December 1st - 15 month mark!

Dear family and friends,

Kia ora!! Vacaville YSA is going great! We had 3 investigators at church on Sunday! Hooray!!

Okay. Weird. On Thursday this week I hit my 15-month mark! I am so old  haha. It is odd to now be one of the old missionaries - I feel like I  just came out! I am stoked for a second Christmas in the field - there

is nothing like serving Christ full-time two Christmases in a row :)

This week was really, really great. It was super humbling - I love being a trainer; I learn so much from Sister Ngawharau every day! This week she taught me that we need to focus better on helping our

investigators to truly progress. We had a great weekly planning and mainly focused on daily contact with all our investigators!

On the down side, our whole zone got sick this week! It was rough...I ended up catching a prety bad cold/fever Saturday, but Airborned it up and am feeling much better now.

I am becoming a Kiwi. Woot woot. I have started accidentally slipping into what I think sounds a New Zealand accent but Sis. Ngawharau always catches me and says, "You sound like a Britain." Haha I sure

love her.  Sis. Ngawharau is getting so much better at contacting and at teaching! We taught an incredible lesson to our recent convert Harrison and she taught so simply and powerfully. She is an incredible

missionary - I learn so much from her humble example!

This week I gave a talk in church about the Restoration and I learned SO much from it! It helped me understand more about why there is opposition in all things. I love 2 Nephi 2 where it talks about it:

"Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other" (vs. 16). More and more out here I

realize how beautiful and amazing the gift of agency is - and how incredible that Joseph Smith chose to act and follow through on his action. Sis. N and I were also asked to give the third hour combined lesson on Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching, so we did, but focused on the "why" in a more spiritual manner. We talked about the worth of every soul using D&C 18:10 and showed "The Butterfly Circus," then asked how it applied to doing our teaching and fellowshipping. The Spirit was so strong in the lesson :) I have never felt so strongly about the divinity of home and visit teaching - we truly are God's hands here on Earth, and home and visiting teaching proves God's love.

Exchanges this week were HUMBLING. I went with Sis. Rodriguez, and she knows her people well even after just two weeks. She did an incredible job leading out the area, and is a wonderful example of following the Spirit. She is so amazing.

Great scripture I found going over MLC notes: D&C 101:16 "Be still and know that I am God." So good.

Sis. Ngawharau's first Thanksgiving was a very unconventional one! We ate with our Bishop, but his wife wasn't feeling well enough to cook, so they took us to Hometown Buffet for dinner haha. It wasn't too bad, and the experience ended up being amazing - we met an inactive member from Dixon, an inactive member from Vacaville, and two solid potential investigators! We also were able to help a homeless man get some dinner. :)

Funny story of the week:

We went to help this super old, tiny lady named Dolores carry her food to her car and she said, "Oh I parked at Marshall's." That was about1/4 mile away from where we were haha. So we walked over there then she yells, "Darn! I actually parked outside the restaurant." Hahaha so we walked all the way back and helped her climb into her HUGE truck with her food. She ended up giving us her address and told us to come by and share more.

When we went by, we met her husband Raymond. He started telling us a

story: "When I was young, my dad always ate my butt out for not working hard enough. Then when I started working, my boss ate my butt out for not working smart enough. Then I got married, and my wife started eating my butt out for messing everything up. So now I have no butt!" He turned around and he had absolutely no bum hahaha.

Anyways, I love you all! The church is true and God loves you :)

Love,

Sister Kolee Decker

P.S. Pics: thanks Mom for the Thanksgiving package!! And thank you Mom, Dad, Camel, and Kristen Parker for the letters! :)