May 22, 2011 Letter

Querida Familia,

  This flood situation is the most hyped up stupid thing. Nothing has really affected any of the places where our members or Investigators live. Of course there are some places that are flooding, the places that are already right next to the water. I still think it is going to take it's toll on Amelia(Mexico jr) but now they are saying it won't hit til this saturday. Also the National Guard just has more time to keep preparing so I think most all places will be prepared for whatever eventually comes. We aren't doing too much service at the moment but we might again soon. It has just been hard to keep tabs on Investigators when they are moving around from place to place.

  Delfina and Eduardo are being affected by the flood even though it hasn't come. They have had their van set and ready to go for like 2 weeks now. Delfina and her 3 daughters got sick so they didn't come to church and when we passed Eduardo just looked preocupado. We are going to visit them Tuesday and help them have a desire to be married. President Jordan will be key in helping them.

   The family that we helped move their trailer to Patterson came to church yesterday. Moises, Rosario, and Jorge(the son). We also had 13 other hispanics show-up. It's sad because our church building is so small that if we would have more hispanics there it would have been too crowded. The english members don't want to give up the big room neither even though, like yesterday, there were more hispanics than english. It just doesn't leave us much room to grow. I translated all of sacrament while E'Terry sat with our Invs. It was very hard, but I grew from it. It's all about rhthym and relaxation. There were times where I didn't understand what people were saying in english so how I am supposed to translate that? We are in the south. For Gospel Principles E' Terry and I taught a good lesson on sacrifice. We watched "Only a StoneCutter" of the new D&C DVD. That movie reminds me a lot of my own dad. It you haven't seen it, I would recommend it. After the good lesson on sacrifice we had all the members make a sacrifice by staying for the 3rd hour that is only in english. All the members did it.

   Not too much more is going on. Elder Terry both need to work on our spanish to be more effective. I bought a really nice translator the other day to help me out. Elder Belknap bought one when I was with him and I saw him grow from it. We also met a really cool family the other day. We taught the father, an ex-Coyote and look forward to teaching the rest of his family this week.

  I am sad to hear about the Farnesworth family, that is really sad! There are a lot of sad and truly great things that have happened since I've been on my mission. I wish it was always just good news, but I guess there is opposition in all things. Tell Trevor Thompson my congrats for his baptism and the Panthers for their good work in track. The good news of all is that we can superar todo por medio de nuestro Salvador JesuCristo.

Con Amor,

Elder Decker