Mission Stories - Wildlife

^{This deer is mooning you from Örebro.}

Missionaries and animals don't have a lot to do with each other, to be perfectly honest. Yet somehow I have animal-related mission stories too. But it's probably because I love animals so very much, and towards the end of my mission I was getting very pet-trunky and would fuss any fluffy animal that came my way.

Generally speaking missionaries are advised to avoid animals and not really touch pets that people might have - again to do with the safety - but I think it depends on the situation. I remember before my mission when I went to visit someone with the sister missionaries, I usually ended up petting the dog while the sisters talked, and one time I said to them "I'm sorry, I'm useless in there, I get so distracted by the dog" but they said "no, that's great, that way it's not we nor the person we are talking to that gets distracted by the dog" :P

Most of the time the animals weren't too distracting to teaching, from what I experienced in Sweden. One couple had a puppy they left in the kitchen while we talked and the puppy barked a lot - I bet if they'd just let her be with us she would have been quiet... But I was there to teach the gospel, not tell people how to raise their dogs. And one guy had two kittens and the most scrumptiously pettable cat Smokey, but she wasn't a distraction, she was a delight :)

There were also some run-ins with wild animals. Once morning in the summer we went out to jog, and we saw a hedgehog... and we touched it :) And once in Norrland we saw a moose when driving back to Sundsvall from Östersund. Some elders also told a story of driving in Norrland and they saw a moose on a field and stopped and got out of the car to go closer and they kept getting closer and they were amazed at they were getting so close - until they realised that it was a roadside decoration made out of a sheet of metal, and so on closer inspection the moose was actually flat... :P (When I heard that I almost shouted at them for approaching a moose, that is so dangerous! Moose are huge and dumb, aka really dangerous! o.O)

The by far coolest wild animal stuff was to do with these huge flocks of birds. The first time I saw them and photographed them I was in Sundsvall, in the north. And we were tracting some small buildings and had to come outside a lot between the trapphuses (the stairs/corridors of such buildings) and this huge flock of birds was just flying around in big circles. It was pretty ominous. And the second time we saw a flock like that in Örebro, in the winter again, and we saw the entire flock land into a tree. The tree had no leaves, but when the birds landed, it looked like it was fully in leaf. I thought it looked really cool so I tried to take a picture. The flash in my camera went off on its own because it was so dark, and the entire flock of birds took to their wings at the same time. It was so awesome and so scary at the same time...


^{Birds in Sundsvall, and the black square is the photo that came out of scaring the birds with my flash.}

The strangest animal run-in was in Sundsvall. We were waiting for a bus after a teach, and you know that phenomenon that you wait for a bus for ages and then three come at the same time? Well, this time buses didn't come, but three horses came running past us, with saddles and everything on. And it went through my head really fast: "stop the horses --> you're not allowed to deal with animals, it's dangerous and you could get hurt sayeth the rules --> and what would you do with the horses afterwards anyway, what if the bus comes before someone horse-related comes --> let the horses run past." And then a little while after some people who did indeed look like they had lost some horses came walking past and we all pointed them the way the horses had gone.