That Was Legitness

This week was pretty darn cool!  To start it off, I got to go down to Destin on trade offs again!!  On the way down, Elder Young (Zone Leader) looked back at our bikes and noticed that mine seemed funny and said "man I hope that doesn't fall off."  Two seconds later, one of the straps came loose and my bike was hanging on by a thread!  This was super scary because I could've lost my bike.  But it made us think about how we need to listen to the promptings of the Spirit, no matter how dumb they are.  Thankfully we pulled over to the side of the road in time that my bike didn't fall completely off but it would have if Elder Young wasn't paying attention.  While in Destin, we got to run on the beach for exercises!!  It was a little stormy but it was still so dang cool!  The sand was white (so white that at first look I thought that it was snow).  While we were walking around, a guy was walking out to his car, we just said hello to him and he totally came over and contacted us! He was like "Are you guys Mormons?  Mormons are good people, where is your church?"  It was pretty cool that he wanted to learn more about us, without us even doing much.  It just shows that the examples of others can make a huge impact on some ones life.

On Christmas Eve, all of the Elders in our district came over and we had a huge sleep over in our apartment!  Everyone brought their presents/packages so that we could all open them together.  That night we had a big party with a bunch of treats and Christmas music while sharing stories, it was so dang fun!   The next morning, we all woke up and made a gigantic breakfast (eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon) and then opened up all of our gifts together.  It was a super fun experience and we got to know each other a little bit more!

CHRISTMAS AND SKYPING HOME!!!!  On Friday we went over to a members home for like 4 hours to eat, play games and Skype home!  It was so good to see family and talk with them for a little bit!  My nephews were there and one was trying to give me kisses, highfives, and a fruit snack through the screen, it was so dang cute!!!!  Seeing them made me so happy and gave me a greater desire to lose myself in the work!  I love my family so much and thank the Lord everyday for having them in my life!

I am so thankful for this gospel and the happiness that comes along with it, and the knowledge that families can be together forever, how great of a gift is that?!  I can't wait to be sealed to my family for all eternity and experience those blessing (well i can wait two years i guess hahaha)

Love you guys lots!

Elder Schipaanboord

Christmas Eve traditions at the Curdy's.

Making snowman treats at the Curdy's

Making snowman treats at the Curdy's

Party at our place.

Elder Fourtin cooking.

Elder Judd and his sloth sweater.

Look who showed up, the sisters felt left out, so we made them some food, but couldn't let them in our apartment hahaha.

Look who showed up, the sisters felt left out, so we made them some food, but couldn't let them in our apartment hahaha.

Running on the beach.

Running on the beach.

Chickenburger

This week was super awesome!!  As a District, we set up a weekly visit to the old folks home.  This week, we went over to sang carols to all the people there, it was so awesome!  The people there were really appreciative of what we were doing; a lot of them don't get any visitors, so they loved having us there and talking with us!  One of the ladies wanted to know all of our names, so we introduced ourselves and it went a little like this,

 

"I'm Elder Judd" 

"I'm Elder Peck" 

"I'm Elder Pike"

"I'm Elder Schipaanboord" 

 

And the lady was so confused and shocked she asked "chickenburger?"  So now my name throughout the district, (and thanks to the sisters) the ward, is Elder Chickenburger. 

Elder Peck and I got the words to the Christmas version of the song "Hallelujah" and have been practicing it so that we can sing it to some people.  We sang it to like 8 families so far, and they absolutely love it!!  At first I was super hesitant to sing, because I don't have a good singing voice, but the Lord has definitely helped me out!  As we sing, I can feel the Spirit so strongly, it is incredible!  I love the Spirit that is brought with Christmas time! 

I got an email this week with something that really hit me pretty hard, it said:

 

"Christmas is not just a day or a season, but a condition of heart and mind"

Christmas day is just the day that we celebrate Christmas, but Christmas is something completely different. "Mas" in Spanish means "more."  If you separate the two, it means "more Christ."   We need to remember Christ at all times, not just Christmas season.  The more that you strive to have Christ in your life, the more that he will emulate in your heart and mind as well as your outward attitude towards life and others.

I love you all so much and hope that you have a Merry Christmas!!

Elder Schipaanboord

PS:  I would highly recommend looking up the lyrics to the Christmas version of "Hallelujah" 

 

Black Santa riding an alligator.

Our Christmas tree is getting some decorations (pictures of Jesus and Christmas cards)

Got a sweet "got milk" glass for my nightly glass of milk as we plan (I have been drinking so much milk!!).

 

Remember the Savior

This week I'm not going to talk about myself but rather talk about what we are sharing, as missionaries, this Christmas season.

All too often during the holiday season, we get caught up in the temporal side of things, getting the right gift, and managing finances, but we forget the real reason that we even celebrate Christmas when its right there in the name, CHRISTmas.  We celebrate Christmas to remember the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior.  He suffered and died for all of us, he saved us from our sins, he bore our burdens and griefs, so that we can life a life full of happiness.  Don't ever forget that!  Christ suffered so that we can be happy, we learn in 2 Nephi that "Men are that they might have joy."  When we feel like we are going through something that is too hard or takes away from that joy, remember that in 1 Corinthians God said he will never put us through something that we can not handle.  However, it will be hard.  When life gets hard and you feel like you are alone, do not fear, God is on your side; in the 105 section of the Doctrine and Covenants, Christ says that "He will fight your battles," He is there for us when no one else is.  He will give us the strength that we don't have.

How great is that?  That is the greatest gift that we could have ever received!  Heavenly Father sent his Son to die for us so that we can return to live with him again.  Remember that during this Christmas season.  I would encourage all of you to go to Christmas.mormon.org and watch the 2 videos that are on the website titled "A Savior is Born" and "Imagine a World Without a Savior."  These are two of the most powerful (2-3 minute) videos that I have ever seen and they are centered around Christ and Christmas.

I love you all so much and know that our Father in Heaven is always there for you and that Christ knows what you are going through, because he went through it to.

Elder Schipaanboord 

 

 

 

Presents under the tree!

 

 

We see these signs everywhere, I am going to start taking pictures of all of them!

 

 

When I got my call to the south this is what I expected to see everywhere, and I do!

 

Blessings

This week was pretty cool!  We have been having a hard time finding people to teach and when we did teach we didn't have much success.  But honestly, we weren't working that hard.  So this week we set some goals for ourselves and said that we would work hard to achieve them.  We decided that we were going to be Exactly Obedient (wake up on time, start studies on time, go to bed on time, ect..) and that we were going to try our hardest to find people to teach.  We have been doing pretty good at all of this and the Lord has definitely bless us for our efforts!  

 

We went over to visit a less active family and we had a BOMB lesson with them!  This lady has been in and out of jail but wants to start coming back to church!  She has two kids (8 and 11) and wants us to come over and teach them and get them baptized!  We talked with some other people about this family and they told us that they were always super mean to them and didn't want anything to do with the church, but they were super welcoming and accepting to what we had to say!

We have also been having a game of football every week and some non members show up and play with us.  After the game, we share a quick message with them and then we go on our way.  One of the guys that goes, always has us come over and play basketball with him.  We have just now started sharing things with him and he has been super receptive to what we say!  His parents have talked to us and said that they don't care if he becomes Mormon, they just asked us not to push anything on him!  So we are going to start teaching him some more!

One more blessing from this week!  Yesterday was the Christmas Devotional, so we went to the church to watch it with a member and her friend!  After the devotional, we asked her what she thought of it and she really enjoyed it and said that it was super beautiful.  We then gave her a tour of the church and she kept saying how everything was so beautiful.  She loved the church and expressed to the member that she was interested in coming to church with her.  So we are going to start teaching her!!

It is so crazy what happens when you put forth the effort and show the Lord that you are trying to improve, he recognized your efforts and blesses you for all that you go through!!

I am so thankful for this week, it has been amazing!! I love y'all so much!!

Elder Schipaanboord

 

 

Happy Turkey Day!!

This week was super awesome!!  On Monday we had a Zone P-Day and played dodgeball!  It was so fun, until Elder Peck (who has a cannon for an arm) decided to drill me in the face, WHILE ON THE SAME TEAM!!!  It hurt so bad, but was so dang funny!!  Guess that will teach me not to walk infront of him while playing dodgeball hahaha.

Tuesday was filled with mixed emotions, during District Meeting, Elder Judd and myself (the two greenies) had to get up in front of everyone and role play teaching two members, it was so bad!!!  We had no idea what we were doing, it made me realize how much I still have to learn and how bad of a teacher I am.  It honestly made me feel like I knew nothing, but it was good because it made me not want that to happen again, so I have been studying super hard to prevent that!  After district meeting, we got home and I got some letters from my family, my sister sent a bunch of pictures from my grandpas funeral (you can view HERE if you'd like), it was so cool to see!  He had a Police funeral with all these guard people and a flag over him.   I wish I could've been there but I know that it's better for me to be out here!  I also got pictures of my youngest two nephews and how they are becoming the best of friends!

On Thanksgiving, we went to this church to help out with a service project of feeding the homeless a turkey meal, there were so many people from our church there to help out that we didn't even need to do anything, so all of the missionaries got up infront of everyone and started singing Christmas Hymns.  It was super nerve-racking, but seeing their faces made it so worth it!  We then went out to the Steele's home for a Thanksgiving lunch, there were like 50 people there and we only knew 3 of them... but they were all so nice and very welcoming!  Their grandson got bored and decided to take us for a ride in his jeep out on this dirt road going through all this water and super hilly stuff, it was so sweet!!!

We then got a ride out to the Curdy's home for Thanksgiving dinner!  This family is so cool!  They are always so nice to us and help us out with everything we need.  They have 7 kids who are so funny (18-8 months).  The dad is this crazy cool military guy who makes his own knives and showed us his forge, he said that he will probably make us one!  Their son, David, got baptized on Sunday and Manny (his dad) wanted us to stand in and help confirm him a member of the church, it was pretty cool that he wanted us to be there for that!

The sisters thought that it would be funny to do the gallon challenge, so we get a phone call from them asking us to go to the church and teach a first lesson for them because they were too busy throwing up.... hahahahaah!  We went to teach, but it was super awkward, because we knew nothing about this girl and had no idea what to teach.  We ended up having a good lesson.  She doesn't know if there is a God, so we taught her about the power of prayer and how to pray.  The spirit was really there as I shared my experience with prayer and invited her to do the same thing.  I am excited to hear how it goes for her!

So all in all this week was pretty darn good!  I had so much fun and am starting to work with Elder Peck so much better, we are becoming more edified and learning how to teach with one another.  The members here are so dang fun and are always taking care of us!

Love you lots!!

Elder Schipaanboord

Elder Swenson's last picture before he goes home.

Elder Swenson and I doing the Fusion Dance from Dragon Ball Z!

Sunsets are really cool, but you can hardly see them because of all the trees.

Sister Haught

Elder Peck

Elder Lindow got transferred.  This guy is crazy, he loves the rural areas and all the cotton fields and random stuff.

Madison Corbin (a member who is super close with all the missionaries and is basically a missionary because she goes on so many splits with the sisters)

Sara Curdy (same thing as Madison Corbin)