Elder Chalmers: My Last Week in Mt. Pleasant

LAST WEEK IN MT. PLEASANT 12/12/15
I found out on Thursday night that I'm getting transferred from serving on campus at CMU in Mt. Pleasant, and will be going to serve on campus at Western Michigan University (WMU) in Kalamazoo. I'll be serving with Elder Erekson, who I came out with. I'm really sad to leave MT.P. I love the ward and I love serving with Elder Tubagus. Life has been good to me here and I'm really excited for the great opportunity to serve in Kalamazoo, also called K-Zoo or Kalamazion. :)

Last Saturday we got to attend the Midland Nativity Exhibit and it was amazing. They have over 700 Nativities, it fills the entire Stake center and there is a wonderful spirit there. Elder Tubagus and I both really enjoyed it.

We were able to have a really great week. It's the week before finals so everybody on campus is pretty stressed out. A lot of the people we met gave us their info but said they wouldn't be available until next semester. We had some great lessons with our investigators and also Calie was baptized today, which was an awesome experience! Again, it was a really great week...

A few of the highlights of the week:

We had a lesson with a guy named Jack. It was interesting, when we originally met him he did not seem very interested but when we had finished talking to him and were parting ways he kind of lingered like he wanted to keep talking. So, he had to reschedule once but we met with him on Wednesday and we had an awesome lesson. He told us how he had put his faith on the backburner for a while and had recently begun trying to do the things to live his faith because he said that was when he was the happiest and then we stopped him. We told him how we don't believe in coincidences and had a great first lesson and he will be awesome for Elder Tubagus and Elder Mafile'o (my replacement) to continue to teach!
We also had a great lesson with our investigator named Troy. We had him read 3 Nephi 11 and he understood it really well so we went over it and asked him how he felt about baptism and he said he felt good about it so we invited him and he accepted to be baptized on January 30th! He's great.
We taught a guy who is from China and has been here for 4 months. His English name is Lockett. We taught him about Heavenly Father and it was awesome! He is the nicest guy. I'm excited for him. I think he will progress really well!
We had a YSA Christmas dinner and white elephant on Friday night which was a lot of fun. I stole these aloe infused socks from Elder Tubagus and then taunted him with them the rest of the night, it was pretty funny. We stole the show because we brought some nerf guns we found in our apartment and they were the hot item. ha. The YSA are great. They are giving me a hard time since I'm going to WMU which is the rival of CMU. ha.
The BIG highlight of the week was Calie's baptism today. We had to work pretty hard to get it all set up and ready this morning and it turned out great. Her parents came up from the Detroit area, around a 2 hour drive. Her mom told us how she was really nervous for her to come to school and what kind of friends she would make. She said she is so grateful that she found us and that we were able to take that burden from them. It was really cool. I got to speak on baptism. I spoke on the role that Justin (the one who baptized her), Calie, and Jesus Christ play in her baptism, it went well. The whole service was great and President and Sister Jacobsen were there, it was just great!

There was also some funny things that happened this week that I have to share:

We were doing our weekly car fast on Tuesday and on our way to campus we saw these two Asian ladies and as we got closer we could tell they were speaking Chinese to each other. We said hi to them and when they saw Elder Tubagus they both got super excited and started speaking Chinese to him so he had to say, "No, no, I'm Indonesian." It was super funny. We laughed about it for a while.
Another funny thing is that there is a room next to the library with a lot of art in it where students always go to study and we saw one of our investigators sleeping in there. We laughed about it and then it was about 4 hours later when we walked past again, and she was still sleeping! We saw her phone on her lap so we decided to text her and see our text on her phone, so we did, and she woke up, and I said, "Oh shoot, she woke up, let's get going!" So we hurried outside, it was pretty funny.

I'm sad to be leaving CMU but again excited for what the future holds and to learn what the Lord has in store for me in Kalamazoo and become who the Lord wants me to become while I serve Him there. I love the plan that our Heavenly Father has for us and I also love the quote, "Growth can't be achieved without change". It's through the changes that occur in our life that we can grow. It doesn't have to be because of our situation or circumstance that we are forced to experience change, it can be because we take the initiative and desire to grow. That is what repentance is for; it's so we can become who Heavenly Father wants us to become. I'm grateful for the atonement of Jesus Christ and for how it enables us to become more and in turn experience more happiness, joy, and direction in our lives. As we utilize the atonement of Jesus Christ we will never plateau in life; we can continue to enjoy all that our Father wants us to enjoy.

I love you all!

Love,

Elder Chalmers

P.s. My new address will be 4449 Hemmingway Dr. Kalamazoo, MI 49009