Happy Half-Way...What??

My dear friends and family,

As of yesterday, I am officially half-way done with my mission! That is pure craziness!! While home feels very far away, I also feel like I just entered the MTC yesterday. I pretend I know what I'm doing, but at heart I'm still very much a groentje (greenie)! Leven is gek. :)

It's been a while since I last emailed, because of our late p-day this week, and honestly all the days just kind of blur together. So here are some highlights of my recent history!

Zone training!! It's the last one with President and Zuster Robinson, so we were combined with another zone for half of it, where they addressed us, after which we split off into our own zones for normal zone training. It was awesome, as always! Zuster Robinson talked about 13 promises God has given us as endowed, covenant people. They are all from section 109 of Doctrine and Covenants. Take some time this week to study that section - it is truly amazing what God does for His children! President then talked about the progress this mission has seen in his time, and how if we continue to be optimistic and think creatively we can keep up the work and make even more progress in the future. He especially emphasized how we are 100% accountable for 100% of the results we see 100% of the time. When we have this attitude of accountability, and we own the results we see, that gives us power to change our results. This is so true, in every area of our lives!

On Monday we spent the whole day doing service! We were helping out at a small daycare/school for handicapped children, cleaning/sanding/repainting a shed and other outdoor surfaces. We enlisted our district and zone leaders to help us, and the people we were helping were so happy with all the work we did. We'll be going back again next Wednesday to help some more. Service is the best!

On Tuesday, after a wonderful district meeting, I went on exchanges in Amsterdam again. Zuster Doxey and I helped a 9 year old make cupcakes for her mother, who is a less-active in the ward. The mom (Chelsey) was totally surprised and showed so much love for her daughter, it was beautiful! And then they were going out to dinner together so we rode the same metro together, and we had a miraculous conversation with Chelsey in which she told us that she wants to be more active in the church, meet more with the zusters, and give her daughter good influences through the church. It was awesome and I'm so excited for the Amsterdam zusters to help Chelsey with her new vision for herself! Service, especially in families, always works wonders. :)

Well, I must go but of course I could never leave without a thought! As I stand half way through my mission and look back on what I've done and experienced, I can see that I have learned an incredible amount. I can also see that, while I'm still doing my best, I've got a long way to go. As I pondered that, I was thinking about how it is possible that we can always be learning, and yet always feel as though we're already doing all we can. I've come to the conclusion that it's all about practice makes perfect! As you practice something, you won't always do it right. But if you correct your mistakes and don't stop trying, you will make progress. And as you continue doing that, things that used to be hard and take up (for example) 15% of your time and energy, now are easy and only take 2% of your time and energy. It's the same with being good and doing good! The more you do it, the greater your capacity to do even more good, because you are continally creating more "room" for more good things as the good things you already do become easier, then habit, then second nature. This process continues until, one day, we reach perfection thanks to the help of the great Finisher. I am so grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ, through which I can be a little better every day, and through which I can become a little more like Him with every good choice I make. It is wonderful to me!

-Zuster Jensen :)

Life is Great :)

My dear friends and family,

Let me begin actually with a shout-out to mijn broertje - Garrett enters the MTC on Wednesday!! I couldn't be more proud of the good choices he's made and the preparation he's done in order to be worthy and ready to serve. I know he is extremely excited and I can't wait to hear all about his journey!

Speaking of missions, mine was great this week. :)

On Monday, we helped a less-active member move. This involved carrying stuff up two flights of Dutch stairs... which, for those of you who don't know, are often spiral (in this case they were) and extremely steep. :P Luckily I didn't trip even once, although I was definitely feeling the burn the next day. :) I love service!

The next day we had an awesome district meeting! It was a little weird since my last district had only 6 missionaries, and this one has around 18. It's actually both a zone and a district... since they closed a few cities in this area they basically just combined all the missionaries in the area into one zone/district. Gezellig! Afterward I went on exchanges with Zr Mashburn, who was in my MTC group. She is very sweet and it was wonderful to work with her for a day.:)

Wednesday and Thursday were relatively uneventful, although still super good. On Friday we had the opportunity to attend MLC (mission leader council)! Neither of us is a sister trainer leader, but President asked Zuster Verdegem to give a presentation about learning/teaching other missionaries Dutch so we got to participate for the day. It was very inspiring and I was so happy to have the chance to receive more counsel from President and Zuster Robinson before they leave at the end of this transfer. :)

On Saturday we worked with the zone leaders, which was great, and then Sunday was also great. Basically, everthing this week was just great. :)

As a thought for this week, I'm going to continue with the idea of things being great. :D We had a dinner appointment on Monday with an older brother in our ward who has an interesting story. He was not a member, and his wife was baptized a little over 10 years ago. Recently she died of an illness. Soon after her death, he began seriously investigating the church and was baptized. They are now sealed together, which is beautiful; but his story made me think, how often does it happen in our lives that we wait to figure out how our lives might be even better? I'm sure he had a great family, but what if this brother had decided to investigate a little sooner? Might they have had some time as members together? When I look around, I think my life is pretty great. But I think, if I strive to follow the example of Jesus Christ and figure out God's plan for me, I might find ways to make it even better. I challenge you all to do the same! God truly is the source of all happiness, and joy comes from following His Son, Jesus Christ. Don't delay the blessings waiting for you! :)





-Zuster Jensen

Surprises (of a good kind) :)

My dear friends and family,
So this week was kind of crazy! First piece of craziness - I knew I was being transferred to IJmuiden. What I didn't know is that, due to uneven numbers of missionaries leaving/coming, they closed down the Haarlem elder's area. Which means it has become our area. So that's fun! There's lots of work to do with taking over their investigators and other people, and it makes for a lot of traveling. But it's great! Zuster Verdegem is a hard worker and we've already seen miracles in the last few days.
Some of the miracles included catching people at home and being able to teach them lessons, as well as randomly meeting prepared people who were interested in the Book of Mormon and willing to make return appointments. We hope to see some good things this week!
Just like any new area, IJmuiden feels very different; I can tell it will be great, though! We are part of the Haarlem ward, and the members here take good care of the missionaries and each other, and they are very welcoming and helpful to everyone. It's awesome! Also, especially since we took over the Haarlem elder's area, we spend a decent amount of time in Haarlem. Which, for those of you who don't know, is where "The Best Two Years" was largely filmed. I hope to have a good collection of pictures in "famous places" by the time I'm done here! :)
Well, a lot of you have emailed me this week about the power of positive thinking and faith, and it's actually something that's been on my mind lately, so I'm going to share of few of my thoughts back on the subject. We are all given weaknesses and trials, and that's necessary. However, it has been amazing to me to see, especially on my mission, just how much Heavenly Father carries us through these. I'm sure I don't even understand the smallest part of how it works, but I know that it does. Perhaps we can't be cheerful every second of every hour, but I know that it's truly possible to live a happy, wonderful life as we simply stay close to the source of true happiness- our Heavenly Father. Through humility and hope, and the development of faith and charity, nothing need ever be seen as a burden or an insurmountable challenge. Every time you are tempted to give up, become angry or bitter, or turn away from the light, simply fall down to your knees in prayer. I know that there we can find the balm in Gilead, the strength and love and peace that comes through the real application of Christ's Atonement in our lives, for the good times, the bad times, and every single moment in between.

-Zuster Jensen

Zusters Verdegem & Jensen

Transfer Day!

Haarlem

A Wonderful (Last!) Week in Assen

My dear family and friends,
It has been an exciting week! But first, transfer news! Can you believe it's already been 6 weeks again? Well, we got the call last night and it turns out I am going to IJmuiden! (And yes that capitalization is correct. The letters ij togethers sometimes do funky things in Dutch). It is right on the sea, just above Haarlem. I will be working with Zuster Verdegem, who is from Belgium and is going home very soon, possibly after this transfer! Hopefully she can teach me better Dutch. :) Zuster Harris will be staying here in Assen and is getting Zuster Johanssen, who was in my MTC district. They will do great things here, and hopefully I'll do great things in my new city!
In other news, last Monday we went to the zoo in Emmen for preparation day and it was just great. The rules about coming in contact with animals are a little different here... they had this room where you could just walk through and there were birds a small animals in it, and I touched a monkey. It was fun. :)
The next day we went on exchanges, so I worked in Gronginen for the day where I met some awesome people and got my first mosquito bite of the year. :P I was hoping they'd at least wait until June... oh well. Consequences of being too sweet. :)
On Wednesday we did a lot of contacting, and then had dinner with a member who had invited several collegues from work. It was fun getting to know them and they had great questions about what we do!
On Thursday we had interviews with President and Zuster Robinson, and received some great advice and encouragement. That evening, we also taught some amazing people! It is a family who we found last week. We have been praying to be able to teach a family, and that night we taught them the Restoration and invited them to baptism! These people are amazing. They are Christian and love the Bible, in fact they buy Bibles from secondhand stores to keep in their car and give out to anyone who might be interested. When they said that, I immediately thought, "they are going to get baptized and do the same thing with Books of Mormon.":) After the lesson I told Zuster Harris, and she'd totally thought the same thing! Revelation. :) These people are so genuinine in the faith and they testified to us about the Holy Ghost and the witness we receive from it, so when we invited them to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it so that the Holy Ghost could confirm the truth of it to them, they were extremely enthousiastic and said they knew the Holy Ghost could do that and that they would read and pray, and if they find out it's true they will be baptized! I won't have the chance to see them again before I leave but I'm so excited for them and I love being a missionary and getting to testify of these things to people!
The rest of the week was also great and exciting, but I've run out of time to tell you about it so I guess you can just imagine wonderful things. :) One thought I will share that's been on my mind this week: Happiness feels so good. There is no replacement for the peace and joy the Spirit brings; however, we have to remain worthy to have it. Sometimes tiny things in a lives are not quite in place, and we don't see how it's effecting everything else, but you feel just a little off. Then, when you fix that little thing, suddenly the Spirit can come back in and brighten all the other things you didn't even know could be better! Obedience and righteous living is truly a blessing, and even though we can't always see the connection between our actions and the outcomes, I know God does and will bless us every time we give Him the opportunity. Take some time to do a little "self check" this week, and see what you can do just a little better. Do that thing, and then watch how the Spirit flows right into your life. :)

-Zuster Jensen

P.S. Happy (belated) birthday to Carter and Kayla! You guys are getting so big! :')

Emmen zoo! :)

I took a trip to Matthew`s mission.. ;)

I Must Have Blinked. Where Did the Week Go??

My dear family and friends,
This has been a crazy week filled with wonderful things! Y'all ready? :)
On Monday it was beautiful weather, and the missionaries up in Groningen were getting together for p-day so we joined them. In fact, we actuallly biked to Groningen from Assen! It was super fun, a total of about 18.3 miles, plus another 2.9 miles from where we met the other missionaries to the station in Groningen to take the train back. We took my iPod and speakers and put them in Zuster Harris' basket, and we "blasted" Mormon Tabernacle Choir the whole way. It was grand. :)
On Tuesday we had an entire day with no appointments, which is always daunting- but it turned out to be a great day with great conversations with people. :)
On Wednesday we had an awesome lesson with an investigator about the Book of Mormon, after which Bernadette called and asked if we would come over and dye her hair. I've never touched the stuff in my life, and had absolutely no idea how it worked, but thankfully boxes come with instructions on them! I did my best and it turned out well. :) That night we traveled to Zoetermeer, where we slept over with the zusters there because... (*drum roll*)
Thursday was zone conference! It was really wonderful. Zuster Robinson talked about grace, President Robinson talked about the advances in technology in the mission field (a.k.a. iPads and how the 12 Apostles want us to have them, so that we can hasten the work here and learn valuable spiritual self-suffiency skills as well), we watched an awesome documentary about the Book of Mormon produced by BYU, and we listened to the program the Singing Elders are doing! These elders are a quartet who have created a program involving stories and songs all about the family, loving each other, and trusting in God and Jesus Christ. They are performing firesides all around the mission and visiting members, sacrament meetings, and investigators. It was wonderful!
On Friday we have a great day of service, and then on Saturday a great day of missionary work! The district leaders came to work with us in Assen, and we had a couple of great lessons, met some great people, and got some great advice. Sunday was also great, although I've run out of time to tell you about it. :P
However, before I go I'd love to share with you some thoughts about grace. In preparation for zone conference Zuster Robinson asked us all to study grace from the Bible Dictionary, as well as read the BYU speech "His Grace Is Sufficient" by Brad Wilcox. If you haven't read it, I highly encourage you to do so. There are so many wonderful things in it. One of my favorite quotes from it is, "we are not earning heaven. We are learning heaven." As missionaries, we teach people all the time about the Gospel of Jesus Christ - faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring the end. In the end, these things are never enough to pay back what Christ has done for us; but they are what we are asked to do, so that we can be prepared to receive the glorious perfection and eternal life that Christ's Atonement has made possible. I encourage you all to study this topic further and see what Christ's saving, redeeming and enabling grace has done and can do for you!

All my love,
Zuster Jensen

Long Time, No See! ;)

My dear family and friends,
This week was filled with ups and downs, but definitely more ups! I absolutelly loved seeing my wonderful family yesterday, you guys are just great. I think the "pregnancy glow" doesn't even compare to the "missionary-who-just-talked-to-their-family glow.";)
Something funny for the week: On Monday it was Doden Herdenkingsdag, which means the day on which the remember those who have passed on before, like Memorial Day. In honor of this, at 8:00 pm they have 2 minutes of silence across the country. Super cool idea! However, we were biking home from a dinner appointment when it was nearing 8:00. We thought we would just step off our bikes, be silent for 2 minutes, and then continue on. However, at about 7:59 and 34 seconds a bug flew literally into my eye, while we were biking. We promptly spent the next 3 minutes trying to get it out. This involved Zuster Harris helping me, since I could not see where exactly the bug was stuck to my eyeball and blinking didn't help. So much for reverent silence... :P We did our own two minutes of silence afterward, although I'm not sure how reverent they were due to the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. :)
On Tuesday we had a wonderful district meeting about the Book of Mormon, I don't have a lot of time to tell you about it but I know it's true! Just read the book and let it bless your life!
I wish I could tell about the other things this week, but unfortunately I'm out of time again. Just now that missionary life is crazy... but overall a good crazy. :)
To end with a thought this week, I'd like to share a quote our district leaders shared with us this week about the Book of Mormon. It's by Hugh Nibley: "
"Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly so experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the Book of Mormon, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester (which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length. Call it a sacred book if you will, and give it the form of a history. Tell of a community of wandering Jews in ancient times; have all sorts of characters in your story, and involve them in all sorts of public and private vicissitudes; give them names--hundreds of them--pretending that they are real Hebrew and Egyptian names of circa 600 b.c.; be lavish with cultural and technical details--manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions, include long and complicated military and economic histories; have your narrative cover a thousand years without any large gaps; keep a number of interrelated local histories going at once; feel free to introduce religious controversy and philosophical discussion, but always in a plausible setting; observe the appropriate literary conventions and explain the derivation and transmission of your varied historical materials.
"Above all, do not ever contradict yourself! For now we come to the really hard part of this little assignment. You and I know that you are making this all up--we have our little joke--but just the same you are going to be required to have your paper published when you finish it, not as fiction or romance, but as a true history! After you have handed it in you may make no changes in it (in this class we always use the first edition of the Book of Mormon); what is more, you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely, explaining to them that it is a sacred book on a par with the Bible. If they seem over-skeptical, you might tell them that you translated the book from original records by the aid of the Urim and Thummim--they will love that! Further to allay their misgivings, you might tell them that the original manuscript was on golden plates, and that you got the plates from an angel. Now go to work and good luck!"
Of course, this assignment is not real. The Book of Mormon is a true record, translating by a prophet through the power of God, and it will change your life. The real assignment is to read it, study it, ponder on it, and pray over it. God will grade the assignment, and He even gives out answers to those students who are ready to receive them. :)

-Zuster Jensen

Quick Update

My dear family and friends,
I'm almost out of time this week, so here's a quick update!
Koningsdag (King's Day)! It's the king's birthday, and to celebrate everyone brings out their junk and it's basically a giant yard sale at various places around the cities, plus food carts and booths run by businesses. We went to Emmen and set up a table with Books of Mormon, pamphlets and the like, and then gave them out and talked to people all day. We were working as a district, so with 4 other missionaries. It was fun!
Lots of other appointments, appointments falling through, contacting, and all that other good missionary stuff. The work is a bit slow here at the moment, but we're doing what we can to change that! And after all, "attitude determines altitude." I know that that is absolutely true. Missionary life can be quite challenging, and so can everyday life. However, we have a vision of what we are trying to accomplish, which is the same vision the Lord has given us for where he wants His church to go. As we have faith in this vision and then make the necessary goals and plans, then put in our best effort, we see success. It is the same with anything the Lord has asked us to do our become - what is your altitude this week?
Sorry for the quick letter, I hope you all have a wonderful week.

-Zuster Jensen