Fall and Halloween in Michigan!!!

October 19" Enjoy the Success, Enjoy the Suffering"

Howdy to all my favorite people!! :) Well first off I love the name of my email.. haha sis steele and I think of like themes for our week and this week it was to enjoy the success and the suffereing! :) I have learned and continue to learn that truly we have the choice to enjoy the journey! The best way to do so is to lean on Jesus Christ and to increase our faith in Him. Another great way that I have learned to enjoy the journey is being grateful, some days it may be the smallest things.. like some mornings mine is being grateful that I have a banana to eat.. or a coat to wear! :) haha but those little things truly help us to enjoy the success as well as the suffering! We just have to choose to be grateful! :) That's such a huge life lesson to learn for sure! :) 

Well things are going great out here in Wyoming! :D We had trade offs this week with the Ludington sisters which was great! Sister Willis is such a sweetheart, she has such a desire to serve a mission and is growing a lot! :) I love trade offs. they teach me so much everytime!! :D We taught their investigator Robin which was awesome and also taught a less active that they just found again! It's always neat to teach less actives! I really love being able to see them feel the spirit again even after they haven't for so long! I feel like a lot of my missionary work when I get home will be filled with teaching less actives and also visiting teaching! :) Such a great work! I love it!! :D 

We had a great day at church yesterday! I have decided to ponderize on the scripture 1 Nephi 1:9 which is the first scripture in the Book of Mormon when Jesus Christ is testified of besides the intro and things! :) It is a great scripture about how truly Jesus Christ is the light. We shared it yesterday at our lunch and dinner appointments and the spirit again testified to me so strongly that Jesus is the Christ and that He is the light of the world. How blessed we are to have such a great example of light and love! It's incredible to me. I hope you all are ponderizing scriptures.. I am sure it's taking a crazy attack on social media, but truly it will help you have a higher plane of thinking and have a place where your thoughts can go when they need to be filled with the spirit! :) We had some great talks on keeping the commandments and a lade just decided to come to church!! That was such a tender mercy!! Hopefully we will get to start teaching her soon! she is kind of church shopping but after yesterday I think she has found her home!! :) 

Well I hope you all are doing well, man.. each week just tends to go faster and faster and my time as a full time missionary is moving so quickly but I do know that our missions go on for life! :) I am grateful for this unique opportunity I have to serve my Lord with everything I have! This work is real and it's the Lords work if it wasn't there is no possible way it would go forth like it does!! I love the book of Mormon I know it is true! Have a wonderful week!! 

Love Sister Chisholm! <3 

fall has arrived!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D 

October 25 "Straighten up and Fly right!!!"

 Hey everyone!! So this theme for the week was awesome!!! Sis Steele and I had so many moments where we were able to go just go back to the basics and truly fly right!! It's also great because this weekend is Halloween!!! Wahoo!! :) So just like witches on their broomsticks we all must fly right each and everyday! haha 

First I will just say that time honestly is going so stinking fast and I wish more then anything that I could just pause time and just live for a few minutes... :O Anyone have any remedies for that?! :) haha I just am so grateful for this time I have to be a missionary! I know that I will still be a missionary when I get home and new adventures will be awaiting me but truly I just love Michigan and the people, the lessons and the spirit that I feel as I work among Heavenly Fathers children! 

We had some incredible experiences this week.. but mostly I am always just reminded that The Lord always has a plan even when things don't always go the way that would be best.. at least in our eyes!! haha here's a couple moments that we had this week that were like that! :) Yesterday.. we had stake conference which was amazing! I am always amazed by the tribulation and hardships the saints have but how they are still faithful enough to come and be together! :) I always think of the song come come ye saints, forevert a favorite! :) But anyways conference was great, we saw tons of missionaries and just had a great spiritual experience! We had a member ask us if we had a dinner and we did but then we found out our dinner was at 3.. so we decided when we got home to ask if we could take their family up on that offer! So he texts us back at 150 and says, we are eating right now! Can you come?! haha so then we wound up having 2 dinner/lunches in a row.. it was like thanksgiving! :O haha I have no idea how we were able to eat everything that we did... but in those moments we realized that Heavenly Father already knew that we were going to have 2 dinners back to back and that it was all going to work out! A huge spill, some apple cider, lots of laughs, lots of people talking forever and some great spiritual thoughts.. check out Moses 7:26-27.. incredible! :D We were able to walk away and realize again that the Lord loves each of us and He truly understands every situation we are in! 

Earlier in the week when we didn't have a car we were walking out of the library and this guy was going to the bus station so we of course stopped him, and just that day we had been talking and praying to be able to teach people! :) He let us teach him right there by the bus stop and we were able to share our testimonies with him! Then later we were able to teach another man and invite him to read form the Book of Mormon! Also another blessing from our Heavenly Father. He always knows what things are going to happen, he always knows what choice we are going to make and truly He is always just a prayer away!! :D 

I am so thankful for the miracles that the Lord consistently blesses us with. He truly asks that we have faith, because without faith nothing is possible! :) I know that the Book of Mormon is true, every time I read it a power comes into my heart, I feel at peace and I receive answers to my prayers, It truly is the word of God. I am grateful for the prophet Joseph Smith, he had so much faith and devotion and truly he was a prophet of God! I love this gospel, it's life changing each day as I knock on peoples doors I am inviting them to change their lives, to become clean again and to draw close to Jesus Christ! Keep bearing your testimony, keep choosing the right and honestly just keep praying even having that desire to believe is enough! :) 

Love you all!!!!!!! :D Take care of all my besties that are home or going home soon! They are amazing!! 

Love Sister Chisholm! <3 

I LOVE MICHIGAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Ian's Baptism....leaves, and birds!

 This was a great week for Sister Chizzy as she was able to see someone she's taught and learned so much from also, be baptized and become a member of the church. This man will always have a very special place in all these cute missionaries hearts!

 So first off IAN got baptized!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was so SO exciting oh my gosh.. I just can't even express in words how wonderful and happy I am about that! He is just amazing, it was so neat to see him in a white shirt, to make a covenant with our Father in Heaven and to receive the Holy Ghost. Oh my goodness, it was just amazing. Such an incredible day and truly like my title no effort is wasted. Heavenly Father knew that Ian needed us and He also so perfectly knew that Ian needed the elders. It has just been so amazing to witness his change and countenance become more light and bright. Seriously.. words do not even describe how much joy I feel. I can't explain it, I wish I could! :) haha I often feel like ammon in alma 26.. I will not boast in my own strength but in my Lord. How blessed I am to be able to proclaim the gospel to the world and to serve my Father in Heaven. Truly He just letting me be a part of His great work. 
I know that the prayers you and the whole family said for Ian were a lot of why he got baptized, it's incredible to me the power of prayer. Even though it's so simple and such a small thing He truly does always hear us and wants to know our desires, thoughts, intents and just want to listen and provide guidance and help when he can! We had a super good FHE on that last night, I shared Jacob 3:1 which I just found, it's a really good one! :)

 haha I got to put a bird on my shoulder this week at Sis Pawson's!! :) She is amazing mom.. I love her! Seriously like my mission mom out here! 

To answer your question about the leaves.. all I need to do is send you this picture.... :) :) BEST LEAVES and FALL EVER!!!!! 

 Life is so good!! So a little update on my life, I am still here in Wyoming Michigan.. LOVE it!! We are finding and finding and finding new investigators we actually are teaching this awesome guy Stephen we picked him up last night and had a super good lesson with him, he doesn't really believe in God and has read a lot about church and so he had a bunch of questions but it was neat because we all were able to talk and then able to listen and understand one another. It was great! :) I love lessons when we are all engaged and willing to listen and learn from one another. He asked us the question if we ever had questions about what we believe, and something I am so grateful for is that when we do have questions we are able to go to the source, we don't have to ask a pastor or talk to a random person but truly we are able to turn to the Lord. We are so blessed to be able to communciate with our Father in Heaven through prayer. 

Conference, and Loving.

Jen didn't have time to write a letter separately for everyone on her email list and that's what  I usually post on here, but today some of her personal experiences were too sweet not to share. If you only read one paragraph from this letter, read the third one. I love the way she says "she just cried, and we just loved"....truly, that's what this work she's doing is all about.

Man.. Conference was incredible.. I cried when the new apostles spoke.. I have been feeling incapable and inadequate recently and the spirit testified to me so strongly about the incapacity and inadequacies these men feel but how truly through Christ we can be strengthened. They shared D&C1:23 a couple times.. Which ps is my ponderize scripture for the week! :) haha but about how truly the Lord calls weak and simple people to proclaim the gospel. When Elder Andersen came he talked about how if we feel inadequate or if we feel like we can't do it, we are right!!! We can't do it, it's too hard for us as mortals but with Jesus Christ, the spirit and Heavenly Father we can do all things. They said the things I needed to hear and the spirit testified so strongly to me that truly as I rely on Him I can do hard things. It was beautiful! The spirit is so incredible, I wish I could tell you all the things I learned this past weekend and all the things the spirit pricked my heart and told me to do better or to work on. Man.. the list would go on forever, but for now I am working on being prepared, ponderizing, just like the rest of the world! ;), and focusing on what we do right and also what others do right, asking more questions, then more then anything simplifying!! :D I am doing pretty good about that one already but I just want to get even better at it! When we recognize the simplicity of the gospel and of life truly it makes it so much simpler! :) So GOOD!

Things are going really well out here! :) I had 2 great trade offs this week! I was able to be with Sister Bates in Holland which was wonderful! Oh my goodness it was great! Here are some of the cool miracles that came from that one.. We were able to go out to Holland and see the lake again which was way fun! Then sister steele and I had a little dinner date because the sisters really wanted to go to their dinner together and so they went and we went to dinner, but we went on this super cute street that had some awesome stores!! The whole time I was like oh my gosh.. my mom would love this!!!!! Seriously.. it was kind of like gardnier village.. you would have been in heaven! haha so that was fun! :) Then sister bates and I took the sisters back to wyoming because we still didn't have a car and then we drove back to holland, so we had a couple minutes before 9 and it was dark and we didn't really know what to do, but we went to this street and there was this house with Christmas lights on it.. weird right? But anyways we saw it and then we drove a little farther and decided to say a prayer and during the prayer I felt super impressed to go to that house so we got out acting on faith, and there was a guy just outside, which was perfect cuz then we didn't have to knock! He started talking to us and we invited him to learn and he said he had met with missionaries before and would love to meet with them again!! We got his number and all that jazz and then since he was hispanic we got to refer him to the Spanish elders! It was awesome!!! Oh my goodness.. the spirit is real! :) Even in the littlest things. That was just the start, we had an awesome trade off, lots of door knocking, we met some awesome people and worked a lot on getting numbers and getting return appointments! Sister Bates is great, I just love our trade offs! :) She teaches me so much, which I am grateful for! She gave me the sweetest compliment at the end she said, our first trade off you changed my mission by helping me understand the importance of testifying and this trade off you have changed my mission by the way you follow the spirit and act on it's promptings. It was great. I just loved it. Being an STL is so great! :D I get to learn so much from so many different missionaries, we have MLC tomorrow which will be good to! I am excited! :) 

Then I had a trade off with Sister Brockbank which was also great! We stayed in Wyoming and also knocked a ton!! That was super fun though too, oh my goodness we were walking from one house to another and then this girl was walking with these two cute twins in a stroller and we stopped her and told her that we were talking about families and Gods plan for us all. She started to cry and told us that he boyfriend is in a coma, her dad passed away from cancer and her brother also passed away from cancer.. I couldn't even believe it. I walked over and just hugged her, this complete stranger that was just so in need of the gospel and the understanding that families are forever, that God has not forsaken her and that she is loved. She just cried and we just loved. It made me think about how the Savior went about His work, I was reading this week in 3 Nephi 17 when Jesus Christ asks them to bring any that are sick and afflicted to come and I thought so much about how truly we are all sick and afflicted in any manner, as the scriptures say and that he just prayed for them and cried with them. In that moment with Kelsey I was able to feel that true love of Christ. It was amazing. She gave us her number and hopefully one her boyfriend will be okay, and two that she will be able to understand more fully the true plan of happiness! :) That was something else that hugely stuck out to me in conference, how much they talked about how this life is not all fine and dandy, but that it is full of trials and that is to be expected but that we get the opportunity to learn and grow the most from those moments! :) So cool! We met some awesome people and taught a couple lessons! That was a great trade off as well! So good!

Okay I only have a couple more minutes, but we haven't done a ton of service recently.. :( We are planning to do one soon though for a member! Oh Elizabeth came to conference this week though!!! That was great!! :) I don't know if she wants to start learning again or not but she came! That was a huge tender mercy!! :) 

We taught a couple lessons, we picked up this awesome new investigator Kayla, I am way excited to teach her! 

Sister Steele and I are doing great!! :) She rocks, we are just loving our time together that is for sure!!! :D 

We haven't had the primary program yet.. I think it will probably be coming up soon though!! :D 

My happiest this week man.. wow!! I don't know.. Saturday was super great!! :D Conference was amazing and we had a way good day, Sunday was amazing especially because it was the sabbath.. Tuesday my trade off with Sister Bates was amazing! :D This week was full of greats, okay Thursday our car fast day was pretty insane.. but BUT it was still good! We picked up some potentials from riding the bus.. :O haha it was something else that is for sure!!! But all in all I am happy, I am excited for this week! It is going to be another busy week in the life of Sister Chisholm the missionary!! :D I LOVE it!!!!!!!!!!! 

Love Sister Chisholm!! 

I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Reunited with Sister Morrison at a meeting earlier this week.

 Sister Chisholm and Sister Steele

 These two pictures were from other missionaries in Jen's mission. I love the sidewalk chalk that some sisters and Elders wrote on the campus stairs! So cool! And the sand art at Lake Michigan!

 Some cute missionaries at the Pier at Lake Michigan