September 16, 2013   Got to chat via email with my Peach from 3:30am to 5:00am this morning.  She is doing well.  Say lots of prayers for these sweet missionaries that are out there giving their all!

Oh My Dear Sweet Family,

Well first of all, I just want to say that mission life is hard. You don´t really ever know what you´re signing up for and I don´t think anyone could ever really portray what it´s like to someone who hasn´t experienced it. There is so much to adjust to and so many things that you´ve never done before. It´s hard, but I´m trying to remember how much it´ll be worth it too. Thank goodness this gospel is true and that we have the Lord on our side. Without the Lord´s help, this work would go nowhere. I am so grateful for my Savior and his help in all of this. I am here for Him and I know that it will get easier and better as time goes on. 

Anyway, not let´s talk about some good stuff. So we went out tracting on saturday night so see if we could get in contact with some antiguos (old investigators who for some reason were dropped) and some references and futures. We had an address for this one lady so we went out into the boonies to find her only to realize that we only had the building number and had no idea which apartment was hers. So we said a prayer and then decided to just start knocking doors. The last door we knocked on was a family and they invited us in! Which by the way is a big deal, it doesn´t really happen here. And so we taught them about the book of mormon and left each of the parents with their own copy and invited them to start reading as a family and set a return appointment for this upcoming saturday! We´re really excited about them, and we could tell with the mom especially that she was liking what we were talking about. 

We also had another cool experience on saturday. We went out on tracting splits with the ward members on saturday morning and we found this sweet young mother sitting on a park bench. We went up and talked to her about the book of mormon and we asked if we could end with a prayer. I said it in my very broken spanish (I can understand a lot but I don´t speak very much) and when I looked up she was teary. She definitely needs the gospel in her life and I know she could feel it. I´ll definitely keep you updated on our investigators. 

And mom I just want to thank you for finding those family history stories for me! I read through them and they are so fun to read! I read Archie Fay Barney´s little red book first and his is by far my favorite. I loved it! I got to a point where I felt like I knew him and I can´t wait to meet him someday. I was remembering the big long story of Lewis Barney that we read for FHE a few years ago and I´d love to read that again too. The intro to the book you sent with me was more of background for the book than it was of him.

So you know how people say that mormons are weird? I can finally understand it! Haha, I think because we are so used to it, we don´t realize how different from the world we are. Especially here in Spain, the world is wicked. Everyone here smokes or drinks or has chastity problems. And I´m not kidding when I say everyone. Satan really is doing his best to make people unhappy. There are some awesome people here, but it´s also a very worldy and wicked place. There´s not a good spirit here. It´s kind of sad to see, but it makes me appreciate the gospel so much more in my life. I cannot express my love for this gospel enough. Everything that I love in this world comes because of the gospel. 

So to answer some of Dad´s questions. We get around by walking. Unless we´re going out to a pueblo then we take the bus. We have a massive area so sometimes it takes 30 minutes just to walk somewhere, and that´s good timing most days. The food is good. I haven´t eaten much Spanish food so there´s not much to say about that. The language is slowly coming. I can understand a lot and get the jist of a conversation, but speaking is hard for me. My companion is awesome! She´s been such a blessing to me! We get along very well and I love her already! The weather is hot and muggy. Haha we sweat all day long. It´s pretty attractive. My companion was in this area before but we got another companionship in our area so they changed the boundaries of our area so some things are the same and then some things are new for her too. Yes, I do feel my Heavenly Father´s love. Somedays a little more than others and somedays I really have to search for it, but yes. I know it´s there. 

Well I´m out of time for this week. I love you all and can´t wait to hear more from you next week! 

Hermana Walton