January 27 - Napa Valley!

Family and friends,

Hello there! Guess what? I'm in Napa Valley now! 

Here's the scoop: I live in Calistoga, the less-ritzy town in the Napa
Valley area. But we cover several cities: Yountville and St. Helena (the
tourist attractions for wine bibbers), Berryessa and Deer Park (out in the
country and forest...basically imagine what the woods look like in
Twilight), and Angwin (the Seventh Day Adventist headquarters
- similar to Salt Lake City for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints).

It's TINY here. We can walk around Calistoga in probably an hour, give or
take a few minutes. And the other towns are all at least a 30 minute drive
in any direction. Yountville is a 45 minute drive, as is Berryessa
(Yountville is 45 minutes south of Calistoga, and Berryessa is 45 minutes
east).

The people who live in the Napa Valley area are 70% vineyard and winery
owners or workers. The area is covered by two sets of sisters:
English (me and Sis. Harston) and Spanish (Hermanas Kaiser y Chavez).
The Spanish sisters have so much success here because the residents they
work with are usually humble winery workers. Random side note:
I'm already getting really good at a few phrases in Spanish because of the
Spanish sisters haha.

On the other hand, the people we work with are the wealthy vineyard and
winery owners...yup. It's very hard to find people to teach. And contacting
every day is filled with very wealthy tourists here to tour the vineyards
and go wine tasting. Currently we have 1 investigator named Ray, who we are
most likely going to drop because he isn't progressing...sad day. But, I do
know that President Alba would not keep English-speaking sisters here if
there was not work to do! So this past week together Sis. Harston and I have
been doing some massive, extensive finding.

We basically spend the entire day in one of the towns and go through
less-active members, potential investigators, and former investigators. We
have potentially picked up a few new investigators, though. One's name is
Valerie - we helped her find her phone in a field, and she said "you've made
your religion very attractive to me, let's talk next week." Another is Saul
- we met him on the street today, actually, and he wants to learn more. We
had a miracle happen, too, with a boy named Wilman (who we are actually
going to pass off to the Spanish sisters soon, but that's alright)! It was
8:55 and we had
19 contacts (we are supposed to contact at least 20 new people every day).
We were driving home from another town and NO ONE was out in Calistoga. Then
we saw one lone man walking down a street, so we made some hefty maneuvers
and hurried to park our car. By the time we got out of the car he was
walking right past us and looking at us all weird. We started talking with
him, and I felt prompted to invite him to be baptized right there on the
street, so I invited him. And he said YES! He texted us later that night and
asked where we meet for church - he had a family emergency come up this Past
Sunday so he couldn't make it, but he wants to come next week to church!
Wow. So there you are - Wilman. Again and again, proof that God is preparing
His children to hear the Gospel. All we have to do is open our mouths.

I wish we didn't have to drive so much, but it is beautiful country we're
driving through - vineyard after vineyard with beautiful mountains
surrounding...it sure is gorgeous here! And technically it's "ugly" here,
according to people who live in this area, because of the drought we're in
and because the vines are dead, since it's wintertime. But it's still
gorgeous here, regardless.

As for my companion, Sis. Harston, she's awesome! She is HILARIOUS. I
basically die laughing every day because of her. She has such a desire to
find the elect, and we are both working our hardest to find, teach, and
baptize those who are ready. I'm staying positive so far - the wealthy
tourists haven't broken me yet! Haha.

Every Sunday after our branch meets, we go to the Veteran's home in
Yountville and help with Sacrament Meeting there. It was so amazing! I loved
having church with these amazing veterans. No one younger than
85 was at church yesterday...it was funny because I was asked to bear my
testimony so I get up to the podium lo and behold: all but one of the
members were asleep in their wheelchairs....and one veteran's dentures fell
out of his mouth and into his lap. Haha it was hard not to laugh, but I
managed to not crack up! The Spirit is very strong, there, aside from them
sleeping through the talks. It was kind of cool to have 90-year-old men pass
the sacrament to us - to see that they were still fulfilling priesthood
duties.

We are dinner with a member there, Conrad, and he told us amazing stories
about World War 2 and how he met his wife, and also his conversion story.
I'll take a picture with some of the vets to send back home in a few weeks.

Well, so much more to tell, but I'm out of time, sadly. I love you all! Make
this week the best week :)

Love always,

Sister Nikole Decker

P.S. Today a member who works at a winery, Sis. Montague, took us on a tour
of a famous winery called Castello di Amorosa. It was HUGE. They filmed the
movie "Brave" there (Disney/Pixar films it in real-life then animates it),
and lots of singers and bands have big concerts in the castle. It was neat
:)

P.P.S. There are so many Seventh Day Adventists here! It's crazy.

January 20 - Wine country here I come!

Dear family and friends,

Guess what?!  I'm being transferred on Wednesday!  Very bittersweet.  I said goodbye to a lot of people yesterday at church and am going to say goodbye to more people at FHE tonight.

So guess where I'm going?  St. Helena, which is a small town in Napa Valley.  I'M GOING TO THE WINE CAPITAL OF THE UNITED STATES.  YES.  I am so excited!  I hear nothing but awesomeness goes on in St. Helena.

It's a very touristy town with lots of very wealthy people touring vineyards.  And then there are the vineyard owners, and the workers (who are mostly Hispanic, so the Spanish sisters have dibs on the humble and ready, sadly).  Supposedly there are so many beautiful vineyards and castles and such to tour up there :)  I can't wait!

Oh, and one more bit of news about St. Helena: it's a branch, which means it's small.  But we go to the St. Helena branch and then later on Sundays we drive to a veterans' home for Sacrament Meeting.  Sister Zenger AND Sister De Rurange served in St. Helena and told me the veterans home is so much fun - lots of old, old, OLD men (80+) with funny senses of humor.  

I am so excited!  My new companion will be Sister Harston, and she's actually companions right now with my MTC companion, Sister Shurtleff.  So I'll be taking Sister Shurtleff's place.  The only hard thing will be we have to do lots of tracting (door knocking).  I've been spoiled here in Santa Rosa in the singles' ward - the only time I've tracted has been when we feel prompted to knock a door we pass or when we help out our zone and they ask us to tract in their area.  It'll be different.

But Facebook is such a cool tool - we usually can find people to teach in our own area via Facebook.  We call it "virtual tracting." 

I never talk about our Facebook work.  I'll tell you how it's going!

I'm only solidly teaching 2 people on Facebook - one is here in Santa Rosa, the other lives in Oregon.  But I've been teaching on and off 2 men from Ghana and 1 from the Philippines and another high school girl from Mexico.

The 2 solid people are Austin and Eli.

Austin is someone I "tracted" into online (AKA I just sent messages out to random people and he responded and we've been talking ever since).  He has some interesting perceptions about God, but he is really learning and progressing.

And Eli is a 35 year old man who added me on Facebook and sent me a message saying that he wants more LDS friends.  We ended up talking and come to find out that he lives a block away from an LDS church!  He's been interested in meeting with missionaries, but is hesitant to have face-to-face contact.  I taught him a few principles of the Gospel, and I felt prompted to ask him to be baptized and he said yes!  So then I asked if I could get his address to send missionaries to his home to teach him face to face and he said yes again and immediately gave me his address.  It was incredible.

I sent the referral to Salt Lake, and they gave it to the missionaries who work in that area locally, and they went by his house.  He's being taught now and is going to attend church next Sunday.  He's working on repairing his marriage with his wife and was telling me last time we spoke via Facebook chat that the Book of Mormon is helping him find ways to fix things bit by bit.

MIRACLES.  Things like this happen often on Facebook, too.  I should talk more about my Facebook miracles...I'll try.

Weeks go by so fast and it's hard for me to remember all the amazing things that happen.  I can't write them all in my journal, either...it's hard for me to find time to write enough.  But then again, it's hard to find time to do much of anything besides missionary work out here haha.  Which makes sense, since I'm a missionary.  

Sadly, this past week and the next few days are my last with Sister Zenger.  She's staying in the Redwoods YSA ward and training a new missionary next transfer, and I'll be a junior companion up in St. Helena.

She has been so awesome!  Sister Zenger has really helped me to push myself and to be exactly obedient.  The obedience has brought so many miracles :)  This week alone we picked up 5 new investigators and ALL of them accepted the invitation to be baptized. One's name is Quentin - he has lots of cooking-related tattoos (he's a chef - we met him around Christmas while we were stapling a flyer up on a pole near his house).  One of his tattoos is a cheese grater on his bicep...I was wondering why he had a cheese grater tattoo.  Then during our conversation we were talking about striving to always be better, and he flexed his bicep with the cheese grater on it and said, "I always strive to be GRATER."  Haha I chuckled about that for a little bit.  It's kind of sad that he tatted his body up, though.  "Know ye not that ye are the temple of the Lord, and ye are not your own?" (Paraphrase from 1 Corinthians)

We were also able to help a lot of our less active members, and finally got in contact with two members who have been less-active for 2 years.  Their names are Bonnie and Lani, and they're sisters who live in Rohnert Park (Rohnert Park is 20 minutes south of Santa Rosa...our area covers the south half of Santa Rosa all the way down to San Rafael, but the furthest south we go is Petaluma, which is 45 minutes south of Santa Rosa...check out a map to actually understand what I'm saying haha).  We had the most incredible lesson with them about Christ's life.  We showed them a Bible video called "For God So Loved the World" and they both ended up crying.  They hadn't felt the Spirit in a loooong time.  Lani works on Sundays, but Bonnie said she's going to try to come back to church.  And both of them said they want to start reading their scriptures and praying again.  It was powerful.

Sister Zenger and I also both got royally lost Wednesday night in Rohnert Park.  We were trying to find this referral, Katie's, apartment in this HUGE complex and just couldn't seem to find it.  We were also literally RUNNING around the complex because it was so freezing cold and it was too cold just to walk, and all the people outside thought we were weirdos...oh well.

But we had a miracle!  We met these two girls, Magen and Tera, before Christmas time contacting in the parking lot of that same apartment complex.  They were nice but we didn't think much of it.  About 2 weeks after that (so beginning of January), we felt prompted to knock a random door with this big Eminem poster outside of it, and what do you know?  Magen answers the door - that was her apartment!  She was really sick, and she ended up wanting us to sing her a Christmas song even though it was 2 weeks past Christmas.  We sang Silent Night and the Spirit was there so strong - her other roommate, Jessica, loved it as well and Magen told us that this is a sign: her coworker had left a Book of Mormon on the table earlier that day.  THEN, on Wednesday night as we were jogging around the same complex trying to locate Katie's apartment a girl smoking weed on the balcony of her apartment yells, "HEY!  I know you!"  We look up and now it's Tera, the OTHER girl we met with Magen.  She said Magen had told her about how we knocked on her door, and now Tera saw us!  She said, "Wow, must be a sign."

I was thinking about it and yes, it IS a sign.  God is preparing people to hear the Gospel, and the fact that we ran into both of them again, and SEPARATELY, proves that they are being prepared to hear the Gospel.  Sister Zenger is going to go by both their apartments on Wednesday night, so I don't know what will happen, but I KNOW that it will be something good :)

I think the last thing I'll talk about is our move.  A senior couple in our mission, the Kenney's, are leaving on Wednesday to go home (they live in Mesa!  Maybe I'll send something home with them!).  So the Kenney's have this super nice condo that their lease isn't up on, but our lease on our little apartment was, so they decided to move us 4 sisters into their condo!  We moved last Saturday.  It was TIRING.  We had to scrub down our entire old apartment and pack up things and move to the new condo.  It is so big.  We're very spoiled.  It's a 2-story condo.  It has 2 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, a huge living room, and a much bigger kitchen than our last one.  

5 elders who live near us helped pack the moving van with our things, and they moved all that to the new apartment while we cleaned and unpacked and such.  It took our ENTIRE Saturday.  And not to mention today, too, to finish.  The nice thing, though, is that all my stuff is already packed for transfers on Wednesday!  So sadly, I moved into a mansion and will shortly be moving out of a mansion.  I'll be sure to take a picture of it before I leave, though.  

I'm going to miss Sister Zenger so much - this transfer together FLEW by.  I learned SO much from her: how exact obedience brings miracles, like I talked about earlier; how to "work hard for the pillow" (and we definitely work hard - I don't think I've ever slept so solidly in my life until this past transfer); how to look for the simple joys; how to notice the small and big miracles in every day missionary work; how to devote oneself completely to the Lord...

Wow.  It's seriously been such a wonderful transfer.  I feel like I've grown so much in just the past 6 weeks.  And I realized today that come Wednesday, I will be 1/4 done with my mission...weird.  Time is flying!  And I want to devote 100% of that time "lost in the work."  It is so true that when you lose yourself in the service of God, that's when you find yourself.  I feel like I know my strengths and weaknesses so much better, and I can just feel myself growing closer and closer to God.  But more importantly, I have the opportunity all day every day to see others I love grow closer and closer to God :)

I love you all!  Hope you have a magnificent week!

Love,

Sister Nikole Decker

P.S. Punny quote this week: "Do you need a PAGE turner?  

                                           Because I'm your guy." (Elder PAGE)

P.P.S. I'll send a couple pictures, but I can only send them one at a time for some reason.

P.P.P.S. Send letters for the next little while to the mission home address: 5301 Badger Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95409 USA

January 14 - Highs and Lows

Dear family and friends,

Life is so great! Cool news: we got an update on our iPads so we can now
email from them :) It's pretty exciting. The iPads are definitely hastening
tools!

My past few emails have been super deep, I feel, so I'll focus on the funny
and happy and weird moments that occurred this week!

First off, we had an INCREDIBLE day on Tuesday! We picked up 3 new
investigators and had 5 lessons (3 of which were with members present). Do
you remember the man, Kenny, I talked about last week? We met him on the
street? Well, we had another lesson with him and it was so powerful! We also
have been doing what it says in the mission handbook and "encouraging
members and investigators to develop friendships..." Basically, Sis. Zenger
and I have strategically been choosing female members to go to our male
investigators' lessons and so far it seems to be working well...haha but
seriously, it's been awesome :) Our members have really helped this week,
and it's been a huge testimony to me that this work of salvation is for
everyone, both members and missionaries.

I invite all members to go out with the missionaries to lessons!
Missionaries come and go, but members in a ward are pretty solid, so it's so
important and vital that investigators have a solid friend.
We're all brothers and sisters, children of God - get over the cliques and
the nerves and act like it! Help those who are trying to change their life
:)

And if you're not a member, then I invite you to meet with missionaries and
become a member. I don't know much, but I DO know this Gospel is so true, so
real, and so right. There is no sacrifice too big to enter into the "kingdom
of God," or the Celestial Kingdom.

So, moving on, the next day, Wednesday, I woke up at about 4:30am and ended
up running to the toilet to throw up! That day and Thursday, too, I felt so
nauseous and gross. The funny thing was that my usual companion, Sister
Zenger, went to a missionary leadership training those 2 days and I was with
Sister Timmons, who also ended up getting sick. The good thing is that I am
better now! I got a blessing and somehow was able to not throw up during our
lessons, so tender mercy
:)

And Ben got baptized!!!! It was so spiritual and amazing :) Ben's nonmember
dad came and absolutely loved it! The funny thing about the baptism, though,
was that he ended up getting baptized 4 times! It was déjàvu, because each
time he entered the water and came up, him and Jeff (a recent convert who
was able to baptize him) would just smile and hug, and then Bishop Pierce
would tell the witnesses, "No, the wording was wrong" and Jeff would baptize
him again, and they would smile and hug, and Bishop Pierce told the
witnesses, "No, the wording was wrong," and again he'd go under the water,
and then him and Jeff would hug, and Bishop would tell them again...haha it
made the baptism rather humorous.

The fourth time Jeff said the wording to the ordinance correctly, and Ben
was baptized, and they hugged, and he was just BEAMING :) It was the coolest
thing. When our bishop welcomed him into the ward after, he told us that the
reason why the wording has to be exact is because it is, for one, an
ordinance - the sacred act that shows you are making a covenant (or promise)
with God - and also because it is symbolic of the perfecting, completely
cleansing power of the Atonement. The wording has to be perfect because the
Atonement is all-encompassing and makes us perfect. It is so special and
sacred.
Then I really understood, and Jeff, and Ben, and even Ben's dad. The Spirit
was definitely there.

And yesterday he was confirmed and received the gift of the Holy Ghost in
church. Ben's dad came for that as well :) He wants to look into the church,
now, but first he is going on a 6-week expedition to Mt.
Kilimanjaro in Africa! He is an avid, and I mean AVID, backpacker and
canyoneer. I am so excited for him to be taught and receive a remission of
his sins and the Spirit to be with him always!

Okay, so we had several weird contacting things happen to us...1. This man
we met downtown kept asking me, "You smoke weed, don't you? Admit it! You
totally smoke weed!" And I kept saying no and then he would say to me again,
"Nah, I don't believe you - don't lie to me! You smoke weed, huh?" I almost
said I did just to get him to go away! But not really, I would never admit
I've done something I haven't done.
Then his friend next to him said, "You know what? She is a servant of God.
Of course she doesn't smoke weed! Leave her alone!" And they walked off.
Yup. That was odd.

And 2. We were contacting on a random street and this young man walked by
and said to us, "you're gorgeous!" BUT, it ended up being pretty cool
because we were able to then talk about the Light of Christ and how each
person has it, but that we were specially called to be servants of The Lord.
He ended up being super interested in coming to church and asked for the
address! It was just such a neat experience that came out of an odd contact.

Finally, 3. There is an avocado tree right in the middle of downtown!
We we're walking down the street to an appointment and an avocado fell on my
head! I looked up and this tree is FULL of delicious California avocados!
So...we might just go back and bring a bag to pick some avocados :)

Life is good, life is happy, life is amazing, life is incredible :) I love
being out here!

Hope you have a wonderful week! I love you all so very much!!

With love,

Sister Nikole Decker



Ben on the left, Jeff is the redhead on the right. So happy for him!

January 6 - Mini Missionary and 4 Month Mark

Family and friends,

Guess what I did this week?!  Well, what my companion Sister Zenger and I did this week?!  We hosted a mini missionary!!  One of the stakes in our area needed more sister missionaries to host a few more Laurels to go on a "mini mission," or work in your area with you for 3 days.

So I'll let you know how it went.  

It was AWESOME.  We picked our 16-year-old mini missionary up Wednesday evening, and she stayed with us until Saturday evening.  Her name is Lena Ainzlee Strickling, and she is INCREDIBLE.  We had to a little bit of tracting this week for the first time my entire mission, and that sweet future missionary was so bold and unafraid.

This week working with her gave me hope and filled me with so much excitement about the rising generation!  And Justin, Lena is a cutie, so maybe you two could...you know...date.  She's a junior in high school and such a sweetheart!  Haha kidding...maybe.

Anyway, it really did impress me how mature and amazing she was.  It was so cool, because all three of us sisters in our temporary trio like doing the same things: kayaking, camping, hiking, backpacking, stargazing, eating, dancing.  We got along so well.  It's so fun to be with people who have your similar interests.  I call Sister Zenger and Sister Strickling tender mercies from the Lord.  It truly is so nice and so fun to serve in the Lord's vineyard with people who you get along with so well.

We witnessed many "mini miracles" this week with Lena working in the vineyard with us for a few days.  First off, we taught Ray a lesson!  Ray kind of fell of the face of the planet for a while, then we decided just to stop by and he was home.  He is going through a lot of inner struggle right now.  He knows the Church is true, and that this is really what brings him true happiness, but his addiction to cigarettes, among other bad habits, is holding him back.  He did say that he wants to meet with us again, but in his own time.  

It makes me think of a talk given in our ward a few weeks back from a member of the bishopric. He said to us, "Weigh these two things in your hands: a pack of cigarettes, or the kingdom of God?"  He went on to talk about how the Kingdom of God, the Celestial Kingdom, is worth giving up anything and everything that pulls us away from Jesus Christ.  But Satan wants to deceive us and make us think it's much more complicated than that.  And that is so true!  

President and Sister Alba also fed Sister Zenger, Sister Strickling (Lena), Sister Hamilton, Sister Timmons, the APs (assistants to the president), and I dinner Friday night and boy did Sister Alba tell us some funny stories!  Remind me when I get home to tell you about her and Michael Jackson ;)

And interesting fact: our temp trio contacted into a drug exchange in downtown Santa Rosa Friday night!  It was actually quite humorous.  Lena and I started talking to this man just as another man was handing him a "marijuana pipe" and it was very awkward.  The man handing him the pipe froze in mid-air with this pipe just out in the air.  It was almost like he thought that maybe if he froze, he would be invisible and we wouldn't notice!  But we definitely did.  It was an interesting conversation...both of these men were clearly under the influence, but they ended up talking with us about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We even invited one to be baptized and he said yes!  Granted...he wasn't all there...but it was cool to be able to feel the Spirit and have them recognize it was the Spirit that they were feeling, too.

We also picked up a new investigator!  His name is Kenny.  We aren't exactly sure how solid he is quite yet, but we had a rather expensive brunch first lesson with him and invited him to be baptized, and he said yes and wants us to come back to teach him on Tuesday!

I also wanted to share a quote from a member of our YSA ward.  She said in testimony meeting yesterday: "Maybe I am lost...but at least I'm lost in the right direction."

I love that!  I want to let all of you know that if you feel confused about what you want to do in school, with your career, with your family, your friends...whatever it may be, it is okay to not know exactly what you are going to be doing.

In Matthew 6:33 it says "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for itself."  I know that even if you don't know exactly what exact decision you will make in a week, a month, a year down the road for those big life-choices we all make, that as long as your are following the Gospel of Jesus Christ and remaining true to those covenants you have made with God, he will make sure that even if you feel "lost" you will at least be lost in the right direction.  

Have a wonderful 2014!  Make every day the first day of a new year :)  Life is all about starting fresh, and becoming the best you: "God doesn't care nearly as much about where you have been as he does about where you are, and with His help, where you are willing to go" (Jeffrey R. Holland, "The Best is Yet to Be," January 2010 Ensign).

Love y'all!

From Santa Rosa,

Sister Nikole Decker