Faith, courage and a little bit of pixie dust!!!!

September 8 "Faith, principle of Power"

Hey everyone!! I hope you all have had a wonderful week! :) I cannot believe it's been another week, seriously does anyone else feel like time is just flying by! It's September already! :) I hope that school, work or whatever you all are doing is going well! :D 

Another week in Michigan Complete!!!!! It was amazing!! :) Here were some highlights!!! 

We had an awesome zone pday on Monday!! I love this zone! It's amazing to be surrounded by 40 missionaries and to be able to to have fun with one another! They all truly are inspirations to me!! 

We had a great dinner with some members and we were able to help them respond to anti, actually cool story! They have a girl that worked with Brother Hannibal and she came up to him after she had read a bunch of the Book of Mormon and had tons of questions, we taught her a lesson a couple weeks ago and then she moved to Indiana, but then she actually came back this past week and came to church with us! :) She plans on getting baptized later this month!! It's amazing how the Lord prepares people, she searched it out herself and then knew he was a member and she was able to ask him questions! I am so excited for her, I am blessed to have been able to be even a small part of that process! :D We talked with them that night about how to answer questions especially the hard ones! 

On Tuesday our sister in ludington called and had just had an amazing miracle! They met this lady and she told them that she was interested and they came back with a Book of Mormon and as they gave her the book the lady started to cry! That was such a tender mercy for those sisters, for her and that they told us! It's amazing how the Lord truly will place us where we need to be! :) We also had a cool expereince that morning where we prayed specfically to be able to meet someone and invite her to be baptized.. it's been a zone goal to invite people to be baptized more often, we had about 10 minutes to knock and on the last door we met this girl that we were able to invite her to be baptized and she invited us back! Miracles are real! :) We taught some great lessons that day as well, our invesitgator Fernando who we just gave over to the spanish elders is amazing!! We taught the word or wisdom and he already is striving to live it, he just quit smoking and drinking.. It was amazing! :) I think he will get baptized soon! 

Wednesday we had a great district meeting, the assistants and the zone leaders were there which made it even more awesome! We have some great leaders in our mission! I am so grateful to be able to serve around them, Elder Bloskas one of the assistants shared a great scripture with sister guest and I after we pratice taught, he asked me to tell him the story about the women at the well, which is in John 4 and then he said the part that has always stood out to him is how the women leaves her water pot and goes to follow Christ and tell others about Him. I loved that. As we come unto Christ it often means that we have to leave something that we love. It means that we have to repent and change, it probably wasn't easy for her to leave the water pot because that was what she was using to get water and had been for so long but she had full trust in the Lord. Faith, it produces miracles!! :D We lost our car on wednesday so we biked and walked and knocked a lot!! It was great!! :) We also taught our new investigator Melissa who cool story was actually found a year ago by my trainer who served here!!!! That was so SO awesome!! We taught her and now she is super interested in learning!! It was amazing! Finding through former invesitgators is real.. especially when they were your companion!!! :) :) We had a lesson with the pendergrasses as well which was great! they are so awesome, I can't wait for them to come to church, it should be soon! It would be hard I think to come back after it's been so long but I think they can do it, faith and courage.. That really is what it takes! 

Thursday we weekly planned... :O :O haha I love planning and I know it's important but let me tell you one of my weaknesses.. being in the apartment for longer then like 3 hours is way way way too long!! haha :) We made it through though and planned a lot of good stuff! and Then we taught our investigator Micheal, he has all sorts of doubts but we watched the Restoration video with him and I think it helped. We just aren't sure exactly how much of a desire he has, but he wants to meet with us.. it's such an odd situation! haha Then there was a guy there that the elders were teaching and he almost hugged me.... Awkward...... Boys.... :O :O I was really embarressed and probably turned red like a tomato! haha 

Friday we found a lot and then also had a lesson with Melissa again! :) haha our tender mercy was that Sister Pawson came and picked us up for our lesson!! that was great! We thought we had asked her to come get us before we went to teach her but we totally forgot with everything else going on! Sometimes little things like that truly are answers to prayers! :) Everything always works out, I am such a firm believer of that! 

Saturday we found all day and biked like 12 miles!! :) It was great! We were so SO tired but we were happy! Those days are the best most of the time you know that you truly did work hard and you feel accomplished! We found some great people as well which was awesome! Miracles are everywhere!!! :) 

Sunday was my favorite day, it always is!! :D I LOVE sundays if you don't.. Well I would just say find a way to love them. It was fast sunday, our testimony meeting was amazing, we learned about forever families in gospel principles, and then about diligence in relief society.. It was so wonderful I truly had tears in my eyes all day, and I had a burning in my heart. The gospel is true, I know that it was restored through a prophet of God. I love my Savior and my Father in Heaven. I am so thankful to be a part of His work. It truly is the greatest work on this earth!!! :D We went door knocking with a member on Sunday as well, Sister Vanhorn and it was GREAT!! She was awesome we met 2 people that had the same name as her too and she just rocked it! :) We had dinner with our ward mission leader and man.. he is just amazing! We talked about staying close to the rod and staying strong in the gospel always, he shared about how often we are holding onto the rod with just 2 fingers and that is enough. The spirit will always help us to get a firm hold again, just keep holding on. Never let the tree out of your sight. Keep pushing on, even if you don't need a boost here it is anyways, you are not alone. You are never alone!! :) 

I love you all! I hope this doesn't bore you.. but I thought you may like to hear about my daily life a little bit!!! Keep smiling!!! The gospel is true!!! 

Sister Chisholm! <3 

Me and Sister Weeks!! It was her birthday 2 days ago!! :) 

 A very fun P-day activity at their Stake Presidents house!

 Peace out man....

 We sent her a back to school package. Each little item has a letter of the alphabet associated with it, it was a fun pkg to put together and she said it came at a good time with things she needed....I LOVE making packages for her and her companion!

This is Ian. She's been teaching him for quite a while and recently had to turn him over to the new elders in the area...she is SO hoping he gets baptized while she's still in the Wyoming area, she has really come to respect him and he is learning so much! And so is she!

 Apparently DL's and STL's need a little rice krispie treat every now and then.

A sweet giro

September 12 2015 "Repent, it's that simple."

Aloha!!!! :D Okay, I am not in Hawaii and it's not that warm here either.. but I just think that is a super great way to start an email!! :D I sure hope that you all are having a great day and that you are happy! Life was meant for us to be happy! Oh also.. I am emailing today because we are having Elder Andersen of the 70 come to our mission on Monday!! It's going to be great, I am going to copy his talk from this past conference in this email because it is super douper good.. and you all should read it!! :) https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/04/the-music-of-the-gospel?lang=eng

Check it out!! :) 

So last week I named my email faith, and this week it is repentance! :) I totally didn't plan that at all.. but in reality we are always striving to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and Enduring to the End. It's a consistent pattern and we must be continually living it! If we let ourselves slip for even just a minute we could fall into a trap and it will be much harder to get out! That is why we need Jesus Christ. We will all stumble at one point or another, we will all make mistakes at some point and that was part of our Father in plan. There truly is no way for us to become like Him if we don't have moments that are hard, or if we are tried. However, we can always come back to Him. We must Let Him In. This is something very profound that I have started to understand a little bit more about the Atonement. Jesus Christ suffered for our sins. He died for us and He made it possible that we can always have the spirit to be with us, however we have been given agency or the ability to choose and we decide what we do with it. We cannot deny the Atonement. If we don't give our hearts over to our Father in Heaven and if we don't let Jesus Christ in then we will never receive the joy of the gospel. We will never be able to change and we will stand still. Doesn't that sound awful...??! It sounds pretty terrible to me. That is why we must accept the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we must be willing and desire to change and then move forward with faith accepting that our Father in Heaven truly does have a plan for us! :) 

I know that you are loved! I know that we are all children of God, He has  perfect plan for us we just must be willing to let Him in and desire to change!! :) We were able to teach repentance to a less active family this week and it was incredible! I love the defintion of repentance in the bible dictionary! One of my favorites for sure, it means that we have a new view of the world, of ourselves and of God. It truly is incredible that we are able to repent, one of my favorite quotes is, "Repent joyfully" As we repent we change and we start to love ourselves again! :) 

Life is good! I love being a missionary, I have the great opportunity of inviting people to completely change and to repent, so that they can be happy, so that they can feel the joy of the gospel and so they can feel love! This work truly is a mighty work of love!! I am so grateful to be part of it!! :D Search for those opportunities to be a missionary, share your testimony or just smile at someone! They truly will desire to know what you carry within you!! :D 

Have a great week!!! :D 

Sister Chisholm! <3 

Oh.. only the greatest district ever!! :) haha 

 Their district!

During a pretty crazy rainstorm a member saw these two cute girls outside on their bikes without an umbrella, they turned around and gave them theirs. People are so good and so kind, thanks for helping our girls stay a "little" drier!!!