European Powerrr

Maandag 9 maart 2015

Heeeeeey allemaal!!!

Well....guess who my new companion is?! :D It's Sister Kreiberg and she is from....DENMARK!!!!

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! European power...keeps you safe from sin, hahahha :) (the real song is 'Scripture power keeps you safe from sin). Ayways, so yeah, that's pretty awesome :D Finally somebody who understands me ^ ^ 

Last week was sooo crazy, because besides transfers we had MLC and we got our Ipads O.O 

I was freaking out, because I had nooo idea what to do! I didn't know what to touch, what not to touch, how to get into things, how to download, how to use the AppStore and all the fun stuff, so I was lost, hahaha XD But it's all good. Thank goodness Sister Kreiberg has only been out for 3 transfers, so she knows what to do :) My little Ipad angel! :3 It's soooo awesome though! Because the new pamphlets that they have are soooo amazing and all the ensigns that we can read and it's just so amazing :3 I'm really grateful that the Lord has entrusted us with these Ipads :) 

Yesterday at dinner I shared one of my favorite scriptures, which is Alma 26:37: 

37 Now my brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever. Amen.

On my Ipad I saw there was a footnote next to mindful, so I clicked on the reference (Yup, I finally figured that out:D) and it led me to Jacob 5:41:

41 And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard wept, and said unto the servant: What could I have done more for my vineyard?

I absolutely love that! What makes Him mindful of us is the fact that He is always looking for more ways to bless us, more ways to lead and guide us, more ways to bring us closer to Him. He does all that He can to make us happy. He's given us the FULLNESS of the Gospel through Joseph Smith, He prepared the Plan of Salvation for us, He sent down His Son, Jesus Christ, so we could overcome death and sin, He has given us His teachings, the five steps of happiness (aka the Gospel of Jesus Christ), He's blessed us with commandments, families, prophets, the Priesthood, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And then still we often choose not to follow Him. Then He weeps over us, because what else could He have done to help us and bless us? 

Since we're studying patience this month, I read the talk 'Patience - A Heavenly Virtue' by President Monson, and I loved a couple of things he said. He shared a poem that I absolutely loved: 

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the greave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Beautiful, huh? :) Then I also loved it when he said: 'Let the scriptures be your guide, and you will never find yourself traveling the road to nowhere.' IT'S TRUE! :D enough said :)

I love y'all very much and thank you for still loving me, even though I've been such a slacker with emailing and sending you my love... I'm sorry.... :s

Lots and Lots of Love

Sister Spijkerman

Transfers! (how did it go by so fast?! O.o)

Maandag 2 maart 2015

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey allemaal!!! 

Well, het nieuws waarop jullie allemaal hebben zitten wachten!!! TRANSFERS! :D

Sister Quiles and Sister Bates are both leaving me behind!!! So I'm taking over the area and I'll find out tomorrow who my new companion is going to be! Aaah, I'm wondering who is going to kill me!

And then I found out that the Avenues is getting whitewashed, weeeeeeeh!!! :( Sad day... :(

Last week we had a great week! Well, actually...there were A LOT of ups and downs!!! A lot a lot...

Up to the point that I just wanted to cry, because I didn't know what to do anymore. But then we had some amazing things happen too! Tuesday we had a training on our mobile devices (or in President Eberhardt's own words: everybody knows they're Ipads; why don't we just call them Ipads, hahaha).

 

Honestly, I wasn't excited, AT ALL! I was afraid of all the temptation that would come into the mission and when we were at family services we would see missionaries from other Salt Lake missions and they would be on their Mobile Devices all the time, and I don't want to be like that. So, kortom, I wasn't excited. So at the beginning of the training I prayed and prayed that I would receive I testimony through the Spirit to know for myself if this would be the right thing for our mission at this time. Throughout the whole training we didn't even touch or see an Ipad. All we talked about was the spiritual aspect of the new technology. How this is going to prepare us to learn how to use technology wisely after our missions so we can continue the Lord's work forever.

 

They talked about how the Lord shows us His trust in us through this. This is all about change and learning how to be in tune with the Spirit even more and to learn self-control and self-mastery. It was sooo spiritual and it has changed me forever!

 

Then yesterday we fasted as a mission for our mission goal of a 1080 baptisms by the end of July, and as we were fasting at Church one of our former investigators that had fallen off the face of the earth (not literally... :P) showed up at Church totally out of the blue!!! :D WHAAAAAA!!! :D He is struggling right now, so he got a blessing from the Elders Quorum president and one of our ward missionaries and in his blessing it said that he should start meeting with us again and start reading and praying daily again! WHOAAAAT?! :D Crazy, huh?! Then 3 of our less-actives came to church! :D so, I can testify to you that fasting brings miracles! I love how Heavenly Father knows our hearts and the desire of our hearts :) 

I will miss my two little sisters, but I know the Lord's will is what's best :) but still...I just love them so much...they have truly become my friends and my sisters...

I love all of you so much and hope that you may continue to witness miracles as well! 

I love y'all and may the Spirit be with you!

Lots of Love

Sister Spijkerman <3

Patience and Long-suffering

Maandag 23 februari 2015

Heeeeey allemaal! 

Ik heb niet zo heel erg veel te vertellen! Onze dinner appointment with Elder DeMass was super awesome! It was so great to see them again after so many years! I think for me personally it really helped me see clearly how much I have changed on my mission. I'm happy :D I love the Gospel sooo much and I love my Savior! I have overcome so many of my fears and now I just LOOOVE talking to people and getting to know them! Who would have thought! The Lord knew :) 

Actually, we had a great experience this week that truly strengthened my testimony of faith and the power of the Priesthood. Last week Sister Quiles got food poisoning. We were up all night with her, because she had to throw up every ten minutes. She was sooo sick! The next day we were going to have a lesson with one of our friends of the Church. She really wanted to be there for him. So we prayed for her and asked our district leader for a blessing early in the morning. We knew it would help her and we had the faith she would be healed, even though she would throw up everything she would drink or try to eat, even water. When she sat down to receive the blessing we even put a trash can in front of her, just in case she would have to throw up again. Then she got the blessing. In the blessing she was promised that she would stop throwing up and that whenever she would feel like she would have to throw up the feeling would go away. She would have the strength to go out and work. After the Amen was said. She looked up and she said that everything was gone. We bought her some medicine and ginger ale and we were able to teach our investigator! You should have seen the difference between before and after the blessing! So, the power of God is sooo real!!! :D

 

I love all of you sooo much! Love, Serve, Teach!

Lots of Love

Sister Spijkerman <3

 

Miracles and Metamorphosis

Maandag 16 februari 2015

HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Wow, this week truly has been amazing!!! This week has changed me sooo much! We had so many experiences that helped me realize that God knows His children so perfectly, that we are truly instruments in His hands.

Our first experience was on Tuesday. Before Sister Bates was here Sister Quiles and I got lost and ended up in a street we'd never been before. We felt we had to be there so we started knocking on doors,. But nobody was home. Then we kind of forgot about it, but every time we wrote it in our planner to go back. But we never seemed to be able to have time. On Tuesday we had time, so we decided to go back to that street and we weren't sure where to go, We prayed and asked Heavenly Father to show us where to go. We felt we had to knock on a specific door. We decided to knock on all the doorsl. We got some good responses, but it wasn't it.

Then we came to the house we felt inspired to stop by. We knocked and a man answered the door. He told us he was a recovering member, that his daughter served a mission in the Netherlands. I was super excited of course and then I found out who it was. Sister Robbins, now known as Caitlin DeMass!!!! I'd been trying to find them in this mission forever, but without success. And then we were here, standing on this man's front porch, telling us that it was his daughter! There was no way we would have been able to talk to him and there was no way we could have set up a return appointment if we hadn't had that connection! :) We are going to have dinner with him and his daughter and husband this week! 

 

Again, we had that amazing connection! I am so grateful for the Spirit and that God KNOWS every single one of us. He reaches out to His children in love. I know that as we listen to the Spirit we will have miracles happen. We will find those that need our help :)

In the car on our way to dinner I was just sitting there in awe, that our Father in Heaven just knows who needs our help specifically and I felt an overwhelming sense of joy and happiness :) And soooo....we are going to have dinner on Friday! :D

Then also this transfer I decided I wanna get rid of all my fears. The Lord has helped me so much with that! When I finally figured out how to do street contacting (I know right, after 14 months I finally figured it out, because we never received any kind of training on it, so pretty much nobody really knows how to do it). But through a video of Dutch missionaries I finally figured it out! :D And it's sooo easy!!! :D And so now we talk to everybody we see and it is sooo great! :D We have had supergreat experiences, but also some really "funny' ones. At least, I can laugh about them :) There was this lady. We got up to her to shake her hand. We're like: HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!! :D How are you?!!!! :D And you could see her face going like this: -_- Like: Oh no...it's the missionaries... -_- it was hilarious! XD She shook her hand, said: I'm Lutheran.

At first we were a little beteuterd, but then we laughed about it and continued our journey! :)

 

 

 

That same night we felt like we had to go visit this wonderful returning member, she's usually not home. Any unplanned visits usually don't work out. But we decided to listen to our feeling. We started walking, as we were walking down the street we ran into a man on a bike and we started talking to him. He told us he was getting kicked out of his house. He had nowhere to go, that his food bag got stolen. He told us he was depressed and didn't know what to do basically. We started talking about Jesus Christ, gave him a gift card for a restaurant. Gave him a plan of salvation pamphlet and testified of God's love for him. We gave him the bishop's number and our number, but he never called back :( He thanked us a billion times for talking to him and helping him. It was such an incredible experience!

And you know what, that returning member wasn't home when we finally got there, so the Spirit led us to this lost man :) So as you can tell, this week was so great! I've grown sooo much and I'm sooo happy! :)

I love y'all and hope that all of you are turning to the Light. I invite all of you to study with me charity for the rest of this month :) (this is what the whole mission of Debby is doing this month). It's truly changing me and I know it will change you forever as well. Let us love one another!

 

 

Lots and Lots of Love

Sister Spijkerman





Elder Scherf en zuster Spijkerman op leiders trainingsvergadering!!! THe Dutchies

Training! :)

Maandag 9 februari 2015

Lieve allemaal!

This week has been a hard one, but it's also been a great one! On Tuesday we had Mission Leadership Council. All the leaders in the mission came together (we have MLC once a month). My companion and I had to give a training on being lovingly bold. At first we weren't sure where to go with it. But we prayed a lot and the inspiration just kept flowing. We felt the Spirit so strong! :) It was a great experience for both of us. :) The Lord truly qualifies those whom He hath chosen :) The Lord will give you the words in the very hour you need them :) On Friday I had to give a training, but I can't do anything without my compadres of course. We gave a training during zone meeting on  developing the faith to find :) Finding investigators is definitely the hardest part of a mission I would say. Sometimes missionaries get discouraged. It's so amazing to spread the Gospel, no matter the results!


This morning I read an article about Elder Nelson coming to the MTC and Sister Nelson Said the following:

 “One key for success on your mission. I’d like to talk to you about desperation.” She explained, “When we are desperate everything changes. Our vision changes. We are suddenly able to see things we’ve never seen before. Our ability to do increases. We are suddenly able to do whatever it takes. ...
“My dear elders and sisters, I pray that on your mission you will have many moments of complete and overwhelming and even anguishing desperation. Why? Because then, and only then, will you desperately ask, desperately seek and desperately knock. Then, and only then, will you find the courage and determination to follow through with exactness everything the Lord needs you to do in order to serve a valiant vibrant, worthy and very successful mission for Him.” (This article is supergreat by the way! https://www.lds.org/church/news/missionaries-called-to-bring-joy-to-others-elder-nelson-says?cid=HPWE012815650&lang=eng )

This principle is so true! I've grown out of my comfort zone so much because of desperation, because I wanted to share the Gospel so badly. Now I'm not afraid anymore to talk to everyone on the streets, on their doorsteps, and to invite them to learn more! It's been so great! :D 

I love all of you so much!!! I'm so excited for all of you to be involved in missionary work!!! It's the BEST!  

The Church is true!!!! Gosh, how much I LOVE the Book of Mormon! I finished it again on Saturday and right now I'm counting all the references to Jesus Christ! I'm in Alma 11 right now, and cumulative I found 2079 so far O.o So...just saying, the Book of Mormon truly is another testament of Jesus Christ :) So I will let you know how much it is in the Book of Mormon as a whole. It just takes some time to count all of it... :)  May the Force be with you!!! :D

Lots and Lots of Love

Sister Spijkerman

Once there was a snowman...

Maandag 2 februari 2015

Hiiiiii Everyone!

So, you might be wondering why I chose for this title. It is because we haven't had snow in weeks. Right now it's like Spring! :) But we don't mind at all! At least, I don't.... :)

Last week was a pretty crazy week. Plans fell through, people needed help last minute, etc. So there was quite a bit of stress, which I'm not used to at all!

O.o  I've never been so stressed out so much in my entire life, hahaha! So it was a good lesson! :) We were able to be led to a new investigator this week! :D

We were walking it was after 6, so it was pretty dark. We saw a house that the Sisters before us had knocked on before. We have tried it before, but that time nobody answered. The first time the sisters met the lady she said  wasn't interested, because she was already a member, haha.

Anyways, I looked at the house and felt like we should try again. So we knocked on the door and a little boy answers. He talks to his dad for a bit, and invites us to come in! So, that was a miracle in itself! :D We sat down, the mom was on the phone, so they told us we could wait till she was done. We talked to the boy for a bit to get to know him. Then she came in and we talked for a bit about where we were from and so on. Which leads into asking if we could teach the boy!

We asked him if he knew what missionaries did and he knew a little bit about it. Then the mom took over and asked him if he wanted to learn more about the Church? She told us that he'd been going to Church in the Stake across the street with some friends and she told us he hadn't been baptized! :D He said he wanted to learn more! :D WHAAAAAAAA!!!!! MIRACLES pouring down from Heaven! :D

You should also know that this is the only ward that hasn't had investigators in FOREVER and we'd been trying and trying to find people in that ward without any success! :D So we are soooo happy! :D The Bishop of that ward, served his mission in The Netherlands, so I absolutely love his family! They are sooo awesome! :)

We also went to Temple Square on Saturday to watch Meet The Mormons! I just love that move so much! :) I hope they'll put in on DVD so I can bring it home and watch it with you! It's super inspiring! It's basically a movie/documentary about 6 different LDS families :) It's AMAZING! :D

 Well....I think that's about it for this week! Missions are the best and I hope you'll encourage EVERYBODY back home to go!!! :D it's so amazing! :) Lives change! The Gospel is true! The Atonement is real! And Christ is right there for us!

 I love y'all and pray that the Lord may continue to bless you! 

 Lots and Lots of Love

Sister Spijkerman

Maandag 26 januari 2015

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai geliefde familie!!! :D 

Afgelopen week was...interessant...

Maandag was ik bij de doopdienst van een van mijn onderzoeksters in the Avenues! Kunnen jullie je nog die onderzoekster herinneren die dromen had dat ze lid van de kerk moest worden? Maandenlang had ze de doopdatum voor 19 januari, ze is gedoopt!!! :D Wooohoooooo!!! :D And it was fun to see the Bryner's again too :3 

Dinsdag hadden we transfers and Sister Bates is bij onze club gekomen! :D It's been soooo much fun so far! She is absolutely adorable! :D It's been fun living with 5 sisters in one home :)

 

This week our apartment was falling apart. A couple of our plugs don't work, then our heater stopped working, so it was 54 F (about 12 C)  in our apartment, that was pretty cold, hahaha. Then our power kept going out, and then our light bulbs all died! :) It's definitely been one of those missionary adventures :) Unfortunately we had to drop some investigators this week :(

 

But I know we'll be blessed with new people to teach! :) 

 

So I'd like to share with you something I learned this week during personal study! I was reading the end of 3 Nephi this week and in 3 Nephi 19 it says the following:

"And it came to pass that Jesus departed out of the midst of them, and went a little way off from

them and bowed himself to the earth ..."

What I learned:  is that even Jesus Christ Himself, the Only Begotten Son of the Father, went to a quiet place where He could pray and talk to His Father :) I thought that was pretty cool....

I don't think I really have something else to share with you this week, sorry....:) But I have tons of pictures though! Be grateful that Sister Quiles is still my companion, because she loves taking pictures and reminds me to take some too! :) 

 I love all of you and I am so grateful that through the Atonement of Christ all mankind will be saved! 

Lots and Lots of Love

Sister Spijkerman