General Conference: A Missionary Holiday

Maandag 6 April 2015

HAPPY EASTER!!!! :D

So, this week was pretty awesome obviously, seeing General conference! :D

I went on exchanges again as usual, this time with Sister Gilmore from upstate New York :)  I absolutely love her and we definitely had a great time together :) Due to exchanges I haven't met our new investigators that we found this week yet...Anyways, 

GENERAL CONFERENCE! 

We attended General Conference downtown at the Conference Center for the Saturday morning session and that was AWESOME! Guess who I ran into?! :D ELDER MUNTINGA! He is serving in the Ogden mission so I didn't expect him to be there, but he was sitting in the same section as we were, so that was super awesome! :D Man, all the sessions  were just sooo amazing! I LOVED Elder Pearson's talk! (Staying by the tree). It's probably because I know him, since he was in my last area :3 He is AMAZING! He is a wonderful spirit about him when you talk to him. He would always go through the congregation after Church to talk to all the members, and hug them. Put a hand on their shoulders... He is one of the most Christ-like people I've ever met :) Anyways...IT WAS AMAZING!

 Oh, and I got a headset and I listened to the session in Dutch, so I could hear pappa speak! :D It was soooo coooool!!! :D And it really helped me understand President Packer's talk too, hahaha  *sigh* I just don't have the words today to describe this weekend!

We watched the Saturday afternoon session at the Drysdale's and they made poffertjes :3 I loved the talk about music :D And I loved the one about that it doesn't matter what calling we hold! It was really amazing, because just the night before the zone leaders and I had talked about how some of the sisters feel like they're bad missionaries because they have never trained before or because they have never been a Sister Training Leader. Other sisters just really want to have the title...

I tried to explain to them that it's not about the title, but that we can serve and influence others for good without the title of a trainer or sister training leader.We were just really concerned about this and then BOOM: A general authority gives a talk on that subject! :D

 

Sunday morning we went to one of our WMLs for Easter breakfast and a little Easter hunt, and they had made us little Easter baskets with Deseret book stuff :3 Soooo sweeet!!! Then we watched General Conference at their house :D It was awesome! In the afternoon we went to another WMLs house :) After our wonderful dinner with the Brushes we went to a recent convert's house and we watched Finding Faith in Christ with her :) 

It was definitely one of the BEST Easters EVER!
 

I have loved reading about Easter in the scriptures and it filled my soul with so much gratitude for my Savior and for all the pain He went through for me personally. I wish it could have been me who suffered, but I never would have been able to pay the price for my own sins. I loved the talk on Grace too by the way. Grace is an amazing concept :) I'm grateful for His grace and for the strength He gives me every day :)

I love y'all and wish y'all the best!!! Keep praying for me :)

Lots and Lots of Love

Sister Spijkerman <3

Higher Ground

Maandag 30 maart 2015

Goodmorning/evening my beloved family!

Wow, it's been quite a week!

 

We went to the Jordan River temple on Tuesday morning and it was AMAZING! I miss the temple so so much...In the Celestial Room a brother explained to me some of the symbolism in the temple. He said it took him a long time to discover some of it, but he told me he comes to the temple EVERY day! :D Lucky him! I learned a lot from him :)

 

Wednesday I went on exchanges with Sister Case, and that was absolutely awesome! We walked a lot, laughed a lot, talked to a lot of people, and had some crazy funny experiences!

 

For example we started talking to this guy on the street. So we shook his hand and he kind of kept walking, and I kept asking him questions, asked if he'd met with missionaries before, etc. He said he had, and when I asked him what his experience was he said he couldn't remember (O.o) and that he was in a hurry to get to his appointment. So we kept walking and started tracting a certain street and then we saw the same guy coming out of his house ten minutes later....hahahahahha XD Yup, he was definitely in a hurry to get to an appointment! Busted, haahahha! It was pretty funny.... :)

 

Gosh, missionary work is just the best. Yesterday I realized that for the most part the joy of missionary work comes from sharing the Gospel. Not the results that come from it! That night we didn't have a dinner appointment, so we had three different kinds of cereal for dinner :) It was awesome!

 

Thursday we had Zone Conference!!! :D I had to give a training with Sister Crotts on the Miscellaneous use for Mobile Devices, which is like the biggest joke EVER, because I don't even know how to use an Ipad myself... But it went surprisingly well, since we had an open discussion with all the missionaries on what we could do on our mobile devices to do effective missionary work.

 

Sister Eberhardt gave an amazing training about staying active after our missions. I loved one of the things she said: 'Do not get life in your way!!!' Always put visiting teaching etc first before homework and other stuff. It was amazing! On Friday we had a mission devotional and Elder Allen of the missionary department and the Utah area president came to speak to us and he spoke a lot about repentance and the Atonement. He gave us 8 questions to ponder:

1. What gifts/treasures have I given to the Savior?

2. Do all of my sins have a cloak?
3. What are my temptations?
4. What have you forsaken?
5. In what ways do I forsake Him and flee?
6. What are my spiritual gifts and how am I seeking after them?
7. If the Savior were to come to you and would ask you 'Lovest thou me more than these?', what would your 'these' be?
8. What kind of a disciple am I?

This week I'm going to ponder and work on these questions and I would invite all of you to do the same :) It was a great spiritual moment! What I loved the most about that evening was being united and gathered as a mission and being one in heart, mind, spirit and purpose. Before the devotional we took a mission picture outside and we sang our mission song "Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy". It still gives me chills thinking about it :) 

Saturday we got locked out of our car, because the keys feel out of Sister Kreiberg's bag, so they were still in the car when we locked it...hahahahha. missionary life... Went to the Conference Center with a recent convert. The Women's Conference was absoutely wonderful! My favorite talk was from sister Oscarson! :) 

Wow, that was a long email... :D And I got tons of pictures too! :D

I love y'all so much!!!

Lots and Lots of Love
Sister Spijkerman

The Akwardness is real...

Maandag 23 maart 2015

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!!!! :D

 Well, this week was...interesting...and totally crazy...

 

On Tuesday we taught a cute little member family the restoration (they're both returned missionaries from the Scotland/Ireland mission) and their son, Damian (2 years old), called us sisternaries! Soooo cute!!!

 

Then that night we 'taught' our new friend! She is supersweet and she has a 2 year old boy! We sat outside on her lawn and the boy DID NOT want to share her with us, hahaha. So he took her to the other side of the lawn. So we're like screaming to her, trying to do "How to begin teaching", figuring out her religious background, her beliefs and stuff like that. Trying to testify to her of God's plan for her, her family and the little boy just kept leading her away by the hand. So when we went to the other side to sit closer by... He decided to go down the street, and so there they went, up and down, from the left to the right. Us trying to teach her about the Gospel. It was hilarious, and definitely one of the most awkward, but funny teaching experiences on my mission XD Next time we'll be teaching her about the plan of salvation, since she wants to learn the role of Christ in our religion. Her mom passed away when she was in her 20s. So I'm sure she'll loooove the plan of salvation! We're excited! :D

 

Wednesday we got sick, we stayed in. I wasn't that sick. We had some appointments, so I went out with members for a couple of hours. But it was sooo weird not having a missionary companion with me...I have to admit: I simply did not know what to do with myself! O.o It was weird. For dinner we went to the Palmers and they're friends with the Bryner's. They had invited the Bryner's over for dinner!!!! :D :D :D IT WAS SOOOOO AWESOMEEE!!!! :D

 

Friday I went on exchanges with Sister Tatafu and it was a lot of fun! :D So recently we've had a lot of funny experiences with people. Since we're walking every other day we try to talk to people on the street, but seriously, every single person that walks on the street will literally cross the street, turn the other way, or suddenly walk into their backyard or walk to their door (I'm CONVINCED that people just walk up to a random house so they can avoid us. It's TOO much of a coincidence that EVERY time we see people they are at their house and that they have to go inside their house. hahahahha! It just cracks me up!) Missionary work in Utah is the best :3 Well, that's about it :D Weird stuff going on, but life is great!

 

Seriously, the lyrics of the song 'You Raise Me Up' are true! On Friday morning during my personal study time I felt prompted to read my patriarchal blessing and to make a list of two things. On one side I wrote down the things Heavenly Father told me to do in order to for me to be happy and blessings to be fulfilled. Then one the other side I wrote down all the blessings and promises that lie in store for me based on my faiithfulness. I discovered that my list was only like  bullet points, while my blessings didn't seem to come to an end! So our Father in Heaven is so loving and merciful! :)

I love you all!!!
Have a great and blessed week!!!

Lots and lots of love
Sister Spijkerman 

 

The Lord loveth His children

Maandag 16 Maart 2015

Halleu Halleu!

Wow, I can't believe another week has flown by! I have to admit, this was probably one of the hardest weeks on my mission. Investigators dropping us, investigators and other people canceling, not showing up, nobody that we're trying to contact being home...Missionary life... I feel like my whole mission I've been able to be happy and cheerful no matter what, but somehow this week I just couldn't find the strength to do it. I have always taken this quote to heart: 

 

“Pray as though everything depended upon God. Work as though everything depended upon you. 

 

It has always worked out so far, but for some reason even that didn't seem to work. But then the answer to my prayer came yesterday. We ended up having dinner with a family that I absolutely love, because the family that had signed up was sick. This family is a very special and precious family. The husband is convert, got baptized about 15 years ago and the wife is the sweetest person on the planet. They have two ADORABLE children, a girl and a boy.They asked us about us and our families and our conversion stories and they told theirs. The Spirit was strong and it uplifted me so so much. It testified to me again that no matter what's going on on our mission, even when we don't see any seemingly results, this is where we're meant to be. There is no better choice or place. At the end when we had to leave the boy and the girl didn't want us to leave and told us we had to stay and that they were going to be missionaries with us. The little boy (he's like 2 years old) even cried his little heart out! It was soooo cute and so sad!!! I just wish I could take this family home with me!!! I'm sure they would fit in my suitcase! So that was definitely a tender mercy and an answer to my heartfelt prayers :')

Well, so far it's been maybe a little bit of a depressing email, I'm sorry about that...But I know this week is going to be a lot better! We have quite a bit of appointments, so I'm excited! The weeks coming up are going to be sooo awesome! In 2 weeks we have zone conference, a mission devotional and we're going to the Jordan River temple, I'm super pumped! Then the week after that we have General Conference. We're going to the Saturday morning session at the Conference Center with a friend of the Church. We're excited about that! Then we're also taking a recent convert to the Women's Conference at the Conference Center, so yup, good and exciting things are ahead of us!

The weather here has been absolutely fabulous by the way! It's been in the 70's (so in the 20's celsius), so that's ridiculously warm for February and March! But I'm not complaining :) 

zuster Iris Spek en zuster Debby Spijkerman

 

Well, I think that's it for this week. I don't want you to worry about me, because I'm doing great! We all have our ups and downs, because that's part of life! There needs to be opposition in all things :)

I love you all and I want you to know that you're always in my prayers :)

Lots and Lots of Love

Sister Spijkerman

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