March 2, 2011

Dearest Family in the whole wide world,

I am glad to hear that you had, once again, a good week. I like the consistency. I love hearing the details of what everyone is doing and how they are doing. Thank you so much dad for checking things out about jobs, school, etc. I really, really appreciate it. I love you all very much for the prayers, thoughts, packages, and letters. These things are very kind and mean a lot to me!

Elder Ketchum and I have also had another good week. We don´t tend to have bad weeks, as those rarely exist in missionary work. The greatest joy really comes from knowing that you are worthy and that the Lord has called you through a prophet of God to serve among His people in a designated spot in the earth. I love being a missionary and lately, Elder Ketchum and I have experienced much success.

Les cuento un poco del éxito y de las experiencias que hemos tenido.
First, Jhon Saco. Jhon is 17 years old from Ecuador and the story is really neat how we met him. Jhon´s mother, Carmen, and his brother Felix (20), live with him here in Madrid about 25-30 minutes from the church in metro. About 3 weeks ago, Elder Gardner (that new missionary that I ¨trained¨ for two weeks from Afton, Wyoming) and I were running late to the ward council meeting that they have every Sunday before church. We had about 2 minutes, I think, from the metro station to get to the church, so when we got off the metro and started running. We ran in front of the famous plaza de toros and crossed the street and entered into the street that leads to the church, Calle Alonso Maestro.

This street isn´t as busy as the famous Calle Alcalá, and it is only a one way street with one lane, like many streets here in Spain. We were running pretty fast, when we heard someone yelling from behind us. At first, I didn´t think much about it, not even looking back, but the second or third time, I turned around and we stopped running. We could tell that this women wanted to talk to us and we stopped and went towards her.

Well, long story short, it was one of those less-active member miracles where this less active women Carmen, had left that Sunday morning to find the church. She had been here in Spain for, I think, more than ten years, and had gone to another church farther away, but I guess was looking for one closer. We were very happy to meet her and we went to the church together. She went into the other ward´s Sacrament meeting as we went into the ward council meeting. But before we parted she gave us her number and asked if we could pass by the following day.

That was three weeks ago and since then we have taught that family several times and Jhon, has a baptismal date. His mom, Carmen, and brother Felix were already members and they have come to church 2 times. Jhon has only come one time and let me just say that this family is very special. These two young men are giants. About 6 feet two or three inches tall and that is very tall for a Ecuadorian as you can imagine and they tower over everyone at church. The special part is that they love their mom and are very respectful towards us. They offer to pray and are really stupendous people. We are excited about them.

Quickly, just one more story about Carol. Carol is a friend of the family of Luis Miguel, the recent convert that got baptized in December. Luis´s wife Sonya is a member for many years but has just come back to being active in about the last 6 months. She is now the Young Women´s President. So Carol, from Pêru, is 27 years old, I think, and has a 7 year old daughter Dana. She was in the house of Sonya and Luis when we went over to teach them last week and we gave her a brief overview lesson. She agreed to come to church as she had already told Sonya that she was coming.

She came to church and stayed all three hours and the last hour she went with the Bee hives, she thought that that was a funny name. We taught her for the second time last night in Luis´s house again and she had prepared for us a dinner, algo de pollo relleno con puré de patatas, no me acuerdo como se llama, pero fue buenísimo. I loved it! After we started to teach her about the Restoration. She had a lot of questions but I loved them because it showed interest. She started to cry and said that she needed this but it was hard for her because she didn´t want to always be someone who looks for God when things are bad and when things are good, forget about him. It seems like she is going through some rough times right now, but she is basically golden and said that she wants to go to church as many times as they let her….which is forever, so that´s great!

I love you all very much. Les quiero un montón y quiero que sepan que oro mucho por ustedes. Espero que tengan una semana super buena otra vez y que sigan adelante con las escrituras. Justo acabé de leer el Libro de Mormón y lo estoy empezando otra vez. Me encanta el Libro de Mormón y es un libro verdadero. Sigan leyendo este libro, por favor. Puede cambiar todo para nuestra familia y ayudarnos tener mucha más unidad y amor.


I love you so much Cami, Mark, and Cari. Keep up the good work.

Love,

Élder Driggs,

your Spanish missionary :)