5/5/14
Temple and Keukenhof

First of all the temple was great. I haven't had that spiritual of an experience in the temple yet. I received a lot of revelation for what the Lord wants from me for these last 6 months.
The Keukenhof was a dream!!!! So beautiful. I wish you could see this stuff and smell it and taste it. Spring here is a dream, it is the best time of year to be here!

We have a baptism date! Our investigator will be baptized on May 17th!
My companion and I are calling the last 6 months "Operation: transformation" and as part of my transformation I set daily personal goals and it's been really improving my missionary work.  It has been a hard week so far and I expect nothing less for these next 6 months.  I feel some big challenges coming, mountains to climb, eh!

We have 5 new investigators this week! We had an amazing lesson with them, it was completely led by the Spirit. On our way to that appointment we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in a parade. It was like a miniture rose parade.  All the floats were of flowers and it was awesome and quite funny how it all happened. But hey, it's Nederland!

Yesterday was Herdenkings dag which is like their Memorial day and it was also fast and testimony meeting, so it was cool to hear so many war stories from members of the ward and how the stories of the parents in concentration camps or in the military has strengthened their faith.  It was so interesting to hear it because it really was not that long ago.

So our church building has been under construction so we've been meeting in another church. We decided we wanted to go to their service as it is right before ours and we thought it would be cool. Well we show up and 9:32 and the service started at 9:30 and they had locked the doors. We literally couldn't go.  I thought about how sad that was that if your are late to church even by two minutes you just can't go to church for the week.  Sad.

Today is the day when Nederland was freed from the Germans in WWII so we went to the Anne Frank house.  Sooooo cool.  We weren't allowed to take pictures. Also, we met some Mormons in line there on vacation and they bought our tickets! It was so nice and so dang awesome!
Also we celebrated my one year mark this week with cheesecake!

5/12/14
Both Zuster Schwab and I are staying in Haarlem! And we're getting another set of sisters in our ward in the city right next to us... should be interesting.
Operation: transformation is going well.  Our theme for this week is operation: invitation. We are working  on inviting EVERYONE to learn about the gospel, that means a lot of contacting. Also, Zuster Schwab and I have really been working hard on our Dutch. We try to only speak Dutch to each other and slow Dutch, so as to pronounce it better.  One of the old ladies in the ward complimented our improvement without knowing we had been doing that, so hey, it seems to be working!

5/19/14
So I was reading the talk by Elder Packer called "The Test" and the whole time I just kept thinking "Obama needs to read this" then it came to me. I can just send it to him, so I wrote him a letter about why i sent it and I hope he reads it.  It's actually a very supportive and uplifting letter just explaining that as saints we pledge allegiance to our country because of our love of God and because of the freedom we have learned to understand that comes from obeying God's commandments.  I actually feel super good about my letter to him and even my companion read my letter and said she thought it was a great idea.
Whether he reads it or not I guess I'll never know, but I felt very prompted to write it even if it is just for myself to have pledged allegiance to a country I didn't think I cared all that much about until now.  You should read that talk, it is powerful. Man the early saints are soooo awesome!

In other news two long lost members showed up to church on Sunday!!! And we had our baptism. What an amazing experience.  He told us he feels like he had been missing something in his search for the right religion until he received the Holy Ghost.  So amazing!

The weather has been a dream!! We went to the beach to have a meeting with our ward mission leader on Sunday, it was GREAT! Also, we went to the beach today too, oh man good stuff!

5/26/14
This week we had zone conference where we learned from the Den Haag Stake President how to get into facebook referral houses.  We have received 545 referrals and we need to be getting in the houses of those that requested.  It is a 9 step approach that is soooo bold.  I love it! We basically walk into their house saying "recht door?" Understanding of the Dutch culture is necessary when hearing this.
We had a super cool lesson with one of our investigators.  He just eats up the gospel but was baptized in another church and doesn't understand why he should be baptized again.  We had a bold lesson about authority and he is going to read Joseph Smith History to get a better understanding.  We are finding that one of the hardest things about teaching investigators is that their families won't support them.  I can understand that to a certain degree but any honest seeker of truth should not be told not to research things for themselves.  This is the case with a few of our investigators. They have testimonies of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but are afraid to be baptized because of what their family will think.  We spoke with a man yesterday who is just crazy about his family and I wondered if, heaven forbid, his family was all of the sudden gone.  He would have no more purpose in life. This is what these people are missing. That deeper purpose of life and that assurance that no matter what happens to us or our families, the gospel of Jesus Christ provides a way to have our families forever no matter what.

The past is a foreign country. We went to a big crazy BBQ with a member...it was so American. Everyone talking with everyone and being loud and eating with our hands and just totally American.  It was so odd to me.  I felt super out of place and yeah, I didn't really like it.  I have really come to love the Dutch culture. Knife and fork, reverent civilized conversations, no outbursts of laughter.  Weird how that happens. I have a feeling adjusting back to American culture will be difficult.  Good thing I don't have to do it for a while.


So the biggest change in my mission and on my missionary work happened yesterday.  This professional golfer from Zimbabwe walks into church with her other pro golfer friend.  She was just sharing all these wonderful insights with classes and with our investigators and after a wonderful church service she challenges my companion and I to take off our watches and not wear them ever again.  Zuster Schwab and I are like, "Do you realize we are in the Netherlands where punctuality is the BIGGEST deal? If you are late to an appointment, you better have been hit by a train." So we kind of just blew it off and told her that the night before we sprinted for  15 minutes to a dinner appointment because we were going to be late. (We weren't, by the grace of God) and she says, "Do you think the Spirit could have told you to run?" yes, "you don't need a watch for that" true. In fact that whole experience was guided by God. We had no idea where we were, how close we were, or how to get to the house. We just ran as fast as we could in the direction we felt. Looking at our watches proved to only stress us out more. God knows that it's important for Dutch people that we are on time, but by stressing out about being on time I can tell you I have ignored a lot of spiritual promptings.  Not any more. So after church, Zuster Schwab and I took off our watches (she even threw hers in a canal) and we aren't wearing watches anymore.  Yesterday we already saw cool successes and felt more guided by the spirit because of it.  I'm stoked for the miracles we will see.

4/7/14
Here I am in Haarlem, 11 months into my mission and still feeling like a greenie.

Haarlem reminds me of Dordrecht. It is a cute old city, only it is SO populated. Whoa! On the train ride to Haarlem I was able to see the tulip fields and wow, that was cool.  It doesn't look real. We are really close to the tulip fields.  Haarlem is where the movie "The Best Two Years" was filmed and it's hilarious to see that same church and that same train station. It's great!!!

We have some really cool investigators and 2 people with baptismal dates. I walked into the promised land I think.  There is a ton of work here to do and I am super stoked to be working here.

We have been taking Dutch lessons from a lady in the ward because according to everyone here our uitsprak (pronunciation) in addition to other things is not good.  So here we are 11 months out and we are learning the alphabet...it's humbling.  Last lesson we spent like 10 minutes on Pres. Uchtdorf's name because apparently I can't say it properly.

Conference was great, I am in love with the talks about covenants.  I don't think I quite understood the magnitude of covenants.  Also, to hear them speak about standing up for your beliefs because we WILL have to defend them was so inspired.  I think missions are partly for that reason.  To learn how to find a stand and then take it.  This is an everyday thing here, and I fear, increasingly, an everyday thing elsewhere too.
In other news, my companion Zuster Schwab and I will be teaching a 17-18 year old high school class about the church on Thursday.  NERVOUS! We taught the 11-12 year old class back in November but nervous nonetheless. Pray for us and for our tongues to be loosed!

Lately, I have been studying testimony. What a testimony is and where it comes from and how do we recognize it. I found I have been over complicating what a testimony is. Searching for some WOW moment in my past where I knew certain things were true.  I have been taking each sentence in "Preach My Gospel" and identifying why and how I know it to be true. It's been a great study so far and I'm only on sentence 3! Super cool. I have found that testimonies are really quite simple and that we gain testimonies of things daily and it depends on faith.  It is what we do with the testimonies that matters. Testimony and faith govern our lives.  We believe the light to turn on when we flip the switch, whether  that came from prior experience or from the knowledge that we have about electricity and science, it is inderdaad faith! It is the more rare type of faith that matters, it is the faith, the testimony, that MAKES things happen, that we ought to be concerned with.  Go-Go gadget faith. GOOD STUFF!
FIJNE WEEK ALLEMAAL!
Groetje

4/14/14
I'm doing great and Haarlem is a Dream! A different dream than I expected but a dream nonetheless. My companion is amazing! She's so cool and does krav maga or whatever that intense fighting stuff is called.  We have great workouts in the morning.
So we have been soooooo busy, it's insane! Our stake president started this campaign called the "Finding Faith in Christ Easter Campaign" it's a link on facebook and it's a free "Finding Faith in Christ" DVD. Once it is requested we are sent their info and we go try to talk to them.  He was at one of our dinner appointments and he said 150,000 ads for the church equals 20 referrals, but 20 sharesof this link equals 20 referrals. So we've been getting our members to share this link and in less than a week our mission has received 243 referrals. We are to contact them as soon as possible which is so hard because we already have appointments planned, but it is so cool.
While going to contact a referral two days ago we happened upon  a tulip field. It was possibly the greates day ever!! It didn't look real, also I'm sure that is how it looks in the Celestial Kingdom.  It was a dream.

4/28/14

Koning dag! It is the greatest. Everyone is wearing orange and is so happy and selling all of their stuff for really cheap.  I bought a chocolate fountain for a euro! We gave out 50 Book of Mormons and a couple thousand cards (many of which we picked up off of the ground) but hey, it was a great day. We saw tons of success.
The funniest thing, I wish I could have recorded it. Our ward mission leader has a 4 year old son who helped us with our Konings Dag booth. He stood on a box of Book of Mormons with the "Together Forever" DVD in his hands and yelled "gratis DVD!" which is just "free DVD" and then if people looked at him he would just say softly with his cute little voice "wilt u een gratis DVD" and he ended up giving like 5 away and some people paid him. He was sooo happy! It was the cutest.  One lady stops and says "What is the DVD about?" and he looks at it curiously and says "I think it's about families" ohhh mand he was the best. It was quite a site to behold.

3/3/14
Well, we have received some unexpected opposition.  I am trying to find what it is that I'm supposed to learn from this but the defensive part of me is getting in the way.  I am really looking forward to the growth this experience can bring. I guess it is preparing me for the real world. It is very odd and so strange and has been a struggle for me.  My mom told me before I left that she hoped I would encounter hard things to strengthen me, well I am.
Our new friend came to church again and this time she brought her nephew and that was cool.  That means we have to translate for them, which is rather difficult but actually really fun!

3/24/14
We went to a concentration camp this week.  Whoa, it was pretty crazy.  Kamp Vught was a labor camp and mostly a transportation camp. So people went there and prayed they could stay because the next step would be a death camp.  Oh some of the things were so sick.  They have a monument for all the kids that died there and their ages.  It is horrific.  I took as many pictures as I could before my camera died, but I didn't know if it was appropriate to smile so some of them are awkward faces.

So my companion does not like fish and I don't like tomatoes well.... we went to an Armenian member's house for lunch after church and guess what we had.  Her favorite, a traditional Russian dish....fish head soup.  Besides the eyeballs staring at me and the tomato pieces (which I swallowed whole) I rather enjoyed it, but my poor companion suffered.
Well, I think I like salmon.  I've just been in a seafood mood and salmon was my only seafood option at a sandwich cafe and so I went out on a limb and loved it.  Also, the fish head soup was salmon and I thought it was delicious. So hey, who knew.
Finally, this week we had several bad moments with animals.  A swan hissed at us (so scary especially the size of swan it was) frogs are everywhere (who knew?) we saw a water chicken fight. Crazy!

3/31/14
I'm being transferred to Haarlem!!! I leave on Wednesday. I have mixed feelings. Yesterday was super hard. I knew I'd be leaving and I was just looking at all the ward members and how much I love them all. But I know it will be good.

Also, I will be companions with a sister training leader which means that I will go to different cities two times each week and work with different sisters. So I will be going to Amsterdam with Zuster Morris! I am super stoked!

Lately I've had less and less people tell me my Dutch is good and also less and less people ask me to repeat things so I'm taking that as my language is getting better. When Dutch people compliment your Dutch it's because they didn't understand what you said and know they have to say something back after you spoke. The problem now is I am going to a different province where the Dutch is different.  Here they speak Brabants and so i speak Brabants and in Haarlem they speak the most modern and correct Dutch so in a way I have to relearn the language based on the culture of where I live.

And, YES the tulips ar out in full force!!!!

2/10/14

This week was great, birthdays on the mission are great! Everyone is so thoughtful and wonderful and I had the most delicious cake of my life.  Not sure if it was really that delicious or if me being off sugar for the last month had anything to do with it. Either way, YUM!!

In other news my companion and I received the stomach flu this week. Not fun.

2/17/14

I'm staying in Den Bosch for another 6 weeks!!!! This time I am getting a new companion.  Zuster Rosenlof! She was in our MTC district and she's the greatest.

Well we got dropped by almost all of our investigators so that was a bummer, but the couple that stayed came to church for all three hours and one told us he wants to be baptized. Also, it was quite possibly the windiest week EVER! I was tipped over on my bike multiple times.

In other news however, we are challenging members in all of Nederland to create mormon.org profiles because that is the face of missionary work now.  We will be working a lot through the internet now...the catch is that we can't use the internet so it has to be through the members.  We've heard many people say, "oh, well I don't do stuff online".  Well you better start now because that is what the Lord is requiring of us.  So I would encourage all of you members  to make a profile also! You never know who's life you'll touch. If you are not a member go to mormon.org and check out my profile and the profiles of people in your area.

Valentine's day was romantic....we were stuck in another city in the pouring rain and our dinner appointment forgot about us. We had bought her flowers too.  So we just doorbell ditched them to a random homeowner.

I finally got the birthday/hump day package. I was thoroughly entertained!!!!! Wow, that was great, I loved it! I love getting pictures. I was so freaking excited. I loved all the camel references...classic.  Thank you so much!

2/24/14
Great week, great weather and a wonderful new companion who unfortunately is sick.

We had a cool miracle yesterday though.  We get a call from a lady we previously taught a couple of times but due to some circumstances could no longer teach her.  She wanted a ride to church so at the last minute we find a member to pick her up and well, not only is she coming to church but also her sister and her sister's son. The son only speaks Italian but fortunately our EQ president served his mission in Italy and so was able to speak with him.

1/20/13
We've had a couple of interesting experiences this week.  We were invited in by a family who's sole intent was to bible bash and they just slaughter us.  It was wretched, they said stuff like "the Book of Mormon is nothing" and "God creates war" as well as awful things about our Savior.  Both my companion and I were crying. It was truly awful.  But then yesterday, it happened again and we knew exactly how to handle it. We've learned we just have to be bold and take control of that situation.

 I have decided that Heavenly Father is the master choreographer and life is just a dance! We have seen evidence of the Lord's hand in our life this week.  First, we were knocking on doors and this woman opens up and says that she has been expecting us.  She said that we had talked to her friend 14 days ago (she had been counting) and was preparing to meet us.  She invited us in and told us that she was so sad (her husband had recently passed away). She told us we couldn't take the pain away.  We told her that we most definitely could not take the pain away, but that the Savior could and wants to. We testified that God loves her. She said that she doubts that. We told her that us coming to her door is evidence that He is aware of her, and loves her. He sent us to her door and He prepared her for our visit. Another example is we had been teaching  this family and we could tell that the mother was struggling or worrying about something however every time we wanted to ask her about it typical family and life situations were always occupying her attention. We knew we needed to speak with her alone and free from distractions so that she could open up. Well during our visit this week, as dinner was concluding an opportunity presented itself, which never happens in this household.  We knew that the Lord had choreographed that opportunity so that we were able to help her.  It was wonderful.

December

Everything is going well, we had a dry week contacting but have seen a lot of success with members.  On Thursday however, we went to go get our Nederland ID's and there was a huge storm!!!!!! All the intercity trains were shut down so we have to take sprinters everywhere.  A two hour trip took us seven hours!! While we were at the train station they announce a "code red", well we don't know what that is so we asked a girl on a train a couple of days later and she looked at us like we were crazy. So a "code red" is like an emergency broadcast, it is  announced on TV, radio, internet, everything. It means "DO NOT GO OUTSIDE"

12/30/13

So, at a dinner appointment with nearly half the ward (since everyone here is related) people started freaking out about my boots and saying they are going to buy me boots. I told them I already talked to my mom about it and I've just been putting it off because it hasn't been bad weather and now today one of the ladies is coming with us to make sure I have "good" boots.  *Side note, the boots are a little torn up, I mean not like my blue shoes I wore in Boise with the holes in the bottom. But Dutch people are obsessed with clean and things being in good shape. You should see how often they are cleaning their windows and cars. Uncle Tim is right. No one, NO ONE has a dent in their car.  Unfortunately the Dutch care more about my worn down boots more than I do. 

One of the coolest miracles is we were asked, that when we pray to ask people that we are with if there is anyone that we can pray for. Well we did that with an lady who let us in  and she just started crying, and told us to pray for her daughter and granddaughter. So we did and she cried all through the prayer and then when we were done she takes the Book of Mormon and says "I think this might be what I need right now." It was pretty amazing. We have an appointment with her this week.

Christmas in the Netherlands

12/2/13
We had a special experience. A school invited us to present to them and eat Thanksgiving with them.  So it was a class of about 40 kids ages 13-14. We presented about America, Thanksgiving and about our church. Talk about freedom of religion.  They specifically asked us to talk about our church, where it comes from, why it's different and well, anything. It was bilingual class so although they are Dutch the class is in English.  All the kids cooked a huge meal for us and they had to do it the American way, which means with recipes using cups and tbsp not grams.  We went in the kitchen with them and this one group was assigned to make rice crispy treats and I walked over and, yeah, they were not what rice crispy treats should look like.  So the teacher comes over and asks if they followed the recipe, to which they replied "yes". So then she says "Oh really, what is an ounce?" The kids didn't know and turns out 8 ounces of marshmallows to them was 8 marshmallows total.  I was dying, it was hilarious.  The food was great! The kids did a wonderful job and they were so fun. They participated in our presentation and asked questions and we all had a really good time.  We gave them all Mormon.org cards and even the head of the program came in and started asking us questions during the presentation.

Thanksgiving dinner was spent with a family in the ward who's son just left on his mission.  They cooked a great Dutch/American Thanksgiving complete with crokets on the table with the dinner. It was awesome.
We had a dinner appointment this week with members and their little boy was hilarious. He kept pretending to shoot me and then apologizing and telling me it was just a joke. Then we played Jenga and I ask "What's your favorite animal?" and he replies "you", I was cracking up.  Then he went behind me (I'm sitting on the floor) and he's doing that hiding from me thing, and I ask who it is and he says his name, and I say "I don't know him" and he gets annoyed and yells who he is and where he lives.  I then turn my head to look at him and he kisses me on the cheek. Oh man, it was so funny!