"Helping others on their way":)

Konigsdag 2015, Maastricht
Missionaries "helping others on their way"

Dearest readers, all I can say about this week is buses, trains, and more buses.  We've used bus 51 far too many times this week...
Oh!  Never make cookies with fake butter because it's stupid and shall not work; you will end up with chocolate chip biscuit things on your hands...but how would I know?

Anyway, we had a fantastic district meeting (like always),  we established everyone's spiritual animals (toch wel belangrijk), (because it's important) and more. 

Wednesday, we had such a fun day doing service for the lovely familie van der Pluijm:) First of all it was simply a lovely day to do gardening (Mom's falling off her seat right now imagining that I enjoyed gardening:)  So we cleared out lots of weeds and cleared out their little ponds of frogs and TADPOLES!  P.S. Frogs in Dutch is "kicker"....coincidence?

Anyway, Sister van der Pluijm hates frogs, so we (I should say the elders) caught a bunch of them and disposed of them humanely (at least I think so).  But we also discovered several tadpoles so I held some for the first time ooit (ever)!  *only some opera noises were made*

We also stopped by a less-active member on our way home and made pannenkoeken with gouda cheese, fried apples, stroop and poeder suiker (actually very delicious and I felt super fancy) with her - she's been less active for over 20 years, but it's always amazing to see how she still feels the spirit.  It just breaks my heart to know that she feels it and knows that God exists, but she says that it is not possible for her to believe anymore.

She's had a lot of problems with the imperfections of the members of the church and from there, here faith took a backseat of things; so it's important to remember that the Church is still true regardless of the members. 

What we need to remember is that OUR testimonies and the ABSOLUTE TRUTH that is the Gospel does not have to be affected by others.

And behold, I say unto you my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now? (Alma 5:26)

If we have felt the truthfulness of the Gospel and see to it that OUR testimonies are our OWN, we need not worry about the imperfections of others, seeing as we are all working on our own imperfections.

We had an amazing dinner/lesson with one of our investigators.  He works for the Catholic Church and moved from Indonesia for the Catholic church, so it's a delicate situation to talk to him about baptism and everything else, because if he were to join the church, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have a house or a job anymore.

But he already had the most amazing testimony of the Book of Mormon.  He met us on King's Day and said that what drew him to the book was that it was "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" - that is what the Book of Mormon is.  It is a testimony to the world that Jesus is the Christ, and as we read it, because that is the only we that we will feel it's power, it motivates us to become more like Him.

There is a special power in it, it is a history of an ancient people, of wars and secret combinations, of governments and conflicts, and yet it testifies as Christ as our Savior and motivates good people to be better (there are no bad people:) 

Thus we see that it was truly written for our day; we have wars and secret combinations, conspiracies; we live amidst a ward of words, a tumult of opinions and yet, we have a prophet preaching the true, pure doctrines of Christ, and we, as a people, look forward to His coming.  It is my testimony that there is powerful spirit in that book that compels people to want to do and be better.

We also went Rotterdam on Saturday to attend the baptism of one of Zuster Twiggs former investigators and got to see the ever so lovely Zuster Voss again:)

Plans for next week have been made and are already set in motion:)  Best week ever coming up!

And as I say every week, be happy!  Find peace and joy in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and realize that someone loves you!  Be kind and patient with each other!  I love the song, "He Sent His Son" the last words are, "Have faith, have hope, live like His Son, help others on their way"

Love,
Zuster Dobler

NOTE from Johanna's mom: We couldn't view the photos that Johanna sent this week, so I'm including a few from the April Kings Day holiday, that I "gleaned" some another missionary blog:)