I'm running out of cool subjects...

Aloha!!! :)

Hey y'all! I hope everything is going well at home. I read Brayden's email from last week a couple of minutes ago and by the end I just kept thinking... I will never complain about my mission again! It is a blessing to be state side. Sure we got cockroaches crawling out of who knows where, but I can handle all that stuff. Blessings. I am on the best mission in the world! :) ... no offense Bray, but it's the truth. Gotta love the southerners. I've learned two new languages here, Spanish and southern. Well, kind of three because the black folk down here have a language all of their own too. Too much fun :) We really do sometimes have too much fun I think. Sometimes our apartment gets kind of crazy with 4 sisters ;)

Anywho, this week was AMAZING. First to answer some technical questions of mom. Sister Barroso and I try to speak spanish all the time together, but it's hard when you're not immersed in the language and you live with English sisters. Our apartment is a bit small but we make it work. We live with the other Corinth sisters (english ones). One of which was one of my sisters in Huntsville, so that's fun. We all share one bathroom, which gets interesting, but we make it work :) The ward is fantastic! We just wish there was more spanish speakers, but what can ya do. And we have 6 missionaries in our ward. The Elders live in the Tennessee area of our ward and they're english as well. Our area is one of the biggest on the mission! Wooo... hope that answers all your questions mom.

Well, let's start with the best news. Jesus came to church!!!! (haha, gotta love it.) Alright, you have to say it the spanish way or it just sounds a bit blasphemous. But he did! We found him a couple weeks ago outside and started talking to him and we've been teaching him, trying to get him to understand that yes, all churches are good, but why settle for just good? Anyways, I drew him a beautiful map to get to the church (it was quite beautiful, he said so himself) and he came!! I was so happy :') A little back story (sorry this is going to be all over the place). We are teaching this other Mexican, Rey (we'll get to him in a minute), but we were teaching him the other day with the one spanish speaker in our ward who doesn't want to deport our investigators, and we told him we were having some other people come to church for the first time and so he didn't have to worry. Then I said, "Do you know Jesus?" and he says, "yea, that's my dad"... CRAZY! It's not by chance that we happen to be teaching both of them and they are our most progressing investigators. Anyways, they got daddy-issues, so Rey didn't think he would come, but Jesus came and Rey didn't. So we had our only little Mexican guy in our very English ward, so guess who had to translate, this girl! I have taken pride in the fact I've been out over a year and haven't had to translate yet, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. The spirit is a life saver, that's for sure. I just hope he was feeling the spirit more than trying to understand what the heck I was saying. The ward was super friendly and I think a little surprised we already got a Spanish speaker to come to church. One of the members came up and said, "Congratulations, y'all are doing work!"... I think it's funny that some members really don't know how hard we work. But anywho, happy day for us.

Now to his son Rey. He was out with his friends Saturday night, so one thing led to another and he didn't get back home until 10 in the morning. We told him he needs to get new friends. He's a great guy and he wants to be baptized, he just wants that feeling that this is what he is supposed to do and he is taking it very seriously, which is great, but he has got to get his priorities straight. He's still young so we can't just expect him to change over night, but he has a sincere desire to and he is coming to church next week. He promised. He shared his experience of getting over the border... I am literally at aw at what some of these people do to have a better life. I straight up told him, he came here for a better life and the better life is the gospel. I wish y'all could just meet some of these people here, their stories and personalities are so much better than what I can write. I just love them all so so much!

In other news. We got to go down to New Albany to a senior couples english class to have a dinner with them. That was fun. They have no spanish missionaries in that are but they are dying to get some. I went on my first exchange this week not as a sister training leader :D That was fun. It was with Sister Murray, who has been a Sister training leader from the beginning just like me, so it was fun to be with her. She's the sweetest. We got dropped by some investigators which is always sad, but what can you do. We are just working our butts off to start our little spanish group here and hopefully with Rey and Jesus that can be the start. I would love to see one of them baptized, just so they can turn around and baptize the other. Maybe fix there relationship problems ;) I love it here though. Trying to get used to actually being in a ward and not a branch. It's difficult sometimes, but I know I'll look back and be grateful for those times.

I love you all mucho and I hope all is well!!!

Mucho Amor!

Hermana Masey Decker