Faith!!

Hey!

You know what? Life is good :) I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!! Seriously though, this is the best thing ever! I want to share with you some awesome thing that I learned this week. So I have been studying a lot about Faith recently. It's going to be really hard to explain all that was going through my mind, but I will try ;) So I totally understand the Faith in Jesus Christ thing. I feel like I have pretty strong faith in Jesus Christ and in his atonement, but I have been thinking lately about faith and miracles and how faith leads to miracles. I understand the concept, it's just the doing it part that is hard for me to get. Like, the fact that I can have so much faith that God is going to help us get a baptism this weekend, but if it isn't in his plan, it isn't going to happen (experienced that firsthand :) ).Well then I'm thinking, we have to have faith that God COULD do it, the question is WILL he. Which brings me to Elder Bednar's talk when he talked about "Do you have faith NOT to be healed.." So then I'm just all confused because really, what's the point in having faith in something that is going to happen if it's not in God's plan anyways. BUT! Me being all confused about this for a couple of months, I was reading in Alma the other day and came across chapter 37 verse 40.

 "And it did work for them according to their faith in God; therefore, if they had faith to believe that God could cause that those spindles should point the way they should go, behold, it was done; therefore they had this miracle, and also many other miracles wrought by the power of God, day by day."

I don't know if this completely answers my question, but it brought some peace of mind for me :) What I got out of it was, they had faith in one little thing, that God COULD move that spindle. Just starting with that, nothing else, not even that it would point in the right direction, or that it would bring them to the promised land, or he would provide the way to get there. I'm sure they had faith in that, but it all started with that God could move that spindle. THAT was the miracle, and then more came EVERY DAY! So, I realized that I was making it more difficult than it needed to be. I need to focus in my own "spindles". The simple things, like reading the scriptures, obeying the rules, those bring miracles. God has promised that. The bigger miracles will follow. Anyways, I don't know if that makes any sense but it blew my mind! :)  

So, enough of that. Our week was amazing! We did much better this week than last and saw some great miracles. We have been joking all week that our investigator Celia (who's in Madison right now) was going to text us and say, "Hey, btw I want to be baptized!" It was mostly a joke, but we both kind of were hoping it would happen. Well on Saturday, guess what she texted us?! "I'm actually texting to tell you guys that I would like to be baptized :)" Best text ever! I think so!! Who knew a text would bring me so much joy. So Celia is getting baptized!!! On January 25th so that her aunt (who's a member) can fly in and see it. We are pretty happy missionaries :D Plus we had 6 investigators at church and 3 with a baptismal date. Things are good. Life is good.

Not much else is going on. We find out about transfers on Saturday, so I'll let you know how that goes next week. I hope you all have an amazing new year! I will be fast asleep in my little bed while y'all are partying :) Miss you! Love you!

Love, Hermana Decker

Temple Trip

Pics of Temple trip

Temple Trip!!

Pics!!

Our tree!

PICS!!

Our district

Christmas!

Well, I'll keep this letter short and sweet since I will be talking to y'all in a couple day!!! Life is good here :) No complaints... except  for maybe the weather. We have the most bipolar weather if I've ever seen it. I'm not going to complain that it is cold because I know we're not nearly as cold as Grandma and Grandpa. About two days ago we hit a record of the high 70's which was awesome, and then a storm came through the other night and we've dropped back down to high 30's. Que en el mundo! But whatever it's fine :) Except for the fluctuation is making me feel a bit under the weather.

We had our Mission Christmas party this week. It was SOOO fun! Our zone teamed up with the two Bessemer zones and we had dinner, a talent show, devotional, and a movie, Ephraim's rescue (Which is really good by the way, if you haven't seen it.) It was nice to kind of sit back and relax for a few hours. It was pretty much a whole day event because it takes about 2 and a half hours to drive down there and then it was 5-6 hours. It was great to see all of the missionaries there :) I was in two parts of the talent show, not because I have any talent, but I'm good at going along with things :) We did a district talent and then us and the Corinth sisters did a talent. They were just little skit things. I am so grateful for President and Sister Hanks and for all the hard work they put in to taking care of us. They're amazing.

President pulled me aside while we were down there to talk to me (that's always a bit nerve racking!). He told me why I am in Florence. Basically he said it was an emergency transfer, he wasn't planning on moving us, but because of something that went down (still not sure what) he had to transfer somebody in and he couldn't move anybody else because they were all locked in so he picked me. So I should still be in Corinth... except for not, because I know everything happens for a reason :) He said he trusts me so he put me here. Anyways, that's why I'm here! A part of me wishes I knew what happened, but honestly it doesn't really matter. Sister Klein says she doesn't know either so it must have had to do something with her previous companion. President also told me that he feels like I have earned the right to pick if I stay or go next transfer... Bah! I hate making decisions! But, I have been praying about it and I think I'm going to tell him that I would love to experience somewhere else (preferably with more Spanish people) but I will go wherever works best for him and the Lord.

I'll fill y'all in with everything else that is going on on Christmas! We can skype whenever, so I'm thinking probably in the afternoon sometime. What time is Brayden calling/skyping and maybe we can try to do it around the same time!

Mucho amor!!!!!!

Love, Hermana Decker

Pics of Christmas Party with President and Sister Hanks!

At the Christmas party!!!

Pics

I forgot to mention that we had a baptism yesterday as well!!!!!!!!! It is of an excommunicated member we have been teaching. She is Awesome!!! It was so amazing to see all of the support from her family and ward family. I've never seen so many people show up to a baptism.

Your daughter

From: Elamae Campbell 

Happy happy happy!

Hey y'all!

I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo excited for Christmas! I think I have been listening to Christmas music since June or something ;) We took our Christmas pictures and we have our little christmas tree and wreath. Members are already starting to get us some Christmas presents. Bah! I just love being a missionary at this time of year. I'm already so happy to just be a missionary, but add a bit of Christmas to it and it's like... too much happiness :D

This week has been great! There are so many good things happening here! We got to go to the temple on Thursday. I absolutely love the temple. I could just sit in there forever! I'm especially grateful for all of the temple workers who take the time out of their schedules to come to all 6 or so temple sessions that we do as missionaries. They drive long and far to come help us out. Sitting in the celestial room and just looking at all of the wonderful missionaries all around I couldn't help but tear up. All these Elders and Sisters are just awesome and each have given up so much to be here. I feel honored to be serving here with each of them. So many wonderful "kids" (because that's what we are) who would put aside everything for 18 months to 2 years to serve the Lord. It just has to be true!!! Bah! too much happiness and love :D I also got the chance to see Hermana Hazelgren and Hermana Barroso at the temple so that was an extra bonus! I have made some amazing friends out here.

Bethany got engaged! Woot! We called Joe last night because we wanted to go visit them and he was like, "yea, that's fine, but only for a bit because we are heading to Huntsville." Then we talked to him about how he needs to propose so that Bethany can get baptized and he was like, "yea sure." Typical boy response. Well we get there about 10 minutes later and within that time period he proposed! We're not quite sure if he did it before or after we called, but we're just excited for them and she is so happy :) So now we're planning a wedding. Sweet! Which it just so happens that Sister Klein was engaged before she came out so she has already done all the planning and knows what we need to get done. We decided she only got engaged to help Joe and Bethany ;)

We saw Celia a few times this week. She is just amazing. So prepared. She is like the sweetest little thing ever. We love her :) Everyone thinks that she is another sister missionary we are dragging along when she is with us because she already looks like a mormon. We told her that she just needs to be baptized so she can stop trying to explain to everyone that she isn't a member yet. Honestly, we just think that she is scared. It's a big step to make in life! She'll be baptized eventually. She's home right now in Madison with her mom so we are trying to send the sisters over there to visit her.

Our miracle, Pam, got a hold of some anti... blah! I hate hate. Why are people so hateful. She agreed to let us come over eventually so we can answer some questions... but we went over yesterday and didn't answer the door even though she was obviously there.

Our theme for this month is "Book of Mormon Month". Woot! I'm so excited :) We have already made a plan to flood the world with the Book of Mormon. We are just going to give everyone one. We gave one to the bug guy the other morning and then we gave one to the gas station lady. YES! We would be giving out more, but our supply is limited. So until the Zone Leaders give us some more, we're fresh out. Que en el mundo! Missionaries without copies of the Book of Mormon? Yea I know.

Sister Klein and I get along great! She is amazing. I love getting to learn something different from each of my companions. She is definitely a bold one, but she just loves the people we serve. We're still getting used to each others teachings styles and those little technical things that just need some practice to get used to. I can tell she is used to taking the lead, which is totally fine, until I want to talk ;) She's from Queen Creek actually! She says she doesn't know Grams or Gramps though. President told me he is going to have to let me know sometime why he felt impressed to send me back here to Florence, so I will let you know how that goes.

Everything is great here! I can't even express to you all how much happiness and love I feel being here. It's not anything that words can describe. You'll just have to experience it for yourselves! :) Go out and bring someone closer to Christ today. As you do that, you will feel closer to Christ. And be happy!! :)   

Love y'all mucho mucho!!!!!!

Love, Hermana Decker

BuEnO!

Buenos Nachos!

Well let me start off with a couple awesome stories. Primero! So about a year ago this time in good ol' Florence I had to go on a 10 day exchange to Huntsville. While I was there, my dear companion Hermana Belford went out with a member and he gave her a $50 gift card to Cracker Barrel! When I got back she said, "I got $50 to Cracker Barrel! We have to go!". But we couldn't find that dang card anywhere! We looked everywhere! in the apartment, in the car, at investigators houses. We were so desperate for some free food we even prayed our little hearts out to find that card. Lo and behold, we never found it. We figured our faith was enough to find it, but the Lord must not have wanted us to find it and perhaps it went to some poor soul on the streets. Well on Wednesday we were doing Companionship study and I discovered that in my desk the drawer comes out and there is a little compartment there with a bunch of "treasures" left by other missionaries. We found a bunch of junk, some love letters to an Elder ;) and... the card! Crazy! So we took the elders out and a couple of our investigators to Cracker Barrel for dinner :) What I learned from that? The Lord answers in his own time and in his own way, but he ALWAYS answers. The power of prayer is real.

Segundo! Once upon a time, about a year ago again, Hermana Belford and I met this Polynesian lady in the library and of course Sister Belford was like, "Ahh! the one Polynesian in Alabama! I must talk with her." So she did and she was super sweet and we tried to see her a million times, but she got super sick and so we never got to go over :( Well this Friday, we got a text asking for Sister Belford and seeing how she was doing. We didn't know who it was so we asked and it turned out being this lady! Her name is Pam. We told her that Sister Belford had gone home but I had a new companion and we would love to come and meet with her. She let us come over and we taught the restoration and she has a baptismal date for January 4th. UN MILAGRO. 

Both of these stories are just so awesome to me. I have been studying about miracles and faith all this week and I guess the Lord decided to give me a little taste of my own small miracles. We have an awesome God! Which reminds me. One of our amazing members gave a talk yesterday and she shared this scripture, Doctrine and Covenants 64:33 "Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great." I love that scripture because lately I have been thinking, I am doing good, but I want to do what's best and this just reminded me, that the small things really do make the difference.

Other stuff that has gone on this week. We got Christmas decorations! ok so there isn't a lot, but we have a 3 foot Christmas tree that we decorated so beautifully and a wreath on the door. Yay Christmas! I'm so excited! And wasn't that Christmas Devotional amazing! I went on an exchange with one of the sister training leaders in Tupelo. We were standing in line at walmart waiting to check out (we were getting flowers for a member who has been struggling) and we met a guy named Cole and I started talking with him about the Arby fries he was buying. One thing led to another and we found out he has a cute little one year old and some of his best friends he grew up with are members. Sweet! We gave him our information and he said he would love to have the missionaries by. Hopefully the Tupelo sisters can do something with that. Really, you can talk to anyone and lead it into the gospel. I mean, Arby's fries? Some lady at Cracker Barrel heard us talking about the church and she asked us what we were talking about and we told her we were missionaries and she told us "Y'all are Angels". :) Nothing like simple phrase like that to make your night. Oh! and we bought ugly Christmas sweaters! Pictures coming soon.

Our investigators are doing great! We have one, her name is Bethany, who is a girlfriend to a less active who is just coming back to church. She is ready and willing to be baptized, with one small problem... they need to get married. She wants to, it just seems he's not so keen on the idea. Maybe he just wants it to be a surprise, I don't know, but whatever the case, they need to get on that because we have her baptismal date for the first week of January. 

We have another investigator who I just love. Her name is Celia and she's a student at UNA. It's kind of great to be teaching people around our same age, because we can understand each other a lot better. She has come to church countless times, and she loves it. Her aunt is a member and came to visit her a few months ago and she came to church with her. She is frustrated because she really wants to know, but she doesn't feel like she is getting an answer. She's going home to Madison this week for Christmas, so we are going to try to get the Madison sisters to visit with her.

We finally saw my dear Mexican family :) Octaviana and Jose Luis. They are going through a lot right now. Dulce (the 19 year old daughter) ran off and got into trouble and she moved out of the house/trailer and Octaviana is just heart broken about it. Jose Luis kind of got offensive when we came over and I was like, "Why are you not coming to church!" He says they are going through a lot and trying to work through it all. We are hopefully going to get them to start coming again and get Jose Luis to the temple. His only problem... He still doesn't know if Joseph Smith was a prophet. Bah! He knows he just doesn't know he knows. 

Anyways, sounds like things are good at home! Love y'all lots and lots and I'm always praying for you! Thank you for your prayers! Abrazos!

Love, Hermana Decker

P.S. Mom, here's an idea for Christmas: http://www.lds.org/new-era/2005/12/idea-list-the-12-reading-days-of-christmas

Pictures!

Thanksgiving with Sister Rhodes

Mr. Hendricks indian wall

Our apple turkeys :)

more

District

Shay and her family

They thought they were coming with me :)

There and back again

Hola Hola!!!

Well, you will never guess where I am... Florence!!! Yep, I'm back. Who woulda thunk??? Not me that's for sure! I was literally shocked when I saw my name and picture pop up in Florence, Alabama again. This was my last guess of where I was going next. I can't even describe to you all of the emotions that were running through me on transfers day, and frankly, I'm still not so sure how I feel about it ;) But I'm here. The Lord knows why and so I'm just along for the ride. I'm excited to be back, I already know the area, I know the ward, the only part that kind of stinks is that we all know there aren't many Spanish people here :( I was hoping to be put down in Birmingham in one of the branches there, but I think this might be my last area. If that's so, I will have spent 8 months in Florence, Al on my mission. CRAZY! I was a little frustrated the first day because honestly, I love this area, but I think I like my other areas better... I know, that's horrible to say. I just miss me my Hispanos! Oh well, the Lord knows best and I know I got people to serve here and I can already feel the Lord working through me to love the people and area as he does. 

So first part of the week was in Corinth still. We had fun. I tried to visit as many people as I could to say goodbye. Shay's baptismal date had to be moved a week because apparently she didn't come to church yesterday. I was sad to say goodbye to her. Rey was sad to see me go. I told him I'd come back for his baptism... when he finally decides to be baptized :p Jesus is being dumb as usual, but he told me we all have to move on and God has a plan for each of us (yea he can be deep sometimes). The worst part was saying goodbye to our boys though (Denise' kids). I'll send pictures of them eventually. They're the cutest! We had a sleepover on Tuesday night. Sister Barroso is awesome. She's going to do some amazing things here. She really doesn't understand how awesome she really is. She really mostly trained me :) anyways, the crazy thing is that we just switched companions with the Florence sisters. I'm now with Hermana Klein in Florence and her companion Hermana Stevens went to Corinth. We're in the same zone so I'm sure will see each other ever now and then.

Thanksgiving was awesome! We played Turkey ball in the morning with some of the ward. Everyone is super surprised to see me back. Some don't remember me :) Which is fine. Then we went to and old black lady in the ward, Sister Rhodes (same lady I ate Thanksgiving last year.) She has like a tradition where she invites the missionaries every year. She is super sweet and the first thing  she says when I walk in is, "My baby's back!" haha, she's great. Then we ate desserts at the Kelley's and another dinner at the Mezas... Suffice it to say, we ate a lot. Everyone keeps feeding us too! Florence will be the death of me.

A member of the bishopbric took us to this cool wall thing this week. Some old man made a wall all made out of rocks and stones in tribute to his great great grandma who was an indian on the trail of tears. It was pretty cool. We helped some member decorate their christmas tree (yay!) and actually watched some of the game. Gasp! I know right, but we figured we weren't going to get anything done around here when the iron bowl is on. So we went over to an investigators and ate treats. We got a new investigator out of it. Woot! Seriously though, wasn't that last 1 second crazy! Not that it matters. Alabama-none, but God is still winning!

We went to FHE last night with the YSA's (which is more like the ysa's and the young married couples). That was fun. We played catch phrase. Best quote of the night was from Elder Reese. "Naughty wolf but domesticated." (his word was bad dog). We had an investigator come to which is even more awesome. Good things are happening here. I'm excited to see what the Lord has in store here :) Now if we can just find where all of the Latinos are hiding :) Still haven't seen Jose Luis because we have been super busy, but that is next on the list! apparently he's started to go all Less active. Not acceptable!

Spiritual thought. I was reading in sacrament on Sunday (which by the way we had 3 investigators there) and came across 3 Nephi 18

 19 Therefore ye must always pray unto the Father in my name;

 20 And awhatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you.

 21 aPray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed.

 22 And behold, ye shall ameet together oft; and ye shall not forbid any man from coming unto you when ye shall meet together, but suffer them that they may come unto you and forbid them not;

 23 But ye shall apray for them, and shall not cast them out; and if it so be that they come unto you oft ye shall pray for them unto the Father, in my name.

 24 Therefore, hold up your alight that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the blight which ye shall hold up—that which ye have seen me do. Behold ye see that I have prayed unto the Father, and ye all have witnessed.

 25 And ye see that I have commanded that anone of you should go away, but rather have commanded that ye should come unto me, that ye might bfeel and see; even so shall ye do unto the world; and whosoever breaketh this commandment suffereth himself to be led into temptation.
First off, prayer. We are commanded always to pray. And ANYTHING we ask the father in Christ's name, if it is RIGHT, he will give it to us. Awesome. Pray in families. Of course. Second, it talks about church, meeting together oft and not forbidding ANYONE. We get some crazy investigators to come sometimes :) And then I love that it says to pray for them! It kind of goes along with that talk in Conference about the Lords game plan. We as missionaries need your prayers, but more importantly, our investigators do. Learn their names and pray for our investigators please. And then we are to be that example by holding up that light and representing Christ. We invite all to do just as Christ did, to come and feel and see. Experience it for self. To gain a personal testimony. I just love the Book of Mormon :D And the power of prayer

Love you all!!!! I hope Sheky got my card. Serph, your pictures are awesome! My companion just laughed when she saw them :) 

Love, Hermana Decker