Emily - Santander Week 11

6.02.08

Hello Family:
Can you believe that its JUNE!!! My birthday is this month and I´m going to be turning 22, I can´t even believe it. I thought I just turned 21. Time is flying, kind of! Anyways last Monday I got a letter from my dear Mom, Thursday a letter from Brother, and then this Monday a letter from Mom again. I always expect a letter from Mom every Monday now. E-mails I have from Pops and sister Sarah. I haven´t heard from Jess in a while. What she thinks she is all busy now because she is more pregnant.J/k! I love hearing from you guys, thanks for the letters. Sister Sarah I sent you a letter last Monday you should get it soon. Mom I love this pics you send! It looks like your having a lot of fun!

We kind of had a random experience last Monday. We were on a train going to a pueblo where the President of the branch and his family live. This girl about 22 years old came up to us, shook our hands and told us her name. Is very rare for someone to contact us, unless its some young guys pretending to want a lesson, which happens pretty often. Anyways she knew a little english and she was from Hungary, here as a nanny. She was baptized a year ago and is the only member in her family. We talked to her until we had to get off the train and we invited her to come eat with us but she couldnt. We gave her all our contact information and left. Later that day we got a text from her and she said that God had helped her find us and she really needed our help. She was going to call us and meet us somewhere. The next day we got a text and she said she had decided to go home and wouldn´t need our help. We can´t call her because the phone number isn´t in Spain. Ive been worrying about her all week because im assuming that she had a nanny experience like mine and is running away. I prayed all week that we would be able to find her if she needed our help but we never ran into her again. She was really nice! Random things like that happen all the time.

At least once a week we contact someone who is from South America and fell away from the church when they got here. We would probably have at least double the members if everyone came. But the church doesn´t even know they are here. Well the most exciting news of the week is that we set a baptismal date with Edna. Remember her, I know Ive talked about her before. She was the one I was most worried about when I got here. Im always quick to judge, she is doing really great. We let her borrow our Liahona and she loved it. This Sunday we fasted with her to find a way to come to church, she works on Sundays. She really has the desire to be better and be baptized. She sees so many bad things in the world and wants a better life. We are about half way through the commandments with her. We see her every Friday and she always makes us some food.

She has a crazy past and we have a lot to help her through but I think she is very humble because of all she has been through. You know how Ive though about being a psychologist. Well Im practicing now too on the mission. I can´t even explain to you what people tell us. Well I guess this is the best way to explain, EVERYTHING! I know way to much about some of the people we teach. One lady just cries through every visit because she is here all by herself working. Her family is in Peru and her husband doesn´t work. She is here to provide for her family. We find moms her by themselves ALL the time. ITs so sad! They miss their kids terribly.

Oh this week another random thing happened. While we were visiting one of our investigators the Elders knocked the building. When we finished they came and got us. They told us they found someone to teach but they couldn´t go in because it was a German women by herself. The four of us together taught her lesson one really quickly because it was late. She speaks Spanish, English, French like five languages or something. Anyways she was an amazing person, so smart. She wants us to come back next Tuesday. During the lesson she stopped us and just looked at us for a while. We asked her if she had a question and she said no Im just admiring you. She couldn´t believe that we were here at such a young age for so long in Spain where she was sure no one was going to listen to us. Elder Hatch was like well thats why we are here with you because your going to listen, she jsut started laughing. It was nice to have at least one person here recognize what we are doing. Im excited to teach her again.

Okay and to end the letter Im going to tell you a funny story...YES! Guess what its about firefighters. The other day we were walking home down some stairs and we ran into 5 firefighters WALKING up the stairs. When we got to the bottom of the stairs we found two more in a HUGE fire truck and a policeman. It seemed like something big happened because there were so many people there but because the fireman were walking it couldn´t have been that big of an emergency. As we started walking down the road we found some people talking about it . An older lady asked what happened and she said someone locked their keys in their piso. I just busted up laughing and I was wishing so bad that DAd would have been there to see it. I would have laughed even harder if I would have seen Dad´s veins popping outside of his head. Anyways once again I really hope I don´t have an emergency while Im here. Well I want to write brother a quick note so Im going to end early. I love you all so much. Thank you for your letters, prayers, and love. Have a wonderful week!

Love, Em (Hermana Gogarty)