Dear friends and family,
Kia ora! Hope you had a good week - I had a wonderful one :) And if you didn't, well, today is the first day of the rest of your life - it can be better today. Choose to be happy :D
Okay, so quick shout out to Dad and Mom and Kristen Parker for the letters! Thank you, I appreciate them SO much :)
Alrighty, well I'll just say some highlights from this week!
I can't remember if I told you about what happened during Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, but I'll share it again anyway. So! We have been working with this less-active sister named Cheyenne, and she stopped meeting with us about 2 months ago. Last Saturday while I was still at Camp Liahona, Sister Ngahwarau felt prompted to call her. She invited Cheyenne to church and Cheyenne accepted. Lo and behold, who do we see walk into church but Cheyenne with her nonmember friend, Andrew! Since it was fast and testimony meeting, everyone was getting up to bear their testimonies and then Cheyenne walked up to the pulpit - she said something like this:
"A month ago, I had made a decision to stop calling myself a Mormon and refer to myself as just a Christian. I was going to attend The Father's House and stop attending here forever. Then Joyce Came by [her visiting teacher]. I thought it was just a coincidence and shrugged it off, but had a thought in the back of my head. Friday night I had it set in my mind: I was going to stop coming here and attend The Father's House. Then the next day, the sister missionaries called and invited me to church. And here I am. I don't believe that twice in a row of someone coming to see me is just a coincidence. I can understand once, but twice? So, I don't understand a lot, but I am going to try to learn. And you will see more of me now. Amen."
!!!!!!! Yay! Wednesday night we taught Cheyenne for the first time and we felt like we should bring Destiny, our recent convert. Glad we did! Destiny bore her testimony of learning and growing her faith in Christ and Cheyenne had a light come into her eyes and told Destiny thank you - she had a lightbulb go off and she understood for the first time that God is not there to be a punisher, but to be our support and our strength. He is the person who we can rely on in the best of times and the worst. And that Jesus is there to help us, too, and pick us back up.
I love Heavenly Father. The more I learn about Him and our Savior, the more my heart fills up. I really feel like David in Psalm 23: "my cup runneth over" (v 5). The more I give my heart to God and Jesus Christ, the more They give so much more back! Crazy how that works.
As for the rest of the week - it was just GREAT! We have been teaching so many street lessons and talking to so many people. I LOVE it. And I am going to bed incredibly exhausted - that is a good sign. It means I am working hard haha.
I know God helps us fulfill our goals, too!
As part of our goal as a mission, one is to get 20 contacts every single day.
We had a neat experience on Monday with that! Monday we had a fun preparation day (played SOCCER!! Yay!) and after dinner we were trying to talk to 20 people before we had a lesson at 8. We got to 14 and ended up talking to this group of drunk homeless men. They were kind of joking around with us so we left shortly after and walked down the street a ways. One of the men named Dennis, who also happens to be YSA-age, called after us and said, "Look, I know I am drunk. But I want to learn more about the Mormon church. Can you teach me?" So we sat down on a bench and taught about faith in Jesus Christ and the Restoration of His Gospel through Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. He was so excited to learn and to get his own copy of the Book of Mormon :) And we set up another appointment for Wednesday. Then we looked at our watch after the lesson and it was 7:55! We still had to talk to 6 more people but didn't have any time before our next appointment. As we turned the corner to get to our car, there were 6 people standing outside of a restaurant! !!! So we were able to talk to 20 new people, too! Yay for miracles!
We also had a crazy night of contacting on Wednesday haha. We brought Quentin - a recent convert who is about to leave on his mission to Thailand - with us to a return lesson with Dennis, the homeless man we met Monday, but he wasn't there. We started walking around by the bridges where they live and asked for Dennis. They kept pointing to this one area but it was quite a walk away so we couldn't walk over there that night. However, on the way we talked to about 15 homeless people and we knew them all! We are friends with many of them haha. I love these people. They are so humble and kind. And we also ended up teaching this wonderful woman named LuAnn about the Book of Mormon and she was so stoked to read it!
Biggest highlight of the week: ORLANDO!! He was the homeless, YSA-age man I gave the AZ oranges to a while back. Remember him? He came to church and a member, Blake, took him to Santa Rosa to stay in the rehab center for a couple weeks? Well guess what?? ORLANDO IS STILL AT THE REHAB CENTER!! He loves it there. It is safe, clean, and uplifting. And he is getting the help he needs. That was such a testimony to me that we should ALWAYS follow our promptings that the Spirit puts into our hearts and minds. Look what happened: we were able to be tools in God's hands to help change this sweet man's life.
Thursday was...interesting haha. Sis. Ngawharau had a root canal and it took a solid 3 hours, so I was just chilling in the waiting room and these 4 YSA-age siblings came in. They were HILARIOUS. Haha I was laughing so hard at their jokes. There was a brother and a sister that were just dying of laughter to the point of tears rolling down and no sound coming out of their mouths except for when they took a breath haha! It reminded me a lot of when Justin and I crack up together - remember those good times Justin?! Haha. Just open your mouth and crack up for dayssss. It was a tender mercy to be in the waiting room with those people.
And Friday was amazing! It was Sister Ngawharau's 22nd birthday :D We woke up and I sang happy birthday to her all morning long haha. I set little reminders on her iPad that popped up with notes during the day and that was fun, too :) I also set up a little surprise birthday lunch with the rest of the zone - we had brownies and balloons and presents and ate lunch together! And the rest of the day we planned for the coming week, and ate this SUPER good dinner at a member in our ward's house. His name is Parker and his family is Japanese. They fed us this DELICIOUS bread.
Okay let me explain how it went: everyone stood around the counter and there was a big skillet with olive oil, butter, and garlic boiling. You put whatever meat and veggies into this communal skillet and it cooks them, then use chopsticks to scoop them out. You have two pieces of bread - 1 to place the food on to cool and soak up the oil, the other to eat with the food when it has cooled! Man, it was so good!! I need to figure out what the name of it is. Parker keeps telling me but e name is super confusing and Italian...
And we ended the night with Destiny! She came out and did missionary work with us all Friday evening. We taught a wonderful lesson to a returning-to-activity member named Jordan (who also reminds me a TON of Eric Sheffield, by the way! You two should meet haha) about faith in Jesus Christ. It's amazing how no matter how many times I teach it, I learn something new. I love teaching with Sister Ngawharau. She is a pretty recent convert, so her experiences are so new and sweet and pure. She is such an amazing companion!
Destiny's grandma in Crescent City is getting worse so Destiny's dad is taking her to Crescent City for at least a month to help her grandma :/ I will miss her a lot! Glad she could spend her last night in Vacaville with me and Sis. Ngawharau :) We are working closely with elders there to make sure that she keeps attending church and getting new member lessons. Also, I am grateful for Skype! We can continue teaching her new member lessons via Skype until she returns, as well.
Saturday we did the coolest service with planting grass and trees in barren areas in Vacaville along the trails they made for cyclists and runners and dog-walkers. It was so cool to meet so many different people in the community from different backgrounds coming together for a common cause. It strengthened my faith in service as a community for sure. Also, Sister Ngawharau and I taught the first lesson EVER 50/50. We have been working on it the whole time we have been companions and it has been a struggle because she is naturally shy. It is amazing to see what we can do through Christ, though - she is already transforming and becoming better and more confident.
One thing I've noticed in her is this gift she has to befriend those who are not easily befriended. She truly looks out for the downtrodden and broken-hearted and seeks to lift them up. She always makes me laugh whenever I feel down, too :) Sometimes I get too serious haha. She helps me remember who I am, what we are doing, and how to enjoy it. I am so grateful she is my companion! I am thankful for the example she is to me of being more like Christ with each passing day.
Haha story of the week:
Last night while contacting we ran into this Thai lady and her American husband. After talking a bit, we found out sue owns a Thai spa in town. She looked at me and said, "You come work in my spa - you nice skin and little body and happy smile make my customers want come to spa" Hahaha - then she started laughing super hard and then it made ME laugh and then her husband started laughing and then we were ALL laughing. Then she turns to Sis. Ngawharau and said, "And you make good officer with tall and strong body." Hahaha. She was so sweet. And now I know I can get a job at her spa if I ever wanted to move here post-mission haha.
Man, I just love being a missionary! I know this is God and Christ's work and I am grateful to be a part of it :) I want you all to know I have a testimony of this Gospel. I know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is truly Christ's church on the Earth again and He leads and guides it through a prophet today, Thomas S. Monson.
The book is blue, the church is true, and God loves you!
Love,
Sister Nikole Decker
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