Living without God's spirit is like trying to dribble a football.

Hola hola!!

So I don't have a lot of time to email today. Thank you holidays. We are at an awesome members house, but preparation day ends like in 20 minutes so I'll be fast.

We had the best of both worlds this week with a recent convert going crazy on us and then finding a golden family! We'll start with the bad first. The recent convert here, Laura, was just recently baptized last Sunday and everything was great! She was so excited and told us that she knew this was Christ's true church. Well, one day later we went to see her to see how she was feeling on the baptism. When we went in I could tell that something was a bit off and we asked her how she felt and she said she felt good. Then we asked her how she was doing with the word of wisdom problems she was having before her baptism and she explained to us that she had fallen back. She was smoking and drinking coffee all over again. Bah! Then she proceeded to tell us that we are not a religion and that we don't know what we are talking about because we have never seen the gold plates and that she thinks we are greatly misguided and brainwashed... Pretty much anything that anybody can throw at us, she threw at us. It was probably one of the worst experiences on my mission thus far. This is the same lady who has read the Book of Mormon more times than most members. She has psychological problems, schizophrenia, so we think it must have been that split personality, because the person we saw, was not the person we knew before the baptism. We haven't been back to see her yet. We tried on Saturday but she didn't answer. We just continue to pray for her.

Enough of the bad news, now to the great news! We met the most wonderful family ever! :D They are the Techlowec family and consist of a mother and father and three of the greatest boys ever, ages 9, 10, and 12. The mom watched the Emma Smith movie on Netflix (thank you Netflix!) and decided to go onto mormon.org and asked for a missionary visit! Woot! Then we show up! We drove up to her house and before we could even knock, she opens the door and has a look on her face like, "Who are you people?". We told her who we were and she smiles and lets us in. Not the usual reaction we get when we say we are Mormons. Long story short. Her youngest son just got over cancer and she has seen the Lord help her family. We testified to her that this is exactly what her family needs now to grow closer to Christ. We left her and her 12 year old son a Book of Mormon and came back a couple of days later and she had read up to 1 Nephi 3 and her son had read up to 1 Nephi 7! We met the Dad, left him a Book of Mormon, taught the restoration to the whole family this time, and they all committed to a baptismal date on February 9th! The best part is that the 12 year old son, who I just absolutely adore, said the closing prayer and we told him to ask if the BofM was true and in his prayer he said, "I don't need to ask if the BofM is true because I already know it is." Bam! I just love kids. We are so so so so excited for this family and I have great hopes for them. BIFE... Best Investigator Family Ever. I have been praying for this family my whole mission. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY! Please pray for them. This family could be such a great contribution to the branch.

We had interviews with president this week. He got a bit teary eyed when I was talking with him. We didn't talk very long because I will be talking with him and having another interview in a little over 4 weeks... crazy. I did find out I was put in this area due to circumstances with a previous missionary... I'm the "saving" missionary.

This area is a tough one, but we are praying hard, working hard, and going forth with faith and steadfastness in Christ. We know he'll make up for the rest.

Oh and I gave a talk on Sunday about the Articles of Faith. It went pretty well if I do say so myself. I can definitely see such a contrast in the types of talks I gave at the beginning of my mission and now. I'm just glad this one was in English.

We're finding more hispanics. Yay! The branch isn't so helpful in that area of the work but we hope to change that. We visited some hispanics in Collinsville this week who are members. None of them come anymore, but we hope to change that :)

Love you all!!

Hermana Decker