Detox just to Retox JULY 21

So this week my companion and I totally felt like we had been eating too carelessly lately and wanted to be more disciplined, so we decided to go extreme and detox. It wasn't completely possible because of our dinner appointments, but it was enough to the point that we decided we hated green vegetables after about 2 days. So then we joined in eating a big piece of a giant peanut butter cup that she made (because she makes peanut butter cups from scratch and they are delicious. what up.) 

Anyway, while we were sitting in the apartement for lunch or something one day, I looked pensively to the wall and asked "how does one do a life detox? Like, a detox from life?" 

She looked with like a "duh"expression on her face at me and goes "isn't that what a mission is?" zingggg. 

Hahaha. 

Detoxing--or rather "detoxing"- while it began to taste like dirt after a while, actually did help me feel healthier and better. It gave enough discipline where I knew that I could really do whatever I wanted to but where I knew that if I wanted to not hate myself, I would make the healthy choice. And yes, after the detox, we definately retoxed. But I think the point is to keep being healthy afterwards. And we're trying. 

A mission is really fun. But sometimes, after a while, sometimes it starts to look like dirt. Sometimes your tan actually is dirt. But mostly it's bike grease and sweat. And it gets really hard to endure. But it is chalked full with such good experiences that make me happy to have spent my time in a good cause. Even though sometimes it has been painful and I have wanted to not leave my apartment or sometimes I've run into days or weeks or months where I'd rather not wake up. Ever. It has been beautiful. And afterwards (wow I can't believe I'm talking about this) I'll be reimmersed in the world and everything, but the point is still to keep in good spiritual health. and the discipline I gain here will help me do that. 

This post took a weird turn and now I don't know what to say but yay detox. 

I love you all.

Stay happy and healthy. 

xoxo

ZusterHoff

Hup Holland Hup? JULY 14

Well. The one game we as a mission got to watch, Nederland lost. That's what we get for breakin the rules of the white handbook I guess. OBEDIENCE BRINGS BLESSINGS. EVERY TIME. 

So, what do you do when discouragement sets in? When you realize the weight of your decisions on yourself and others? When your team loses? When your most reliable plans fall through and the people you thought you could count on turn against you? When you feel like everything is against you and you feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders and just about to crush you down to nothing? Powerless. Struggling. Alone. Sad. 

The mission, as life, is incomplete without these sorts of experience. It's like that quote about the refiner's fire, or that quote about how we either get grinded down or polished up in this stone crusher sort of a world. 

But these are the moments we become humble. We realize the need of God in our lives. The need of our Savior Jesus Christ, who is mighty and able to take our yoke upon him and suffer what we suffer. He is the only one we can count on. And His atonement is everything we need. 

I also hope that exercise and detoxing helps because that's what my plans are. 

well.

I love you all. 

xoxo

Zuster Hoff

Ten Year Tribute: Hold to the Rod JULY 7 2014

There isn´t too much to report on this week. the days just get really short but the weeks end up being really long and everything blends together. But operation reactivation is going pretty cool, I guess you could say. Setting dates with people to come back to church and be edified by the good word of God. It´s a wonderful life. 

Speaking of the good word of God, the Book of Mormon has a story about an iron rod, which is compared to be the word of God. I have an iron rod that I wear around my neck. My mom sent it to me back in December and told me to remember the carving that Michael did--a small piece of wood with the words carved in `hold to the rod` much like the words on my necklace. Yesterday marked the TENTH YEAR since his death. And every year, on the death date or birthday, I like to do something to remember/honor him. So yesterday I wrote a song. And since I have nothing else to say, I will write it up for you.

It´s called....10 Year Tribute: Hold to the Rod

The prophet Lehi had a dream wherein he saw many things

including a tree--who´s fruit could make one to be exceedingly happy

And he bade his family to come see

Numberless concourses were pressing on all catching hold of the iron rod,

the word of God, for however long it took to see the dawn

And they´d taste the glory of the brightest day,

yet still some people fell away

lost in the mists of darkness.

There was a young boy unsure of where he could turn for joy,

slightly annoyed, a few wrong turns can only lead to tears and burns.

Yet luckily, it was easy to find that good ol´path once left behind

still aligned with pictures in white and arms open wide.

And oh what joy filled the soul when they found he reached the goal 

in the right and preparing for eternity

Yet in a flash after the crash, we become a little taken aback...

and there will be many who say 

why were you taken away 

why oh why did you have to go

I don´t know

and we take all we can find to remind us of the good times

but what they leave behind is the best sign...

After he´s gone, a book, a song,

a suggestion of how to go on,

a hollow log--hold to the rod.

So I´ll grasp onto the end keep pressing on with you my friend

keeping my balance through this mist of darkness

No I don´t ask why anymore, I´ll never know all the answers for sure,

I just put my trust in God and I hold to the rod.

Keep holding on. 

Take me where I belong.

HOLD TO THE ROD.

I am thankful for the examples I have in my life of goodness. And I know that I have many. I love my mission and that it lets me get closer to the other side of the viel. Blessed am I.

I love you all! Have a great week! :)

xoxo

Zuster Hoff

Sticks and Spit June 30

Whale whale whale. We haven't seen any whales I don't know why I started out that way but anyway--can we talk about the fact that it is July tomorrow? Yeah. It's July tomorrow. That is...the month of summer that it becomes really hot in this country. Bring it on. [gently, please.]

Well, I don't really have any cool spiritual experiences that happened this week because I was kinda sick so I spent a lot of time feeling like a zombie and not really "thrusting in my sickle" if you get what I'm sayin [Doctrine and Covenants Section 4] 

BUT we had an appointment with Matt (he moves back to London tomorrow how sad) but we were at his place and he actually lives in this part of town that people call little Morrocco. All the people are Muslim or atleast middle eastern and they don't like white people. Anyway, we bell up to Matt for him to let us in and nobody answers, so we call him up and it turns out he's gonna be a little late so we're like--no problem. We'll just wait. and so we're waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And while we're waiting, we notice these little girls who are just wanting to make trouble. There is this little storage room for bikes and we're standing next to the door and all of a sudden the door opens and one of the girls runs past and throws out a stick. And then she and her friend are just laughing inside the building and thinking they are so smart. Then a few minutes later, the door opens again, and they throw out this huge empty container of laundry detergent. and by this point we're like...wow. what children. They are bangin on the windows and laughing and whatever and we're deciding to ignore it....until from the balconies, they start SPITTING ON US. It was sick. So we rescheduled with Matt and biked awayyyyy. 

My companion asked "what do you think Jesus would've done in this situation?" Well. Jesus said "suffer the children..." Emphasis on the word SUFFER. 

Just kidding I love children. Most of the time. But I never thought I'd be spit on on my mission. Don't know why that never crossed my mind. BUT while sticks and spit may wish me away, no harassment can take my testimony.  

I coulda made that line cooler but I don't have a lot of time. 

Bottom line-- RISE ABOVE IT. We were made for more than the dross of this world. 

xoxox

Zuster Hoff

The Extra Push june 23

Miracles Happen. This I know. I even wrote a song about it while I was in Assen. It's about an experience that I had on a Northbound train out of Amsterdam. And the day that I had while I was in Amsterdam. But this experience is about a day I had in Gouda. That's where I am now. And miracles are STILL HAPPENING.

So remember how I told you about looking up George and finding Matt? The plot thickens GEORGE NEVER ACUTALLY LIVED THERE. Crazy, right? So here we have found Matt, this gem of a guy, who is totally ready to be baptized and loves God and has the greatest testimony of gospel principles that I have ever heard, and we tell him--yo. You need to get baptized. and what does he do? AGREE. And now he is praying over dates and telling all his friends and educating everybody on the difference between LDS and FLDS (because that is not even CLOSE to the same faith) and pretty much...that's cool. and we just kinda showed up at the right place at the right time for him to realize this. I was kinda thinking "well, he'd be getting baptized with or without us"but while we weere talking to him last night it was really cool that he expressed his testimony that we were sent from God at the right time to give him that extra push that he needed at this point in his life. God numbers his sheep. He is aware of them. And he loves them.

And whenever I need that extra push in my life-- I know that Christ does not only give me the extra push I need, but he carries me. The atonement is powerful and it is everything. Without it, nothing else really matters. I'm thankful for a life of meaning.

xoxo

Zuster Hoff

Jun 16 Title Finding Lost Sheep

One time when I was in Leeuwarden, Zuster Clement and I found this lady after thinking it was hopeless. It was a miracle. And we told our District Leader that we had found a lost sheep and he thought we were serious. So we made it a goal to find a lost sheep. And then one day we did while biking out to the middle of nowhere. But then I stopped my bike way too close to it and freaked it out and ran and it ended up running straight into a gate. Then I realized if you are going to find lost sheep and not have them run away, you gotta keep your distance sometimes. 

But luckily humans aren´t sheep--we are much more intelligent. And this week we found some really, really, really cool sheep. One of them, we will call him Matt, was pretty much the biggest miracle ever. Well. Maybe not but he´s the favorite of the week right now--even thought there are so many to choose from. 

Anyway, an appointment fell through and our back up plan was going to look up a member who had just moved in and invite him to church. Let´s call him George. So we looked him up, and he wasn´t actually home, but a friend was over. Enter Matt. Matt invited us up and talked to us and he was like "oh, you guys are the mormons!" and we were like "yeah!" and come to find out, this man is from England but is here on vacation for the month and he has a lot of friends who are on missions and stuff and he is SO COOL but he gets transferred all over the world for his job and so one time he was living in France and he was almost baptized but a WEEK before his baptism, he was transferred to the middle east. So anyway, we had the coolest converstaion with him, he even still has his Book of Mormon, and well...He definately is so prepared. Good news is that he is here until the end of the month. Bad news is that we only have until the end of the month. But it´s amazing how through a series of unfortunate events, very very fortunate things can happen. Like finding lost sheep. 

May we all make the goal and yearn to find the lost sheep of our lives.

They are there and waiting to be brought back to the fold.

But try not to stop your bike too close to them and freak them out because they might run away. 

Love you all.

xoxo

Zuster Hof

Applying the Atonement june 9

This week I learned a lot about finding forgiveness, applying the miracle of the atonement and truly repenting. And how repentance is not just a one time thing--it is a continuous process. 

At our district meeting on Tuesday, the district leader gave an incredible "presentation" (?) I guess you could call it, on loving ourselves. I guess this is a constant struggle that a lot of people have. It's difficult to love ourselves. We have to live with ourselves--we know our weaknesses and our faults and shortcomings better than anyone. We see them the most. But too seldomly do we understand that we have to be patient with ourselves and love ourselves through it. We talked about how the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, [insert other fruits from Galatians 5 here] and then the question was posed "how often, in our own communication with ourselves, are these things present? How often do we communicate with ourselves with love and joy and longsuffering and goodness?" Not too often. And then we have to make the connection that if these things aren't present in our communication with ourselves, then the spirit is also not able to be present. and we are not really able to love ourselves. 

The sentence I held onto from that meeting, however, was when he said "If you have these bad feelings where the spirit cannot be present--cast them off. If these feelings are driving you to repentance, repent, and then cast them off. You are too good for them."

So the next day, we were on exchanges and we did service for a member but we stayed way too long and I felt really bad about it. I felt like I had wasted the Lord's time that day. And I wasn't really having good feelings/conversation with myself. But then I remembered that I needed to repent and cast these feelings off--so we went home to change and eat and I said a prayer--pleading for forgiveness and pledging to work more earnestly for the rest of the day. Then we walked out the door with 2 and a half hours left and the where to go (though already planned out in a scattered manner) came clearly and the order too. And we ended up teaching a less active member and also 3 other lessons. And it was miraculous to see that the Lord really doesn't care where you've been or what you've done nearly as much as He does about where you are and where you are willing to go with His help. Maybe "His anger is not turned away, BUT His arms ARE outstretched still." I had to put this same process in force the next few days, every time I felt like I wasn't doing enough. And I relaized that repentance isn't a pit stop--it is a road. But it is not a lonely road-- the Lord is walking with us down it. 

Love

Zuster Hoff

Spiritually Ripped june 2

So this week was awesome. We TASTED 20 lessons but we only got 19. Number 20 was rude to us and turned us away :( sad. Prayers for softened hearts.

Well, yesterday, we did this activity in gospel principles and we taught about the scriptures. We began by giving everybody a piece of paper and saying "okay, imagine you are going to die today and you have 5 minutes to write some of your last words down. It could be a letter to anyone you want, it could be bank account information or passwords--it could be anything you want it to be--but these are your last words." If you were actually in that situation, you'd pour your heart out and tell whoever you're writing everything in your heart. You would maybe cry. I know I did. You would really hope they would read your note and remember you. Then after these 5 minutes, I went up to one of the people and took his paper and ripped it up right in front of him. MAN, he was mad. I felt so bad. He said "I worked so hard on that--I wrote it in my nice handwriting, I put my heart into it, it was almost poetic, and then you just ripped it up." We were then able to compare that to the scriptures. Those are the last words of the prophets. They wrote those for us. Those warnings and promises and blessings and knowledge that they left behind so that we could profit--and when we don't read them and use them, it's as if we are ripping them up, being unappreciative and even careless. As the person tearing up his paper (don't worry, I apologized profusely and now we're friends again) I felt SO bad. It is an awful feeling when you disregard someone's whole hearted, almost poetic attempt to leave you something valuable. And I realized how much I love the scriptures! 

So--my advice to you all is don't rip the scriptures--read them and become spiritually ripped. 

"SCRIPTURE POWER IS THE POWER TO WIN." 

xoxo

Zuster Hoff

Wonders and Windmills May 26

Went to Kinderdijk today--it was pretty much a lot of. Good pictures!

This week was great. On Saturday, we went to the temple. I took this boy. He's so cute. He even held my hand a lot of the way there. He's FOUR and he is the son of an investigator who is so cute and really wants to get baptized. She's from Brazil and just the sweetest thing. She wanted to go to the temple to sit in the waiting room and just see what she could. It was a beautiful experience and it was really cool to be able to be in the temple. What a great spirit. Other cool  things happened too.

For example, we were looking up a referral who wasn't home the other day and so we decided to knock doors and this one lady's husband was about to take a card but she came down and just said "no no no no!"and she was a little defensive I think and she asked why we were there and we told her we share a card with people and our website and she asked where we were from--like "who sent you which organization who are you and for what purpose are you standing on my door?"and I said "we are personal representatives of Jesus Christ and we share His restored gospel"and she immediately completely changed and she apologized and it was really cool to see the change. There is a power that comes to missionaries, I believe, when we understand that we are personal representatives of Jesus Christ here to share His restord gospel. It was really cool to experience that.

We also tried to use the Book of Mormon more in finding. It was all fun and dandy.

Until I pronounced "macht"as "maagd"--then the man told me he didn't remember reading anything about the "maagd" of the holy ghost in the bible. Ay.  

It's been a good week! Hope you're all havin a good beginning to summer!

xoxo

Zuster Hoff

HOLLAR from HOLLAND may 19

I just got transferrred to South Holland in a town called Gouda where cheese hangs from the sky and the buildings look like cheese and stroopwafels and the life is GOOD. The church is right across the street from our apartment and the station is right down the street. It's a good place to be! 

On transfer wednesday I had to bid farewell to the funky Friesland and my wonderful companion and come on down to the Rotterdam train station to meet my new companion who greets me with a napkin in her hand, saying "well, I would try to impress you, but a bird just pooped in my hair." Haha. That's a sign you are going to have a fabulous transfer. 

Well. That's all I have today. It's been a crazy week. Hopefully I'll start to figure out this town this week. 

xoxo

Zuster Hoff

City of Cheese May 12

So transfer calls came late last night and it looks like I'm goin down to GOUDA. Now, I know that people are grossly mispronouncing this name right now, so I'm going to give a pronounciation guide. Gouda is not pronounced like gooo-duh. It is, infact, pronounced *phlegm*-ow-duh. Finally somewhere that's not an hour or more away from EVERYTHING. Behold, the tender mercies of the Lord are upon all.

This past week we had interviews with President and while I was talking to his wife, she committed me (as she said that she was going to commit all of the missionaries) to living the white handbook--or as Tad R. Callister would call it--the book of blessings. As I started calling it the book of blessings a while back, my companion asked "do you think it has more blessings than rules? Maybe we should count" and I came back with "well, every time we keep a rule, we recieve blessings." I was thinking of how obedience is kind of like God's "currency." In heaven, money isn't really going to matter. And even here on earth, it doesn't really matter to God how much money we have. What does matter is if we are obedient. Money wont always make us happy--and it wont ever make us truly happy. Obedience, however, and the blessings and confidence that come from being obedient, will. And so if we stretch this metaphor out a little bit--we can see that the more hours somebody works, the more money he or she recieves from their boss/company who has given them the hours. Well, it follows then that the more commandments that we obey, the more blessings we recieve from our Heavenly Father who has given us the commands. I was thinking about the rules in the white handbook--this handbook that has been written especially for missionaries--and I was thinking about how some of the rules are definately ones that I regard as rules--things that we need to do--for example, don't go swimming or participate in water sports. Don't wear skirts with a slit that comes about the knee. Don't But then there are other ones that I always read over and think "oh that's just a suggestion" such as speak your mission language as much as possible, don't use slang even in letters home, call all of your investigators by brother and sister last name. And it's just really interesting to see how we "rank" the commandments sometimes as some of them being more important than others. We do act like it's a pick and choose "buffet" and that's not the way that they were intended. My companion told me about the quote that says "the most important commandment is the one that keeps you furthest away from God" meaning that whichever commandment you are having the hardest time with is the most important at that time. But as I've found myself hearing about other people's disobedience and "judging them because [they] sin differently than I do" I have realized that I have problems too. And I'm thankful for the atonement. But I'm also thankful for my weaknesses because not only do they humble me, but they allow me to feel empathy.

 

This is Nothern Downpour--sending my love for the last time

 

xoxo

Zuster Hoff

one year anniversary

Title: One Year Anniversary

 

Is there something for the one year anniversary? Is it paper? or is that five years? Well. I don't know. But I have renamed the one year anniversary the tulip anniversary. Because to celebrate a whole year together, I treated my nametag right this week. I took a pretty great photoshoot of it with the tulips at Keukenhof. I took it to the temple. I showed it off for everyone--really proud to wear that guy on my chest for a whole year now. 

 

I remember that exactly a year ago on that day I was getting all of my luggage out of the car and saying goodbye to my dad and walking through the MTC building and having them put my nametag on me. At that moment--I was so overcome with joy. I was a representative of Christ. I was about to learn Dutch. I was a MISSIONARY.

 

And I still am. I have gotten a few letters lately from different people who have reminded me how lucky I am to be a missionary. I have too often taken my nametag for granted. I have not worn it as proudly as I should. I have not respected the authority that it deserves. But what a silly thing to take for granted when the there are only 18 short months--18 fast sundays--that I will be able to wear it for.

 

Appreciate the good, the bad, and the crazy. Because the one year anniversary is the only one I'll get.

It's Cinco de Mayo. But the Dutch call it--Bevrijdingsdag. I don't care what they call it, as long as it's a party :)

 

xoxo

 

Zuster Hoff