Dear family and friends,
 
I hope that everybody is having a great new year and doing well on their New Year's resolutions! We are doing well here in Saratoga Springs. We had an interesting and a fun week. Here are some of the things that happened:
 
We were surprised this week when we went over to visit Marco and Jennifer at Jennifer's parent's house (M and they weren't there. The parent's told us that they just suddenly left for Idaho when they heard that Marco could get a job up there. The thing is that they are young (she is 18 and he is 21) and they are pretty rebelious. The parents had talked to them a lot about helping around the house and being grateful for the help that their parents are giving them by letting them live in their house and being responsible for their baby, but they just wouldn't listen, and so they finally just left without telling anybody, even sending us a text or something. I feel sorry for them because they are going to have to learn a lot of life lessons the hard way.
 
On a surprising and happy note, Maria, a 15 year-old foreign exchange student from Mexico went through a huge turn around this week. We were going and teaching her about once a week (she lives with an American family of members) and she wasn't being very receptive. We even watched the Joseph Smith movie and at the end she laughed, which offended me. But we kept going and telling her that she had to read and pray. She kept doing that and suddenly this week she told us that she felt like she believed in everything and had already talked to her parents about getting baptized. We told her that she had received her answer and that she needs to honor her parents, but that she needs to be true to her testimony, even if she has to wait until she is 18, because her parents are Catholic and don't approve. She even bore her testimony on sacrament meeting and said that she knows that the Book of Mormon is true and that the Church is true. It was pretty amazing to see that change in her. 
 
Those were the big events. We also helped Sean, a New Zealander who married a Mexican girl from Utah move on Friday. It was fun. Elder Campos and I did quite a bit while they were running to get the truck - they were delayed because they saw a car crash on the way and were the only witnesses so they had to spend a few minutes giving details to the police.
 
We also found a guy from Spain named Ivan who is the grandson of an American soldier who stayed in Spain after WWII. He doesn't know much English, but he decided to come to America because something was missing from his life in Spain and he wanted to start all over and find happiness and peace in his life. We took him to church the day after we met him and he liked it. He says that America is a lot more friendly than Spain.  
 
Jesus Christ lives and is our Savior! I hope each one of you can come at least one small step closer to Him this week!
 
Love,
Elder Getts