The Mergenthaler Family

I have a lot of Costco stories like the time a crazy guy followed me through the isles cursing me for causing the degradation of the planet through overpopulation, or when little Gavin disapproved of a sample so strongly he spit it out in the cart next to him (good thing I had baby wipes). This month, Ricky got to experience some of the joy of shopping with little children. Makayla had an appointment at Costco in the optical department. Unfortunately, this appointment also fell during Rodeo Break, which meant nobody else was in school and we had already spent two days doing chores and not going anywhere, so the kids were desperate to get out. Taking six kids to any appointment is hard, but in some places, the tiny, chairless rooms make it torture. Everything is big at Costco, except for the optical department. So I put Brooklyn and Gavin in a shopping cart and told Ricky and Andrew to walk around the store for a while. Sean stayed with me and Makayla and sat on my lap (he's t...

2 weeks of emails from Emily. Sadly, no pictures, but a lot of great stories.  February 10:  ALLLLLLRIGHTY people I am officially here in Kwatta--aka me and Zr. Hatch are now the Kwatta Kweens!!!! It's been an absolute blast. I have seriously loved every minute of it. I feel so good about ending my mission here. This is the best job. Some stuff that happened this week: Still in Rainville: --On Monday, we had a super good lesson with Tricia. We talked to her about baptism and asked her if we could choose a date. She expressed that she didn't really see a need for getting baptized again, but then we had a SUPER spiritual conversation about it all and she promised she'd pray and ask God if thats something she needs to do. I have no doubts she'll be making that step before I leave Suriname.  --When we were busy teaching a lesson, a man from Jamaica randomly passes by. We say hi to which he responds, "Ya'll pray for me. I don't think I can join when I have THIS ...

From Emily: GUYS! I'm moving areas *cries a thousand tears*. That's the super sad news for this week. My heart is a little broken, but I had a cool spiritual experience that helped me feel better, so get yourselves ready for some cheese.  I was just sitting on my bed listening to music and thinking on Saturday night before bed. Then a song came on by Lauren Daigle. The chorus says, "What have I done to deserve love like this." It was like my heart just burst and images of all the people I love here in Rainville flashed through my head. I truly feel that I don't deserve the relationships I have with these people--it's more wonderful than I can explain! I have been filled with more love than I ever thought possible. What have I done to deserve such love? I feel blessed beyond words for the time I got to spend here. The more I think about my experiences in Rainville, the more I want to give Heavenly Father a big hug haha. There's no question that I'm...

From Emily January 20: We asked our cool young friend tony what his bracelet means and the title of this email was his answer. It didnt look like the other voodoo stuff I have seen, so it caught us off guard. Voodoo is sketch people. Always remember to wear your protective bracelets. This week we...... -almost died because i was really sick but the elders brought this whack juice and it literally healed me. Cant explain how. Prayer works though because I told Heavenly Father we had too many lessons the next day and I couldnt afford to be sick and boom genezen. I was super grateful for that. -found a super cool girl named exantha. We actually gave her a Book of Mormon a few months back and went to follow up. We finally got a lesson. When we were asking her who god is for her, she goes "You know, I want to know who he is better. I dont really know right now." That touched me a ton because her humble answer of I dont know led to a super spiritual lesson. Humility is really the d...

Recently, a school teacher called because one of my children had behaved unkindly toward a fellow student. The incident was bad enough that the other child left class crying and requested to be removed from their reading group. I'm not naive. I know that my children aren't perfect, but still, I was shocked. I thought I had taught him better. My first reaction was reinforced when his teacher (who I love, by the way) said, "*** hasn't behaved like this before, and it surprised me. Is there anything going on at home that might have set him off?" I responded. "No, nothing out of the ordinary here. I'm sorry you saw that side of him at school." I joked, "Usually he only treats his siblings that way." That sounded bad, so I backtracked and said, "Trust me when I say, that kind of behavior is not allowed at home." After the call, I felt sad that another child had a bad day at school and my son was a part of that. I felt like a bad mom....

Emily’s New Year email is below. Maybe you have noticed with other emails that I don’t take time to adjust the formatting or edit. You get the same version we get. I like it because it shows how tricky technology is there.  Whats uppppp friends and family! It was another great week. I realize I've been awful at sending emails of substance lately and you all are probably missing my hilarious sense of humor, so get ready for a good one because this week was straight up funny. Some stuff: --in Suriname, we have what we call old year and new year (new years eve and day). Everyone lights up about every firework they can get their hands on in their front yard. There's basically nonstop fireworks for two days and it's AWESOME. Sounds like a war zone, which it probably could be because Suriname's president got arrested for murder a couple weeks ago so yaaay. We are pretty accustomed to noises at night though (thank you to the neighbor's cats who mate at weird hours), so we ...

Merry Christmas from Zuster Mergenthaler: Wow so much has happened and it was an awesome Christmas week. One of the best christmases of my life. I am so grateful the Savior was born. Now the streets of suriname are all smoky because people go crazy setting off fireworks. I dont have time to update, but I wanted to share this super cool story that happened yesterday: We were going out to contact and we were just gonna go on the gongrijpstraat but when we went over the bridge of iniquity I had a very distinct picture in my head of this building where we used to teach the portugese dude addicted to ecstasy (haha did I tell you about him? Anyways....) so we head over there because I know this is from the spirit. Then when we get there, I feel like we should contact the street behind it. At the end of the street was an old investigator who was SUPER ELECT but told us to stop coming. We contacted the whole street up to her house but didnt really find anyone cool. I was a little dissapointed,...