Merciful and almighty Father, we give thee thanks for the joy we feel in our heart, as we gather on this sacred spot. We come here today to dedicate a monument to our honored ancestor, Isaac Decker, to rededicate his grave, and perhaps most importantly to rededicate ourselves to the principles to which he dedicated his life.

Father, we don’t know our Grandpa Isaac as well as we’d like to. A century of reticence and some malfeasance, and a great deal of decay have blurred his picture, and so we do not know him as we would like to know him. But we take comfort that first of all we know enough to honor him. We have some indication of what he endured, and we have confidence that when he was enduring it, he did it with us in mind, in the manner of pioneers in all times and places. It was his hope and intention, we are confident, that we should have an easier time of it, as we face our different challenges