Prayers should be "well done" not "rare"

Hola hola!!!

So our theme for this week is "Hakuna Matata" and that has definitely been a help with all of the craziness that has happened this week! Well maybe it's more of a lack of craziness. Last week we had 13 new investigators... almost all of them dropped us before we could even get in a good couple of lessons. What can you do? hakuna matata ;) Almost every single night except for Saturday night, ALL of our appointments and back up plans have fallen through. I was about to the point where I'm like, "What's the point of even planning if nothing we plan for happens?!". (You think I would be used to this by now being out so long...), Well it's not so much the plans falling through as the fact that we have very limited miles, it's freezing! and it gets dark at 5. Crazy bipolar Alabama weather! So we've been biking and walking in the freezing cold all week. Everytime we leave the apartment I just say, "You crazy mormons!" :) We are crazy. It's gotta be true if we're willing to sacrifice our night to walk around in the freezing cold trying to find somebody ;) But! all of this has been a great learning experience for me. We're building character. We have gotten so desperate that we literally have been talking to EVERYBODY. The whole awkwardness factor of walking up to random people on the street, in the store, at the gas station hasn't necessarily gone away, but I've just gotten to the point where I'm like, "Yup, this is going to be awkward, but who cares!" :) We just laugh our way through it. I don't even know how many people we have given pass along cards to this week or how many book of mormons we have handed out. 

I got to go to Georgia this week! We were over visiting someone from the branch with the most awesome Senior couple ever! (well kind of. They are from Huntsville on assignment here from the Stake President to strengthen our branch) and they took us over to the border. I have officially been to all 4 states our mission covers :)

Our BIFE came to church yesterday! woot woot! They seriously are a miracle! They seemed like they really like it. The youngest, Danny, thought that he was getting baptized on Sunday so he was afraid to come. Apparently he's afraid of water... So if any of y'all have any ideas on helping him overcome that, it would be appreciated. But! We are happy that they are talking about baptism. They really are preparing for the 9th :) I am just so happy for them! And Lee, the 12 year old, (my bff) he said while they were leaving, "I really like this." Bah! I just love 'em! They all have been reading!.. Except for the dad. But, we are working on him. He has really opened up since we first saw him so hopefully, with time, he'll see what a blessing it can be for him and his family.

Celia was baptized in Florence! She is so awesome. I tried to see if President would let me go but he said it was too far :( I'm really excited for her though. She is going to be such a strong member.

So, I had the greatest, what President Hanks calls "Emmaus experience" this week. If you don't know the story of the road to Emmaus, you can find it in Luke 24, but it basically is a moment when you look back and realize that the Lord was with you. I realized this week that my biggest "Emmaus Experience" hasn't actually happened on my mission, but before it. I realize now that the Lord really has been involved in every single detail of my life to get me right to this point where I am now. He has never abandoned me. He really is micromanaging every moment of our lives! I am so so so grateful that he has been pushing me in the right direction all my life even if sometimes I have been stubborn :) It's like what President Eyring said in last conference, "There is not one of us that He has not desired to save, and that He has not devised means to save." Wow! And I can see on my mission that miracles happen every day! Little "Emmaus experiences" every day. I can't even tell you how many times I have felt like I just "chose" to knock on a door, and then realizing afterwards it was a prompting. Our God is an awesome God!

You know what else? I've really come to realize that the mission is mostly for the missionaries. If anything, we will at least have 80,000 somewhat converts this year. All of them just happen to be members already ;) It's like Elder Bednar said, "The biggest convert on your mission oughta be you!". But that only comes by completely forgetting about yourself. Why else would the Lord send out a bunch of kids to do his work? It's so we can learn a thing or two on our way and hopefully bring some of that joy to others, whether before or after the mission. Like Elder Holland said, "Your mission is the MTC for your life."

Thanks for all the prayers and all of the love sent this way! I am definitely sending it back :)

Love you all!!!!

Con amor,

Hermana Decker

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

Wrinkled with burden? Come inside for a faith lift!

Haha! So we're back with the church signs :) Isn't that one awesome. I laughed for like a minute straight. Gotta love the south!

Well I am in Fort Payne, Alabama! We're pretty much out in the boonies. Seriously though, this is probably the most hick/redneck place I've ever been my whole mission. And I've been a lot of places! ;) But! I absolutely love it here!! I finally made it back to a branch!!... except for it's completely English. Well, not completely because there are a few members that are Hispanic, they just don't come to church. Which is pretty much the case for almost all of the members of the branch. Everybody is Less active. It apparently used to be a ward, but their numbers of attendance have decreased significantly so it's now just a little branch. I like to call a lot of the members out here "baby Mormons" because they are all so new in the gospel. A lot of them still hold on to their "southern Baptist" culture (which leads to some interesting lessons in church... some of it bordering on false doctrine. haha) but what can you do. If I ever pick up on the southern drawl, it's going to be here. I just love it all! I'm so excited to finish up strong here. It's going to be an interesting transfer, but an amazing one none the less! :) 

The branch is small and many of the members aren't very strong in their testimonies of the gospel, but we are planning on really focusing on the members this transfer. We need to strengthen the branch before any missionary work gets done. Most of the other areas I've been in, the ward/branch is really focusing on missionary work, but this area is hardly even talking about it. Hopefully we can change that. Getting a lot of the less active members will be on our list as well. The problem is that our area is huge and all of the members live super far out and we have little to no miles and we share the car with the Elders. Luckily a few of the sisters in the ward are sweet enough to take us out every once and a while. It's about a mile and a half to even get to an area with houses from our apartment! It makes for fun bike rides ;)

That all being said, this area has had 4 baptisms within this transfer and last! 3 of them are children of members :) But we did just have a baptism yesterday! Her name is Laura and she has quite a miraculous story. She found a Book of Mormon some years ago and read it a few times, then a few months ago got on Mormon.org and requested a bible so she could give it to her friend and the sisters delivered it and started teaching her! She is prepared. She has a few psychological issues, but the branch has been super sweet to her.

Hermana Torgersen is the sweetest thing ever. I don't think I have ever heard a negative/mean thing come out of her mouth. She is a youngin', only 19 :) She's a little more on the quiet side which I'm not really used to since most of my companions have been crazy! But she reminds me a lot of myself when I first got out... except for maybe a little more sweet ;) She's been out for 7 months. I'm so excited to work with her! She is a super hard worker and she just loves everyone!

We don't have a lot of investigators right now, but we are striving to change that. We had a really good week this week in teaching and finding new people. The night time appointments are a little rough since I don't know the area and she has only been here for 6 weeks and we don't have a lot of investigators to teach, but we're working on it :) We biked forever far away this week to get to a trailer park of Hispanic people! It was totally worth it ;) I have missed being around so many Hispanics. There aren't a lot here, but most of them haven't spoken to missionaries before since Spanish missionaries have just recently been put here. This Saturday we're hoping to head to Collinsville which apparently has a lot more Hispanics. I don't understand how they end up in this area or a lot of these areas down south, but I'm glad they do! :)

Our church flooded this week. Because of the crazy cold bipolar weather here this past week, a lot of the pipes froze and burst at peoples homes and obviously our church. We were at the church when it happened. It was pretty crazy. It looked like it was raining in the church.

Love you all! I send my prayers and love your way!

Love, Hermana Decker

Baptism pics

Alex at baptism :)

Olo!!

Hola hola!!!!

Guess what! :) I'm being transferred!!! Once again I am headed to one last new area. I'm super excited but at the same time, I will really miss the people here in Florence. It's so crazy how quickly you fall in love with the people that you serve. I've only been here for 6 weeks (well minus the 5 months about a year ago) but I've met a bunch of new people and I feel such love and hope for them. But! I am so grateful for an opportunity to meet more people and grow to love them just the same! We have been speculating, and we think I might be headed down to Lorna, one of the Spanish branches near Birmingham. I told President I would love to serve in a Spanish area again, so maybe he took that into consideration. Plus, I emailed Hermana Child today, who is serving down there as one of the Sister Training leaders, and she says that she thinks I'm moving there too because one of the Sisters there is being transferred. I really don't care where the Lord sends me, I know wherever it is I will love it! :) I already had a chance to serve in a branch anyways, so I would love to let some other sisters have the opportunity. (still, the selfish part of me wants to be moved down there ;) ).

The weather here is FREEZING. Literally. We had a cold front move in and today's high is 15 degrees. The wind chill should get us around negative 10. Awesome. I just feel bad for the poor elders who don't have a car. We are trying to take care of them the best we can by finding them rides, but there is only so much we can do. They're just little boys ;) They are awesome! Just sometimes need someone to take care of them ;)

I got some spectacular, awesome, amazing, tremendous, marvelous, and wonderful news :) We had a baptism on Friday!! Alex was baptized. I guess I haven't really talked about him very much, but it's mostly because we haven't really been teaching him specifically, but his sister. When I first got here he had a baptismal date, but freaked out last minute when we were planning his baptism and told us to leave him alone. We've seen him off and on because we visit his sister Claudia and he's been there when we were teaching her. On Thursday though, we were over at their house and he said that he wanted to be baptized (which he has been saying for a while) but we didn't want a repeat of last time, so we told him he has to be really serious this time.  On Thursday we told him, "Whenever you want to be baptized we will make it happen," and he said, "Well I'm off tomorrow". So, we made it happen :) It was great. Not a really good turnout at the service, but it was last minute. I'm really excited for him. I know if he wants to he will be a great help to his family in bringing them to baptism. His sister and her 9 year old daughter and his other 9 year old sister have baptismal dates for the end of this month. It would be amazing if he could baptize them. BAh! I just love this gospel so much. I love seeing the miracles that come from it :)

Anyways, that's about it from this side of the world ;) Life is good. Life is great. I love it! I hope all is well with each of you! Thank you so much for your prayers and love. I will be sending some your way!

Love, Hermana Decker

P.S. Here's the quote of the week from my lovely companion:

"Who wears the pants in this relationship?" -Me

"We both do! They're double sized." - Sister Klein