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
No comments:
Post a Comment