Week 47 ~ american... and mormon? #blessed plus tulips

Short email this week! We some awesome stuff happen this week. We went on exchanges and Zr Musgrave and Zr Harris looked up one of our Lamb of God referrals and she was super positive! She invited them right in and she is now a new investigator. While that was going down, Zr. Ibrahim and I went to a dinner appointment out in Emmeloord... the member is a tulip farmer! So we got to see some of the beautiful tulip fields. And I went the next day too with Zr. Musgrave for another appointment out there. The tulips are so beautiful! I guess our area is one of the areas with the most tulips in the Netherlands!! We're so blessed.

Iris is doing so well! We went to a lunch appointment with her and her husband and she is SO ready to be baptized. We are going to finish the lessons with her this week and then they are going to Paris to go to the new temple open house. Then they'll come back and she will be baptized!! Super, super exciting.

Another miracle: we were walking along the water to go look up a referral and a group of people were passing us and this woman came up to us and stopped us and say, "HEY!!" really excitedly. Well we knew right away that they were Americans because Dutch people do not do that hahah. But they were not only Americans, but Mormon Americans!! From Idaho and Texas! They were on a river cruise through the Netherlands. It was so good to get to talk to them! I love Americans and I love Mormons and combine that and that's just good stuff right there.

Ik hou van jullie,

Z Fordiani

exchanges & tulips

1-egggssss

2-the things you learn on exchanges... zelf gemaakt

the rest-tulips

1-tulips!

2-Zuster Westveer took us to see the tulips :)

3,4,5-Congrats to my sis and Carter!! Engaged​

Week 46 ~ happy easter & keukenhof

This week we did a LOT of finding. Whoooo! Our mission almost met our goal of finding new investigators during the two weeks of the #princeofpeace campaign. We got 292/305 new investigators! It's cool to see that God helps us with our goals when we have the faith to make them.

We also went to KEUKENHOF this week!! Keukenhof is the most beautiful tulip festival in the world! I won't write too much today because I have tonssss of pictures.

Also Happy Easter! We were blessed with four investigators who came to church! And one of our investigators, Iris, surprised us in relief society. We were discussing ways that we listened to the spirit this past week and Iris raised her hand and announced that she is preparing to be baptized!! We are super excited to help her prepare for her baptism! She is married to a member and has been coming to church and doing her own research for the past year or so. Now she's ready to get the rest of the lessons from us and make the best decision of her life! yay! :)

We got to help one of our investigators, Etty, with an Easter party for her kids, her sisters' kids, and the neighborhood kids. So many children in one house. They each decorated their own cake (with fondant), cut out cookies, and painted an egg. We hid chocolate eggs for them to find around the neighborhood too. It was super tiring, but super fun. On Easter we went to one of our fav members, Tineke, and had lunch and painted eggs. Fun fact: people here don't dye eggs, they paint them. Kinda different, but still fun.

Ik ben zeer dankbaar voor mijn Heiland Jezus Christus die voor ons gestorven is. Ik ben dankbaar dat door Hem, and dankzij zijn opstanding, kunnen wij allemaal opstaan en met onze hemelse vader weer wonen. Ik weet dat hij leeft! Ik ben blij dat ik deze kennis heb en voor de gelegenheid om mijn vreugde hier in Nederland met anderen te delen!

Ik hou van jullie!

Z Fordiani

1-Oliebollen at the carnival in Enschede last Monday

2-the ride we went on. booyaaa

3-blowing giant bubbles

4&5-Keukenhof!

KEUKENHOF

helping the kids decorate their cakes

Week 45 ~ When eternigators come in clutch

With the new Easter Campaign, our zone made a goal of finding 60 new investigators in the two and a half weeks the campaign is running. That means each companionship needs to find about four new investigators. Zr. Musgrave and I made a couple new goals to try to reach the zone goal and one of those goals is to talk to at least five people per day other than knocking and appointments. So even when we have a really busy day, we still make time to talk to random people on the street and public transportation. We've seen some really cool miracles through it!

On Thursday we were walking in the park and we saw a guy sitting on a park bench with a bottle of beer next to him. I felt like we should talk to him so I contacted him and he turned out to be looking for a bible study! He is from Morocco and he just barely converted from Islam to Christianity. We made a return appointment with him, Hichame, for Saturday. He doesn't speak too much Dutch, mostly just French, Arabic, and Moroccan so he brought his friend to translate for us. His friend was kinda a biased translator though, so we were worried if we would be able to teach him. He agreed to come to church with us on Sunday. He showed up (we were slightly shocked) and he sat through sacrament meeting not knowing what was going on. We then went to gospel principles class and our eternigator Wieu was there. That turned out to be the biggest blessing because we forgot that Wieu also speaks Arabic!! He ended up translating the rest of church for Hichame and agreed to come on joint teach with us! We hope to help Hichame learn about the church and to help Wieu realize the testimony he has in the process. We're really excited.

We also overheard a guy speaking English and we contacted him and asked where he is from. Turns out he is from Rhode Island! AMERICA. Hahah Americans are weird. He took the train to Kampen with us and talked to us the whole time. He was so friendly! It was weird haha.

There was also another guy last night I felt like we should contact. We were on the way home and I felt kinda sick and I didn't really want to, but we did. And it turns out he didn't have any interest, but he talked to us almost all the way home and at the end of the conversation we found out he already has a Book of Mormon! I don't know why we were supposed to contact him, but I hope his interest is sparked to read the Book of Mormon.

The weather has been warming up a ton! I'm super happy. BUT this week on Wednesday we're going to Keukenhof and it's supposed to rain. So PLEASE pray for us because I really want it to be warm haha.

I hope you have a good week!

Z Fordiani

1-churros

2-swings

3-missionary Phone life...

4-flowers

Week 44 ~ #PrinceofPeace aaaannd GCONF

The #PrinceofPeace campaign has started! Go check it out on mormon.org. It is SUPER cool. We have a goal as a companionship to find three new investigators per week for the next two weeks that this campaign is running. Hopefully we can see some miracles :)

I didn't wear tights for the first time this week! First time in like five months hahah and I regretted it. It was cold! But it's warming up a lot.

My booties died. And I got new shoes!

We met a guy named an old indonesian guy named Roy on the street and he wants to visit me in America... doesn't have interest though.. he asked for my number and we gave him our missionary phone number.. hopefully he calls so we can try to convert him mwahaha.

We got the elders SO GOOD with an April fools joke. The elders texted us and asked what we were doing for conference and Zr. Musgrave has had feet problems for a long time, so we told them we were on a train to Leiden because her feet problems were getting really bad. They totally bought it. We let them eat it up all day and sent them updates and everything. Then when they called for weekly numbers at night we dropped it on them. Hahahah they were so pissed/shocked/impressed. It was good.

Aaaaaand we had GCONF!! I LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE. I'm so grateful we have a living prophet on the earth to lead and guide this church! We were able to watch one of the sessions with a less active (now kinda active) member and her two boys. SO FUN. I love that family. We set out cups with candy with the words jezus christus (jesus christ), gebed (prayer), geloof (faith), and familie (family) on them and if we heard the word we took a piece of candy. We also built a fort. Duh. Just like the good old days.

I haven't watched all the sessions of general conference yet, but I really liked some parts of Elder Clayton's talk. He said, "We will never be alone in our infirmities if we walk with Him."And,"In our moments of deepest grief, we can find comfort in our Savior." I have a testimony that these things are true. I have experienced them in my own life and I know that the Savior can help us through ANY trial we go through. I invite you all to come to Him and he will make up the rest. And if you haven't watched conference yet, DO IT.

luvs

z fordiani

1-true

2,3-dead shoes

4-ships

5-ayyyy UTAH graffiti

6-gconf fort

7-stuck