Spencer will be giving his mission report

Dear Friends,

I just wanted to share with you that Spencer will be giving his mission report on Sunday March 8th at 11:30am at the Monterey Building. ( 7145 E. Monterey Ave.) Just in case any of you would like to come hear him speak. His mission has been an amazing experience.

Love,
Tonya
(Anxiously Awaiting His Return)
14 days! :)

Yellow, how ya blue´n

Spencer's email had a little more to it then last week.  For that we are grateful.  Spencer continues to work hard and attempt to accomplish the most he can in his remaining time left.  We love his enthusiasm of hard work.  Enjoy.  15 days left! :)

Dear Family & Friends,

Where do we start? We had a lesson with this family we found last week and because these types of families dont come very often we wanted to make sure we had the best member with us. So, we called up the stake president! He is soo amazing. I can confidently say he is a better missionary than I am! We invited them to be baptized and it wasnt going very well. So, he just went for it and invited them to church! It was super cool to go on a teach with him! 

Then we had another lesson with an older couple and we needed a really good member. So, we called the Stake Patriarch! The lesson went great and he testified of the importance of baptism! 

We are for some reason bumbing into the same barrier of member lessons. The goal this week is to just break that and then its open space after that! 

Maybe its my old age but, I have developed a love for raw tracting! Just knocking on doors until you are too cold to continue! I get such a rush! We have been finding tons of investigators that way. 

Our members are also setting us up with their friends. We have an appointment with one member familys friends on march 2nd! That will be super fun! 

We are sharing the spiritual thought at the YSA family night tonight. We had our most solid investigator (who we found while knocking on doors!) coming but he called today and cancelled!!! I almost cried. He said he doesnt want to meet anymore. So, thats the heart break of the day! Elder Kontinen and I decided to go to Subway and splurge a little bit. Subway in Finland is actually more of a nice resturaunt. Same quality food as in America just nice resturaunt price. 

I have been studying the ministries of Ammon and Aaron. I like these two a lot because they had problems like I do! Mine are for sure not as bad and my middle name is the same as their name! But, What I noticed is the whole time they are teaching king Lamoni and his father respectively, they are serving and doing things for others. Not only are they teaching the Gospel but they are just plain doing good in all the spare time. I believe that is a attribute of Christ. They are always willing to stop and do something for someone else even though they might have been tired and hungry. I hope to develope those types of traits in myself. 

I have hard times on my mission but for some reason I am still happy about it all! I maybe am even a little proud of some of the hard stuff. Either way, The times when I have forgotten myself the most are when I have had the most joy and have found myself! 

For real this time, have a great week! 

Love, 

Elder Tippetts 

This week was soo hard!

It sounds like Spencer had a tough week but always seems to have a positive outlook about them.  He is in a tough area so it is really to be expected.  At least he is teaching and planting seeds.  With hard things comes great blessings!   Enjoy! #30days!  :)

Dear Family & Friends,

I hope you have all had a good week. We are emailing early because we are leaving to interim training tomorrow in Helsinki. We are very excited for that because its 3 days with President and Sister Watson. 

This week was soo hard! I love looking back at it because it was crazy how many rejections we got! But, if I have learned one thing on my mission it is to never give up! If we didnt just keep going despite the failures, we would have missed out on the greatest blessings. 

We were cold and tired but we kept going and we met a family from Italy that is soo excited for us to come back and teach them! We also found 7 other new investigators. 

Church was really good yesterday as well. It was kind of funny because we were mentioned three times in members testimonies! We keep running into the Stake presidents daughters friends and giving them cards or something. Then in her testimony she said that she had been praying for more opportunities to shard the Gospel! Weird how she started praying then we started meeting all her friends who then went and asked her more about the church. 

Elder Kontinen is extremely afraid of speaking in front of people. So, when I could feel his nervousness I leaned over and said, "Ill go up with you!" So we bore our testimonies and it was great. He did really well. I have a hard time being sensitive to him though because he speaks Finnish fluently! haha I give him a hard time for that! 

We ate kebab today. It was alright...

I have been reading my journal entries from earlier on my mission and I read about a time when a man came up to us and said, "Christ chose to carry his cross to his death, so too we must choose!" Something like that and I remember thinking about that a lot. Chirst made the decision to do hard things so, in order for us to be like him, we too must choose to do things that sometimes seem hard. We can always be comforted to that, He went before us and has experienced it all! 

Have a great week! 

Love,
-- 

Elder Spencer Tippetts

Finland Helsinki Mission

Neitsytpolku 3 A 4 

FI-00140 Helsinki

Finland 

Hello again from Finland

Spencer's emails seem to get smaller and smaller.  I am hoping he is just working harder and harder to finnish all he needs too.  We are down to 35 days.  I am trying hard to remain calm except every so often I burst into tears with excitement.  Sorry it's the mom in me! 

P.S.  Spencer will be returning on Thursday March 5th at 5:50pm on British Airways.  He will give his mission report that following Sunday March 8th at 11:30am at the Monterey Building (7145 E Monterey Ave, Mesa, AZ 85209) Just so you can pencil these events in your calendar. Hope to see you that are able to come! :)

Dear Family & Friends,

We had a pretty good week! 

We found lots of new people and worked really hard. It has warmed up this week so its only 0 degrees outside right now. We almost broke out the short sleeved shirts. 

We have a lot of irons in the fire right now. One doesnt speak any languages we do very well so, we are working on having this person be taught through skype from temple square. Its kinda cool! 

President and Sister Watson came to Jyväskylä this week and we had interviews with them. It was well timed because I was having a rough couple of days. I related our area to walking up a sandy hill. Everytime you take a step you slid back a step and a half! I said that I guess if I can just start running faster eventually the sand will run out and I will just walk up the mountain! President affirmed that it is just hard work that is required. It was really special to see them because I got to be one on one with both of them and they both cried telling me how much they missed me. I cried too! I also told them that we will be visiting them in the summer! They are excited.

Lots of fun things going on this week. We had dinner with our Ward mission leader which was great. They have iPhone 6 plus. It was ginormous! I dont know how one is supposed to use that! Anyway, he is helping us a ton with the work. We also have many other appointments set up this week. Next week we go to interim training. Interim training happens every 9 weeks. I have only not been at 3 of them during my mission. I have always either been training or teaching at them! Pretty cool. It will be in helsinki at the mission home. 

Pretty run of the mill week. We walk on water (frozen) wherever we go and teach people about the gospel. 

Have a great week! 
-- 

Elder Spencer Tippetts

Finland Helsinki Mission

Neitsytpolku 3 A 4 

FI-00140 Helsinki

Finland

Hello from Finland

Always look forward to waking up to Spencer's emails.  Sounds like he is working hard and finding success.  He will never cease to amaze me at how much he accomplishes in a week.  I love his attitude how it is always filled with a little bit of Spencer's humor.  Gosh I miss that son of mine. Enjoy!   #43days!

Dear Family & Friends,

This week was ordinary but extra ordinary! We set new Standards of Excellence as a mission which are basically to have 15 member present lessons and 6 new investigators in a week. This week we had 4 member present lessons which was a huge stab to me because we killed ourselves to get things set up but they just didn't work! A positive thing though was we found 10 new investigators which has made this week get a little bit busier! We already have 6 lessons set up for this week with investigators so if we can just make sure these all go through then I am projecting by weeks end we can get 10 member present lessons. It will be the same amount of member present lessons this whole district had together, last transfer cycle. These goals that we set as a mission have been changing us soo much! The goal is just to not take any steps backward until we get there! 

As a mission we raised our vision to something higher than what was previously thought to be possible. As President says, "When the tide comes up, all ships rise." As a few have caught the vision, it has changed all of our perspectives. We have doubled in productivity statistacally as well as what one can actually see. It is quite amazing to be here right now. 

A quote that has been with me for my whole mission was from Elder Tadd R. Callister "with increased vision, comes increased motivation" If we change what is possible in our minds it becomes that way! 

It was a brisk -18C this morning so not too bad (-1F ish). We decided to take a short cut across the giant frozen lake to get to the church today! It was pretty cool! (haha do you get it? cool?) :)

We had some great experiences that I can't remember very well right now but I will do my best to re cap them! 

We searched the area book as part of the routine stuff and came across an older couple. We called them and ask if we could come over. They said yes and we went! Our member made sure to cover Abraham sacrificing his son as well as reasons for baptism by authority and how the church encourages us to get an education. We gave him 55 minutes and we took the other 5 to tell about our lesson. Over all it was delightful to be together with them. We are going back on Thursday. These are the types of missionary problems I am not sure if I will miss or not yet! haha 

We played basketball today which was fun. Watch out Cameron, I am getting good! 

Well, I think that is all the good stuff this week. We should really kill it this week! 

Oh and I also got to have lunch with Elder Kiuttu who is now serving in Lahti after the Zone meeting. It was great! 

Okay now I am done, Love you! 
-- 

Elder Spencer Tippetts

Finland Helsinki Mission

Neitsytpolku 3 A 4 

FI-00140 Helsinki

Finland

Great Week!

Favorite day of the week!  Sounds like it is to the freezing time in Finland.  I get the chills just reading his email.  I am grateful the work is progressing in this area that didn't have much before Spencer got there with his new companion.   He is working hard to Finnish strong!  Enjoy! #50 days!

Dear Family & Friends,

Things are going well here. We are making progress with building up the area. I have taken some advice from dad to search the area book and find the names of people who have already had a seed planted in them. It has been working really well. We have found 11 Investigators from the area book so far! Not all of them unfortunately work out but at that rate of finding we should be doing well soon! Small worry I have is I may be too good of a sales person and I force people to set up a return appointment and then things dont go too far. At least they have a chance right? haha I just got to keep loving them! 

This area averaged around 1 lesson to investigators a week from the records in the area book. This last week we had 10! The Lord is really helping us along. 

Whats hard for me is adjusting to never having a free moment to having whole days blank. I got discouraged this week because things arent happening as fast as I want them too but with patients things will work out. 

Riding a bike has been a challenge for me because the last time I rode a bike everyday was at the beginning of my mission! My body hurts but I can feel myself adjusting! 

Time is short here to do all the things but it can be big! Wwe found a family that has 4 kids. They are really cool! 

I am tired but what I am learning is that the Atonement can help with fatigue. I seriously collapse at the end of every day because I have just enough energy to make there. It quite a blessing! 

Also I was quite cold this week. We biked to a far area and then we talked to this one man for like 30 minutes and I tried to set up a return appointment 5 times and he declined every time! Then I had the thought to tell him about the Book of Mormon and BOOM! He wants one, so we set up a time and then rode home. All the while I a freezing, even my Finnish companion was freezing. I didnt know If I was gonna make it home. We finally got home and I laid on the warm floor for like 15 minutes until I could feel me feet and hands again! Wow it was super cold! 

It also snowed maybe a foot today which made biking treacherous because it is coming down faster than they can plow it! 

The church is true everyone! Until next week, have a good one! 

Love,

-- 

Elder Spencer Tippetts

Finland Helsinki Mission

Neitsytpolku 3 A 4 

FI-00140 Helsinki

Finland

Hello from Jyvaskyla

Waiting an extra day for Spencer's email was tough because we were so excited to hear about his new companion and new area.  His p-day changed to Tuesdays. Out of 13 new missionaries that arrived this transfer only one was a missionary from Finland and Spencer was the lucky one that gets to train him.  He wanted to train him so bad.  So now he is with a Finnish missionary who know the area they are in.  So great things are in store.  They have already had dinner appointments everyday last week.  One dinner appointment a week is a good week.  So I know he is getting fed well.  Beef him up before he returns. :)  

#57 days!  Enjoy!

Dear Family & Friends,

So an overall awesome week! The transfer went well. Elder Kiuttu is training a new missionary so he was going to be down in Helsinki so we thought we could use his skills to help with the transfer! It came in handy! 

I got my new companion! His name is Elder Kontinen. He is from Finland! My first non-american companion! He is really great and we have hit it off. We speak a ton of Finnish together wich is really cool! His grandparents were in the Marjaniemi ward where I served for 6 months! He has served in the army for a year already and is just awesome! It will be a fun transfer for sure! 

We got to Jyväskylä and got a ride to our new apartment. We made ourselves at home and got started. This area didnt really have anything going on which is alright because we can get a fresh start. This week we set a baptismal date and found 5 new investigators!!!! Its awesome! We have had a dinner appointment every night so far! Elder Kontinen knows a lot of the members so he just calls them and we go over! 

It is quite the adjustment to come from my last area! We had tons of investigators and if we ever had a blank time we had some kind of administrative task to do so we would be out all day. Now, because we dont have as many progressing investigators its really hard because I have to in a sense be in the trenches all day! I guess its good for me, It builds character! 

We work hard and have a ton of fun at the same time! 

The same old stuff though so as far as reading material goes, I am not providing much! 

Its cool how the Lord can carry you through things. This transfer is going to be a challenge for sure. Of course I am more well equipped to handle it that before but, I still come home and cant do much more than get to bed! (Guess I havent really changed that much on my mission!) The Lord takes us as far as we can go and then just a little bit farther! 

Love, 

-- 

Elder Spencer Tippetts

Finland Helsinki Mission

Neitsytpolku 3 A 4 

FI-00140 Helsinki

Finland

Pictures are always a bonus!

Me with the Van. and the lake frozen solid and people wlking across it to get to the center! It was -20 last night! 

Elder Richards, Veli and I at Veliś favorite resturaunt! Me making prime rib in a pan! 

Elder Kontinen and I at the train station.