quote

I was reading the ensign from this month and in Elder Packer's talk, he says something  that I thought you'd like

"I have come to know that faith is a real power, not just an expression of belief. There are few things more powerful than the faithful prayers of a righteous mother."

Love you so much!!!!!! Miss you!!!

Como Estan!!

Buenas!

Greetings once again from the lovely state of Alabama! :)  It has been another fantastic week as a missionary. I love every single moment of it. I couldn't imagine being anywhere else right now. I keep having dreams where I am at home and I wake up in a panic. I will not let that happen. I guess it's good though because I wake up realizing that at some point I will go home and I need to work my tail off before that day comes. But, like I said. I love it. I love our little branch and all of the members. I love our investigators. I love the missionaries, especially our sisters were over. I just love it all.

I mentioned before I love our investigators. I would love it more if they would keep some commitments!!  We are having trouble getting ANY of our investigators to church. Even the other Elders and Sisters in our district (and branch by that matter) can't seem to get anybody to commit to come to church... Well I guess the problem is that they commit and then they don't show up. We thought for sure we would have at least one person at the church since we arranged a ride for them and everything and they promised they would be there... The members went, but nobody answered the door. It's a bit discouraging especially since they commit to baptism and then they aren't really willing to work towards it. We try to make it very clear that if they want to be baptized they need to come to church... still nothing. It has made me realize that we really are looking for the elect. The ones who are willing to keep those commitments and come to church at all costs.

I got to go down to Montgomery this week! The three hour drive was totally worth it just to be there for Paulina's baptism! Yep, she was finally baptized and it was wonderful :) Even with the fact that she had to be baptized three times. That has made me realize that these people are out there. The ones who are ready. Who have been praying for us to show up. Praying for direction. Praying for peace. And then God sends us. God knows where they are. The problem I'm having is listening to him I guess. We'll find them though :) We might have to drop all of our investigators first though ;) 

I finally got to take a nap! I think it was the first time on my mission! It was preparation day. I usually don't like taking naps because we have SO MUCH TO DO! But, my allergies are killing me. I love Alabama, but not so much all of the pollen in the air. Thank you drugs!

Well, we are as busy forever with everything, but I love it so much. It makes me a better missionary and helps me be more urgent. I loved being able to see your pictures Brayden! I can't believe it! You're a missionary! I may have shed a tear or two. I love it. It helps me be motivated to work. 

The work goes on! We are still searching, working hard, biking like crazy! I lost 5 lbs! Huntsville is like the hilliest place in Alabama. We have some nice sweat stains to show for it ;) 

Love you all soooooo much! Thank you for the prayers and letters. Thanks for the package mom! Sadly... only the ruffly skirt fit.. I'm telling you I'm getting fat! The dress was just a little bit to small. If I was a couple centimeters smaller, it would fit. And the houndstooth skirt was a bit to short... But! I loved them. It's the thought that counts right? One of the sisters told me they found some good flowy skirts with pockets at Down East. 

Oh! for the Elders in your ward. President said something that I thought might help. Think of all of the missionaries that have been in that area and how many of them have asked the members for referrals. They need to stop asking for referrals and invite missionaries to do missionary work. Help them to do missionary work. In the end, our mission is just preparing us to be better member missionaries because they do the actual work.

Love you!!! 

Con amor, Hermana Decker

Aloha!

Buenos Dias!!

Things are crazy as ever here in Huntsville Alabama :) But we love the craziness. We are always all over the place going on exchanges with sisters. Being away from my area has really helped me to grow a greater appreciation for each and every second that we have. Each moment is precious when we are finally in our area. I love going on exchanges though. I think it probably helps me more than it helps the other sisters. I love serving them. There are so many of them who need help and it's so hard to get to all of them! We have the zone leaders calling us telling us of sisters that need to go on exchanges and then we have the sisters calling us telling us they want to go on some, I just wish we could get to all of them tomorrow. We don't know where to go, but the Lord does, so we are trusting that he will guide us to the sisters that need us most.

This week has been a pretty successful week... besides the fact that nobody came to church, but we are working on that! I truly have a testimony now of talking with everybody! We've seen our numbers go up a lot just by stopping to talk to everybody we see. I always thought it was so annoying to have people just stop and talk to you, like on temple square with all of the sister missionaries popping out of nowhere to talk to you, but I guess we are a little annoying and awkward :)  The Lord is blessing us even when we are hardly ever in our own area. We had 6 baptismal dates, but none of them came to church, so now we only have 3. I don't know what these people need, but they will not get off their lazy bums and come to church. Granted, most of them work Sundays, they will take any day they can get to work. We're trying to get them to recognize that if we make time for the Lord, he will bless us. It's discouraging to see all of these people drop through though. I wish they could just see it from our perspective. So many blessings. I know though that there are people out there who are ready right now to make the commitment, we just got to find them.

We had to drop a few investigators and that's always hard, but they were not progressing. Someone once told me out here that the key to  baptizing is dropping. We waste too much time with the people who are not ready, we have to find the ones that are.

I have been praying for the opportunity to do more service and Saturday when we were on our exchanges with some sisters we got to do a lot of service! We helped at this house for feeding people in need and we met a lot of spanish people there. Then we helped this lady who is in a safe house move in some furniture. We left her a book of mormon. She has been through a lot and I hope and pray that she will read it...

On a more not so work related side, here are a few other things that happened this week :) I hit a bird... It pretty much just skydived right out of the sky to the front of our car. The sister that was with me laughed her eyes out she thought it was so funny, while I cried ;) I met a full grown seven dwarf. He was the most interesting fella. He even had a dwarf hat on. I wish I could've gotten a picture. We biked like crazy this week. While the rest of me might be getting fat, my legs are going to be solid muscle by the time I get back!

I hit my half way mark yesterday... Its so weird!!!! I cannot believe that I only have 9 months left! it goes by so stinkin fast it's not even funny. We did some training this week in one of the district meetings on urgency and I pretty much broke down on the missionaries about how fast it goes by. Most of them still don't believe me, but it really does go by SO fast. We shouldn't waste ONE SECOND out here.We have such a limited time to serve the Lord completely with all our time and heart and if we don't make the best of it, we will go home wishing we did more. I don't want to go home like that. I'm determined not to :) I want to go home exhausted.

We get to train for a bit on Thursday at our zone conference. President will be there and everything, so it's a bit intimidating. We get to train on the importance of members. Then we get to train next week in the other zone were over at their zone conference. Then we have Mission Leadership council next Friday and we have 5 Exchanges planned for the next two weeks... Lots to do but I love every minute of it! Hopefully I get to go down this weekend to see Paulina's baptism as well. Sister Stock (my previous companion) just emailed me and said that some of our investigators are getting baptized soon in Florence! Bah! I just love it. Dulce (Jose Luis' sister) has pretty much fallen off the face of the planet :( I just hope she finds her way. Too many problems for the youth of this generation. I just wish that I could help them see what a difference they can make! It took me way to long to figure it out. They could help so many of their friends come to the knowledge. I am a firm believer in that the children will guide them.

I love you all so so so much! Sorry this was a super long letter :) I think I'll step off my soap box now ;)

Love, Hermana Decker

Hola Familia!

Buenos Dias :)

I am so happy I got to see all (well almost all) of your beautiful faces yesterday!!! :) So sad Serph wasn't there :( I miss his beautiful face too. I'm sad I didn't get to talk to Bray either, but at least I know he is being taken care for across the border :) Didn't know we were in the same time zone though!! That's neat! 

Nothing has changed much since we last talked. I'm sad we didn't have more time though :( So much to say and yet so little time! All the kids looked the same but a little more grown up. I can't believe how fast time flies by! I keep having dreams that I am home and it makes me realize that I don't want to go home anytime soon. Not because I don't want to see my family but because I haven't finished what I was sent out here to do and I haven't become the person that I need to become.  This mission really is a blessing and I am now just realizing how extremely short the time is here! It has made me realize that I don't want to let even one moment slip by, which is exactly what I have been praying for. I am so grateful for parents who have raised me to get to this exact point in my life :)

Huntsville is going well. I love the people here and I love sharing the gospel with them. We were able to commit three people to baptism this week. Daniel and Suzanna, and Alejandra. We have a lot of investigators, the problem is that none of them will come to church! It's frustrating but we just keep trying to think outside of the box like President teaches us so we can get people to come.

We are having trouble getting some of the branch members out to teach with us. The ones that can go out are usually out with the other missionaries in the branch. We are trying to come up with ways to make the branch excited for missionary work but haven't quite figured it out yet. We are going to visit more members and hopefully we can get someone out with us. That would be nice because I have seen the blessings of member missionary work. There really is nothing that compares! 

The missionaries too need a bit of a kick to get them more excited for the work. I have started to see the importance of leading by example and I hope we are doing a good enough job to help out these sisters a bit. They are afraid of inviting to baptism! The zone leaders really hit that hard in Zone Training, but some people still just don't get it. We have to get them to realize that is our purpose! Invite! They need to see more baptisms to get them excited but they won't see any if they're not inviting.

I love the mission. Even with all of the naked ladies answering the doors, Wasps in the house, broken fingers, muddy shoes, flat bike tires, slammed doors, problem missionaries, cat calls etc... It really is a great journey :D and all of those things just make it even better ;) They make good stories. I can't imagine not being here. I'm grateful for the events in my life that have brought me here. We had a man just stop us on the street asking us for a Bible and we gave him that and a Book of Mormon and he was so excited to read it! Little things like that make me realize that the lord is preparing people right now! We just gotta find them :)

Thank you so much for all of your support and Love!! I couldn't do it without you :) 

Love, Hermana Masey Decker

Hola

Buenos Dias!!!

I get to talk with y'all next week!!!!!! I'm so excited :D Presidente Lopez (our branch president) said that we could come over next week after church to skype at his house, so it will probably be around 2ish our time so 12ish your time.... I hope that doesn't interfere with church and stuff.. But I'm sure he will let us do it whenever we want to. Cant wait to see your beautiful faces :D

So this week has been hectic to say the least! This whole Sister training Leader thing is a lot of work! Who would've thought. So we got two new Temple Square sisters in the mission and they were going to be in our zone so president wanted us to come down to Birmingham to transfers to come get them and their companions. We weren't supposed to go to tranfers but we ended up taking the long trip down there Wednesday morning. The temple square sisters weren't getting there till later so we had to pick up their brand new companions and get them all set and ready to go and then we got to go to the mission home to have lunch with the departing missionaries while we waited for the Temple Square missionaries, which was great. Love free food! It's so sad to see missionaries go home though :( kind of like a bitter sweet thing because you know they get to go see their family and friends. I love the departing missionaries though because they have grown so much and you can just see it in their faces. Anywho, so we were down there pretty much all day and then we had to drive both of those companionships back home, one set living all the way up basically in Tennessee so we didn't get back home till about 10 that night. It was a long day...

Then we had Mission Leadership Council down in Birmingham on Friday so we got to make another trip! Apparently we were one of the first "mission Leadership Councils" in the world!! Pretty cool. President Holzapfel is AMAZING!!!!!! I love him so much and his wife as well. They work so hard and we can feel their love. We got a lot of good training from him. It's good to get chastized every now and then :) I always leave his meetings feeling a lot more motivated! This calling has made me realize I have so much to work on! Anywho, we were there pretty much all Friday and then we went on an exchange with the other Spanish Sisters in our area. Did I mention we have 6 missionaries working in our little branch! Bet you didn't know there were that many spanish people down here did ya ;) One of the Elders is Elder Decker! (Which reminds me.. Padres, could you send me a good family history chart? We are determined to find out if we are related! ) We are all in the same district which means we get to hold our District meetings in Spanish! Pretty exciting stuff.

I love the exchanges! I learn something new about myself and missionary work every time I am with these amazing Sisters! I love them all so much! I didn't realize I could love them more than I already do. I got to go with Hermana Beck (shes a trainee) and shes great :) She made me Banana pancakes for breakfast and we got to go to the Ghetto and hula hoop and we saw a sweet car with "SWAGILLAC" on the back :) I love the black people ;) I have really tried to focus on what I can do to help this work move forward here, to help the sisters, and I'm trying to gain more Christlike attributes. This calling has made me realize that I have a lot to work on and it has helped me to focus more on being exactly obedient and working smarter and harder.

Our investigators here are great! They aren't progressing as much as we would like but we just keep thinking of ways we can help.I love the Spanish people! And I love that I get to learn their language and actually speak with them! We recontacted a past investigator named Maricruz. She has been tought a lot! She knows a lot of the past Hermanas that have been here in Huntsville. She basically knows everything she won't commit to baptism! She has been to church a lot and we asked her all of the Baptisimal questions and she answered them all correct! We told her that and she said that she just wants to be sure because she doesn't want to fall away when she commits to something... I'm not quite sure what she needs, but hopefully the Lord will help us figure out what to do.

We have zone training on Tuesday and Hermana Hazelgren and I get to train in our zone and the Madison zone. We'll see how that goes... Working with all these sisters I have realized more the importance of the work we are doing. That probably sounds strange but it's true. We aren't just here to help our investigators, our purpose states to "invite ALL to come unto christ". That includes the members, less actives, the missionaries, our companions, EVERYBODY. Even these cute sisters here :) I love 'em :D

 I love being able to serve here in Huntsville. The branch is great and they are all so loving and welcoming. They are few, but the few are faithful and have strong testimonies. They could probably use a bit of excitement to get them excited for missionary work. We are trying to think of ways to do that and have thought of maybe a missionary activity and they could definitely use some baptisms here :) we hope that we can bring a few this transfer. I have been praying and praying that we can. With 6 of us missionaries all working in the same branch, I have strong faith that it can happen. If we ever actually get to work in our area ;) I swear we are in the car for half of our week!

Congrats to my little Ejilah!!! I'm so excited for him and his baptism :) I want to see pictures! Give him a big kiss and hug for me! And Colbster! I heard you got your drivers permit! That's a bit scary thinking you will be on the road ;) LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!!!!! Can't wait to talk to y'all!

Les Amo MUCHISIMO!!!!!!

Con Amor, Masey