Emily @ Santander Week 2

Hello Family:This week I had a couple letters waiting for me at the mission home. One from mom and the rest from Elders. They must have stolen my address from Sister Nickolaisen. One of them was pretty serious!LOL. I´m not really quite sure how to respond, he pretty much confessed his love for me. They are all good Elders, it was fun to hear from them. Kind of sad that I got more letters from the MTC Elders than my family. Just Kidding! Grandma I didn´t get yours, sorry. Maybe it is sitll on its way.

An hour is not enough time to tell you everthing that has happened this week. That is so awesome that you can see where I live. It is true that I live in a very high building but there is nothing else here. You know it the East you can´t see the sky because of the trees, well here its because of the buildings. Everyone lives in a piso and a lot of times they have families in each room of the piso. ITS CRAZY!

Ill start by telling you who we are teaching. First of all I can´t figure out what mission I was actually called to. I think we have talked to someone from every country in South America. Right now we are teaching this really neat lady from Dominican Republic. She is reading, praying and she came to church on Sunday with her grand-daughter. She is just a really good person and she always treats us so kindly. She feeds us every time we come over. The first time we came she made us this amazing juice. It was like a creamy lime smoothie. I will show you how to make it in a year and a half. She has also made us some not so good food. The other day we had cold sweet bean soup. I almost threw up!

We taught a lot of people this week, that we were just randomly able to get a hold of. The area book stresses me out. There are so many people that were interested and haven´t progressed. To find one of them takes like 30 mins. Our area is huge and it includes a huge hill so it takes along time to walk to each piso. Last night we taught this family at a members house. The members are from Ecuador and they are amazing. They dress just like the people I saw while I was there. WE ate dinner with them and then watched Legacy. After the movie I felt really strongly that I needed to share my testimony. As they began talking when the movie finished, my heart was pounding. I just jumped into the middle of their conversation and was like, puedo compartir mi testimonio? The whole room just turned and looked at me. I shared a really simple testimony of Jesus Christ, life after death with our familes, and the power of the atonement. For some reason I was crying. The family that we were teaching are really great people. I hope that we can help them continue to progress. I guess they have been taught all the lessons. ITs hard not to want to force people to accept what they know is true. If that makes any sense. It is so hard for people to take the necessary steps to change their lives.

Saturday was a really hard day. The weather here has been crazy! At night it sounds like someone is slamming a tree against our window and spraying it with a fire house. It is like hurricane weather. So anyways it was wet and cold on Saturday and we were wandering around looking for people from the area book. We would go to their piso and ring the bell and then no one would answer. So we would ring all the other bells until someone would let us in the building. Then we go from floor to floor knocking on doors. SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM, everytime it happened I thought I would get more use to it, It hurts every time. Then we were walking down the hill and these 10 year old kids flipped us off. WE smiled and waved at them. I thought about giving them a friendly slap on the face. The kids here are crazy, just like I remember them in Madrid. Pornography is out of control here and there are marijuana stores that sell everything. I feel so bad for them, they all look horrible. The girls have no self respect. Its so sad!

We did a lot of knocking this week because no one was on the street. This week is Semana Santa and everyone is on vacation. So here in Spain for Semana Santa they have a parade. People beat themselves and crawl down the street on their knees. The way they dress is really scary. If you don´t know what I´m talking about search it on the internet. I can´t explain it all I am running out of time. We ran into one the other night when we were going home. I got the most horrible feeling in my stomach when I saw it. People here are either Catholic or don´t believe in God at all. There are some pretty messed up things in this country because the religion was forced. I don´t even know how to explain it but their religion is their culture.

On Sunday I bore my tesimony and lead the music for every meeting. The missionaries help run things a lot in the ward. There are people from all over the world in the ward and they are all very nice. We went to two eating appointments. The first one the food was awesome and the women we ate with were so nice. Afterwards I shared my testimony and a spiritual thought from the March Ensign. Wasn´t that Ensign amazing, I have it in English and Spanish. The second cita almost made me throw up too. Thank goodness they don´t feed us everyday here.

There is so much more to tell you but I dont´have time and I don´t know how to put a lot of it into words. I will have to write you some hand written letters today, I need to get some things off of my mind. I think it would help to write them down and I want you guys to know everything that is happening. I get to talk to you in May and I´m so excited about that. I´m glad you got Logan off. I left him some treats at the CCM in Madrid with a letter. He probably left with more clothes then I did.Sister thanks for your e-mail, Dad thanks for yours and mom as always thank you for your beautiful hand written letters. I love you guys so much and I do miss you a lot. I still can´t believe that I´m here and that I´m a missionary. I pray for you everyday and I try to not think about you all the time. Sister Sarah where are you? I love you! Coby I hope your doing well too, I love you! Oh and one letter from you is not going to last my whole mission, there better be more on the way. Hope everyone is doing well. I love each one of you so much and Im thankful for your support and prayers.loveem (hermana Gogarty)