Dear Family and friends,
Hello! How was your week? I hope it went well :) I had an amazing week up here in St. Helena! It's been raining for almost a week straight and I've LOVED it!
I am pumped for General Conference this coming weekend! For all of you who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints:
watch it! For all of you who are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: watch it! It's on lds.org and BYUtv, as well as a myriad of other places, including the local LDS church buildings. I invite you all to listen! It is amazing to listen to these inspired men. I promise if you go into General Conference with a question in your mind, that question will be answered. No matter what the question is. Take the challenge and watch living prophets! :)
So. For my week!!
Sis. Petersen is basically a BOSS. She invited 4 people to be baptized on the street. Yup. She is an amazing missionary! But really. I feel like she's training me! She's helping me to be more humble and patient
:) I love it. I love her!
We have been working so hard to be exactly obedient. The Lord has been blessing us for trying to be exactly obedient. My faith is being built so much! Last week we were running late. We have been trying to be exactly obedient, so we ran down the street to be back at our apartment by 9pm. We only had 17 contacts, but we had faith God would put at least 3 more people in our path. We ended up talking with 6 more people AND we were home right at 9.
On Friday, we were contacting and had to finish weekly planning, but only had 19 contacts. Sis. Petersen said, "I wonder where we should go to talk to at least one more person." And then right in front of us, a lady got out of her car! We were able to talk to her and another person or two.
Sis. Petersen and I have also been teaching basically 50/50 because we've been going "back to basics:" teaching, testifying, inviting.
It's been interesting, though, because even though we're striving to be obedient, we ended up dropping an investigator. I think it's for the best though. We dropped Jim Kelleher - he just wasn't keeping commitments and wasn't willing to do so to strengthen his faith. It makes me sad when people use their agency to deny themselves blessings, but maybe in the future he will be ready.
Okay - here is the highlight of my week: I was able to understand a lesson in SPANISH on Wednesday. The Hermanas (Hermana Kaiser and Hermana Nimmer) teach an English class Wednesday evenings, and we help with it. They had a former investigator, Miguel, show up and we invited him to Roberto's baptism (which was also the highlight of my week, too....it was a great week). He asked what baptism was, and I felt prompted to show him the picture of Jesus Christ being baptized from the Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet, so I did and explained what baptism is, why we do it, how God has asked us to do it. It was amazing, because then the Hermanas chimed in, and turned into a talk about baptism and then a full blown member-present lesson (Bro. Mutz comes to learn Spanish, too) with a former investigator of the Hermanas. It all started with following a prompting - then turned into a lesson about the Restoration and Jesus Christ establishing His church. It was AMAZING. They were able to resolve some concerns he had and invited him to be baptized on the 28th of June. And the coolest
part: I UNDERSTOOD EVERY WORD!!! And it was all in Spanish!! I had the gift of listening to tongues...if that's such a gift. It was so neat.
It made me feel so happy that I could understand what was going on and was able to chip in a little bit with my broken Spanish. Maybe I'll get switched to being a Hermana...psych. That would make me FREAK OUT.
Understanding Spanish is one thing haha. Speaking it is entirely different. It really was a great experience, though.
I wanted to end with a funny thing Sis. Petersen told me the other day. I asked, "if you could only say one phrase for the rest of your life, what would you say?" She said: "The struggle is real." Haha it made me chuckle because there are just so many things that you can say, and yet she chose that one. She is so sweet - I love her so much and am so grateful to be her companion!
I'll really end now with two jokes this man at the veteran's home always tells us (and I mean always - I've talked to him 4 times and he tells us these 2 jokes each time)
Why didn't the skeleton cross the road?
Because he had no guts!
Have you heard of Tarzan? Do you know how he died?
Somebody greased the rope!
Ha and then this old, sweet toothless guy bursts out laughing and it makes us die laughing because he's laughing so hard...oh good times at the veteran's home :)
I hope you have the most marvelous week! I love you all so very much!
Oh and guess what? God loves you :)
Love always,
Sister Nikole Decker
P.S. I hit my 7-month mark on April 4th, so this coming Friday.
Madness. I don't ever want to leave! I love it here.
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