Sister Jessica Lee Hollist

I can't believe it's already been 2 months, what!! I only get to do this period of time 8 more times sadly. However, because we lost around 40 missionaries this past week a few areas are combining and closing. We are now over Woodhaven and Indian Trail and are now in a full car area. The best news of all, I am still with Sister West, YAY!! As far as being in our apartment is going we have played a lot of two handed UNO and the 2020 mutual theme album is where it's at. One quick brief story, This week we were biking back from our dear friends Jane and John's home when we got called to the side of the road by a man and his wife working in their yard. They asked us if we were the missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ and we said yes. They were very knowledgable people as far as the bible goes and they also knew a lot about the Book of Mormon and they quoted verses from both groups of scripture. We stood there for about 30 minutes while this couple seemed to attack ...

Wow, what a CRAZY week it has been. We got a call Thursday morning and we have now been put under what one would call "shelter." We can leave to go to the grocery store and an occasional lesson with young people (which we are so blessed to be able to do still) but otherwise we are in our apartments. There truly are so many positives to everything going on right now. I was studying in Joseph Smith History the other day and verse 20 says, "It seems as though the adversary was aware, at a very early period of my life, that I was destined to prove a disturber and an annoyer of his kingdom; else why should the powers of darkness combine against me? Why the opposition and persecution that arose against me, almost in my infancy?" The adversary is very aware of what miraculous things our Heavenly Father is capable of. This has become one of my most favorite verses and it applies to each of us individually. When the adversary tries SO hard with us it's because he KNOWS...

Wow, it's been a bit of a crazy week. If I hear corona one more time... I know everyone is talking about it so I'm going to give my brief thought about it all. I know there is a lot of craziness going on but I'm so grateful that this gives us a chance to realize what is truly important. Sporting events can get cancelled, stores can close, airports can close, anything can close, but nothing will ever stop the joy that we continually get from our loving Savior and the continuation of this wonderful restoration. I'm grateful to be a missionary at this time because it is allowing me to truly realize what is most important above EVERYTHING else. This week I was reading a talk by Joseph B Wirthlin and he says his mother's advice to him when he was younger was "come what may, and love it." This time is exciting, this is allowing us to slow down and focus on the real reason we are here. Trials and challenges are going to come but we can always learn to love it and...

What a great week it has been! I'm not even sure where to start, but that's pretty usual. Anyways I'll just start with Sunday. Sunday morning we had ward council (so we thought) at 7:30 but with the daylight savings it was basically at 6:30 and the Elders asked us for a ride so we had to leave our apartment at around 6:45 (5:45) to go get them and then be on time which means we had to wake up at 6:00 (5:00). We got to the church, which is about 30 minutes away from the Elders apartment, and then they proceeded to tell us that ward council was cancelled and that they were just kidding and they wanted to see how long it would take us to realize. Long pointless story later let's just say there were a few tears (actual tears) at the loss of sleep and then a desire to get back at them, so I'll let y'all know how that goes down. All jokes aside Heavenly Father blessed us in some amazing ways this week. I am amazed every week at the joy he has blessed me with. Enos v...

I've been out a little over a month yay!! It's been the longest and shortest month ever. Another exciting week which contained a lot of biking, rain, and great weather. The weather around here is kinda weird because one night it snowed and then the next morning it was like beautiful and short sleeves weather. We also had a dinner last night 8 miles away and didn't have the car so it made for quite the exciting evening of biking but we really loved it. We had a lot of lessons fall through this week which created for time to explore our area more and Kentucky is a lot more beautiful than I realized. I dont have much time so I'm going to keep this brief but one thing that has stood out to me this week from studies was I was reading in 2 Nephi 2:11 which says, "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither ...