is Australian Day and so in behalf of my lovely companion I hope you do something Aussie. (I don't know what that would entail but I'm sure you can figure something out :))

This week sure was filled with tender mercies from the Lord. Sister Rajah and I have been praying to be able to have the eyes to notice those little miracles or instances when God touches our lives.

I remember Sister Clayton, wife of Elder Clayton coming to our Sacrament and speaking to us and sharing that we must have the eyes to see and the hearts to remember those instances. When everything you do is focused on moving the Lord's work forward it really is amazing to see all that He does for you. 

This week He has led us to some wonderful people who have been able to strengthen us as we have taught and testified. The Lord really His mindful of His children :) What a glorious truth. 

Helping adjust President and Sister Risenmay to the mission has been fun. They are both great. Sister Risenmay is so lively and always comes into our office just to 'chat' haha. It catches us off guard most times because we always assume that she has something for us to do or wants us to know about something when in reality she just wanted to say hi :) It's cute, I think she's having a blast being in a mission with all girls. They are both going to wonderful things for the mission. 

Tomorrow we start transfer planning! Crazy that it's already here, President hasn't wanted to start until he finished interviewing every single sister which has pushed us back so we get to start and finish this week. Hopefully it works out that way! 

Tuesday we had the worldwide Missionary Broadcast in the Conference Center Theater and apparently it was the first one in about a decade. We were blessed to be able to attend and we recieved training from Elder Anderson, Elder Oaks, and then some from the Missionary Department and some of the Seventies. It was a wonderful experience and we have been trying to apply a lot of it into the mission. The work sure is hastening!

Sister Rajah helps keep me sane amidst all of the many different things that we have been doing. We sure do have a lot of fun together! Sometimes too much fun, it's that's possible.

​

I also cut her hair this week! And it actually looks good! I've been telling all the sisters that I'm secretly a professional :) All the things that you get to do while serving a mission. 

Hey I love you all! This Sunday my MTC class will be doing the special musical number during Sacrament Meeting. It's bit of a tradition. We will be singing the 3rd and 4th verse of "I Feel My Savior's Love" which I think mostly goes unnoticed. Sister Desjourdy and I found it when they said we should sing this song so we requested to sing those verses. :) It's simply my testimony of my mission. 

3. I feel my Savior's love

And know that he will bless me.

I offer him my heart;

My shepherd he will be.

He knows I will follow him,

Give all my life to him.

I feel my Savior's love,

The love he freely gives me.

4. I'll share my Savior's love

By serving others freely.

In serving I am blessed.

In giving I receive.

He knows I have followed him,

Given all my life to him.

I feel my Savior's love, 

By serving others freely.

Hope you have a wonderful week! Love you all!

XOXOX

Sister Fluckiger 

God is Real!

My dear family!! 

This week has been probably one of the craziest weeks of my mission (I'm sure that I say that every week, but this time I mean it!)

First off, I apologize for not emailing yesterday. We had meetings with the new Mission President until 5:30pm and at that point there just isn't a point at having a preparation day, so now we are having it today! Yay.

You would be amazing at all that has happened within this week. It felt like a months worth of events were all crammed into a single week. it was also an up and down thing. This week we said goodbye to the wonderful Poulsens. I'm still in a little bit of denial that they are gone. I truly know that they were exactly what I needed for my mission. I also know that President and Sister Risenmay are exactly what the mission needs now and it's been a blessing to work with them the past few days. 

:) I don't know how President Poulsen put up with us for so long, but I sure appreciate it. 

Last week Sister Rajah and I drove down to the MTC for the day. I came full circle, started my mission at the MTC and now I had the opportunity to be sent back! It did feel weird going their again, that MTC smell...it's a real thing haha. The other funny thing was all the missionaries giving us these weird looks because we were walking around with these strange and different name tags :) For the most part we just pretended to be new missionaries again, we fit right in with everyone! 

The group tour that we gave went really well! Talk about stressful though. There's nothing like giving a tour to a bunch of mission presidents and visitor center directors AND all of the staff from the Visitor Center department of the Missionary Department. Thankfully it was the first time and the last time ever doing something like that. 

The blessing of being down in Provo for the day was getting to walk around the Provo Temple 

After surviving that task, the next one was to transition Mission Presidents. We said goodbye to President and Sister Poulsen Thursday night and Friday morning President and Sister Risenmay arrived bright and early. They are wonderful and are exactly what the mission needs at this time. It's kind of fun to be able to work so closely with two different Mission Presidents, a little bit crazy too. Our mission is so unique and there are just so many variables and it's been fun to try and help them all figure it out.  

Yesterday we were able to take them around to see all of the different centers and sites and show them all that we do here. They previously served in the Salt Lake City South Mission and they have shared with us how our mission is one of a kind :) 

Then we also welcomed three new wonderful sisters from the MTC this week! They were supposed to come on Transfer Day but have been living in the MTC for many many weeks, so we said we could just take them early. It's great to see new missionaries and to feel the fire that they have within them. Every time we are with President I always find myself volunteering to train again :) I say, a year and a half is just not long enough! 

Amidst all of this Sister Rajah and I have been able to see our Father taking care of our investigators. Sadly we weren't blessed with as much proselyting time but the time that we do have miracles just pop out at us left and right. One investigator finally got a hold of the locals, one was able to have the blessing of baptism, one was able to make it to church, and we were able to find many more. You get so much done as you serve on Temple Square, it blows my mind every time a week ends and we review all that has happened. The Lord sure does take care of us and His many other children. Last night after finishing our last meeting with President Risenmay we hit the square running! We were able to take a few texted out tours and place a few copies of the Book of Mormon. One sweet couple that we took around was from Texas and you could tell that their hearts were in the right place. As we were in the Tabernacle we were teaching the restoration and explaining to them the blessing of having a Prophet of the earth again today. I don't think I will ever get over how cool it is that we have a living, breathing, Prophet of God on the earth...today! As we were sharing this with this couple you could see the light of understanding come into their eyes. For a split second they got it! We brought up the Book of Mormon and explained that it was the 'fruit' that would allow them to know if the Prophet was true. They told us that they would read it on their plane home. That's another blessing of serving in a place where everyone is visiting because almost everyone has to get home somehow and it usually takes some time - the perfect time to read! 

I love being a missionary and I love being on Temple Square.  It's been warmer recently, all the snow is gone and the sun has come out. The next few weeks are going to be a lot of fun as we continue to teach repentance and baptize converts! 

Oh and here is a picture of my companion in a box:

​Sometimes when we are bored we hide in boxes and jump out at people. President Hinckley always said that "Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured" 

Love you all!!

XOXOXO

-Sister Fluckiger

Work Work Work!!!

Hi Everyone!!

The sun is shining here in Utah and the sky is a beautiful blue! Now that is just a plus to the wonderful work that has been happening on the square! 

President has been taking the time to do a lot of interviews for the sisters that are going home and then he also started cleaning out his office, which means more proselyting time for us! 

I'll admit, over the last two transfers I've found myself sometimes getting caught up in the list of things we must do everyday that it clouds the real reason that I am here. Being able to be out and about, contacting, finding, and teaching our investigators was a real treat. It's definitely the best part about missionary work. Sister Rajah and I have probably even had too much fun with all of it :) (if there is such a thing as "too much fun"). 

The Lord provided us with a lot of miracles which was wonderful. One of our investigators in California is planning on being baptized soon but the last two weeks we hadn't been able to get a hold of her. Which usually doesn't worry us too much since they have the locals but we were a tiny bit worried because the last time we had talked with her she was able to share with us a few of her concerns and we realized that she hadn't been reading the Book of Mormon in a while because the locals were having her focus on the lesson pamphlets. It's never a good sign when investigators aren't reading the Book of Mormon... the miracle was, after many many days of pray and fasting, Saturday night during our Weekly Planning session we received a text from her explaining why she hadn't been in touch. She had some hard things happen within her family, but the last sentence in her text was: "I am reading the Book of Mormon, it's helped me. I still have a lot to learn but I'm going to do it" 

I sure do love that book :) 

It's funny, we also took a tour of a family from Atlanta (I love taking people around from the south!) and it ended up being a really nice experience. They weren't too interested in finding out if our church could benefit them in anyway, they were more interested in trying to figure out what makes us tick and why we would do something as crazy as serve a full time mission and not get paid for it. I made a comment to the mom in the middle of it that no missionary in the world would give up so much time and money to leave their home and go knock on strangers' doors all day long everyday. By the end of the tour she took my arm and looked me straight in the eye and asked me: "and you really believe this?" I don't know if this is accurate or not, but I think in most cases it's human nature to automatically doubt when you are questioned like that. For me, I feel like it just strengthens me because I always have the spirit witness to me in that moment that I am right. That this really is His church. I wish everyone could know that now. Eventually everyone will of course, I guess I'm still waiting on the patience thing :) 

 

​

Something fun that we did this week was following Relief Society my MTC class went and took photos with President and Sister Poulsen. Elder Moore even let me use his fancy, expensive (I even asked him...it's more expensive than me!), and very heavy camera. After taking only 3 photos my arms were tired. And I thought I was in pretty good shape again. I don't know how photographers do it. 

​The old MTC gang is back together! (we are missing a few...but they ditched out early)

​Two of my favorite people! President and Sister Poulsen spoke in Sacrament meeting yesterday. Both shared wonderful testimonies. They are sure going to be missed! The work will continue to move forward though! I am excited for the opportunity to learn from President and Sister Risenmay, all that we have heard has been wonderful things!

Oh and the funny thing of the week, we have an investigator who is in Nigeria, he is a favorite of mine. We met him online so he knows us by our first names, but Sister Rajah has decided that I need to officially change my name. Every time we call he always raps to us, and then asks "where is Alizzzaaa??!" Somehow that also led to all of our other African investigators calling me that. It's hard not to laugh during every lesson. Teaching all nations is such a blast! It's neat to be able to see the gospel go into so many parts of the world. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's a one size fits all!

Love you all lots!!

XOXOXOX

-Sister Fluckiger

It's 2016 Already?

My oh my! Where does time fly!?

This was one of those awful weeks where not one of our investigators answered the phone. So sad, luckily we were able to use the time to find new people to teach. We met a wonderful Italian exchange student who came to visit Temple Square and wanted to learn more and meet with missionaries.  We also met a great family whose neighbors are members of the church and then decided to come to Temple Square to see what makes that family tick haha. The dad is now going to read the Book of Mormon and they are going to meet the missionaries when they return home. So despite us worrying about all of our other investigators, the Lord provided for us to see miracles and we talked with and taught those who came to Temple Square. 

This past week was also the very last week of the Christmas lights! I love Christmas time, it's a magical time of the year where so many hearts have been softened. Sister Rajah and I have been able to cover a lot of the Christmas assignments which was lots of fun! 

​

One of my favorites is to be up by the Statue of Christ, we had large groups of families come and visit which was so fun to be able to witness them teaching each other and learning about how they kept Christ in the center of their holiday season. I secretly snatched this photo as they were listening to the lovely narration of the Savior's words found in the scriptures. I sure am grateful for my Savior and His loving atonement that allows us to grow and become more like Him. 

Along with the Christmas fun we've had a few meetings with the missionary department, they have basically been fine tuning our teaching skills because next week we are going to be driving down to the MTC to give a group of brand new Visitor Directors, Mission Presidents, and wives a group tour to demonstrate to them how we can still fulfill our missionary purpose even if we are assigned to a visitor center. So that's been fun and exciting. We will be able to meet President and Sister Risenmay though, they will be arriving to the mission on January 15th. We've only heard wonderful things about them and I know that I'll be able to learn a lot from them during the few weeks we'll be able to serve together. 

With the new mission president arriving it also means that we have been getting everything ready for President and Sister Poulsen to leave. Really sad to think about but we are enjoying all the time that we have to be with them. This Thursday for Relief Society we are actually going to be surprising them with a special program to thank them. The zones have come together and written different songs and poems that they are going to present to them along with some gifts and a slideshow. Sisters here sure are creative! One of President's favorite things is music and listening to us sing so that will be the majority of it. 

​Here's one song that the sisters wrote, it's to the tune of "We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet"

​

And then, here's a poem that a zone wrote together. 

We are super excited, we know that they are going to love it! The trick is keeping it a secret as long as possible. :) 

I hope you all had a wonderful Sabbath yesterday! It's still my favorite day of the week!

We had our fast and testimony meeting in Sacrament and I loved being able to see and hear sisters from all over the world share about their love for Christ and His church. Sometimes I think of the movie Grinch and how at the end He went through this painful experience where His heart suddenly grew three sizes bigger. I feel like I can relate to him, haha, I mean my experience hasn't been as drastic of course. But with the atonement of Christ, that really can happen to us! He can help us grow our own hearts and the love we have for others can and will grow. It's been a neat experience. It's fun to serve in a place like Temple Square with so many wonderful sisters from all over the place. 

So all the amazing sisters is a plus but then when you think of all the cool people who come to Temple Square, that's another plus. Last night as we were up on the square we ran into one of my zone leaders from when I was in Atlanta. He asked us how it was serving on Temple Square compared to when we were in our Outbound missions. I told him that when I was in Atlanta I felt like everyone I taught was the same person, same story, same background, same needs - or almost at least. He agreed. On Temple Square though within 5 minutes you'll meet two groups of people from separate sides of the world with completely different needs and backgrounds.  I mean yesterday alone I met someone from Texas who knew everything there was to know about the Mormon church and had no interest in it at all but because of how changing her life was, had a hard time believing that God really did know her. Then I met a family from Brazil who were hard core Catholics but knew nothing about the Mormon Church. Using the same scripture for everyone doesn't really work that way here, you always have to make sure you are in-tune with the Spirit so He can tell you what they need. It's fun and exciting! 

Serving a mission is the best thing anyone could ever do. For the year of 2015 we were able to reach our goal as a mission of 900 baptisms...we actually exceeded it! This morning we set another mission wide baptismal goal for the year of 1,016 for the year of 2016! I always like to picture Heavenly Father's dining room table - He has a lot of chairs and we are all trying to fill them! Lots and lots of work to be done :)

I love you all and hope you are having a wonderful week!

​

XOXOXOX

Sister Fluckiger 

Christmas Excitement

Words cannot express the amount of things/work that we accomplished this week. 

So here are some pictures instead:

A lost sheep who is no longer lost :)-  I found him a year ago when I was companions with Sister Fingerle

We took the Organ tour Christmas morning!

Following the tour we gathered together as a mission and had a Christmas Devotional and then went and opened presents together!

​

YAY...Santa came and visited us :D

We had to buy 30 pizzas the day after Christmas....luckily the Lord provides a way...

He provided Costco...

That's all the fun things that happened this week, I won't bore you with all the meetings and office work. 

However, the Lord really did provide for us this week with our investigators! They are all doing wonderful and all made it to church yesterday and some of them are preparing for baptism now! Yesterday was our day that we prayed to be able to get a hold of every single one of them and they actually ALL answered the phone! (that never happens!) God sure is good!

We also had time this week to go on some exchanges with the Zone Leaders, it was fun, I served with Sister Sonku (South Africa) and Sister O'Dell (Maryland) for the day. Sure learned a lot from them and probably laughed a little bit too much. Then this morning we had a special training with Brother Billings who works in the Missionary Department and is over all the Visitor Centers - we will be going down to the MTC for a special training with the new Visitor Center Directors and Mission Presidents - and he was able to give us a wonderful compliment of telling us that we don't have the 'missionary voice'! This might sound weird, but it's a real thing and we don't like it because, to me at least, everyone who has the voice sounds like a robot. So to anyone who is preparing to serve a mission, don't fall into it! It's not cool.

Okay, well it's short and sweet but we have to run, we are spending most of our preparation day today in meetings. I love you all and hope you had a wonderful Christmas filled with the Spirit of our Savior.

Love you lots!!

XOXOXOXOX

Sister Fluckiger 

​

Merry Christmas!

My oh my, this week is Christmas! 

I have loved being a missionary this Christmas season, it's a good thing that the Lord blessed me with two Christmas' because this time around I've had my own testimony deepen of how special this season is. 

The closer it gets to Christmas the busier the square gets and the more fun we have :)

I'll admit though, this week was probably one of the busiest and craziest weeks of my mission. So many things happen that I can't even remember any of them... just kidding haha.

 

Tuesday we spent the majority of the day with the departing sisters. We were able to attend the temple with them and then lunch at Olive Garden. 

Then on Wednesday I was able to pick up my new companion, Sister Rajah from Perth, Australia. And yes she does have a pretty cool accent. 

​We spent most of Wednesday in the mission office with the new sisters. We had 13 wonderful and powerful sisters arrive from the MTC. We met all of them, interviewed them all and then met with President and paired them up with their companions. . Sadly, after getting through Wednesday both President and Sister Poulsen came down with a pretty bad cold, so they have been out of the office for the past few days. So that's been a bit tricky as we needed to plan for our big Mission Leadership Training and Council which happened this morning. This week we also had a stake that volunteered to feed some of our sisters missionaries which is such a blessing for us. We will be going to dinner this week right before Christmas, so it will be really special. 

We also had the blessing of being able to hear from some wonderful people. Brother Michael Wilcox came to our Thursday Relief Society and shared a wonderful message about the first Christmas that happened in the Americas so long ago. Then on Friday, Elder Lynn Robbins came and spoke to us about the difference between doing and becoming. He taught us how we can use our missionary planner as a tool to help us become better disciples of Jesus Christ. it was wonderful! Then on Sunday we were blessed to have Elder Ronald Rasband come to our Sacrament Meeting. It has been such an uplifting week. And I promise with all of these fun perks we still had the time to do lots of missionary work. One lady who Sister Nogueira and I had been teaching, we actually found her one evening wandering the square with her brother who was a member, she shared with us that she has been able to recognize this as truth. She attended church yesterday and has decided that she wants to be baptized. The gospel is true! I'm grateful to be a missionary and to be able to serve the Lord in this way.

I told Sister Rajah and we weren't allowed to get tired over the next few weeks because we just have too many things that we need to do between helping President and our investigators. This week we are going to be having the Christmas Devotional this week and we somehow have to figure out how to hook the sound system up in one of our bigger theaters. So if you want something to pray for, there you go :) me and techy things haven't been the best of friends the last few weeks. We also want to be able to find a lot of time to teach our investigators. Using time wisely is a skill the Lord is trying to teach us right now. I know He will succeed :)

The work continues to move forward, I'm grateful for this Christmas season and for all that I have learned this year. I love you all lots and hope you have a merry merry Christmas! 

XOXOXOX

Sister Fluckiger

The Snow is Falling

G'Day everyone! 

Is anyone counting down for Christmas? I was talking to some kids this week and asked them if they knew how many days left until Christmas...their response- "no, if we keep tract then it will go slower" haha cute kids! The month of December has just flown by though, it's crazy. Salt Lake City is also preparing for Christmas, we woke up this morning to about 6 inches of snow on the ground! Yay! And it continues to fall as we speak. We've been told that it will snow all day today and tomorrow. 

​

The snow isn't as untouched as when we found it early this morning but it's still pretty close. It looks like a winter wonderland. 

This morning was transfer conference. It's crazy to think that an entire transfer has already gone by. It's not fair that we only had 5 weeks. So this morning as a mission we all gathered together in the Assembly Hall and were blessed to be able to hear from both Sister and President Poulsen. This is their last transfer here on Temple Square. They will be departing in the middle of January. It's so sad to think about, I love them both so much! I really believe that I was sent to serve on Temple Square because I needed to learn from them. This transfer has been great to be able to spend more time with them and learn from them, not only them but also the entire mission presidency! 

​

Wednesday my sweet companion, Sister Nogueira, will be departing which is also sad. Five of my mission companions will be finishing their missions this week. Crazy how fast time goes. Temple Square really has become my home away from home and the sisters that I serve with I know with all of my heart are really my sisters. We were buddies up in the pre-mortal life and we knew that we would be blessed to be able to serve together. Each Transfer Conference we get to hear from the departing sisters and we also sing them our mission song to close the meeting. I love my mission but it's not fair that we come from all over the world, makes it harder to be able to see everyone after the mission. President always says "never in your life will you be able to stand with a group of sisters as strong as this and all be united in the same purpose" I know though that as we all return to our different parts of the world we are going to be strengthening the church and preparing more individuals for the blessings of the temple.

We were able to attend Music and the Spoken Word this week (the last week of the transfer they always recognize the sisters who are leaving). We all agreed that the program was one of their best yet, of course that is all our opinion. The spoken word really stood out to me because I feel it's what I've been telling members and guests all day every day since the Christmas lights turned on. -
"Two thousand years ago, a child was born-in a small town, in a small stable, the only place His mother could find to spend the night. The world He entered was full of conflict, in desperate need of peace-not that different, actually, from today's world...He grew from child to man, from grace to grace and brought a message of love and compassion and long-suffering... in the process, He changed the world forever....As we remember His birth and life, may our celebrations take us back to that which is small, quiet, and peaceful. In a world so large, loud and unsettled, we can make this season a welcome change-small, quiet, and peaceful."
The scriptures always tell us to "remember, remember" and it applies to Christmas time too! I spoke to a cute little family this week and I was able to ask the kids why they loved Christmas time. One of the younger kids replied very fast and loud and said "because I love Jesus!" That kid understands! Being a missionary on Temple Square is so special and unique. Everyday I have been blessed to see the hand of God work in somebody's life which results in His hand working more in my life. 

Aside from the snow and the normal missionary routine this week was beyond crazy for us. We were able to participate in two different focus groups with the Missionary Department, one was for a new Temple Square historic guide for missionaries (woot woot) and the other one was for improvements that they are making with our online Teaching Center. Those were both exciting but now we have found ourselves a little more involved than we were expecting. One of the Brothers who works for the MTC and is over our Teaching Center is now having us pilot all the new features, which is fun to see things start to work and progress. That all happened this week. Then on top of that we finished transfer planning with President, and prepared everything for Transfer Conference this morning. Yay! Another week accomplished!

Wednesday I will begin serving with an Aussie :) Sister Rajah from Perth, Australia. She is great! We were actually in the same district last Christmas, crazy to think that the Lord has brought us back together. She is perfect for the calling and I know that she'll be able to help me a lot. I know that we are going to have a lot of adventures together and be able to learn a lot! 

I hope you all are doing well and that you are beginning to feel the special spirit of Christmas.

I love you all!

XOXOXOX

Sister Fluckiger

Time Flies When You're Having Fun!

Hi Everyone!!

This will probably be a quick and short email. This week seriously has just flown by. Last night as we were planning we were looking back through the past 7 days and we both just feel like we were robbed of some extra time. Did you know that we spend 1/3 of our entire missions sleeping? Can you believe that?! Seriously, what a waste of time. Sister Nogueira and I have decided that we wish we could be vampires..but in a good sense. But really, if we didn't have to sleep we would be so much more effective. We would do all of our office work and planning at night time when everyone else is sleeping, that way we can just spend all day long teaching and testifying. If only that could really happen. 

Some crazy things have happened though this week. We spent most of it with President, Monday and Tuesday we had Zone Leader Reports and then Wednesday we starting Transfer Planning. Crazy to think that that time has already come!

Getting to be with President is a lot of fun, even if we are in meetings all day. He is just so funny :)
​

We have been able to spend a lot of time out in the lights though since President usually leaves in the evenings. I love Christmas time on Temple Square, it's magical and filled with the Savior. It's also filled with lots and lots of people. This year has actually been slower than last, at least the weeknights are slower, but the weekends are still packed. Which means we mostly see couples and teenagers. For whatever reason, we both love talking to like 14-15 year old kids. They are just hilarious and then of course we invite all of them to start now to prepare for their missions. We've had a lot of really good spiritual conversations with some really good kids. Every once in a while though, you see or meet kids like this:

​hahaha they plugged their phones into the Christmas lights and then stood there for a good long while just texting. Gotta love it!

I know that this church is true! I know it with all of my heart. We were able to teach on of my recent converts this week, he was baptized about a month ago, and we asked him if he had been able to receive a home teaching assignment. He was so happy and excited to tell us - turns out that he goes home teaching twice a week! He absolutely loves it. He even shared with us the message that he had prepared for his next visit. "When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." He is a perfect example of this, and I have been able to learn the importance of it. I love this gospel and I love my Savior. 

Have a Happy Happy week!

XOXOXOXOX

Sister Fluckiger

A Savior is Born!

Snow. Snow. Snow!

Now it's really beginning to look a lot like Christmas! The snow is falling, the lights are on and we are Christmas Caroling :)

I hope everyone was able to have a very special Thanksgiving. We had the blessing of going over and eating with a wonderful family who lives in the Ensign Peak Stake which is located right next door to Temple Square. It was lovely, Sister Nogueira and I went with Sister Brooks (California) and Sister Nevil (Texas). After Thanksgiving Lunch we came back to the square and worked. It was really cold that day but surprisingly there were a good amount of people on the square. 

Then, this Friday the Christmas lights turned on! Which means everyone and their kids came to Temple Square! Sister Nogueira and I had so much fun. Teaching the gospel is so fun! Doesn't matter what is going on, we are always able to find joy as we go out onto the square and testify of the Savior. Christmas is a very special time to be a missionary and I am so grateful that I get two Christmas'. Has everyone been able to see the new video: "A Savior is Born"? It's very different from the last videos that the church has put out but I have grown to love it because each time I watch it I am able to feel of the children's testimonies about the Savior. So I'm actually sure that you have all seen this new video - the question is have you actually seen the second video? They made two this year and the second one is the answer to the invitation to "discover why" the Savior was born. You can find the video on Christmas.Mormon.org - it's animated so that's how you can know that it's the right one. I'm excited for all of you to watch it tonight for Family Home Evening and to discuss why the Savior needed to be born. I am so grateful that the Savior was born! That single event in history has changed my life. It has paved the way for everything and everyone. How neat is it that we are able to celebrate Christmas!

Other than the craziness and excitement of having the Christmas lights back on, Sister Nogueira and I have been prepping for some of the Christmas activities that we will be having as a mission and then organizing everything so that with the new year and also a new mission president everything will be clean and we will know what it is. haha, because we have been finding a lot of funny things in our office that has no purpose. It's funny to see what sisters leave behind when they finish their missions.

Other fun things that happened this week: 

​We had to try on sweatshirt per Sister Poulsen's request - we turned it into a photo shoot.

​I got stuck in a microwave box..... haha

Speaking of microwave - we don't have a photo of this but we wished we had one. Last Monday while we were on our Preparation Day, some sisters decided to pop popcorn in the microwave in our office.... ya our microwave might have caught on fire a little bit. When we arrived in the office the next day the entire mission office stunk like burnt popcorn and our microwave was completely black inside haha. So this microwave box came from a new microwave that Elder Moore brought us.

​And here's my companion in the microwave box :)

Then last but not least, Sister Nogueira and I always find so many things to laugh at :) With the lights on there are so many people on the square and sometimes funny things happen. Two days ago we were out on the square contacting families and we decided to head into the South VC to warm up a little bit. Well we were right outside the automatic doors and we could see a big family heading out the doors so we took a step to the side to let them out first. The daughter who was leading the way decided she wanted to jump out as the doors opened but sadly our automatic doors are so slow and lazy and never open when you want them to. So she has a pretty good jogging start and she jumps into the door but instead of the door opening all the way she hits the door with her shoulder and basically falls out the door instead of flying like we are sure she wanted too. I was just shocked to see all of this but my companion just started laughing haha which turned out to be a good thing because this (probably 15ish) girl just laughed too and then walked off like nothing happened.

Christmas time is fun. This week we were blessed with some more time to teach and focus on our investigators - they are all doing great! One of our investigators is 72 years old! She's from the VERY southern part of Georgia and she is just so funny to talk with. We have to go a little bit slower with her but she'll make it. The Lord is helping her :)

And that was my week! Tomorrow we are finishing up Zone Leader Reports, which is where we sit down with President and the zone leaders a zone at a time to discuss the sisters and their needs. Then Wednesday we will begin transfer planning. Crazy to think it's already time for that. 5 week transfers are just too fast - 7days really does make a big difference. 

I love you all and appreciate ya!

Thanks for always reading this silly letters!

XOXOXOXOX

Sister Fluckiger

The Lord Will Provide

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The leaves have finally all fallen off the trees and now we are just waiting for it to snow :) President told us this morning that Wednesday is supposed to be a big snow day. So that should be excited. Sister Nogueira and I broke out our winter coats- they're not used that often. Besides walking to the Square in the morning and walking home at night we usually only get about 1 or 2 hours up on the Square these days. 

However the time that we do get to go up the Lord always provides a miracle! It's been a really neat week to see how He is so aware of our schedules, even when they are as crazy and demanding as ours.

So generally transfers are a period of 6 weeks within the mission. At the end of a transfers there is always a group of sisters who leave because they have completed their missions and then we always get a batch of fresh new missionaries from the MTC. The church doesn't like to send out missionaries the week of Christmas because it's hard to get flights and the end of this 6 week period would actually be the day before Christmas Eve so we are shortening it and instead having a 5 week transfer and then the following transfer will be 7 weeks to make up for it. Having 5 weeks means that we have 7 days less to plan everything for next transfer. So we have been doing our very best to stay on top of the different responsibilities we have and to even get a head if possible. 

So this week we did outbound planning. We calculated how many missionaries we currently have, how many are going home, and how many will be coming from the MTC. We then discussed how many missionaries we need in the mission for Christmas time. From that we come up with how many missionaries we can send to other missions. That was a great! Now we just have to wait until the Zone Leaders have their reports ready for us about the sisters on their zones and then we can start the process of what we call Transfer Planning! Which is basically pairing up all the companionships with President.

Another exciting thing that happened this transfer was Christmas Training! 

We will be getting new schedules this Friday because the lights will be turning on! I seriously am still having a hard time believing that it's been an entire year since the lights were on. Crazy! The square will not be open from 9am - 10pm which means we don't leave the square till 10 and won't get to bed until 11:30pm. This truly is the craziest mission in the world. We are so excited though. We received training on the new Christmas Initiative which will be "A Savior is Born". I testify that a Savior was born and that He lives today! On Friday the new Christmas video will be released and there is actually an invitation at the end to "Discover Why" - then there will also be a second video that is the answer to why the Savior was born. It is so special to know that God has a plan for each of us and at the center of that plan is our Savior Jesus Christ. I hope all of you can Discover the Savior this holiday season. 

With this Christmas Training we were able to assist President in announcing to the mission a new Mission Wide Goal. So far this year we, as a mission, have been able to help 800 of our Brothers and Sisters make the special promise of baptism with our Father. It's truly special to have the knowledge that there are so many more people who have the knowledge of our Savior Jesus Christ because 200 sisters decided to serve the Lord for 18 months. Our Mission Goal is to continue working our very best, and strengthening our faith in Christ, and be able to help 100 more of our family members home to Him before the end of the year. This is our gift to them and our gift to the Savior.






​President Poulsen invited all the sisters who were willing to work their very hardest and to trust in the Savior completely to sign their name as commitment to the Lord.

You know the Lord's work would continue to move forward even if He didn't have missionaries. However, doing His work through missionaries helps the missionary become converted. I'm grateful I headed the prompting to serve a mission because I have become more converted because of it. The gospel is true!

And the Lord has been able to witness to us many times this week that we aren't doing anything - it's all Him. We really do only have about an hour a day up on the Square and it's usually a desk assignment in one of the visitor centers. He really does know our schedule. He brought us 3 different individuals who had questions and wanted to learn more about the Savior. Even better- they were the ones who walked up to us!

The Lord has people prepared for us, the question is if we have the eyes to see them.

The Church is true and the Book is blue.

Love you all!

XOXOXOX

Sister Fluckiger

I'm Going to Build a Boat!

Hi everyone!

The Mission life just gets crazier and crazier! I know that Heavenly Father does it to me on purpose. Every time I think "I've finally figured this out" or "I've got this down finally" Heavenly Father gives me something else. Gotta love a challenge! :)

So many things happened over the past two weeks though! We had transfers last week which is why I missed a week of emailing. My schedule has changed and in about a week it will change again because we will begin the Christmas schedule! Yay! We walked out of the Church Office Building today and we saw that they have started setting up the nativities. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" here on Temple Square! 

I have a new companion again! She's from Brazil but moved to the States when she was a kid and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia! 

Sister Nogueira - the red head on the right :) We are having so much fun together and we get to teach a bunch of Brazilians! This photo was taken at the Roof (a really great restaurant on the top floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. We were able to accompany the departing class to the Temple and then onto lunch with President. Being in the Temple once again was wonderful. President has called me back to serve in the mission office and I'll be there for the rest of my mission and I'm grateful for the opportunity to serve him and to serve with him but I'll admit I was a little hesitant because I knew that it would cut into my teaching and proselyting time. Of course put on top of that the normal feelings of inadequacy - the Temple was a great place to go afterwards to be able to receive some answers. While I was there I read in 1 Nephi about when the Lord called Nephi to build a boat. It blew my mind that Nephi didn't even question...well he did but his question was "where can I go to find the materials to make the tools to build a boat?" What faith he had. I definitely had a change of heart about my new assignment. The Lord truly can do whatever He wants - with Him everything is possible so why wouldn't He be able to use us as His children, despite our weaknesses. 

Speaking of Nephi, this morning we had our Missionary Leadership Council to begin the new transfer and Sister Nogueira and I trained on the difference between achieving and becoming. It was such a wonderful experience for both of us because our goal was to teach only from the Book of Mormon. We accomplished that by reading the story of Nephi and Laman and Lemuel and in the middle of the story we would act out different things about how the different reactions related to how we as missionaries react. It was great! Laman and Lemuel were the perfect example of a missionary who achieved their mission. Actually if you read the story again of when they went to get the brass plates you would see that they would obedient and what the Lord had asked them to do. They weren't happy about it of course but they did it and achieved. It's sad but we sometimes sees that happen within our missions, being a missionary just becomes a checklist of things that we need to do instead of us allowing the mission to help us become more like our Savior. It went really well! The sisters especially liked when we acted out the part where Laman comes back from the first attempt and he's all frazzled because he almost just died - I wish someone would have videoed us :)

If you hadn't figured it out yet, this week was filled with meetings! We've had one every day so far. It's so busy for a few different reasons: the Christmas seasons starts next week, this is only a 5 week transfer, and President is getting ready to finish his mission. It's a good thing that Sister Nogueira and I really like a challenge. 

It's been a huge goal of ours though to still be able to have a good teaching area and we know that the Lord will help us out. We have been able to see a few miracles the past few days that we have been companions.
Something that we have been talking a lot about actually that has helped us set some goals this transfer has been talking about our Father in Heaven's home up in heaven. I shared with my companion how Mom always says that there isn't going to be "any empty chairs at my dinner table". That's what our Father in Heaven wants too! We are focusing on filling more of those chairs as our Christmas gift to Him this year.
One of the ladies that we are teaching I was able to find last week actually. She just called in and told me that her son was baptized into our church a few years back and now she knows that she is ready to learn more and meet with missionaries. How cool is that?! She's a really sweet lady and I know that this is an answer to her son's prayers. 

Another cool miracle happened yesterday while we were in the North Visitor Center - a lady came up to us and simply asked us for a copy of the Book of Mormon. She shared with us how she had talked to some sisters earlier, actually like 2 or 3 sets of missionaries, about it but now she wanted a copy. We were able to teach her more about the Book of Mormon and how it can have an righteous influence on her life. Now we are going to happily teaching her more about the restored gospel! 

Being a missionary is just so fun! Especially in this mission! This week I was able to try Brazilian tea (it's herbal I promise!) It actually wasn't that bad. I think my companion was disappointed because I guess other Americans are really dramatic when they try it for the first time and I wasn't. Oh well, I can check that off the list of things I need to try.

I love you all so much! The Gospel is true and it changes life, it has changed mine for sure!

XOXOXOX

Sister Fluckiger